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By Tom Engelhardt

20 December, 2013

@ TomDispatch.com

We’re Number One… In Obliterating Wedding Parties

The headline — “Bride and Boom!” — was spectacular, if you think killing people in distant lands is a blast and a half. Of course, you have to imagine that smirk line in giant black letters with a monstrous exclamation point covering most of the bottom third of the front page of the Murdoch-owned New York Post. The reference was to a caravan of vehicles on its way to or from a wedding in Yemen that was eviscerated, evidently by a U.S. drone via one of those “surgical” strikes of which Washington is so proud. As one report put it, “Scorched vehicles and body parts were left scattered on the road.”

It goes without saying that such a headline could only be applied to assumedly dangerous foreigners — “terror” or “al-Qaeda suspects” — in distant lands whose deaths carry a certain quotient of weirdness and even amusement with them. Try to imagine the equivalent for the Newtown massacre the day after Adam Lanza broke into Sandy Hook Elementary School and began killing children and teachers. Since even the New York Post wouldn’t do such a thing, let’s posit that the Yemen Post did, that playing off the phrase “head of the class,” their headline was: “Dead of the Class!” (with that same giant exclamation point). It would be sacrilege. The media would descend. The tastelessness of Arabs would be denounced all the way up to the White House. You’d hear about the callousness of foreigners for days.

And were a wedding party to be obliterated on a highway anywhere in America on the way to, say, a rehearsal dinner, whatever the cause, it would be a 24/7 tragedy. Our lives would be filled with news of it. Count on that.

But a bunch of Arabs in a country few in the U.S. had ever heard of before we started sending in the drones? No such luck, so if you’re a Murdoch tabloid, it’s open season, no consequences guaranteed. As it happens, “Bride and Boom!” isn’t even an original. It turns out to be a stock Post headline. Google it and you’ll find that, since 9/11, the paper has used it at least twice before last week, and never for the good guys: once in 2005, for “the first bomb-making husband and wife,” two Palestinian newlyweds arrested by the Israelis; and once in 2007, for a story about a “bride,” decked out in a “princess-style wedding gown,” with her “groom.” Their car was stopped at a checkpoint in Iraq by our Iraqis, and both of them turned out to be male “terrorists” in a “nutty nuptial party.” Ba-boom!

As it happened, the article by Andy Soltis accompanying the Post headline last week began quite inaccurately. “A U.S. drone strike targeting al-Qaeda militants in Yemen,” went the first line, “took out an unlikely target on Thursday — a wedding party heading to the festivities.”

Soltis can, however, be forgiven his ignorance. In this country, no one bothers to count up wedding parties wiped out by U.S. air power. If they did, Soltis would have known that the accurate line, given the history of U.S. war-making since December 2001 when the first party of Afghan wedding revelers was wiped out (only two women surviving), would have been: “A U.S. drone… took out a likely target.”

After all, by the count of TomDispatch, this is at least the eighth wedding party reported wiped out, totally or in part, since the Afghan War began and it extends the extermination of wedding celebrants from the air to a third country — six destroyed in Afghanistan, one in Iraq, and now the first in Yemen. And in all those years, reporters covering these “incidents” never seem to notice that similar events had occurred previously. Sometimes whole wedding parties were slaughtered, sometimes just the bride or groom’s parties were hit. Estimated total dead from the eight incidents: almost 300 Afghans, Iraqis, and Yemenis. And keep in mind that, in these years, weddings haven’t been the only rites hit. U.S. air power has struck gatherings ranging from funerals to a baby-naming ceremony.

The only thing that made the Yemeni incident unique was the drone. The previous strikes were reportedly by piloted aircraft.

Non-tabloid papers were far more polite in their headlines and accounts, though they did reflect utter confusion about what had happened in a distant part of distant Yemen. The wedding caravan of vehicles was going to a wedding — or coming back. Fifteen were definitively dead. Or 11. Or 13. Or 14. Or 17. The attacking plane had aimed for al-Qaeda targets and hit the wedding party “by mistake.” Or al-Qaeda “suspects” had been among the wedding party, though all reports agree that innocent wedding goers died. Accounts of what happened from Yemeni officials differed, even as that country’s parliamentarians demanded an end to the U.S. drone campaign in their country. The Obama administration refused to comment. It was generally reported that this strike, like others before it, had — strangely enough — upset Yemenis and made them more amenable to the propaganda of al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.

In the end, reports on a wedding slaughter in a distant land are generally relegated to the inside pages of the paper and passing notice on the TV news, an event instantly trumped by almost anything whatsoever — a shooting in a school anywhere in the U.S., snow storms across the Northeast, you name it — and promptly buried and forgotten.

And yet, in a country that tends to value records, this represents record-making material. After all, what are the odds of knocking off all or parts of eight wedding parties in the space of a little more than a decade (assuming, of course, that the destruction of other wedding parties or the killing of other wedding goers in America’s distant war zones hasn’t gone unreported). If the Taliban or the Iranians or the North Koreans had piled up such figures — and indeed the Taliban has done wedding damage via roadside bombs and suicide bombers — we would know just what to think of them. We would classify them as barbarians, savages, evildoers.

You might imagine that such a traffic jam of death and destruction would at least merit some longer-term attention, thought, analysis, or discussion here. But with the rarest of exceptions, it’s nowhere to be found, right, left, or center, in Washington or Topeka, in everyday conversation or think-tank speak. And keep in mind that we’re talking about a country where the slaughter of innocents — in elementary schools, high schools, colleges, and universities, workplaces and movie theaters, parking lots and naval shipyards — is given endless attention, carefully toted up, discussed and debated until “closure” is reached.

And yet no one here even thinks to ask how so many wedding parties in foreign lands could be so repeatedly taken out. Is the U.S. simply targeting weddings purposely? Not likely. Could it reflect the fact that, despite all the discussion of the “surgical precision” of American air power, pilots have remarkably little idea what’s really going on below them or who exactly, in lands where American intelligence must be half-blind, they are aiming at? That, at least, seems likely.

Or if “they” gather in certain regions, does American intelligence just assume that the crowd must be “enemy” in nature? (As an American general said about a wedding party attacked in Western Iraq, “How many people go to the middle of the desert… to hold a wedding 80 miles from the nearest civilization?”) Or is it possible that, in our global war zones, a hint that enemy “suspects” might be among a party of celebrants means that the party itself is fair game, that it’s open season no matter who might be in the crowd?

In this same spirit, the U.S. drone campaigns are said to launch what in drone-speak are called “signature strikes” — that is, strikes not against identified individuals, but against “a pre-identified ‘signature’ of behavior that the U.S. links to militant activity.” In other words, the U.S. launches drone strikes against groups or individuals whose behavior simply fits a “suspect” category: young men of military age carrying weapons, for instance (in areas where carrying a weapon may be the norm no matter who you are). In a more general sense, however, the obliterated wedding party may be the true signature strike of the post 9/11 era of American war-making, the strike that should, but never will, remind Americans that the war on terror was and remains, for others in distant lands, a war of terror, a fearsome creation to which we are conveniently blind.

Consider it a record. For the period since September 11, 2001, we’re number one… in obliterating wedding parties! In those years, whether we care to know it or not, “till death do us part” has gained a far grimmer meaning.

Tom Engelhardt is a co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

[Note on American air power and wedding parties: TomDispatch has attempted over the years to record and point out the cumulative nature of these “incidents.” Check out, for instance, “The Wedding Crashers,” or a 2012 piece, “It Couldn’t Happen Here, It Does Happen There.” What follows, gathered by TomDispatch’s Erika Eichelberger, are links to the other seven wedding massacres with brief descriptions of what is known: December 29, 2001, Paktia Province, Afghanistan (more than 100 revelers die in a village in Eastern Afghanistan after an attack by B-52 and B-1B bombers); May 17, 2002, Khost Province, Afghanistan (at least 10 Afghans in a wedding celebration die when U.S. helicopters and planes attack a village); July 1, 2002, Oruzgan Province, Afghanistan (at least 30, and possibly 40, celebrants die when attacked by a B-52 bomber and an AC-130 helicopter); May 20, 2004, Mukaradeeb, Iraq (at least 42 dead, including “27 members of the [family hosting the wedding ceremony], their wedding guests, and even the band of musicians hired to play at the ceremony” in an attack by American jets); July 6, 2008, Nangarhar Province, Afghanistan (at least 47 dead, 39 of them women and children, including the bride, among a party escorting that bride to the groom’s house — from a missile attack by jet aircraft); August 2008, Laghman Province, Afghanistan (16 killed, including 12 members of the family hosting the wedding, in an attack by “American bombers”); June 8, 2012, Logar Province, Afghanistan (18 killed, half of them children, when Taliban fighters take shelter amid a wedding party. This was perhaps the only case among the eight wedding incidents in which the U.S. offered an apology).]

Copyright 2013 Tom Engelhardt

By Amnesty International

20 December, 2013

@ Amnesty International

Torture, flogging, and summary killings are rife in secret prisons run in Syria by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS).

Torture, flogging, and summary killings are rife in secret prisons run in Syria

by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham ( ISIS ).© Ayman Alèp/Demotix

Torture, flogging, and summary killings are rife in secret prisons run by the Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), an armed group that controls large areas of northern Syria , said Amnesty International in a briefing published today.

ISIS , which claims to apply strict Shari’a (Islamic law) in areas it controls, has ruthlessly flouted the rights of local people. In the 18-page briefing, Rule of fear: ISIS abuses in detention in northern Syria , Amnesty International identifies seven detention facilities that ISIS uses in al-Raqqa governorate and Aleppo .

“Those abducted and detained by ISIS include children as young as eight who are held together with adults in the same cruel and inhuman conditions,” said Philip Luther, Amnesty International’s Director for the Middle East and North Africa .

Former detainees describe a shocking catalogue of abuses in which they or others were flogged with rubber generator belts or cables, tortured with electric shocks or forced to adopt a painful stress position known as aqrab (scorpion), in which a detainee’s wrists are secured together over one shoulder.

Some of those held by ISIS are suspected of theft or other crimes; others are accused of “crimes” against Islam, such as smoking cigarettes or zina, sex outside marriage. Others were seized for challenging ISIS ‘s rule or because they belonged to rival armed groups opposed to the Syrian government. ISIS is also suspected of abducting and detaining foreign nationals, including journalists covering the fighting in Syria .

Several children were among detainees who received severe floggings, according to testimonies obtained by Amnesty International. On one occasion, an anguished father had to endure screams of pain as ISIS captors tormented his son in a nearby room. Two detainees related how they witnessed a child of about 14 receive a flogging of more than 90 lashes during interrogation at Sadd al-Ba’ath, an ISIS prison in al-Raqqa governorate. Another child of about 14 who ISIS accused of stealing a motorbike was repeatedly flogged over several days.

“Flogging anyone, let alone children, is cruel and inhuman, and a gross abuse of human rights,” said Philip Luther. “ ISIS should cease its use of flogging and other cruel punishments.”

Amnesty International is calling on ISIS to end its appalling treatment of detainees and for the group’s leaders to instruct their forces to respect human rights and abide by international humanitarian law.

Several former detainees told the organization that they were seized by masked gunmen who took them to undisclosed locations, where they were held for periods of up to 55 days. Some never learnt where they were but Amnesty International has identified ISIS prisons at seven locations: Mabna al-Mohafaza, Idarat al-Markabat and al-Mer’ab, all in al-Raqqa city; Sadd al Ba’ath and al-‘Akershi oil facility, both elsewhere in al-Raqqa governorate; and Mashfa al-Atfal and Maqar Ahmed Qaddour in Aleppo .

The Sadd al-Ba’ath prison is beside a dam on the Euphrates River at al-Mansura, where the local Shari’a court judge, who invariably appeared wearing an explosives belt, has instituted a reign of terror over its detainees.

Former detainees accuse him of presiding over grotesquely unfair “trials” lasting no more than a few minutes as other detainees look on, and handing down death penalties which are subsequently carried out. At his direction, detainees have been mercilessly flogged; on at least one occasion, he is said to have personally joined in the flogging.

At al-‘Akershi oil facility, which ISIS also appears to use as a military training ground, detainees were subjected to the aqrab as a means of torture, according to the testimonies of two men who were held there in recent months. One spent 40 days in solitary confinement, for part of which he was chained up in a tiny room full of electrical equipment with fuel on the floor.

“After years in which they were prey to the brutality of the al-Assad regime, the people of al-Raqqa and Aleppo are now suffering under a new form of tyranny imposed on them by ISIS , in which arbitrary detention, torture and executions have become the order of the day,” said Philip Luther.

Amnesty International is calling on the international community to take concrete steps to block the flow of arms and other support to ISIS and other armed groups implicated in committing war crimes and other serious human rights abuses.

“The Turkish government, in particular, should prevent its territory being used by ISIS to bring in arms and recruits to Syria ,” said Philip Luther.

“As well, Gulf states that have voiced support for the armed groups fighting against the Syrian government should take action to prevent arms flows, equipment or other support reaching ISIS in view of its appalling human rights record.”

Amnesty International also renews its call to the Syrian government to allow unfettered access to Syria by the independent international Commission of Inquiry and by international humanitarian and human rights organizations, and to end its violations of human rights and international law, including the use of torture in its own detention centers.

By Vacy Vlazna

18 December, 2013

Countercurrents.org

Your Holiness

In desperation, in December a campaign was launched appealing to you to help release the suffering people of Gaza from the genocidal strangulation of the Israeli seven year blockade.

There is no world leader other than yourself who possesses the moral strength, the political freedom and the spiritual imperative to help Gaza. There is noone of global influence to whom the Gazans can turn except Your Holiness.

Through your words and actions, we see the same star that heralded the advent of Gandhi, of Mandela, of Jesus. It’s light – the spiritual simplicity of love for the human family, for the oppressed, for the poor, is again penetrating human hearts and consciences.

It shone bright when you went to Lampedusa, the refugee purgatory, drawing world attention to the “globalization of indifference”

“We are a society that has forgotten the experience of weeping, of “suffering with”: the globalization of indifference has taken from us the ability to weep!…..We are accustomed to the suffering of others, it doesn’t concern us, it’s none of our business…..Herod sowed death in order to defend his own well-being, his own soap bubble. And this continues to repeat itself.” (Lampedusa Homile,)

Today’s Israeli Herods have systematically made Gaza a hell on earth by imposing a blockade in violation of international law that has made Gaza an open air concentration camp imprisoning 1.7 million innocent people, half of whom are children.

As the world makes merry this festive season, the people of Gaza have deliberately been deprived of fuel by Israel for two months: they suffer in freezing temperatures, with no electricity, no light, no heat, scarcity of food, no essential services, when the waste water treatment plant stopped functioning sewage flooded the streets- then kicking families while they are down so low, Israel opened dams east of Gaza drowning hope and the last vestiges of normal life.

Imagine truly if this Christmas you were were in Gaza, ‘suffering with” Gazan families, and you have no place to run, can’t get medical help for your hungry and cold children, can’t cook, clean their clothes, keep them dry, warm, safe, happy.

Meanwhile the Christian kings of the ‘free world’, Obama, Cameron, Merkel, Hollande, Abbott will attend Christmas mass under a blaze of cameras and their own cruel hypocrisy in full knowledge that the Gaza humanitarian disaster, unlike the Philippines, is man-made. Herod-made. Nor they will lift a finger to bring the gifts of justice, compassion and love to Gaza’s immiserated manger.

Speaking of ‘manger’, doesn’t it strike you as bizarre and unChristian that Christians have for decades overlooked or tolerated that Bethlehem, the birthplace of the Divine Child, is in illegal occupied territory and surrounded by the illegal Annexation/Apartheid wall enforced by the Israeli military?

And speaking of Palestine’s military occupier, unconscionably, Israeli Herods sow death to raise the profits of Israel’s armament juggernaut. In his recent shocking documentary, The Lab, Yotam Feldman exposes how Palestinians have been dehumanised as sacrificial guinea pigs:

I think the main product Israelis are selling, especially in the last decade, is experience… the testing of the products, the experience is the main thing they [customers] are coming to buy. They want the missile that was shot in the last operation in Gaza or the rifle that was used in the last West Bank incursion.

Inevitably, the profits soared in 2009/10 after surgical strikes by F16s, attack helicopters drones, and phosphorous bombs slaughtered 1400 Gazans, one third of whom were children and again in November 2012. The blood and the weeping never dries up in the Gazan soul.

The blockade of Gaza is the crime of the 21st century and is integral to Israel’s 65 years of war crimes, crimes against humanity, apartheid polices, state terrorism and illegal colonisation perpetrated against the indigenous people of Palestine. Gaza/Palestine is also the great lament in the sacred heart of humanity. It is crying out. Will you respond? Please.

In your Lampedusa homily, you pose two questions that call our spirit to live in solidarity with the poor, with the oppressed, “Adam, where are you?” “Where is the blood of your brother?”. These questions are versions of the quintessential question, Who am I?

And in this instance who is Pope Francis? Whose shoes do you step into – The Fisherman’s or caesar’s?

The signs of your papacy are hope-filled.

The 1968 film, The Shoes of the Fisherman, based on Morris West’s novel, portrays a spiritually pragmatic pope of profound compassion who sells off the Vatican treasures to alleviate the lethal poverty of Communist China.

The film also drew inspiration from the Archbishop of Venice, the beloved Albino Luciani, who later became, for a shimmer of time and light, Pope John Paul I. Over the years, Luciani had condemned “the hypocrisy of the Vatican treasures”. (White Light, Dark Night, p144, Lucien Gregoire)

Of Luciani and Wojtyla ( Pope John Paul II), Gregoire writes,

During the twenty years they served as bishop and cardinal, each of their countries suffered from an immense orphan problem – about two million in each country. During that time Wojtyla built and dedicated fifty-three churches and not a single orphanage. Luciani, on the other hand, built and dedicated forty-four orphanages and not a single church.” (p 141)

Like Luciani, you, Pope Francis, mingle with your flock and criticise the ‘idolatry of money’ and the ‘new tyranny’ of capitalism.

Unlike the ultraconservative John Paul II and Benedict, who between them destroyed Latin American liberation theology and plunged the Church into the dark ages of Opus Dei fascism, you are rebuilding the church as a ‘house of joy’ and taking a path never travelled by previous popes.

Gandhi fasted and marched with humility for justice. Mandela, with humility, sacrificed 27 years for justice. So when you see the glittering lights of the Christmas tree in St Peter’s Square, may you reflect on the wretched darkness in Gaza and know that peace on earth doesn’t exist without peace in Gaza and all of Palestine. Peace for Palestinians is your and our business.

Gaza doesn’t need Vatican treasures, it needs liberation to live fully and humanly.

We, who respect justice and human dignity, have just lost the presence of Mandela but, Inch’Allah and God Willing, we have gained you, Pope Francis.

Dr. Vacy Vlazna is Coordinator of Justice for Palestine Matters. She was Human Rights Advisor to the GAM team in the second round of the Acheh peace talks, Helsinki, February 2005 then withdrew on principle. Vacy was coordinator of the East Timor Justice Lobby as well as serving in East Timor with UNAMET and UNTAET from 199-2001.

By Dr. Abdullah Al-Ahsan

18 December 2013

Prison authorities in Bangladesh have hurriedly carried out the execution of Abdul Qadir Mollah, an Assistant Secretary General of Jamaat-i-Islami Bangladesh (JIB), following an equally swiftly conducted hearing by a full bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court which upheld his death sentence. The execution was carried out at 10-01 pm Thursday, December 12. Earlier Mollah was arrested on October 14, 2010 without any charges. Six cases were filed against him on October 28, 2012 and on February 5, 2013 he was given life imprisonment for crime committed against humanity. This was followed by the demand for his death sentence by a small segment of population. A delighted government responded amending the constitution (ICT Act 2013) to facilitate death sentence for Mollah and appealed against the life imprisonment on September 17, 2013. The government secured its desired verdict and immediately announced that he would be executed at 12:01 am Tuesday, December 10. Immediately the government came under huge international pressure. Although the country’s Attorney General claimed that there was no scope for appeal in such cases, under pressure the Supreme Court Appellate Division met but without much discussion it upheld the earlier verdict and thus fulfilling the government’s desire. According to many lawyers this became a case of judicial murder.

The authorities not only have carried out the execution in a hurry, they also buried the dead body swiftly. According to one of the two sons of Mollah, some thugs belonging to the ruling party surrounded the family house in attempt to prevent them joining the funeral. The thugs turned violent when the family members tried to get out for joining the funeral. At that stage the police intervened, but only to arrest 16 members of his immediate family. Within hours Mollah was buried at his ancestral home several hours driving distance from where he was executed. His sons and other immediate family members were not allowed to join the funeral prayer.

Why were the authorities in so much rush? There is no other explanation but to accept the popular view that this and all other such cases (there are a number of other cases currently being tried) are politically motivated. The government from the very beginning of these trials has ensured that no international observer is allowed into the court, although the government called it “International War Crime Tribunal (ICT).” In fact, the expression in our title “a deplorable act by a deplorable government” was originally used by the British international lawyer Toby Cadman for this trial. Earlier Cadman’s attempts to visit Bangladesh were curbed by the government. The government also prevented Turkish lawmakers who tried to observe the trial process. The whole process is a sham.

What is Government’s Interest?

The government’s interests in ICT have been under discussion in many national and international forums. The story of Skype conversation on the subject between the trial judge and a Europe based lawyer has been exposed by the Economist (Dec 12, 2012) and a Bangladeshi daily. Also the story of a prosecution witness who decided to speak the truth and was abducted by plain-cloth police from the court is also quite well-known. The witness was found in an Indian prison three months later. India’s role in Bangladeshi politics is very important subject for discussion: the current government seems to enjoy India’s unconditional patronage.

What does the government want to achieve? Does the government want to take advantage of international media’s attention in South Africa to avoid immediate criticism? Many pundits have suggested this: Clearly the government’s desire is the total elimination of JIB from the political landscape of the country. This is because JIB’s participation in all elections since the end of the dictatorial rule of President Ershad, indicates that it holds the political balance in the country and its members can’t be bought. The authorities have already banned JIB from participating in the forthcoming election which is due within a month. And currently JIB is in coalition with the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). Abdul Qadir Mollah’s execution seems to be a part of government’s design to ensure its continuation in power. The government has India’s blessings in this design: this has been made public not only by pro-Indian think-tanks, but also by visiting Indian officials to Bangladesh. On its part, India seems to enjoy US approval and the US ambassador to Bangladesh has been visiting Delhi for consultation on Bangladeshi affairs. However, the USA seems to hold the view that JIB and its supporters are not Islamist extremists and preventing them from the political process would encourage extremism in the region. This seems to be a dilemma for both Bangladeshi and Indian governments.

Potentials for Violence

Violence has already erupted in many places in the country following the execution of Mollah. But in the context of Bangladesh where political violence is common, particularly in the wake of an election, these acts might be considered negligible. JIB has called for protest marches throughout the country but has urged supporters to restrain from violence. In fact, Mollah himself is reported to have urged his sons and his lawyer on December 10, the day he was scheduled to be executed, to convey the message to the outside world that his supporters and sympathizers should not get involved in violence. His lawyer has conveyed the message saying, “all his concern was about the Islamic Movement. All throughout the last meeting he was smiling like a normal person. But he wept several times only for the Movement and Movement only.” However, it is difficult to predict how far JIB will succeed in containing violence. Last Friday hundreds and thousands of people throughout the country attended Salatul Janaza al-Ghaib (funeral prayer without the dead body) for Mollah and little violence was reported.

However, in many cases violence in the past has erupted due to provocations by law enforcement agencies and ruling party thugs. The government has been citing the example of Egypt where the law enforcement agencies are blaming the Islamists for violence. The government is also using the media to justify execution of Mollah by conducting interviews of those whose relatives were killed in 1971 without any reference to the way Mollah’s trial has been conducted. Many observers have also suggested that the government is looking for an excuse for declaring emergency. An emergency rule would enable the government to postpone the general elections which is due in a few weeks time. Isn’t the government killing democracy in the process?

 

International community’s response to Mollah’s Execution

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has expressed his shock at the execution of Mollah. Earlier High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay had called for a stay of execution just 3 hours before the scheduled execution by an urgent press release. The UN High Commissioner urged the government to not carry out the execution of Molla because ICT “did not meet international standards for imposition of death penalty (UN News Center Dec 10, 2013).” This prompted other international leaders including John Kerry, the US Secretary of State, and the Turkish Prime Minister Erdugan to call the Bangladeshi prime minister to halt the execution. All these efforts went in vein. After the execution the Amnesty International (AI) issued a statement saying, “The execution of … Mollah should never have happened.” Quoting one of its researchers AI said “The country is on a razor’s edge… with pre-election tensions running high and almost non-stop street protests.”

It is noteworthy that the generally Islam-bashing human-right agencies and the Islamophobic media too are very critical of the Bangladeshi authorities on this issue. This is because the government of Bangladesh has crossed all limits of civilized behavior and nobody, except perhaps India, wants to be part of this heinous act. Prime Minister Hasina has cited the example of Egypt in justifying her actions against Islamists such as Mollah and other opposition parties. She appears to argue that such actions are needed for the sake of democracy and security. As for India, India has always camouflaged its hypocrisy behind its staged democracy. Its treatments of the people of Kashmir and Sikkim are blatant example of India’s double standards. But Bangladesh does not seem to have mastered this “quality” and it has to conduct an election soon. That is why Bangladesh authorities have come under criticism by human rights agencies and the international press. However, it would be hard for the country to survive long with such behavior. The government is already in trouble with its own coalition partners on the mechanism of holding forthcoming election. The government may not last too long.

Lessons from Mandela’ Legacy

When the world is engaged in saying the final farewell to Nelson Mandela one wonders whether he would have a message on Abdul Qadir Mollah’s execution. After all Mollah has been accused of collaborating with Pakistan in 1971 against the struggle for independence and self-determination of the people of Bangladesh. Mandela too championed similar cause. In a statement on the occasion of Mandela’s death Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has declared Mandela a true Gandhian. Would Mandela or Gandhi have approved the kind of politics that India and the government of Bangladesh are playing?

Supporters and sympathizers of Mollah too should consider whether they have something to learn from Mandela’s legacy. No, Mandela’s struggle was not absolutely violence-free, but Mandela’s approval of violence was very limited. Mandela also was just one-term president of the country. Are the supporters and sympathizers going to learn from such an example?

Dr. Abdullah Al- Ahsan is the Vice President of International Movement for a Just World (JUST).

By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and JODI RUDOREN

16 December 2013

@ The New York Times

An American organization of professors on Monday announced a boycott of Israeli academic institutions to protest Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, signaling that a movement to isolate and pressure Israel that is gaining ground in Europe has begun to make strides in the United States.

Members of the American Studies Association voted by a ratio of more than two to one to endorse the boycott in online balloting that concluded Sunday night, the group said.

With fewer than 5,000 members, the group is not one of the larger scholarly associations. But its vote is a milestone for a Palestinian movement known as B.D.S., for Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions, which for the past decade had found little traction in the United States. The American Studies Association is the second American academic group to back the boycott, movement organizers say, following the Association for Asian American Studies, which did so in April.

“It’s almost like a family betrayal,” said Manuel Trajtenberg, a leading Israeli scholar. “It’s very grave and very saddening that this happens, particularly so in the U.S.,” he said.

Dr. Trajtenberg, an economics professor at Tel Aviv University, earned his doctorate at Harvard and like many Israeli academics has had frequent sabbaticals at American universities.

Israel has strong trade ties with Western Europe, where the B.D.S. campaign has won some backing for economic measures, a particular concern for Israelis. Last week a Dutch company, Vitens, announced that it would not do business with Israel’s national water company, Mekorot, because of Israel’s policies in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Israel recently faced a potential crisis when it seemed its universities and companies would lose out on some $700 million for research from a European Union program after new guidelines prohibited investment in any institutions operating in territory Israel seized in the 1967 war. Israeli academics were reeling at the possibility that they would be punished over government policy toward the Palestinians, until Israeli and European officials struck a deal late last month to allow Israel to participate.

In April, the Teachers’ Union of Ireland endorsed an academic boycott of Israel, and several times in recent years there have been strong efforts within Britain’s largest professors’ group, the University and College Union, to do the same.

Israelis have long seen Europe as more hostile — even anti-Semitic in some pockets — but a slap from the United States has a particular sting.

“Rather than standing up for academic freedom and human rights by boycotting countries where professors are imprisoned for their views, the A.S.A. chooses as its first ever boycott to boycott Israel, the sole democracy in the Middle East, in which academics are free to say what they want, write what they want and research what they want,” Ron Dermer, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, said Monday.

America is viewed not only as Israel’s staunchest ally, but its best friend, and many analysts have fretted publicly in recent weeks that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s outspoken opposition to the interim Iran nuclear deal had damaged relations with Washington.

Next month, the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting will debate a resolution calling on the State Department to criticize Israel for barring American professors from going to Gaza and the West Bank when invited by Palestinian universities.

People on both sides of the issue acknowledged that despite the heat it generates, the requested boycott will have little practical effect, at least for now. The American Studies Association resolution bars official collaboration with Israeli institutions but not with Israeli scholars themselves; it has no binding power over members, and no American colleges have signed on.

In fact, the American Association of University Professors, the nation’s largest professors’ group, said it opposed the boycott. A number of American scholars, while angry at Israeli policies in the West Bank, say they oppose singling Israel out over other countries with far worse human rights records. Others say it makes little sense to focus on Israeli universities where government policy often comes under strong criticism.

“O.K., so a couple of Israeli researchers will not be invited by a couple of American researchers,” said Avraham Burg, a leftist former Labor Party lawmaker who was one of the founders of Molad, a research group that recently published a report on Israeli isolation. “That for me is awful, because the academic community is the last one with the freedom of thought and freedom of expression.”

But Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian activist and a founder of the B.D.S. movement, said the boycott vote shed light on the close collaboration between Israel’s universities and its government and military, and it put those universities on notice that they will become unwelcome in international academic circles.

“It is perhaps the strongest indicator yet that the B.D.S. movement is reaching a tipping point, even in the U.S., the last bastion of support for Israel’s unjust system,” he said.

President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority has publicly rejected a boycott of Israel. While pro-boycott forces draw parallels to the sanctions movement against South Africa during the apartheid era, Mr. Abbas, who was in South Africa last week for the funeral of Nelson Mandela, restated the Palestinian Authority’s longstanding position of supporting a boycott only against products made in West Bank settlements, but not institutions that operate within Israel’s 1948 lines.

“We are neighbors with Israel, we have agreements with Israel, we recognize Israel, we are not asking anyone to boycott products of Israel,” Majdi Khaldi, an adviser to Mr. Abbas, said in an interview on Monday. “The problem is two things: occupation, and the government of Israel continuing settlement activities.”

On Dec. 4, the 20-member national council of the American Studies Association voted unanimously for a boycott resolution, but decided to put the matter to a full membership vote. The group said that of 1,252 members who cast ballots, 66.05 percent voted in favor and 30.5 percent against, with the rest abstaining.

The American Association of University Professors, with 48,000 members repeated its position that while economic action against a nation might be warranted, academic boycotts stifle academic freedom and are likely to hurt people who are not the intended targets.

But the American Studies Association’s online forum filled with comments rejecting that logic, like this one from David Palumbo-Liu, a professor at Stanford: “People who truly believe in academic freedom would realize protesting the blatant and systemic denial of academic freedom to Palestinians, which is coupled with material deprivation of a staggering scale, far outweighs concerns we in the West might have about our own rather privileged academic freedoms.”

Richard Pérez-Peña reported from New York, and Jodi Rudoren from Jerusalem.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: December 18, 2013

An article on Tuesday about an announcement by the American Studies Association calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions described incorrectly Avraham Burg’s connection to Molad, a research group that recently published a report on Israeli isolation. He was a founder of Molad; he does not run the group and is no longer affiliated with it.

By PAUL KRUGMAN

15 December, 2013

@ The New York Times

Rising inequality isn’t a new concern. Oliver Stone’s movie “Wall Street,” with its portrayal of a rising plutocracy insisting that greed is good, was released in 1987. But politicians, intimidated by cries of “class warfare,” have shied away from making a major issue out of the ever-growing gap between the rich and the rest.

That may, however, be changing. We can argue about the significance of Bill de Blasio’s victory in the New York mayoral race or of Elizabeth Warren’s endorsement of Social Security expansion. And we have yet to see whether President Obama’s declaration that inequality is “the defining challenge of our age” will translate into policy changes. Still, the discussion has shifted enough to produce a backlash from pundits arguing that inequality isn’t that big a deal.

They’re wrong.

The best argument for putting inequality on the back burner is the depressed state of the economy. Isn’t it more important to restore economic growth than to worry about how the gains from growth are distributed?

Well, no. First of all, even if you look only at the direct impact of rising inequality on middle-class Americans, it is indeed a very big deal. Beyond that, inequality probably played an important role in creating our economic mess, and has played a crucial role in our failure to clean it up.

Start with the numbers. On average, Americans remain a lot poorer today than they were before the economic crisis. For the bottom 90 percent of families, this impoverishment reflects both a shrinking economic pie and a declining share of that pie. Which mattered more? The answer, amazingly, is that they’re more or less comparable — that is, inequality is rising so fast that over the past six years it has been as big a drag on ordinary American incomes as poor economic performance, even though those years include the worst economic slump since the 1930s.

And if you take a longer perspective, rising inequality becomes by far the most important single factor behind lagging middle-class incomes.

Beyond that, when you try to understand both the Great Recession and the not-so-great recovery that followed, the economic and above all political impacts of inequality loom large.

It’s now widely accepted that rising household debt helped set the stage for our economic crisis; this debt surge coincided with rising inequality, and the two are probably related (although the case isn’t ironclad). After the crisis struck, the continuing shift of income away from the middle class toward a small elite was a drag on consumer demand, so that inequality is linked to both the economic crisis and the weakness of the recovery that followed.

In my view, however, the really crucial role of inequality in economic calamity has been political.

In the years before the crisis, there was a remarkable bipartisan consensus in Washington in favor of financial deregulation — a consensus justified by neither theory nor history. When crisis struck, there was a rush to rescue the banks. But as soon as that was done, a new consensus emerged, one that involved turning away from job creation and focusing on the alleged threat from budget deficits.

What do the pre- and postcrisis consensuses have in common? Both were economically destructive: Deregulation helped make the crisis possible, and the premature turn to fiscal austerity has done more than anything else to hobble recovery. Both consensuses, however, corresponded to the interests and prejudices of an economic elite whose political influence had surged along with its wealth.

This is especially clear if we try to understand why Washington, in the midst of a continuing jobs crisis, somehow became obsessed with the supposed need for cuts in Social Security and Medicare. This obsession never made economic sense: In a depressed economy with record low interest rates, the government should be spending more, not less, and an era of mass unemployment is no time to be focusing on potential fiscal problems decades in the future. Nor did the attack on these programs reflect public demands.

Surveys of the very wealthy have, however, shown that they — unlike the general public — consider budget deficits a crucial issue and favor big cuts in safety-net programs. And sure enough, those elite priorities took over our policy discourse.

Which brings me to my final point. Underlying some of the backlash against inequality talk, I believe, is the desire of some pundits to depoliticize our economic discourse, to make it technocratic and nonpartisan. But that’s a pipe dream. Even on what may look like purely technocratic issues, class and inequality end up shaping — and distorting — the debate.

So the president was right. Inequality is, indeed, the defining challenge of our time. Will we do anything to meet that challenge?

 

By Countercurrents.org

14 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Michael Hayden former CIA chief believes that The sectarian bloodbath in Syria is such a threat to regional security that a victory for Bashar al-Assad’s regime could the best outcome to hope for.

A Washington datelined AFP report said:

“Michael Hayden, the retired US Air Force general who until 2009 was head of the Central Intelligence Agency, said a rebel win was not one of the three possible outcomes he foresees for the conflict. “Option three is Assad wins,” Hayden told the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts.

“‘And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I’m kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes,’ he said.

“The first possible outcome he cited was for ongoing conflict between ever more extreme Sunni and Shiite factions. And the second outcome, which Hayden deemed the most likely, was the ‘dissolution of Syria’ and the end of a single state within the borders defined by a 1916 treaty between the French and British empires.

“‘It means the end of the Sykes-Picot (Agreement), it sets in motion the dissolution of all the artificial states created after World War I,’ he said.

The report added:

“A breakdown in the century-old settlement could spread chaos in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, “Hayden warned. ‘I greatly fear the dissolution of the state. A de facto dissolution of Sykes-Picot,’ Hayden said. ‘And now we have a new ungoverned space, at the crossroads of the civilization. The dominant story going on in Syria is a Sunni fundamentalist takeover of a significant part of the Middle East geography, the explosion of the Syrian state and of the Levant as we know it.’”

Disarray

Citing US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel another AFP report headlined “Disarray for moderate Syrian rebels a ‘big problem’: US” said:

“Setbacks for Syria’s Western-backed opposition are a ‘big problem’ and the United States is assessing the damage.

“The United States would continue to support ‘moderate’ forces but will withhold non-lethal assistance to the rebels until it can assess who is in control of arms depots and border crossings, the Pentagon chief told reporters.

“‘I think what has occurred here in the last couple of days is a clear reflection on how complicated and dangerous this situation is and how unpredictable it is,’ Hagel said at a joint press conference with Singapore’s defense minister.

“He spoke after a powerful rebel faction, the Islamic Front, last week seized the Bab al-Hawa crossing on the Turkish border and weapons warehouses from the Free Syrian Army, which is led by General Selim Idriss.”

Citing a US official the Washington, December 12, 2013 datelined AFP report added:

The Islamic Front seized a compound near the Turkish border belonging to the Free Syrian Army, or the Supreme Military Council (SMC).

‘Following that, SMC officials fled other compounds out of fear that they could be attacked as well,’ said the US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

‘The initial incident occurred at a single compound but there were ripple effects,’ the official said.

The report said:

“Some media reports also said Idriss had fled Syria but a spokesman said he was on a working trip to Turkey.

“‘We continue to support General Idriss and the moderate opposition,’ Hagel said.

“‘But this is a problem, I mean, what has occurred here, a big problem. And we’re going to have to work through it and manage through it with General Idriss and the moderate opposition.’

“He added that ‘when the moderate opposition is set back, that’s not good.’

“Asked who was in control of the arms depots, Hagel said: ‘We’re evaluating right now. We’re assessing what has happened, where we are.’

“He said there were ‘very dangerous elements’ in the opposition that ‘complicates our support’ for the rebels.

“Delivery of non-lethal assistance would be withheld ‘until, first of all, we can get a clear assessment of what has happened,’ Hagel said.

“The fractured opposition included Al-Qaeda and other ‘terrorist groups,’ he said, added: ‘So it’s not a matter of just an easy choice between the good guys and the bad guys here.’”

Islamists kidnap Kurdish civilians

Citing monitoring group The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights a Reuters report from Beirut said:

Islamist rebels linked to al Qaeda kidnapped at least 120 Kurdish civilians on December 13, 2013 from a village near the Turkish border in Aleppo province.

Citing Arab and Kurdish sources in and around Ihras the monitoring group with a network of sources across Syria informed:

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters entered Ihras, 20 km south of the border town of Azaz, and took the captives, including at least six women, to an unknown location.

Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

The incident is the latest in a series of kidnappings and killings by ISIL this month targeting Kurds in northern Syria, where mainly Sunni Arab Islamist rebels and Kurdish fighters have clashed repeatedly in recent months.

The monitoring group said:

ISIL had kidnapped 51 Kurdish civilians from the towns of Manbij and Jarablus northeast of Aleppo since the start of December, including eight women and two children.

ISIL has also evicted 15 Kurdish families linked to the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) from their homes in Idlib province, according to the Observatory.

Front against al-Qaeda

In an Istanbul, December 14, 2013 datelined report by İpek Yezdani, Hurriyet Daily News (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/syria-rebels-unite-against-al-qaeda.aspx?PageID=238&NID=59483&NewsCatID=352) said:

Fifteen Syrian armed opposition groups, including the Supreme Military Council of Free Syrian Army (FSA), have established a new front under the name of “Syrian Rebels Front” to fight both President Bashar al-Assad’s government and al-Qaeda-affiliated groups in Syria.

The report headlined “Syria rebels unite against al-Qaeda” said:

The former spokesperson for the Supreme Military Council, Col. Qassim Saad Eddine, called on all other fractions to join the front, which included 15 battalions and a brigade belonging to the FSA.

Eddine said in July 2013 that the killing of senior FSA commander Kamal Hamami by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) was a declaration of war.

The announcement of the new front came one month after Syria’s most powerful rebel groups said they had forged a new Islamic force called “The Islamic Front” and were seeking to topple the government of al-Assad and replace it with an Islamic state.

Meanwhile, a prominent member of the political wing of the Syrian opposition, the Syrian National Council (SNC), refuted allegations that the commander of the FSA, Gen. Salim Idris, fled Syria after Islamist militant fighters ran him out of his headquarters.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, which was based on White House sources, Idris flew to Doha recently after fleeing to Turkey from Syria.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, a member of the SNC claimed “Idris has been living in three countries, Turkey, Qatar and Jordan for the last one year. He was going to Syria from time to time.”

The 13-month-old U.S.-backed Syrian National Coalition, which supports the FSA, is based in Doha. The United States and United Kingdom have suspended all “non-lethal” support for rebels in northern Syria after the Islamic Front took over key FSA-controlled warehouses holding lethal and non-lethal weapons intended for moderate fighters in northern Syria.

Al-Qaeda linked group executes rebels

In an earlier report Reuters said:

Al Qaeda-linked the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, or ISIL, members have executed the commander of a rival rebel faction and six of his men, an amateur video of the public execution showed, part of their campaign to marginalize other groups.

The report from Beirut headlined “Video shows execution of Syrian rebels by Al Qaeda-linked group” said:

The ISIL have taken advantage of a power vacuum in rebel-held areas to assert its authority over more moderate elements of the armed opposition.

The November 28, 2013 datelined report added:

The video, posted online by the anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group, shows armed men in black standing below an ISIL banner.

The Observatory said the video was taken in the northern Syrian town of Atarib in Idlib province. Its authenticity could not be independently confirmed.

A masked man on the video identifies seven men kneeling as members of the Ghurabaa al-Sham brigade, a moderate Islamist group that was one of the first to fight Assad.

He spoke into a microphone to a crowd of men, some of whom used their mobile phones to film the killing.

They were then shot in the head.

Refugees

Another AFP report headlined “European response to Syrian refugees ‘pitiful’: Amnesty” said:

European Union leaders should “hang their heads in shame” at their failure to provide safe haven for Syrian refugees fleeing the brutal conflict, Amnesty International said on Dec. 13.

In a damning report, the human rights group says EU member states have offered places for just 12,340 people over the next year — well below the 30,000 sought by the UN and a tiny fraction of the millions who have fled Syria.

The report from London said:

As winter storms brought fresh misery to the hundreds of thousands of refugees sheltering in tents in camps in Lebanon and Jordan, the group urged the EU to ease some of the pressure on Syria’s neighbors.

“The EU has miserably failed to play its part in providing a safe haven to the refugees who have lost all but their lives,” said Secretary General Salil Shetty.

Amnesty also condemned the bloc for making it so difficult to enter the EU legally, and for leaving those who do make it languishing in squalid detention centers for weeks on end.

“The EU must open its borders, provide safe passage and halt these deplorable human rights violations,” Shetty said.

Syria’s neighbors have borne the brunt of the refugee crisis, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has called for other countries to provide 30,000 places by the end of 2014.

Only half of these places have been pledged so far, and of the 12,340 offered by EU nations, the vast majority — 10,000 — is from one country, Germany.

Eighteen EU member states have offered no places, including Britain, where Prime Minister David Cameron has been vocal in his calls for international action to stem the crisis.

In September, two British refugee campaign groups wrote to Cameron urging him to establish a resettlement program.

But a government spokesman said on December 13, 2013 it had no plans to resettle or provide temporary protection to Syrians, saying it was focused on providing humanitarian aid to the region.

In Bulgaria, where an estimated 5,000 refugees arrived between January and November, Amnesty said it had found refugees “living in squalid conditions in containers, a dilapidated building and in tents”.

“It is deplorable that many of those that who have risked life and limb to get here, are either forced back or detained in truly squalid conditions with insufficient food, water or medical care,” said Shetty.

Refugees trying to cross from Turkey to Greece reported being met by gun-wielding, hooded coastguard officials who stripped them of their belongings before sending them back.

“They put all the men lying on the boat; they stepped on us and hit us with their weapons for three hours,” explained one man picked up by the Greek coastguard near the island of Samos in October.

“Then at around 10 in the morning, after removing the motor, they put us back to our plastic boat and drove us back to the Turkish waters and left us in the middle of the sea.” Just 55,000 Syrian refugees have managed to claim asylum in the EU, a fraction of the estimated 2.3 million who have fled the country, Amnesty said.

 

Press release

This week the World’s political leaders stood united in admiration at the Memorial service in South Africa to honour the memory of Nelson Mandela, Leader of his country, and a man of courage who gave inspiration to many people around the world.

 

Across the world in East Jerusalem in solitude sits another man of courage Mordechai Vanunu.    In l986 Vanunu, the Israeli Nuclear whistle-blower, told the world about Israel’s secret nuclear Weapons.   For this he served 18 years in an Israeli prison, 12 in solitary confinement, and since his release in 2004 he has been forbidden to leave Israel, speak to foreigners, and is constantly under surveillance.

On 25thDecember, 2013 Christmas day, he will be brought again before an Israeli Supreme Court and will, yet again, ask for his right to leave Israel. The Supreme Court can give him his freedom to go get on a plane and leave Israel as he wishes to do.   I appeal to President Shimon Perez, to Prime Minister Netanyahu, to let him go.   He is a man of peace, desiring freedom, who followed his conscience.  He is no threat to Israel.   He like Mandela, has served now 27 years and deserves his freedom.

To the World’s Political Leaders who recognized in Mandela, a man of Honour and courage and saluted him, I appeal to you to do all in your power to help Vanunu get his freedom now.   You have it in your power To do so, please do not be ‘silent’ whilst Mordechai Vanunu suffers and is refused his basic rights.

To the World’s media, I appeal to you to report on Vanunu‘s continuing Isolation and enforced silence by Israel.

To civil communities everywhere, I appeal to you to increase your efforts for Vanunu freedom and demand ‘Israel let our brother Mordechai Go. We cannot be free while he is not free’.

 

Mairead Corrigan Maguire

Nobel Peace Laureate

15^th December,2013

 

 

 

 

 

By Hussein Al-alak

13 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Few countries in the Middle East have experienced the same level of chemical attacks as the Iraqi people. Starting in the 1920’s, which saw the first ever gassing of the Kurds by the British, for nearly one hundred years, every generation has grown up under the shadow of chemical weapons.

Vivid descriptions have been given by Iraqi and Iranian Veterans, of their exposure to chemical weapons in the Iran/Iraq war, and the various neurological impacts, while bearing witness to the changing colour of the sky and skin, which came with years of bombardments.

Medical experts in the Kurdish village of Halabja, are still dealing with the breathing difficulties and disabilities, which have arisen among survivors of that fateful day in the late 1980’s, when planes flew over the village and gassed an estimated 5.000 people.

It was in the First Gulf War of the 1990’s, where the Iraqi people once again witnessed the first hand impact of chemical’s, where the combination of burning oil fields, Depleted Uranium, along with a host of other toxins being spewed into the environment, led to it being classified as the “most toxic war in modern history”.

People involved with Iraq, during the 1990’s, witnessed a dramatic increase in birth defects in the area’s most heavily bombed by the UN sanctioned “Desert Storm”, with rates of cancer’s souring beyond pre-war levels, and Gulf War Illness/Syndrome still being the unexplained medical condition, amongst Western service personnel.

According to Iraqi government statistics, prior to the outbreak of the First Gulf War, the rate of cancer cases in Iraq was 40 out of 100,000 people. By 1995, it had increased to 800 out of 100,000 people, and by 2005, it had doubled to at least 1,600 out of 100,000 people. Current estimates show the increasing trend continuing.

John Pilger recalled a 1999 visit to Iraq in which he spoke with paediatrician Dr. Ginan Ghalib Hassen, who described the many children she was treating with neuroblastoma.

“Before the war, we saw only one case of this unusual tumor in two years, Now we have many cases, mostly with no family history. I have studied what happened in Hiroshima. The sudden increase of such congenital malformations is the same.”

After the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent US/UK occupation, Chemical Weapons were once again inflicted up on the Iraqi people, which included the use of white phosphorous against civilian populations in area’s like Fallujah.

According to acclaimed journalist Dahr Jamil, the U.S. and British military used more than 1,700 tons of depleted uranium in Iraq in the 2003 invasion –on top of the disputed figure of up to 900 tons in the 1991 Gulf War.

In context, the UK Atomic Energy Authority warned the British Government, “that if 50 tons of the residual dust (from Depleted Uranium) was left in the region, an estimated half a million excess cancer deaths, would result by the year 2000”.

The Iraqi section of Al-Qaeda, which has since re branded itself The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, for its involvement in the Syria uprising, were also the first branch of Al-Qaeda to start using chemical weapons.

Between October 2006 and June 2007, Iraq experienced fifteen chlorine bomb attacks, which according to the US Defence Department, the first documented case being in Ramadi, where terrorists detonated a car packed with 12 120 mm mortar shells and two 100-pound chlorine tanks.

Chlorine attacks also occurred in Fallujah, Balad and again in Ramadi, with a later attack against Forward Operating Base Warhorse, in Diyala, where a car bomber detonated two tanks of chlorine and 1,000 pounds of explosives, with the chlorine alone causing an adverse reaction to over 65 US service members alone.

In June 2013, the Iraqi Army shut down three Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant bomb factories, and seized chemicals which were designated for chemical attacks, less than one month before its use in neighbouring Syria. Situated close to the borders with Iraq’s turbulent neighbour, among the ingredients found in the bomb factories, were those for Sarin.

Hussein Al-Alak is a British based journalist and is chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK. Hussein is also a member of the Royal British Legion and a mental health advocate for Combat Stress. You can follow him on Twitter @TotallyHussein. He blogs at http://totallyhussein.blogspot.co.uk

By Nile Bowie

13 December, 2013

The humiliating public sacking and subsequent execution of Jang Song-thaek, the man once widely believed to be the second-in-command in North Korea’s political hierarchy, has stunned observers and onlookers.

Dispatches from Pyongyang’s state-media allege that Jang mismanaged economic affairs and had ambitions to stage a coup d’etat against the leadership in Pyongyang.

State-media highlighted how the once elite powerbroker attempted to convert departments under his control into a “little kingdom,” and suggestively alluded to Jang using outside perceptions of himself as a reformer to further his political ambitions.

These developments may be interpreted by some as evidence of instability in the upper echelons of power in Pyongyang, It would be more plausible to infer that the leadership is fully capable of containing threats to its rule, even from a highly established individual married into the Kim family.

Jang Song-thaek, the husband of former leader Kim Jong-il’s sister, has been politically intertwined with North Korea’s ruling family for over four decades and received a top military post in 2011 following the death of Kim Jong-il.

He was known to have been a key figure in maintaining stability in the early months of Kim Jong-un’s tenure and was widely believed to be steering the state’s economic affairs, particularly in joint projects with China.

Jang was held to be one of the most reform-orientated elite officials and an alleged proponent of Chinese-style market reforms; he oversaw the development and administration of the Rason Special Economic Zone and the Hwanggumpyong-Wihwa Island Economic Zone, regions where Pyongyang is guardedly experimenting with foreign investment and joint-ventures.

Indications suggest that Jang’s demise was rooted in disagreements with the leadership on how to boost the economy, with his faction supporting a Chinese-style opening while Kim Jong-un and hardliners support a partial opening through contained and controllable economic zones and joint-projects.

The downfall of Jang naturally presents openings for other figures to emerge as key powerbrokers. Figures such as People’s Army politburo chief Choi Ryong-hae have rapidly risen up the ranks of the military since Kim Jong-un came to power and has been frequented photographed with the young leader in public outings.

As a figure associated with reform, the demise of Jang suggests that conservative policies seen as favorable by the military establishment will remain the mainstay of Kim Jong-un’s handling of economic affairs, foreign policy, and the nuclear issue.

Additionally, the ousting of Jang symbolically marks the moment when Kim Jong-un’s leadership passed from a group-led ‘guardian system’ to one of single-person rule. It would be very unlikely for the leadership in Pyongyang to face any opposition to these internal developments.

It is expected that Kim Jong-un will eventually embark on a foreign visit to China. The Chinese leadership can pursue strategic engagement with the leadership in Pyongyang at the highest levels so as to ascertain the priorities of the young leader, and reshape the approach toward Pyongyang accordingly.

Maintaining long-term regional stability and friendly bilateral ties are the objectives of China’s policy toward Pyongyang, and a diplomatic exchange at the highest levels is sorely needed to establish greater policy synergy to the benefit of both parties.

The current scenario leaves much to be clarified, and regional stability can be managed only through measured dialogue that examines both governments’ grievances and positions on various issues.

Integration through economic exchange should remain the central approach in deepening Sino-Korean relations and ensuring stability, and high-level talks with Kim Jong-un should be explored to further these policies.

As the Chinese proverb goes, “A small hole not mended in time will become a big hole much more difficult to mend.”

The author is an independent journalist and a columnist with Russia Today (RT) covering international affairs.