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By Mustapha Marrouchi

Like everyone else on the planet, I have been following the carnage that has been taking place in Paris; a carnage that has left nearly twenty people dead, including a black woman from Africa recently appointed a policewoman, a French policeman of Algerian descent, and three “terrorists,” also of African lineage. And while it is inhuman not to feel sympathy for all the victims who died in horrible conditions, we must remind ourselves of the stand that France has been taking vis-à-vis many issues concerning Muslims living inside its belly. For France, unlike the other colonial powers, has never faced up to its xenophobic past, especially when it has to do with those from The Maghreb.

France has banned the hijab by law, has barred the road to any form of political representation (foreigners forever yet not one of the five million French of Maghrebian descent hold a seat the French Parliament), has continued to play a game of hide and seek when it comes to the question of the Arab, who has been described as banlieusard (i.e. vermin, rat, locust). Think about it. To hear (and many French do) that Islam is a religion for idiots is not uncommon in France. If this sounds too extreme, all you need to do is to read France’s most celebrated writer, Michel Houellebecq and the case will be clear enough. This is a country that pries itself on being the only functioning democracy in the world yet gives no voice to those it considers lesser people except to pray in the streets of Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and elsewhere; a country that says it is the cradle of the Rights of Man yet does allow the dissemination of several abject cartoons of the Prophet Muhammed, the sensibility par excellence for millions of Muslims, in the name of freedom of speech is to ask for trouble, to say the least. What else did these cartoonists expect? When you attack the last rampart, the terminus, the citadel of a religion that struggles on a daily basis to shield itself from all sorts of invasions coming from the West: Nike, CNN, BBC, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, you must take responsibility for your actions. Il faut assumer, as the French like to intone.

To degrade a man—namely, Muhammed, is to sally the very core of a cultural, social, economic, spiritual, and even metaphysical value that is so dear to so many people; people who may have nothing at all at home but who have plenty if they have a Qur’an they can cling to, a book that is held in some quarters dearer than life itself. In the West, on the other hand, we must call a spade and spade. This is done, we are told, in the name of saying it as it is in an enlightened West. Well, were the very same Charlie Hebdo to try and criticize Israel, or claim that the Shoah never existed, which it did, or that the Holocaust is a tall tale, which it is not, then we will see what happens to the so-called sacred freedom of expression. It will be savaged, taken off the shelves, eradicated tout court. To that effect, we still recall how the comedian Dieudonné and his quenelles were meted in a ruthless way simply because he was deemed to be un agent provocateur to public order (i.e. anti-Semitic and therefore undesirable). He was not only banned in France but in the rest of Europe as well thanks to the pressure brought to bear on him by a powerful Jewish lobby that stands as a chienne de garde for everything that is meant to harm Judaism/Israel and its image in the world. But to typecast Muslims and/or their Prophet, a man who stood for tolerance, equality, and modesty; a man who has been compared to Charlemagne and Jesus, is fair game because Muslims the world over are still thought of as the “small” people who understand only the language of force, who are barbaric and backward and stupid and deserve to be pissed on. But we, on the other hand, are civilized, advanced, and rational. Any representation of them (Muslims) is therefore fair game. After all, if you go after the source, the origin, the beginning as it is embodied in the Prophet, and get away with it, then the sky is the limit.

Here, one particular culprit comes to mind, someone who opened the Pandora Box for many to follow. That person is Salman Rushdie. Muslims have never had a break ever since The Satanic Verses came out in 1987.[2] Oddly enough, I have a copy signed by Monsieur Rushdie himself. The team of cartoonists who were killed in Paris were marching in the footsteps of Rushdie, Hirsi Ali, Anne Coulter, Niall Ferguson and Co. Their main objective is to insult in the most hideous way Muslims and what they hold dear, very dear. There is an irony worth mentioning here in that I have never heard a Muslim saying something negative about Jesus or Moses or David or Buddha any other prophet for that matter. In fact, they treat all prophets with reverence. One does expect the same to happen on the other side. For the West, though, nothing is sacred. Their argument is that we are here to debunk, satirize, and degrade everyone and everything that stands in our way of thinking. Well, the Prophet Muhammed is not everyone. Like Moses, Abraham, David, he is someone and ought therefore to be treated with respect and even veneration.

In the midst of the tragedy that took place in Paris, the West cannot accept the fact that it is unable to force so many of the earth’s people to embrace all of its ideals, to bow to all its ideas, and to sit aside and watch while they are defaced and disfigured. The time has come for such a West to reconsider its views about the rest of us, to rethink its ideas about not only freedom of expression but also about how far it can go to diminish those of us who believe and do not believe in another Supreme Being as Nietzsche once put it. The West should know better than sally a people and one person they hold high up there. That one person is the Prophet Muhammed. For many, including those alienated young men who killed the cartoonists in Paris, he is a reason for being, refuge, a tiny corner where they can run in times of desperation, reclaim their identity, and be who they truly are. It is funny, is it not, that the weapons the men used to kill their victims are made in the West, the virtuous West who intervenes in a Rambo-like fashion in Libya, Mali, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria; a West that says very little when innocent civilians are killed in Palestine and elsewhere as if they were flies in the name of national security; a West that fathered the Crusades, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Zionism, colonialism, racism; a West that calls the Paris killers “barbarians” yet drops bombs on innocent civilians whom it deems “collateral damage.” It is a sad state of affairs.

In the end, do I feel sorry for those who were shot in Paris? Of course, I do. Any decent human being would feel terrible about what happened. But at the same time and until the West and the Rest speak the same language; until we are able to come to an understanding that the loss of human lives is the same the world over, that the spilling of blood of one life in Paris is no more, no less precious than another in Gaza; until we realize that there is enough room for all of us to live in harmony with each other without prejudice, only then can we claim to be decent and fair-minded and possibly even civilized. Otherwise, we are all barbarians avant la lettre, except that some of us are more astute at manicuring their barbarity that others.

An internationally renowned literary and cultural critic, Mustapha Marrouchi lives on borderline between the West and Rest. He is the author of half-a-dozen books, including The Fabric of Subcultures.

[1] Mustapha Ourrad who died in the assault was the copy-editor for Charlie Hebdo. The other victim of Maghrebian origin is the policeman who was shot at point blank and died instantly on the pavement in front of the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo. Ironically, their names have hardly been mentioned in the Western media. They remain a non-entity.

[2] The following is a piece I wrote against orthodoxy and in favor of Rushdie’s right to freedom of expression. See Mustapha Marrouchi, “Salman Rushdie in Alphaville, at Cross-Purposes,” Brick (Summer 1989): 38-46.

14 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By John Chuckman

The Extremely Dark and Unexamined Underside of the Charlie Hebdo Affair

We hear much about bloody events in Paris being an attack upon western traditions and freedom of the press, and I am sorry but such claims are close to laughable, even though there is nothing remotely funny about mass murder. It certainly is not part of the best western tradition to insult the revered figures of major religions. You are, of course, technically free to do so in many western countries – always remembering that in many of them, a wrong target for your satire will get you a prison term for “hate crimes” – but it does represent little more than poor judgement and extremely bad taste to exercise that particular freedom. What Charlie Hebdo does is not journalism, it is sophomoric jokes and thinly disguised propaganda. Hebdo ‘s general tone and themes place it completely outside the mythic tableau of heroic defender of free speech or daring journalism, it being very much a vehicle for the interests of American imperialism through NATO.

Of course, the best western traditions don’t outlaw what garments or symbols people may wear for their beliefs, as France has done. Note also the history of some of the politicians making grandiose statements about freedom of the press. Nicolas Sarkozy was involved a number of times in suppressing stories in the press, even once getting a journalist fired. Sarkozy is a man, by the way, who took vast, illegal secret payments from the late Muammar Gaddafi and from France’s richest heiress to secure his election as president. David Cameron had police seize computers at Guardian offices and allows Julian Assange to remain cooped in the Embassy of Ecuador to avoid trumped-up charges in Sweden. Cameron is also best buddies with Rupert Murdoch, the man whose idea of journalism appears to be what he can dredge up to exchange for what he wants from government. His Fox News in the United States enjoys a reputation for telling the truth only by sheer accident. Barack Obama is a man transfixed by secrecy and ready to use all of his powers to punish those who tell the truth, a man who holds hundreds in secret prisons, and a man who regularly oversees the extrajudicial execution of hundreds and hundreds of people in a number of countries.

The parade celebrating the good things of western tradition – which Obama missed but which saw now-potential presidential candidate Sarkozy shove his way to the front – also included such luminaries as the Foreign Minister of Egypt’s extremely repressive government, which, even as the minister marched proudly, held innocent journalists in prison simply for writing the truth. The Prime Minister of Turkey was there celebrating, a man who has put a number of journalists in jail. Celebrating rights and freedoms also was King Abdullah of Jordan who once saw a Palestinian journalist sentenced to hard labor for writing so simple a truth as that the king was dependent upon Israel for power.

We shouldn’t forget, too, that Israel targeted and killed a number of journalists in its Gaza invasions, that the United States’ forces in Iraq targeted and killed a number of journalists, and that “NATO” deliberately targeted Serbia’s state television service with bombing, killing many civilians. Free speech and western traditions, indeed.

There are more doubts and questions in the Charlie Hebdo affair than there will ever be answers. In part this is because the French security forces silenced witnesses, killing three assumed perpetrators in a display which seems to say that Dirty Harry movies are now part of French training programs.

And then we have the sudden death by apparent suicide of a police commissioner in charge of the investigation just as he was writing his report alone at night, an event which received little mainline press coverage. A man in his forties in the midst of likely the biggest case of his career just decides to kill himself?

We should all be extremely suspicious of a trained killer, seen as being informed and exceedingly efficient at his work, leaving behind his identity card in an abandoned car. It really is a touch more serendipity than we would credit in a mystery story. We should all be extremely suspicious of men so obviously well trained in military techniques, about men who were well informed about schedules at the offices they attacked, and about men heavily armed in the center of Paris. People serving in notorious killer outfits like America’s SEALs or Britain’s SAS rarely achieve such complete success as twelve victims, all shot dead, and an easy get-away.

And just to add to the confusion we have the video of one of the armed men shooting a police officer lying on the sidewalk. The armed man, face covered, lowers his AK-47 to within a couple of feet of the victim’s head and fires. The head goes down, but we see no blood. Have you ever seen photos of someone shot in the head with a high velocity weapon? That’s what the Zapruder film is about, and the results are more like an exploding pumpkin than a death at the end of a stage play. Even the propaganda-ridden BBC now has expressed doubts about the video.

We need to be more than suspicious about anyone or any event which has any connection with ISIS. ISIS is one of the terror groups assembled, armed, and supplied by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the United States for the deliberate and wanton destruction of Syria. The two brothers killed in Paris both fought in Syria. It certainly would be easy enough for someone to have obtained an ID card there from one of them. Remember, the excesses of ISIS we all read about – at least those that aren’t clearly staged propaganda stunts such as video of a hostage beheading – are the direct result of assembling large bands of cutthroats and fanatics, arming them, and setting them loose to terrorize someone else’s country.

It is the simplistic view of ISIS that the involved intelligence services want us to have that it is a spontaneous fanatical rebellion in favor of one extreme interpretation of Islam. Despite many recruits for ISIS holding what are undoubtedly genuine fanatical beliefs, they almost certainly have no idea who actually pays their salaries or provides their equipment – that is simply the way black intelligence operations work. And those participating in such operations are completely disposable in the eyes of those running them, as when the United States bombs some in ISIS who perhaps exceeded their brief.

Every society has some percentage of its population which is dangerously mad, and if such people are gathered together and given weapons, their beliefs are almost beside the point, except that they provide the targeting mechanism used by those doing the organizing.

We should all be extremely suspicious about any event when a man such as Rupert Murdoch is quoted afterward saying, “Muslims must be held responsible for jihadist cancer,” as he was in The Independent . In case you forgot, Murdoch is a man whose news organizations for years lied, stole, and violated a number of laws to obtain juicy tidbits for his chain of cheesy mass-circulation newspapers. Murdoch also is a man who has had the most intimate and influential relationships with several prime ministers including that smarmy criminal, Tony Blair, and that current mindless windbag and ethical nullity, David Cameron. Publicity from large circulation newspapers, which can swing at a moment’s notice from supporting to attacking you, plus campaign contributions buy a lot of government compliance. Murdoch also is one of the world’s most tireless supporters of Israel’s criminal excesses.

And speaking of David Cameron, Murdoch’s made man in Britain, David felt compelled to chime in on the Hebdo publicity extravaganza with, “Muslims face a special burden on extremism….” Now, why would that be? No less than Murdoch’s creepy words, Cameron’s statement is an indefensible thing to say.

Who has a special burden for the massacre of students at Columbine High school in Colorado? Who has a special burden for Israeli Baruch Goldstein who murdered 29 Palestinians as they worshipped? Do Noweigians bear a special burden for Anders Breivik, who shot 69 people, mostly children, perhaps the most bizarre mass murderer of our times? Does the American Army bear a special burden for Timothy McVeigh’s horrific bombing in Oklahoma City, killing 168, he and his associates having met in Fort Benning during basic training, two of them having been roommates? Perhaps, in both these latter cases, Christianity bears a special burden since these people were exposed to that religion early in life? As was Hitler, as was Stalin, as was Mussolini, as was Franco, as was Ceau?escu, as was Pinochet, and countless other blood-drenched villains?

The late Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, was responsible for a great many murders, including about a hundred people bombed in a terror attack on the King David Hotel. He also was responsible for the assassination of the distinguished Swedish diplomat, Count Folke Bernadotte, and he started the invasion of Lebanon which eventually left thousands dead, but you’ll have a hard time finding him described anywhere as a “Jewish terrorist” or finding prominent people asking who has a special responsibility for his extraordinarily bloody career.

There is something hateful and poisonous in conflating the religious background of a criminal or mentally unbalanced person and his violent crime. We seem to do this only in cases involving violent men with Muslim backgrounds. Why? How is it possible that even one decent Muslim in this world has any responsibility for the acts of madmen who happen to be Muslim? This gets at one of the deep veins of hate and prejudice in western society today, Islamophobia, a vein regularly mined by our “free” press and by our ‘democratic” governments. Our establishment having embraced Israel’s excesses and pretensions, we have been pushed into worshipping the mumbo-jumbo of Islamic terror, a phenomenon virtually invented in Israel and perpetuated by Israel’s apologists as a way of stopping anyone from asking why Israel does not make peace, stop abusing millions of people, and return to its recognized borders.

Well, we do have an entire industry exploiting every event which may be imagined as terror. I read an interview with the great cartoonist, Robert Crumb, who happens to live in France. When asked if any other journalists had approached him on the topic of controversial cartoons, he said that there weren’t any journalists in America anymore, just 250,000 public relations people. That is precisely the state of American journalism. It digs into nothing, at least nothing of consequence, working full time to manage the public’s perceptions of government and its dreadful policies, from murdering innocents with drones and remaining quiet on the many American and Israeli atrocities of recent decades to manipulating fears of “terrorism” and saying little about such domestic horrors as the many hundreds of citizens shot dead by American police every single year.

The French government is reported to have been quite concerned about Benjamin Netanyahu showing up at the Paris march and making volatile speeches, and they specifically asked him not to come. At first, Netanyahu’s own security service, Shin Bet, agreed that he should not go because the parade in the streets represented a difficult security situation. But neither the host government’s formal request nor the security service’s concerns can stop a man like Netanyahu. France was advised he would come, and the French made their displeasure clear by saying they would then also invite Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestine Authority to the parade, which they did.

Netanyahu not only marched for the cameras at the front rank of a parade where he had no business, he made arrangements with the families of four Jewish victims for an all-expense-paid showy funeral in Jerusalem. None of the victims was even an Israeli citizen, yet at this writing they have all been buried in there with pomp and plenty of publicity. But Netanyahu didn’t stop there, he went on to make speeches that the French and other European Jews should leave their countries riddled with anti-Semitism and come to Israel, their true homeland. In diplomatic terms, this was what is termed unacceptable behavior which in almost any other case would get you thrown out of a country. In ordinary terms, it was outrageous behavior, much like seeing a seriously drunken guest loudly insulting his host at a party to which he was not even invited.

The ineffectual current President of France, François Hollande, sent notice to Jerusalem that the four dead shop victims were being awarded the Légion d’Honneur , France’s highest honor. The nation’s highest honor, founded by Napoleon over two hundred years ago for exceptional contributions to the state, awarded for the act of being murdered by thugs? Simply bizarre.

I don’t pretend to understand everything involved in this complex set of events, but it is unmistakable that we are being manipulated by a number unscrupulous and unethical people who use murder victims and the public’s natural sympathies for them as board pieces in some much larger game.

There is even a trivial side to these bloody events with many Parisians carrying signs which read “Je suis Charlie,” surely the kind of asininity posing as deep feeling that long has been established in the United States where Walmart teddy bears and plastic flowers with cheap slogans are regularly tossed in piles here and there as memorials to this or that. Perhaps Euro-Disney has had a more devastating influence on French culture than I realized.

John Chuckman is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company.

14 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Ulrich Rippert

Governments throughout Europe have responded to the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in France by moving quickly to push through a raft of anti-democratic measures. They are exploiting the shock and confusion generated by the event in Paris to take actions that have long been prepared, but that have so far encountered resistance.

Immediately after the attacks, the police presence at airports, in front of embassies, government buildings, newspaper offices and public places was reinforced by thousands of security forces in European capitals and major cities.

Heavily armed and camouflaged military troops have been deployed throughout Paris and elsewhere in France, including at the Eiffel Tower and in all public places. Parts of the city resemble a war zone.

On Monday, the Ministry of Defence in Paris announced the deployment of 10,000 troops to maintain peace and order and protect public buildings. In addition, the government has provided 4,700 police officers and gendarmes to guard Jewish schools and synagogues that are considered particularly vulnerable.

After a cabinet meeting on Monday, Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian spoke of a permanent threat. Prime Minister Manuel Valls promised more money for the secret services and more effective surveillance.

At a security summit last weekend in Brussels, the European powers agreed that a European-wide passenger data system must be adopted as soon as possible. Airlines will be obliged to retain the records of their passengers for up to five years. US General Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and chief of the NSA, also took part in the meeting. Hayden has been responsible for implementing and expanding much of the illegal and unconstitutional spying programs developed in the United States.

Individual countries throughout Europe are planning their own measures. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel (Christian Democratic Union, CDU) has called for better international intelligence cooperation.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maizière (CDU) stressed on Monday that one of the most important measures in Germany was the deployment of more intelligence staff for the monitoring of Islamic fundamentalist groups. For this, funding would have to be significantly increased, he said.

De Maizière and others have called for the reintroduction of data warehousing. In 2010, the Supreme Court ruled that the mass storage of telephone, e-mail and internet traffic data of all users for several months, without any grounds of suspicion, was legally questionable.

Last year, the European Court of Justice ruled that such monitoring and collection of personal data was illegal. It explained that the storage of communications could not abrogate professional secrets, including those of journalists. Now, in the name of defending the freedom of the press, the German ruling class is pushing to rapidly implement these anti-democratic measures.

Also on Monday, Justice Minister Heiko Maas (Social Democratic Party, SPD) said that individuals accused of traveling to participate in terrorist activity will face even harsher punishment. Up to now, only those attending a terrorist camp in order to prepare an attack could be punished. In the future, it will be a criminal offence to travel abroad with the intention of participating in attacks or to train as a terrorist. It will make no difference whether the accused individual actually arrives at the terrorist camp.

According to political weekly Die Zeit domestic political affairs spokesman Burkhard Lischka (SPD) complained that there are cases in which someone expressed their intentions in a letter or on a social network, but could not be prosecuted. In the future, these individuals could be detained in Germany or abroad.

The Minister of Justice also wants to create a specific criminal offence of financing terrorism. Donations of all sizes supposedly aimed at supporting terrorist activities would be punishable. In the US, such laws have been broadly applied and used to target groups that are not directly connected to any Islamic fundamentalist organizations.

Later this week, the government in Germany will consider a bill that provides for the withdrawal of identity cards from “potential attackers.” It is already possible to withdraw a suspect’s passport under certain conditions.

In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced a drastic expansion of Internet surveillance. He wants to ban encryption programmes and news services like WhatsApp.

Cameron said that there must be no “means of communication” that “we cannot read.” Previous governments have hesitated in taking such steps, Cameron said, but they are necessary so that, “in extremis,” any communication could be obtained with a signed warrant from the Home Secretary.

The “Snoopers Charter”, as these proposals came to be known when they were first introduced, failed to pass parliament in 2012. They would require communications companies to retain details of their entire communication traffic for twelve months. Any person who communicates using encryption or sends encrypted files would be required to provide government officials access to cryptographically-protected information. Those refusing to hand over their password could face up to two years in prison.

The Italian government under Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (PD, Democratic Party) has also announced a significant expansion of state powers. Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has announced that he will introduce a bill in the Council of Ministers that will enable the police to withdraw the passport of any terrorism suspect.

In addition, Alfano will provide the police and judiciary with extraordinary powers that will allow increased Internet surveillance. The government is planning to shut down suspicious websites. Internet service providers must cooperate in the future, to “track messages in the network that contribute to radicalization,” Alfano said. The government would prohibit providers “from accepting websites that incite terrorist behavior.”

The main purpose of this coordinated offensive by the European powers is not the fight against an alleged “Islamist threat.” The ruling elites are increasingly turning the continent into a police state as popular resistance against the European Union and its policies is growing. The military employed in the streets of Paris, the building up of the intelligence apparatus and the assault on democratic rights are directed above all at the growing opposition in the European working class to austerity at home and unending war abroad.

14 January, 2015
WSWS.org

 

 

By Mehdi Hasan

Dear liberal pundit,

You and I didn’t like George W Bush. Remember his puerile declaration after 9/11 that “either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists”? Yet now, in the wake of another horrific terrorist attack, you appear to have updated Dubya’s slogan: either you are with free speech… or you are against it. Either vous êtes Charlie Hebdo… or you’re a freedom-hating fanatic.

I’m writing to you to make a simple request: please stop. You think you’re defying the terrorists when, in reality, you’re playing into their bloodstained hands by dividing and demonising. Us and them. The enlightened and liberal west v the backward, barbaric Muslims. The massacre in Paris on 7 January was, you keep telling us, an attack on free speech. The conservative former French president Nicolas Sarkozy agrees, calling it “a war declared on civilisation”. So, too, does the liberal-left pin-up Jon Snow, who crassly tweeted about a “clash of civilisations” and referred to “Europe’s belief in freedom of expression”.

In the midst of all the post-Paris grief, hypocrisy and hyperbole abounds. Yes, the attack was an act of unquantifiable evil; an inexcusable and merciless murder of innocents. But was it really a “bid to assassinate” free speech (ITV’s Mark Austin), to “desecrate” our ideas of “free thought” (Stephen Fry)? It was a crime – not an act of war – perpetrated by disaffected young men; radicalised not by drawings of the Prophet in Europe in 2006 or 2011, as it turns out, but by images of US torture in Iraq in 2004.

Please get a grip. None of us believes in an untrammelled right to free speech. We all agree there are always going to be lines that, for the purposes of law and order, cannot be crossed; or for the purposes of taste and decency, should not be crossed. We differ only on where those lines should be drawn.

Has your publication, for example, run cartoons mocking the Holocaust? No? How about caricatures of the 9/11 victims falling from the twin towers? I didn’t think so (and I am glad it hasn’t). Consider also the “thought experiment” offered by the Oxford philosopher Brian Klug. Imagine, he writes, if a man had joined the “unity rally” in Paris on 11 January “wearing a badge that said ‘Je suis Chérif'” – the first name of one of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen. Suppose, Klug adds, he carried a placard with a cartoon mocking the murdered journalists. “How would the crowd have reacted?… Would they have seen this lone individual as a hero, standing up for liberty and freedom of speech? Or would they have been profoundly offended?” Do you disagree with Klug’s conclusion that the man “would have been lucky to get away with his life”?

SEE ALSO: #WhoIsMuhammad takes over Twitter to reclaim the Prophet for Islam

Let’s be clear: I agree there is no justification whatsoever for gunning down journalists or cartoonists. I disagree with your seeming view that the right to offend comes with no corresponding responsibility; and I do not believe that a right to offend automatically translates into a duty to offend.

When you say “Je suis Charlie”, is that an endorsement of Charlie Hebdo’s depiction of the French justice minister, Christiane Taubira, who is black, drawn as a monkey? Of crude caricatures of bulbous-nosed Arabs that must make Edward Said turn in his grave?

Lampooning racism by reproducing brazenly racist imagery is a pretty dubious satirical tactic. Also, as the former Charlie Hebdo journalist Olivier Cyran argued in 2013, an “Islamophobic neurosis gradually took over” the magazine after 9/11, which then effectively endorsed attacks on “members of a minority religion with no influence in the corridors of power”.

It’s for these reasons that I can’t “be”, don’t want to “be”, Charlie – if anything, we should want to be Ahmed, the Muslim policeman who was killed while protecting the magazine’s right to exist. As the novelist Teju Cole has observed, “It is possible to defend the right to obscene… speech without promoting or sponsoring the content of that speech.”

And why have you been so silent on the glaring double standards? Did you not know that Charlie Hebdo sacked the veteran French cartoonist Maurice Sinet in 2008 for making an allegedly anti-Semitic remark? Were you not aware that Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet in 2005, reportedly rejected cartoons mocking Christ because they would “provoke an outcry” and proudly declared it would “in no circumstances… publish Holocaust cartoons”?

Muslims, I guess, are expected to have thicker skins than their Christian and Jewish brethren. Context matters, too. You ask us to laugh at a cartoon of the Prophet while ignoring the vilification of Islam across the continent (have you visited Germany lately?) and the widespread discrimination against Muslims in education, employment and public life – especially in France. You ask Muslims to denounce a handful of extremists as an existential threat to free speech while turning a blind eye to the much bigger threat to it posed by our elected leaders.

Does it not bother you to see Barack Obama – who demanded that Yemen keep the anti-drone journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye behind bars, after he was convicted on “terrorism-related charges” in a kangaroo court – jump on the free speech ban wagon? Weren’t you sickened to see Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a country that was responsible for the killing of seven journalists in Gaza in 2014, attend the “unity rally” in Paris? Bibi was joined by Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, and David Cameron, who wants to ban non-violent “extremists” committed to the “overthrow of democracy” from appearing on television.

Then there are your readers. Will you have a word with them, please? According to a 2011 YouGov poll, 82% of voters backed the prosecution of protesters who set fire to poppies.

Apparently, it isn’t just Muslims who get offended.

Yours faithfully,

Mehdi

Mehdi Hasan is the political director of The Huffington Post UK.

By Anne Norton

I condemn the murderers who attacked Charlie Hebdo. I condemn the demand that calls us to say #jesuischarlie. Condemning murder does not require the embrace of bigotry. The demand that we embrace Charlie Hebdo belongs to Europe’s rightward turn.

#jesuischarlie might be meant as solidarity. But it calls for an identity bounded by bigotry. Charlie Hebdo is a scurrilous rag, willfully offensive, that defended the powerful by attacking the weak. The journal ‘s favored practice was baiting the Muslim minority: developing ever more pornographic and offensive blasphemies. Muslims in France, especially religious Muslims, are a minority, subject to daily slights and institutional discrimination. Charlie Hebdo manifested its moral courage in a continual parade of hook-nosed Muslims (often Mohammad), leering and lustful, held up for the mocking amusement of secular elites. I mourn the dead. I defend freedom of expression, but I want no part in that. I am not Charlie Hebdo.

They have the right to write, to publish what they choose. We should defend that right, but we are not obliged to praise or agree with Charlie Hebdo. We are not obliged to republish their shameful cartoons, or defend their bigotry. The demand that we do so is another attack on free speech. It is requiring us to speak a script dictated by others, to speak against our will.

I fear for a Europe that embraces these practices.

#jesuischarlie says if you are not Charlie, you are not ours, you are alien. It’s us against them (and you know who they are). There is a close kinship between the seemingly liberal #jesuischarlie and the French right of the le Pens, père et fille. Both know who doesn’t belong. Both seek a single France, unified in culture and practice. Both call for placing religious Muslims, perhaps Muslims altogether, perhaps even those of Arab descent, outside the boundaries of France, of the West.
We can see this in the photographs of the victims, photos that rarely include the two victims with Arab names; two working people: the copywriter and the policeman.

Though they disagree on the France they want, much of the French right and left concur in the demand that France be a single people, alike in their public practices, marked by no sign of religious difference. Right and Left reject the “unassimilable” and regret “the failure of integration.” They seize on the ritual humiliation of those who are not like them as an occasion for solidarity. The “je suis charlie” hashtag makes unanimity compulsory: we must all be Charlie, we must all agree, we must all be one.

No. We should be able to value, and to mourn, the lives of those we disagree with.

I mourn. I am angry at an unjust and shameful attack. I grieve the lives lost — all the lives, not least Ahmed Merabet, the policeman who was one of the first victims of the murderers. His murder is the only one seen, yet it has been rendered almost invisible. Officer Merabet was there to guard Charlie Hebdo. That is duty. That is bravery. That is the defense of free speech. He belongs to a larger France, and a better Europe.

Anne Norton is Professor of Political Science and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania.

10 January 2015

By Tony Cartalucci

Corroborating claims by French security agencies, a bizarre interview conducted just before the death of terror suspect Chérif Kouachi reveals that he had been in Yemen and in direct contact with none other than Anwar Al Awlaki – the notorious Al Qaeda leader allegedly killed in a drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

The UK Mirror in an article titled, “Paris shootings: Listen to terrorist Amedy Coulibaly’s bizarre conversation with hostage during supermarket siege,” quoted Kouachi as saying:
We are just telling you we are the defenders of the prophet and that I Chérif Kouachi have been sent by Al Qaida of Yemen and that I went over there and that Anwar Al Awaki financed me.

Not only was Anwar Al Awlaki a senior leader in Al Qaeda, he also infamously spent dinner with top brass at the Pentagon shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks in Washington, New York, and over Pennsylvania.

CBS News would report in their article, “Qaeda-Linked Imam Dined at Pentagon after 9/11,” that:
Anwar al-Awlaki – the radical spiritual leader linked to several 9/11 attackers, the Fort Hood shooting, and the attempted Christmas Day bombing of an airliner – was a guest at the Pentagon in the months after 9/11, a Pentagon official confirmed to CBS News.
Awlaki was invited as “…part of an informal outreach program” in which officials sought contact “…with leading members of the Muslim community,” the official said. At that time, Awlaki was widely viewed as a “moderate” imam at a mosque in Northern Virginia.
At the same time, the FBI was also interviewing Awlaki about his contacts with three of the 9/11 attackers – Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al Midhar and Hani Hanjour – who were all part of the crew of five that hijacked the American Airlines jet that hit the Pentagon.

Indeed, Anwar Al Awlaki would admit to having met Hazmi – in yet another incident the general public is supposed to believe is simply an astonishing coincidence.

The list of “coincidences” and “accidents” is so far impressive and include the following:

1. French authorities arrested and imprisoned Chérif Kouachi in 2005 for terrorism. He would be released in 2008 after sentencing was suspended for “time served,” this despite evidence suggesting Kouachi may have even gone as far with his plot as travel to Yemen. Slate Magazine would report in their article, “The Details of Paris Suspect Cherif Kouachi’s 2008 Terrorism Conviction,” that:
Kouachi was arrested in January 2005, accused of planning to join jihadists in Iraq. He was said to have fallen under the sway of Farid Benyettou, a young “self-taught preacher” who advocated violence, but had not actually yet traveled to Iraq or committed any acts of terror. Lawyers at the time said he had not received weapons training and “had begun having second thoughts,” going so far as to express “relief” that he’d been apprehended.

2. Kouachi and brother Said would be implicated in another terrorist plot again in 2010 but were not prosecuted due to a lack of evidence. The BBC in their report titled, “Charlie Hebdo attack: Suspects’ profiles,” would state:
In 2010 Cherif Kouachi was named in connection with a plot to spring another Islamist, Smain Ait Ali Belkacem, from jail – a plot hatched by Beghal, according to French anti-terror police.
Belkacem used to be in the outlawed Algerian Islamic Armed Group (GIA) and was jailed for life in 2002 for a Paris metro station bombing in 1995 which injured 30 people.
Said Kouachi, 34, was also named in the Belkacem plot, but the brothers were not prosecuted because of a lack of evidence.

3. With French intelligence agencies’ knowledge, the Kouachi brothers would then travel to Yemen in 2011, receiving weapons training directly from Al Qaeda. CNN’s report titled, “France tells U.S. Paris suspect trained with al Qaeda in Yemen,” would report:
A U.S. official says the United States was given information from the French intelligence agency that Said Kouachi traveled to Yemen as late as 2011 on behalf of the al Qaeda affiliate there. Once in Yemen, the older brother of the two received a variety of weapons training from al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) — the affiliate in Yemen — the official said, including on how to fire weapons. It is also possible Said was trained in bomb making, a common jihadist training in Yemen. Two other U.S. officials confirmed that information about the Yemeni travel was passed to the U.S. from French intelligence agencies.
In addition, French Justice Minister Christiane Taubira told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in an interview broadcast on CNN International that one of the brothers traveled to Yemen in 2005. Taubira would not say which brother.
Admissions that one of the brothers had traveled to Yemen in 2005, suggests the possibility he may indeed have received weapons training from Al Qaeda before his arrest and imprisonment later that same year.

4. It was reported that the brothers then fought in Syria before returning last summer, approximately 6 months ago. USA Today would report in an article titled, “Manhunt continues for two French terror suspects,” that:
The brothers were born in Paris of Algerian descent. Cherif was sentenced to three years in prison on terrorism charges in May 2008. Both brothers returned from Syria this summer.

5. Also about 6 months ago, French intelligence decided the suspects’ serial offenses along with their direct contact with Al Qaeda – including the receiving of terrorist training and battlefield experience fighting along side them in Syria – were “low risk” cases and therefore not worthy of their attention.

Astoundingly, UK’s Daily Mail would report in their article, “Revealed: Police stopped watching Paris killers six months ago after terror cell of kosher deli attacker and his crossbow jihadi wife – who has fled to Syria – were deemed ‘low-risk’,” that:
The world’s most wanted female terrorist has fled to Syria, it was revealed last night – as police admitted they stopped surveillance on her deadly Parisian cell six months ago because they were deemed ‘low-risk’.
The Daily Mail would go on to report on other cell members including Amedy Coulibaly, also killed by police during the recent shootings and attacks in Paris – also a notorious serial offender, known terrorist, and also previously arrested, convicted, and sentenced to prison for terrorism.
Who decided this cell was “low risk” six months ago? That is probably where the French people should begin searching for justice – if justice is in fact what they seek.

Six months, coincidentally, is also about the typical length (6-10 months) of security and intelligence “sting operations” targeting terrorists. It provides an appropriate time frame within which an event like the recent attacks could have been planned, funded, and eventually carried out. The public is expected to believe this obvious terror cell who had been in and out of prison for terrorism over the course of a decade and in direct contact with Al Qaeda, was suddenly dropped from the attention of French intelligence just in time for them to carry out their most spectacular crime to date?

Who decided this cell was “low risk” six months ago? That is probably where the French people should begin searching for justice – if justice is in fact what they seek.

Europe Has Been Here Before

Unfortunately, these “coincidences” and “accidents” are not coincidences and accidents at all. They fit an obvious pattern of staged provocations within the context of an intentionally engineered “strategy of tension,” identical but scaled up from what NATO was exposed to have committed during the Cold War as part of its “stay behind networks,” more commonly known as “Operation Gladio.”

Indeed, if NATO could carry out attacks during the Cold War, targeting Western Europeans in deadly brutality designed to appear as the work of NATO’s enemies, why would NATO now be suddenly excused from the investigation as a prime suspect? With the “coincidences” and “accidents” described above, those occupying the highest of France’s political, military, and intelligence offices, should be removed, tried, and imprisoned for criminal negligence at the very least.

As the puzzle pieces continue to fit together, the picture that appears is one of brazen, intentional provocation either to divide society at home, or wage war abroad, or both. And as this picture comes into focus, the rhetoric designed to distract the public from seeing it will reach a fever pitch.

11 January 2015

By Olivier Roy

FLORENCE — The attack against the Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has re-launched an ongoing debate in France about the compatibility between Islam and the West. The issue is more fraught in Western Europe than in the United States because of the huge number of Muslims who are not only settled there, but who also have citizenship.

By a strange coincidence, on the same day of the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, we saw the long awaited release of the most recent novel by the bestselling French author Michel Houellebecq, titled “Submission.” The book imagines the victory of a moderate Muslim party in the 2022 French presidential and parliamentary elections.

The issue of the compatibility between Islam and French or Western political culture is no longer confined to the usual suspects: the populist right, conservative Christians or staunch secularists from the left. The issue has become emotional and now pervades the entire political spectrum. The Muslim population — which does not identify with the terrorists — now fears an anti-Muslim backlash.

Roughly speaking, two narratives are conflicting: the dominant one claims that Islam is the main issue, because it puts loyalty toward the faith community before loyalty to the nation, it does not accept criticism, does not compromise on norms and values and condones specific forms of violence like jihad. For the adherents of this narrative, the only solution is a theological reformation that would generate a “good” Islam that is a liberal, feminist and gay-friendly religion. Journalists and politicians are always tracking the “good Muslims” and summoning them to show their credentials as “moderate.”

On the other side, many Muslims, secular or believers, supported by a multiculturalist left, claim that radicalization does not come from Islam but from disenfranchised youth who are victims of racism and exclusion, and that the real issue is Islamophobia. They condemn terrorism while denouncing the backlash that could in turn radicalize more Muslim youth.

The problem is that both narratives presuppose the existence of a French “Muslim community” of which the terrorists are a sort of “vanguard.”

“Muslims are criticized for being a community, but then asked to react against terrorism as a community. This is called the double bind: be what I ask you not to be.”

The juxtaposition of these two narratives has created a deadlock. To overcome this, it is necessary to first take into account a number of inescapable facts — facts which we do not want to acknowledge because they show us that the radicalized young people are in no way the vanguard or the spokesmen of the Muslim population, and in particular, that there is no “Muslim community” in France.

Radicalized young people, who rely heavily on an imagined Muslim politics (the Ummah of earlier times) are deliberately at odds with the Islam of their parents, as well as Muslim culture overall.

They invent an Islam which opposes itself to the West. They come from the periphery of the Muslim word. They are moved to action by the displays of violence in the media of Western culture. They embody a generational rupture (parents now call the police when their children leave for Syria), and they are not involved with the local religious community and the neighborhood mosques.

These young people practice self-radicalization on the Internet, searching for a global jihad. They are not interested in the tangible concerns of the Muslim world, such as Palestine. In short, they are not seeking the Islamization of the society in which they live but the realization of their sick fantasy of heroism (“We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,” claimed some of the killers at Charlie Hebdo).

The great majority of the converted amongst radicals clearly shows that radicalization is taking place among a marginal fringe of the youth, and not at the heart of the Muslim population.

BEYOND CLICHES

Conversely, one might say, the facts show that French Muslims are more integrated than commonly thought. Each “Islamist” attack has involved at least one Muslim victim amongst the police force — for example Imad Ibn Ziaten, a French soldier killed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse in 2012, or the officer Ahmed Merabet, killed when he tried to stop the killers at the Charlie Hebdo offices.

Instead of being cited as examples, they are considered counter-examples. The “real” Muslim is said to be the terrorist and the others are the exceptions. But statistically, this is false: in France, there are more Muslims in the army, the police, and the gendarmes than in the Al Qaeda network, not to mention in government administration, the hospitals, law practices or the educational system.

Another cliché is that Muslims do not condemn terrorism. But the Internet is overflowing with condemnations and anti-terrorist fatwas (Just one example).

If the facts contradict the thesis of the radicalization of the Muslim population, then why are they not recognized? Because one attributes to the Muslim population a far-reaching community for which they are, at the same time, criticized for not exhibiting.

Muslims are criticized for being a community, but then asked to react against terrorism as a community. This is called the double bind: be what I ask you not to be.

“In France, there is not a Muslim community, but a Muslim population.”

If, at the local level, in the neighborhoods, there are certain forms of community, such a thing does not exist at the national level. The Muslims of France have never had the desire to put in place representative institutions or even, at the very least, a Muslim lobby. There are no signs pointing toward the beginning of the establishment of a Muslim political party. The candidates of the political sphere who are of Muslim origin are spread out across the French political spectrum (and include the extreme right). There is no “Muslim vote.”

There is no network of denominational Muslim schools (less than 10 in France), no mobilization in the street (no demonstrations around a Muslim cause has attracted more than a few thousand people) and almost no grand mosques (which are almost always financed from outside funding). There are only a handful of small local mosques.

If there is an effort at community, it comes from above, from the state, not the citizens. The purported organized representation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith at the Grand Mosque of Paris is held at arm’s length by the French government and by foreign governments alike. And it has no local legitimacy. In short, the Muslim “community” suffers from a very Gallic individualism and remains recalcitrant. That is the good news.

Yet, both the left and the right do not cease to speak of that famous Muslim community, either to denounce its refusal to integrate, or to paint it as the victim of Islamophobia. The two opposing narratives are based on the same fantasy of an imaginary Muslim community.

In France, there is not a Muslim community, but a Muslim population. To admit this simple truth would already be a good antidote against the current hysteria, and the hysteria to come.

Statement by the International Progress Organization on events in France and the future of multiculturalism in Europe

The International Progress Organization strongly and unequivocally condemns the use of violence for political or religious purposes. Everyone will agree in the condemnation of acts of terrorism such as this week’s attacks in Paris. However, one should also address the deeper divisions and contradictions in Europe’s multicultural societies. The freedom of the press is not absolute; it does not include the right to deride or ridicule religion and it must be based on respect of human dignity. As with the earlier cartoon crisis in Denmark: one must be aware that the deliberate use of media to provoke faith-based communities will poison the social climate and contribute to an atmosphere of distrust and mutual hatred. This, of course, does not excuse violent reactions such as those in Paris; but journalists, including those who use jokes and irony to express their point of view, should be aware of their social responsibility. There can be no peace without mutual respect, first and foremost among people with different worldviews, whether religious or secular.

One should also be aware that the jihadi violence did not come out of the blue. The Western powers in particular have (a) for a long time supported jihadi groups and used them for their geopolitical agenda, and (b), through their policy of “regime change,” they have created the political vacuum in which these groups are flourishing. One should not be surprised about the backlash in Europe.

The tragic events and the reaction to them are a bad omen for the future. The political systems in Europe will become more and more unstable if the governments and the dominant media refuse to acknowledge that these acts of violence are not isolated incidents, but happen in a framework of increasing alienation and confrontation between the religious and cultural communities. This development is further accelerated by the large-scale military engagement of Western powers in the Muslim world – because of (a) the destruction of the social fabric in these countries and (b) the creation of hatred among the affected populations. The situation in Europe is further aggravated because inter-religious tensions are increasingly being exploited for the sake of party politics. This may trigger a never-ending cycle of hatred and violence, and make the “clash of civilizations” a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Focusing on the tragic events in Europe, one should not forget, however, that these past days Boko Haram slaughtered many hundreds of innocent people in Baga town and neighbouring villages in Nigeria.

This is indeed a challenging time for all who are committed to dialogue. Denial of reality will completely erode the basis of Europe’s official multicultural credo. What is most needed now are voices of reason that are able to cross the cultural divide – even in a situation where emotions obstruct rational thinking of political and civil society leaders on all sides.

Vienna, 9 January 2015.

 

By Eric Zuesse

On January 7th, Britain’s Guardian, which used to be a fine newspaper but isn’t now, started what will necessarily be a long road back to reality, after nearly a year of their intermittent inattention and Western propaganda on Ukraine — finally realistically reporting the war there as being what it is and always was: an attempt by the post-coup Ukrainian Government to destroy the area in Ukraine where the residents had voted 90% for the Ukrainian President who was overthrown in the February 2014 coup.

Oleg Orlov headlined “Ukraine’s Forgotten City Destroyed by War,” and he described a city in ruins from the intensive bombings during July and August.

Though most of his article avoided the key question as to which side was to blame for this, no one can deny that the invaders here were the Ukrainian Air Force and Army, and that the defenders were troops of irregular fighters who lived in the invaded region. So, anyone with an IQ above 50 would have no difficulty figuring out that the Ukrainian Air Force and Army were to blame for bombing this city — that the Government was bombing and trying to exterminate the residents there while claiming to be their rightful Government (and which Government still remains supported by the West in that war against the former Ukrainians who live, and have always lived, there).

Here is the way that Orlov reported it:

“Towards the end of July, Ukrainian troops approached Pervomaisk but ran into stiff resistance and could not take it. A massive artillery bombardment began that would continue into August. Most people fled.”

He described the damage he viewed:

“Some blocks of this city, situated 50 kilometres west of Luhansk, have been practically wiped off the face of the earth by Ukrainian artillery barrages. Hardly any houses have escaped unscathed. We had seen such complete devastation in eastern Ukraine only [once before], in the villages of Khryashchuvate and Novosvitlivka, a few kilometres southeast of Luhansk. On that occasion, though, it was LNR (Luhansk People’s Republic) and possibly Russian artillery that opened fire in August [in order to] dislodge Ukrainian troops from the villages.”

Ultimately, he acknowledged that the Government were the invaders:

“The ‘Commandant’ of Pervomaisk (the mayor, appointed by the armed men who control the city) has a grisly collection of photos on his computer that were taken at that time. The rebels, though, had set up camp not only on the outskirts of the city but also smack in the centre, goading the Ukrainian forces into firing on Pervomaisk. But that in no way justifies strikes against populated areas by multiple launch rocket systems.”

However, again, only a fool would think otherwise. The situation is hard for propagandists such as the Obama Administration to even refer to.

It should also be pointed out that when Orlov asserted that, the rebels’ having “set up camp not only on the outskirts of the city but also smack in the centre” was “goading the Ukrainian forces into firing on Pervomaisk,” he was saying that even merely defending the City constituted shared responsibility, along with the attackers, for the City’s having been destroyed. This is like saying that a woman’s attractiveness constitutes her shared responsibility for her having been raped by her attacker.

Orlov then goes on to say:

“In November, strikes on the city resumed, although they were less intense than in the summer. We talked to the staff of a maternity hospital that had been hit by a bomb on 15 November, with a further five bombs exploding next to the building. A baby girl born two months premature was in the hospital at the time: it was a miracle that she survived, the doctors say.”

Then:

“When, the following morning, a ‘repair brigade’ went to [clear away the rubble], a new barrage began and one worker was killed. They showed us some one-storey houses that were destroyed on 23 November by strikes from a Grad rocket launcher. People crowd tightly into the bomb shelters when they are under fire [but] there were no bombardments during our visit and the huddled figures were those of permanent residents who no longer have anywhere else to live.”

He describes the desperate condition of the people that the Ukrainian Govenment’s bombings (which are financed by the West) has produced:

“The worst thing is the acute shortage of food in Pervomaisk. Although there are several shops in town, many people have no money left to buy anything. The city authorities – the Commandant, mayor and Cossack, Yevgeny Ishchenko and his comrades-in-arms – are trying to keep people alive somehow.”

Perhaps because of the requirement in the West to blame Russia for these things, the article closes:

“When we were in Pervomaisk, an eighth humanitarian aid convoy crossed over from Russia into eastern Ukraine. On our way back to Moscow, we discovered that no [food or supplies] from this convoy found their way to Pervomaisk. We appealed to the Commissioner for Human Rights and the Presidential Human Rights Council. We hope that the Russian government will wield its influence and convince the LNR authorities to send some of the humanitarian aid they receive from Russia to those who need it most – the people of Pervomaisk.”

He ignores this reality: The Ukrainian Government was blocking aid convoys. The Government is trying to starve the residents there to death. To blame Russia for any of that failure of food to reach the starving is obscene. But at least this article by Orlov is a start. That’s more than one can yet say for such newspapers as The New York Times, and Washington Post — or any in America.

After all: It was Obama who installed the current Ukrainian Government. David Cameron did not. If the business of journalism is to cover-up for one’s own Government’s international crimes, then newspapers such as The New York Times, and Washington Post are authentic journalistic institutions, not mere propaganda-organs. But the Guardian is making a step away from that type of ‘journalism’ — at least to the extent that Britain is partly responsible for the February 2014 Ukrainian coup, which is a very small extent. Perhaps that’s why the ‘news’ media in Britain are a bit freer to report the truth of that war than ours are.

Only in America is the lying by media about Ukraine’s war so pervasive. That’s because it’s basically America’s war, even though the American public is overwhelmingly opposed to it. The American Government serves the American aristocracy — no longer the public.

Maybe the British aristocracy don’t hate Russians as much as America’s do; but, for whatever reason, they’re not so committed to the destruction of Russia as Obama and the American aristocracy he represents are. That American aristocracy control America’s ‘news’ media, but they fortunately do not also control Britain’s.

If one reads the American press about Ukraine now, after the coup, then one is reading lies, distortions, and propaganda: myths, not history.

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

09 January, 2015
Countercurrents.org

 

By Andre Vltchek

A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.

When you read the memoirs of Edward Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.

The same could be said about many other Muslim societies, including those of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia. Old photos speak for themselves. That is why it is so important to study old images again and again, carefully.

Islam is not only a religion; it is also an enormous culture, one of the greatest on Earth, which has enriched our humanity with some of the paramount scientific and architectural achievements, and with countless discoveries in the field of medicine. Muslims have written stunning poetry, and composed beautiful music. But above all, they developed some of the earliest social structures in the world, including enormous public hospitals and the first universities on earth, like The University of al-Qarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco.

The idea of ‘social’ was natural to many Muslim politicians, and had the West not brutally interfered, by overthrowing left-wing governments and putting on the throne fascist allies of London, Washington and Paris; almost all Muslim countries, including Iran, Egypt and Indonesia, would now most likely be socialist, under a group of very moderate and mostly secular leaders.

***

In the past, countless Muslim leaders stood up against the Western control of the world, and enormous figures like the Indonesian President, Ahmet Sukarno, were close to Communist Parties and ideologies. Sukarno even forged a global anti-imperialist movement, the Non-Allied movement, which was clearly defined during the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, in 1955.

That was in striking contrast to the conservative, elites-oriented Christianity, which mostly felt at home with the fascist rulers and colonialists, with the kings, traders and big business oligarchs.

For the Empire, the existence and popularity of progressive, Marxist, Muslim rulers governing the Middle East or resource-rich Indonesia, was something clearly unacceptable. If they were to use the natural wealth to improve the lives of their people, what was to be left for the Empire and its corporations? It had to be stopped by all means. Islam had to be divided, and infiltrated with radicals and anti-Communist cadres, and by those who couldn’t care less about the welfare of their people.

***

Almost all radical movements in today’s Islam, anywhere in the world, are tied to Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative, reactionary sect of Islam, which is in control of the political life of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other staunch allies of the West in the Gulf.

To quote Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi:

“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultra-conservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant…”

The West gave full support to the Wahhabis in the 1980s. They were employed, financed and armed, after the Soviet Union was dragged into Afghanistan and into a bitter war that lasted from 1979 to 1989. As a result of this war, the Soviet Union collapsed, exhausted both economically and psychologically.

The Mujahedeen, who were fighting the Soviets as well as the left-leaning government in Kabul, were encouraged and financed by the West and its allies. They came from all corners of the Muslim world, to fight a ‘Holy War’ against Communist infidels.

According to the US Department of State archives:

“Contingents of so-called Afghan Arabs and foreign fighters who wished to wage jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.”

Muslim radical groups created and injected into various Muslim countries by the West included al-Qaeda, but also, more recently, ISIS (also known as ISIL). ISIS is an extremist army that was born in the ‘refugee camps’ on the Syrian/Turkish and Syrian/Jordanian borders, and which was financed by NATO and the West to fight the Syrian (secular) government of Bashar al-Assad.

Such radical implants have been serving several purposes. The West uses them as proxies in the wars it is fighting against its enemies – the countries that are still standing in the way to the Empire’s complete domination of the world. Then, somewhere down the road, after these extremist armies ‘get totally out of control’ (and they always will), they could serve as scarecrows and as justification for the ‘The War On Terror’, or, like after ISIS took Mosul, as an excuse for the re-engagement of Western troops in Iraq.

Stories about the radical Muslim groups have constantly been paraded on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, or shown on television monitors, reminding readers ‘how dangerous the world really is’, ‘how important Western engagement in it is’, and consequently, how important surveillance is, how indispensable security measures are, as well as tremendous ‘defense’ budgets and wars against countless rogue states.

***

From a peaceful and creative civilization, that used to lean towards socialism, the Muslim nations and Islam itself, found itself to be suddenly derailed, tricked, outmaneuvered, infiltrated by foreign religious and ideological implants, and transformed by the Western ideologues and propagandists into one ‘tremendous threat’; into the pinnacle and symbol of terrorism and intolerance.

The situation has been thoroughly grotesque, but nobody is really laughing – too many people have died as a result; too much has been destroyed!

Indonesia is one of the most striking historical examples of how such mechanisms of the destruction of progressive Muslim values, really functions:

In the 1950s and early 1960s, the US, Australia and the West in general, were increasingly ‘concerned’ about the progressive anti-imperialist and internationalist stand of President Sukarno, and about the increasing popularity of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). But they were even more anxious about the enlightened, socialist and moderate Indonesian brand of Islam, which was clearly allying itself with Communist ideals.

Christian anti-Communist ideologues and ‘planners’, including the notorious Jesuit Joop Beek, infiltrated Indonesia. They set up clandestine organizations there, from ideological to paramilitary ones, helping the West to plan the coup that in and after 1965 took between 1 and 3 million human lives.

Shaped in the West, the extremely effective anti-Communist and anti-intellectual propaganda spread by Joop Beek and his cohorts also helped to brainwash many members of large Muslim organizations, propelling them into joining the killing of Leftists, immediately after the coup. Little did they know that Islam, not only Communism, was chosen as the main target of the pro-Western, Christian ‘fifth column’ inside Indonesia, or more precisely, the target was the left-leaning, liberal Islam.

After the 1965 coup, the Western-sponsored fascist dictator, General Suharto, used Joop Beek as his main advisor. He also relied on Beek’s ‘students’, ideologically. Economically, the regime related itself with mainly Christian business tycoons, including Liem Bian Kie.

In the most populous Muslim nation on earth, Indonesia, Muslims were sidelined, their ‘unreliable’ political parties banned during the dictatorship, and both the politics (covertly) and economy (overtly) fell under the strict control of Christian, pro-Western minority. To this day, this minority has its complex and venomous net of anti-Communist warriors, closely-knit business cartels and mafias, media and ‘educational outlets’ including private religious schools, as well as corrupt religious preachers (many played a role in the 1965 massacres), and other collaborators with both the local and global regime.

Indonesian Islam has been reduced to a silent majority, mostly poor and without any significant influence. It only makes international headlines when its frustrated white-robed militants go trashing bars, or when its extremists, many related to the Mujahedeen and the Soviet-Afghan War, go blowing up nightclubs, hotels or restaurants in Bali and Jakarta.

Or do they even do that, really?

Former President of Indonesia and progressive Muslim cleric, Abdurrahman Wahid (forced out of office by the elites), once told me: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was not an attack by the Islamists; it was done by the Indonesian secret services, in order to justify their existence and budget, and to please the West.”

***

“I would argue that western imperialism has not so much forged an alliance with radical factions, as created them”, I was told, in London, by my friend, and leading progressive Muslim intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar.

And Mr. Sardar continued:

“We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting History as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.”

From the hopes of those post-WWII years, to the total gloom of the present days – what a long and terrible journey is has been!

The Muslim world is now injured, humiliated and confused, almost always on the defensive.

It is misunderstood by the outsiders, and often even by its own people who are frequently forced to rely on Western and Christian views of the world.

What used to make the culture of Islam so attractive – tolerance, learning, concern for the wellbeing of the people – has been amputated from the Muslim realm, destroyed from abroad. What was left was only religion.

Now most of the Muslim countries are ruled by despots, by the military or corrupt cliques. All of them closely linked with the West and its global regime and interests.

As they did in several great nations and Empires of South and Central America, as well as Africa, Western invaders and colonizers managed to totally annihilate great Muslim cultures.

What forcefully replaced them were greed, corruption and brutality.

It appears that everything that is based on different, non-Christian foundations is being reduced to dust by the Empire. Only the biggest and toughest cultures are still surviving.

Anytime a Muslim country tries to go back to its essence, to march its own, socialist or socially-oriented way – be it Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, or much more recently Iraq, Libya or Syria – it gets savagely tortured and destroyed.

The will of its people is unceremoniously broken, and democratically expressed choices overthrown.

For decades, Palestine has been denied freedom, as well as its basic human rights. Both Israel and the Empire spit at its right to self-determination. Palestinian people are locked in a ghetto, humiliated, and murdered. Religion is all that some of them have left.

The ‘Arab Spring’ was derailed and terminated almost everywhere, from Egypt to Bahrain, and the old regimes and military are back in power.

Like African people, Muslims are paying terrible price for being born in countries rich in natural resources. But they are also brutalized for having, together with China, the greatest civilization in history, one that outshone all the cultures of the West.

***

Christianity looted and brutalized the world. Islam, with its great Sultans such as Saladin, stood against invaders, defending the great cities of Aleppo and Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem. But overall, it was more interested in building a great civilization, than in pillaging and wars.

Now hardly anyone in the West knows about Saladin or about the great scientific, artistic or social achievements of the Muslim world. But everybody is ‘well informed’ about ISIS. Of course they know ISIS only as an ‘Islamic extremist group’, not as one of the main Western tools used to destabilize the Middle East.

As ‘France is mourning’ the deaths of the journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo (undeniably a terrible crime!), all over Europe it is again Islam which is being depicted as brutal and militant, not the West with its post-Crusade, Christian fundamentalist doctrines that keeps overthrowing and slaughtering all moderate, secular and progressive governments and systems in the Muslim world, leaving Muslim people at the mercy of deranged fanatics.

***

In the last five decades, around 10 million Muslims have been murdered because their countries did not serve the Empire, or did not serve it full-heartedly, or just were in the way. The victims were Indonesians, Iraqis, Algerians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and the citizens of Mali, Somalia, Bahrain and many other countries.

The West identified the most horrible monsters, threw billions of dollars at them, armed them, gave them advanced military training, and then let them loose.

The countries that are breeding terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are some of the closest allies of the West, and have never been punished for exporting horror all over the Muslim world.

Great social Muslim movements like Hezbollah, which is presently engaged in mortal combat against the ISIS, but which also used to galvanize Lebanon during its fight against the Israeli invasion, are on the “terrorist lists” compiled by the West. It explains a lot, if anybody is willing to pay attention.

Seen from the Middle East, it appears that the West, just as during the crusades, is aiming at the absolute destruction of Muslim countries and the Muslim culture.

As for the Muslim religion, the Empire only accepts the sheepish brands – those that accept extreme capitalism and the dominant global position of the West. The only other tolerable type of Islam is that which is manufactured by the West itself, and by its allies in the Gulf – designated to fight against progress and social justice; the one that is devouring its own people.

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist.
09 January, 2015
Counterpunch.org