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By Countercurrents.org

30 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

As thousands of Egyptians defy emergency and curfew imposed in cities the army warns of collapse of the Egypt state. The opposing camps turn visible: progressives oppose emergency while the Islamists and the US back Morsi, the Muslim brotherhood leader imposing emergency.

People in Suez, Port Said and Ismailia rose in protests defying emergency. Thousands of demonstrators marched to Shura Council’s headquarters to oppose policies of president Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood while the Shura Council endorses emergency measures.

Patrick Kingsley reported [1] from Cairo:

Continuing civil unrest may soon cause the collapse of the Egyptian state, the head of the country’s armed forces warned.

Parts of Egypt are in turmoil following five days of rioting in which 52 people have been killed and more than 1,000 injured after protests against president Mohamed Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood and police brutality turned violent.

General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s comments have sparked fears that the military might once again intervene in the day-to-day governance of Egypt.

Writing on the army’s Facebook page, Sisi said: “The continuation of the struggle of the different political forces … over the management of state affairs could lead to the collapse of state.”

Sisi said the army would remain a “solid and cohesive block” on which the state could rely.

Egypt’s new constitution underwrites the army’s judicial independence. The army was also asked to help restore order on the streets of Port Said this week, prompting reminders of Mubarak-era state governance.

The military still controls large parts of the Egyptian economy.

Yasser el-Shimy, Egypt analyst for the International Crisis Group, described Sisi’s statement as a “gentle reminder” of the army’s influence.

“The army is very happy to pass the buck – they really have been burnt by their involvement [in politics] over the last two years,” said Shimy.

“But there is a point after which the army will feel that they cannot just stand back if they feel the integrity of the state is in danger.”

Asked by the Guardian whether he feared military intervention should the unrest continue, Gehad al-Haddad, a spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, said: “No. I know enough about the way President Morsi removed General Tantawi to not be worried.”

On a street near Tahrir Square protesters also said they did not fear a military intervention, arguing that either regime was undesirable. “If the army comes, we will still be on the street,” said Mina Remond, a 20-year-old student standing among demonstrators on the banks of the Nile.

The offices of the Cairo Governorate, a mile from Tahrir Square, were attacked.

In another attempt to lessen some of the violence, Egypt’s prosecutor-general also ordered the arrest of the Black Bloc, a new group of young masked protesters that emerged for the first time in Egypt last Thursday, and which has been involved in many of the most aggressive clashes. Dressed in black and in balaclavas, the Black Bloc appears to be inspired by a similar approach used by anti-capitalist protesters in Europe and America throughout much of the past two decades.

Little is known about the group, which first appeared on Facebook on 21 January, and purports to act solely against the Muslim Brotherhood.

Emergency and curfew defied

The cities of Egypt’s Suez Canal – Suez, Port Said and Ismailia – continued to witness protests on January 29, 2013 against a government-declared state of emergency featuring a daily 9pm-to-6am curfew [2].

On January 27, 2013 night, president Morsi announced a state of emergency in the three cities.

Protesters chanted against the emergency measures, slamming Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood group from which he hails.

A solidarity demonstration also took place in Cairo on January 29 at 9pm, when the curfew goes into effect in the canal cities. Hundreds gathered in downtown Cairo’s Talaat Harb Square for the occasion.

A solidarity football match has also been planned at the same time outside the Presidential Palace in Cairo in imitation of a match held in Ismailia on January 29, when city residents played the country’s most popular sport with military personnel who refused to enforce the curfew.

Clashes continue

An earlier report [3] said:

Clashes between hundreds of protesters and police forces have continued for the third consecutive day in Port Said.

The clashes centered on Al-Arab police station and the surrounding area.

According to eye witnesses there are injured among the protesters, although there is no official confirmation of the numbers of injured as yet. Gunfire and live ammunition have been heard in the area.

On January 28, thousands of mourners in Port Said joined a mass funeral held for seven civilians who were killed on January 27 when police clashed with thousands of mourners marching in a funeral procession for those slain in the clashes the previous day.

Mourners chanted against Morsi, calling for him to leave power.

Major-General Ahmed Wasfy, the commander of Egypt’s Second Army (a regional sub-division of Egypt’s armed forces) who was assigned to restore order in the city held a press conference on Monday.

“We are not here to wage war against the people. We are the Egyptian army; we are here to serve the people,” he said, adding that the curfew imposed by president Morsi on Suez, Port Said and Ismailia Sunday is in the best interest of people to restore order.

The commander of the second army accused people from outside Port Said of distributing weapons inside the city to create chaos. He also added that things would calm down in the city over the next three or four days.

The Ultras Green Eagles, the hardcore football fans of Port Said’s Masry football club, have called on its members, Masry fans and the people of Port Said to gather at 8pm in order to continue what the group called “retribution” for the “martyrs of Port Said”, those who have been killed in the past 48 hours, in a statement on its official Facebook page.

Several political groups have already announced that they will organize rallies and protests in Port Said starting from 8pm and 9pm, in defiance of the presidential decree which imposed a curfew in the three Suez Canal cities for the next 30 days.

Shura Council opposed

Sarah El-Rashidi reported [4]:

Around three thousand protesters set out from Cairo’s Sayida Zeinab Mosque on January 28 afternoon towards the Shura Council, the upper house of Egypt’s parliament, which is currently endowed with full legislative powers.

The march, which marks the second anniversary of Egypt’s 28 January 2011 ‘Friday of rage,’ is meant to protest the recent death of dozens of protesters in clashes with security forces across the country and to demand the suspension of Egypt’s newly-approved constitution and the dismissal of the cabinet.

Leading the march is renowned leftist activist Kamal Khalil, who chanted anti-Muslim Brotherhood slogans and demanded “vengeance for the martyrs.”

“We are not going to leave it to Badie,” protesters chanted in reference to Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie.

Activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah told Ahram Online that the march was meant to protest the Brotherhood’s perceived monopolization of state institutions.

“We want to stop the Brotherhood’s attempts to take over state institutions… and pass illegitimate laws through them,” said Abdel-Fattah.

“And now Morsi has reinstated the emergency law, which reflects his failure as a legitimate democratic leader,” he added.

Also present at Monday’s protest were members of the Revolutionary Socialists, the Socialist Popular Alliance and the National Association for Change.

Meanwhile, members of the 6 April youth movement held up trash bins as shields bearing the word ‘Peaceful.’

“We want freedom. We want to get rid of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood,” Amr, a masked 14-year-old member of Egypt’s ‘Black Bloc,’ told Ahram Online.

Hisham Sabra, a protester and consulting engineer, told Ahram Online that Monday’s protests were “a chance for freedom to be gained and a democratic stable Egypt.”

“We were naïve…we used to have a semi-military dictatorship. Now we have a theocratic dictatorship, which is more dangerous,” added Sabra.

Sabra praised the National Salvation Front (NSF) opposition group’s decision to boycott the president’s calls for dialogue.

The NSF announced its rejection of Morsi’s invitation to dialogue, describing it as a “façade” that would not benefit Egyptians.

Two police officers were killed in the city of Port Said while one conscript was killed in Suez.

Shura Council backs emergency

Gamal Essam El-Din reported [5]:

The Islamist-dominated Shura Council (the upper house of Egypt’s parliament, currently endowed with full legislative powers) on January 28 ratified new security measures at the request of president Morsi.

In a plenary session, the Shura Council approved the laws, which had been rammed through a joint closed-room session of the council’s national security and legislative affairs committees on January 28.

The law states that army officers helping to maintain security will be granted judicial powers in accordance with the Criminal Procedures Law and the Police Law. It further states that military courts will be charged with trying those convicted of crimes of sabotage.

The Shura Council’s joint committee had emphasized that the use of the armed forces in restoring order should not be upon the request of the president, but rather with the approval of Egypt’s National Defense Council (of which the president is a member).

The law was rejected, however, by Ihab El-Kharat, chairman of the Shura Council’s human rights committee and member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party. “There is no need for emergency measures because ordinary laws already allow the military to help the police,” he said. “There is no need at the moment to give the armed forces judicial powers.”

He added: “Egypt is suffering from a political crisis. There must be a political solution to this crisis rather than the imposition of draconian measures.”

Emad Gad, political analyst and leading member of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, told Al-Ahram Online: “The Shura Council’s endorsement of Morsi’s authoritarian measures gives renewed proof that the council is just an Islamist-dominated parliament, designed mainly to rubberstamp Morsi’s draconian decrees and serve the interests of his Muslim Brotherhood.”

US backs Morsi

Dina Ezzat reported [6]:

A round of talks between Cairo and Washington – some sources suggest it included direct talks between an apprehensive US president Barack Obama and a reassuring President Morsi – concluded that despite the outrage of protestors since the January 25 Revolution anniversary, Morsi’s presidency is weakened but not broken.

“He is still largely in control. Ultimately we think the anger [in Egypt] will calm down – but he will have to give something,” said a Cairo-based Western diplomat.

This view is shared by many foreign diplomats in Egypt: the army is not moving against Morsi – some hasten to add ‘at least not yet’ – and public opinion has not turned enough to see another president fall in less than two years.

Moreover, the call made by a leading member of the National Salvation Front for the West, especially Washington, to put pressure on Morsi, is still being pondered and no serious pressure seems to be building.

According to one informed source in Washington, an expected US State Department statement mildly placing more blame for the current violence on Morsi than on the rest of the political leadership was suspended in favor of a White House statement calling on all leaders to end the violence and pursue dialogue.

The spirit of the statement, the same source says, was largely influenced by the US ambassador to Egypt, who seems to be arguing the case for Morsi even as Washington becomes more sceptical. “It is clear these demonstrations will not bring Morsi down,” the source said.

Overall, Arab diplomats in Washington say the White House is comfortable with the role Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood are playing on key Middle East issues: Gaza, Hamas, Iran and Syria. “And above this there is a sense of ease with regards to the positive statement Morsi made on the Prophet Mohamed’s birthday about equal rights for Coptic Christians and Muslims alike,” said one Washington-based Arab diplomat.

Sources who followed recent talks between Washington, Morsi and the Egyptian army say a few concessions might be offered to contain public outrage.

Meanwhile, sources in the Egyptian opposition say their views on how to exit the current crisis have been solicited by the US embassy in Cairo.

Some say these contacts amount to mediation rather than consultation – something a US embassy source declined to confirm, saying it is normal for embassies to talk with political leaders.

This said, an Egyptian military source confirms the US is confident the Egyptian army will stay out of politics. There are certain matters the armed forces “talk frankly about with the presidency but this does not mean the army is at all willing to re-engage in the political process – we are staying out of it,” he said.

A similar assessment is offered by several foreign diplomats in Cairo who essentially agree that Morsi is facing difficulties and that he is also facing pressure from the armed forces on some matters, but things have not reached the point at which the army would ask Morsi to step down.

According to the military source, who spoke to Ahram Online on condition of anonymity, the armed forces are unlikely to repeat the offer it made for a national dialogue last November during the political crisis over the president’s constitutional declaration. “Unless we are asked by the presidency we are not intending to offer our help again. The president is dealing with this matter himself.”

A number of public figures and opposition politicians refused the president’s invitation to join a national dialogue on the current crisis, presidential sources say.

Islamists support Morsi

Another report [7] said:

Salafist Nour Party, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya say Morsi’s decision was needed to maintain order.

The party spokesman Nader Bakkar said in a statement.

Bakkar said the party “understands the need for such a decision.”

Bakkar went on to commend the president for thanking the police.

Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya also announced its support for Morsi’s decision to declare a state of emergency.

Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya’s political arm, the Construction and Development Party, also welcomed the president’s invitation to opposition forces to enter into a national dialogue.

Source:

[1] guardian.co.uk, Jan 29, 2013, “Egypt’s armed forces chief warns unrest could cause collapse of state”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/29/egypt-armed-forces-chief-warns-collapse

[2] ahramonline, Jan 29, 2013, “Cities of Egypt’s Suez Canal protest curfew for 2nd consecutive day”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63626/Egypt/Politics-/Cities-of-Egypts-Suez-Canal-protest-curfew-for-nd-.aspx

[3] ahramonline, Jan 28, 2013, “Port Said: Funerals and clashes continue in besieged city”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63508/Egypt/Politics-/Port-Said-Funerals-and-clashes-continue-in-besiege.aspx

[4] ahramonline, Jan 28, 2013, “Thousands of anti-Morsi protesters march on Egypt’s Shura Council”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/63516/Egypt/0/Thousands-of-antiMorsi-protesters-march-on-Egypts-.aspx

[5] ahramonline, Jan 28, 2013, “Egypt’s Shura Council green-lights president’s emergency measures

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/63512/Egypt/0/Egypts-Shura-Council-greenlights-presidents-emerge.aspx

[6] ahramonline, Jan 29, 2013, “US still backing Morsi as army remains quiescent”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63559/Egypt/Politics-/US-still-backing-Morsi-as-army-remains-quiescent.aspx

[7] ahramonline, Monday 28 Jan 2013

“Islamist parties welcome Morsi’s state-of-emergency decision”, http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/0/63479/Egypt/0/Islamist-parties-welcome-Morsis-stateofemergency-d.aspx

By Robert Reich,

29 January 13

@ Robert Reich’s Blog

As President Obama said in his inaugural address last week, America “cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.”

Yet that continues to be the direction we’re heading in.

A newly-released analysis by the Economic Policy Institute shows that the super-rich have done well in the economic recovery while almost everyone else has done badly. The top 1 percent of earners’ real wages grew 8.2 percent from 2009 to 2011, yet the real annual wages of Americans in the bottom 90 percent have continued to decline in the recovery, eroding by 1.2 percent between 2009 and 2011.

In other words, we’re back to the widening inequality we had before the debt bubble burst in 2008 and the economy crashed.

But the President is exactly right. Not even the very wealthy can continue to succeed without a broader-based prosperity. That’s because 70 percent of economic activity in America is consumer spending. If the bottom 90 percent of Americans are becoming poorer, they’re less able to spend. Without their spending, the economy can’t get out of first gear.

That’s a big reason why the recovery continues to be anemic, and why the International Monetary Fund just lowered its estimate for U.S. growth in 2013 to just 2 percent.

Almost a quarter of all jobs in America now pay wages below the poverty line for a family of four. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 7 out of 10 growth occupations over the next decade will be low-wage — like serving customers at big-box retailers and fast-food chains.

At this rate, who’s going to buy all the goods and services America is capable of producing? We can’t return to the kind of debt-financed consumption that caused the bubble in the first place.

Get it? It’s not a zero-sum game. Wealthy Americans would do better with smaller shares of a rapidly-growing economy than with the large shares they now possess of an economy that’s barely moving.

If they were rational, the wealthy would support public investments in education and job-training, a world-class infrastructure (transportation, water and sewage, energy, internet), and basic research – all of which would make the American workforce more productive.

If they were rational they’d even support labor unions – which have proven the best means of giving working people a fair share in the nation’s prosperity.

But labor unions are almost extinct.

The decline of labor unions in America tracks exactly the decline in the bottom 90 percent’s share of total earnings, and shrinkage of the middle class.

In the 1950s, when the U.S. economy was growing faster than 3 percent a year, more than a third of all working people belonged to a union. That gave them enough bargaining clout to get wages that allowed them to buy what the economy was capable of producing.

Since the late 1970s, unions have eroded – as has the purchasing power of most Americans, and not coincidentally, the average annual growth of the economy.

Last week the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that as of 2012 only 6.6 percent of workers in the private sector were unionized. (That’s down from 6.9 percent in 2011.) That’s the lowest rate of unionization in almost a century.

What’s to blame? Partly globalization and technological change. Globalization sent many unionized manufacturing plants abroad.

Manufacturing is starting to return to America but it’s returning without many jobs. The old assembly line has been replaced by robotics and numerically-controlled machine tools.

Technologies have also replaced many formerly unionized workers in telecommunications (remember telephone operators?) and clerical jobs.

But wait. Other nations subject to the same forces have far higher levels of unionization than America. 28 percent of Canada’s workforce is unionized, as is more than 25 percent of Britain’s, and almost 20 percent of Germany’s.

Unions are almost extinct in America because we’ve chosen to make them extinct.

Unlike other rich nations, our labor laws allow employers to replace striking workers. We’ve also made it exceedingly difficult for workers to organize, and we barely penalized companies that violate labor laws. (A worker who’s illegally fired for trying to organize a union may, if lucky, get the job back along with back pay – after years of legal haggling.)

Republicans, in particular, have set out to kill off unions. Union membership dropped 13 percent last year in Wisconsin, which in 2011 curbed the collective bargaining rights of many public employees. And it fell 18 percent last year in Indiana, which last February enacted a right-to-work law (allowing employees at unionized workplaces to get all the benefits of unionization without paying for them). Last month Michigan enacted a similar law.

Don’t blame globalization and technological change for why employees at Walmart , America’s largest employer, still don’t have a union. They’re not in global competition and their jobs aren’t directly threatened by technology.

The average pay of a Walmart worker is $8.81 an hour. A third of Walmart’s employees work less than 28 hours per week and don’t qualify for benefits.

Walmart is a microcosm of the American economy. It has brazenly fought off unions. But it could easily afford to pay its workers more. It earned $16 billion last year. Much of that sum went to Walmart’s shareholders, including the family of its founder, Sam Walton.

The wealth of the Walton family now exceeds the wealth of the bottom 40 percent of American families combined, according to an analysis by the Economic Policy Institute.

But how can Walmart expect to continue to show fat profits when most of its customers are on a downward economic escalator?

Walmart should be unionized. So should McDonalds. So should every major big-box retailer and fast-food outlet in the nation. So should every hospital in America.

That way, more Americans would have enough money in their pockets to get the economy moving. And everyone – even the very rich – would benefit.

As Obama said, America cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it.

Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock” and “The Work of Nations.” His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.

By Countercurrents.org

29 January, 2013

Countercurrents.org

External armed intervention and conflict is ruining agriculture sector in Syria.

A UN mission has found: cereal, fruit and vegetable production dropped by half and there is massive destruction of irrigation and other infrastructure*.

The mission, from January 18 to 22, has also found: Twenty-two months of conflict have left Syria’s agricultural sector in tatters

The mission has found:

1. Wheat and barley production dropped to less than 2 million tonnes last year from 4 to 4.5 million tonnes in normal years.

2. Vegetable, fruit and olive production declined significantly in both Homs and Dara’a Governorates, including a 60 percent drop in vegetable production in Homs and a 40 percent drop in olive oil production in Dara’a.

3. Only 45 percent of the farmers were able to fully harvest their cereal crops while 14 percent reported they could not harvest due to insecurity and lack of fuel.

4. There is a lack of access to agricultural inputs including quality seeds and fertilizers.

5. There is a lack of irrigation due to damage to main irrigation canals especially in Homs and lack of fuel for irrigation pumps.

6. Movement of livestock to grazing areas has not been possible and their survival is compromised by the lack of animal feed and veterinary drugs, the importation of which is hampered by sanctions.

7. The production of poultry, a traditional source of cheap animal protein has also been severely hit with major farms destroyed in Homs, Hama and Idleb.

The mission was coordinated with both the government and the opposition and visited several affected areas in Damascus as well as in the governorates of Homs and Dara’a. The mission team was composed of emergency directors from seven UN humanitarian agencies and led by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

The mission was struck by the plight of the Syrian people whose capacity to cope is dramatically eroded by 22 months of crisis,” said Dominique Burgeon, Director of FAO’s Emergency and Rehabilitation Division, who participated in the mission.

“Destruction of infrastructure in all sectors is massive and it is clear that the longer the conflict will last, the longer it will take to rehabilitate it,” he said.

Of the 10 million Syrians who live in rural areas – about 46 percent of the population – 80 percent derive their livelihoods from agriculture.

Burgeon said: The people need urgent agricultural support in terms of seeds, fertilizers, animal feed, veterinary drugs, poultry and rehabilitation of irrigation infrastructure.

* 23-01-2013, “Syrian agricultural production drops massively as conflict continues”, http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/168676/icode/

By Alex Lantier

29 January, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The imperialist powers are escalating the war in Mali. Britain has pledged to deploy troops, and the US is planning a base for drone aircraft in the region, as French troops marched into the rebellious north of its former colony.

British authorities said they would deploy hundreds of troops, concentrating on training French-backed Malian government forces and providing “force protection” for the trainers. British Special Forces are already reportedly in Mali, working with the French. Britain has also sent C-17 transport aircraft to help France deploy troops to Mali.

The announcement came after talks Sunday between British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande. A Downing Street spokesman said, “The prime minister made clear that we fully support the French government’s actions …. The prime minister went on to explain that we are keen to provide further assistance where we can, depending on what French requirements there may be.”

The United States is also extending military assistance to France, offering on Saturday to refuel French warplanes with US tanker airplanes after talks between US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. Many French fighter-bombers operate from bases in France, flying to Mali through Algerian air space and bombing targets in Mali. This places them on the outer edge of their operating radius, requiring refueling.

At the same time, Washington is in discussions with Niger and other neighboring countries of Mali to find a possible base for US drones. The US already deploys small manned surveillance planes from a base in the military side of the Ouagadougou airport in Burkina Faso. This is one of a series of informal bases tied to the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), whose only official base in Africa is a joint Franco-American base in the East African coastal city-state of Djibouti.

US officials said that drones flying from Niger or Burkina Faso would monitor the flow of supplies and weapons from Libya across the Sahara to northern Mali.

They could also attack ground targets, extending the US war of remote-controlled assassination—currently waged in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and parts of the Arab Peninsula and East Africa—to the Sahel. The New York Times reported that Washington has “not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.”

AFRICOM commander General Carter Ham declined to comment on the US basing of forces in Niger, claiming the subject was “too operational for me to confirm or deny.” However, Niger’s president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has stressed that he is willing to establish a “long-term strategic relationship with the US.”

French Special Forces also recently deployed to Niger to protect French nuclear energy firm Areva’s huge uranium mines there. (See: “France sends troops to secure Niger uranium mines”)

The escalation of drone and commando warfare across West Africa highlights the sordid corporate and strategic interests driving the war in Mali, and the responsibility of the imperialist powers in creating the conditions that provoked the war in the first place.

NATO’s promotion of Islamist forces in the 2011 Libya war to destroy the regime of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi stoked ethnic and sectarian warfare in the Sahara. Now, Islamist forces, traffickers tied both to Al Qaeda and to the French-backed Malian regime in Bamako, and local ethnic-nationalist groups are re-supplying themselves with arms stolen from Libyan weapons dumps and trafficked across the Sahara. The response from Washington, Paris, and London is to further deploy forces and escalate violence across West Africa.

France is invading northern Mali, which broke away from the corrupt junta of Captain Amadou Sanogo in the capital, Bamako, to re-impose Bamako’s authority. Yesterday and over the weekend, French troops occupied key northern Malian towns, after a bombing campaign last week targeting the towns of Lere, Timbuktu, Kidal, and Gao.

Reports suggest that opposition fighters—including both ethnic-Tuareg and Islamist forces from various militias—are abandoning the towns after token or no resistance. They are either fleeing towards Kidal, a remote town 300 miles northeast of Gao and the last to remain under opposition control, or to the countryside, to prepare guerrilla resistance.

On Sunday Gao—the largest of the towns, with roughly 85,000 inhabitants—fell to French and Malian government troops, who had first seized its airstrip. French military sources said they had killed 25 Islamist fighters in Gao.

Yesterday the Tuareg-nationalist National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) signaled that it wanted to organize a truce in Kidal with invading French forces.

Yesterday French forces also took control of Timbuktu, a historic center of region’s medieval African empires.

Before French troops entered the town, Islamist militias reportedly burned two libraries in Timbuktu, containing thousands of priceless historic manuscripts dating back to the 13th century. Like other deeply reactionary acts of vandalism by US-backed Islamists who later fell out with the West—such as the destruction of Kabul’s cultural heritage by Afghan anti-Soviet mujahedin in 1992, or the Taliban destruction of the Bamiyan Buddha sculptures in 2001—such crimes point to the terrible implications of imperialism’s manipulation and promotion of Islamism.

Attempts to use the crimes of the West’s former Islamist proxies in Africa to justify France’s war in Mali are profoundly hypocritical. Paris routinely ignores such crimes when they are committed by forces it is supporting. This includes the Islamist Syrian insurgency, which attacked historic sites such as the souk of Aleppo. It is also a cynical cover for the reactionary character of the war.

With France blocking journalists from covering the war zones, reports of ethnic killings are being largely ignored in the mass media. On Saturday, however, Amnesty International (AI) released a statement accusing French-backed Malian forces of “violations of international human rights and humanitarian law, including the extrajudicial executions of Tuareg civilians, indiscriminate shelling of a Tuareg nomadic camp, and killing livestock on which the nomadic population rely for survival.”

The Bamako regime, whose authority France is intervening to restore, is thoroughly corrupt. Having worked closely with the International Monetary Fund and French capital to privatize and eliminate northern Mali’s limited social infrastructure since the 1980s, it turned northern Mali into a region where a small elite amassed fortunes based largely on criminal activities. These prominently include drug and kidnapping rackets, from which Malian officials derive considerable profits.

According to the British Guardian, the most expensive area of Gao is called “Cocainebougou,” or “Cocaine-town,” due to the fortunes realized from shipping Latin American cocaine through the South Atlantic and West Africa on towards Europe. The paper commented that their source, a police officer, “admitted there was collusion between smugglers and state officials.”

By William A. Cook

28 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

“ We are outraged and shocked at these offensive comments (made by MP David Ward last week) about Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the suggestion that Jews should have learned a lesson from the experience ” (Jon Benjamin, chief executive of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, 1/25/2013).

I must apologize for not responding to the lashing given to Lib Dem MP David Ward a week ago as my wife’s Mother, 88 years of age, was moved into Hospice care readying her for leaving this vale of tears. Her life, as is true of my own, suffered the horrors of WWII and the Nazi devastation of prisoners including, from 1933, Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, Roma (Gypsies), Jehovah Witnesses,   homosexuals , (and) persons accused of “asocial” or socially deviant behavior, and Jews, between 1938 and 1945 (Holocaust Encyclopedia). Our lives are bookended between depressions and wars. So what have we learned, as David Ward so tellingly asks to the chagrin of many including Mr. Benjamin quoted above. Curiously I found Mr. Ward’s comment incomplete. This is what he said:

    Having visited Auschwitz twice – once with my family and once with local schools – I am saddened that the Jews, who suffered unbelievable levels of persecution during the Holocaust, could within a few years of liberation from the death camps be inflicting atrocities on Palestinians in the new State of Israel and continue to do so on a daily basis in the West Bank and Gaza.

If truth be told, it did not take “a few years” for the Jews to inflict “unbelievable levels of persecution” on the indigenous people of Mandate Palestine; the persecution began in earnest in 1939 against the British, the British Mandate Government established in 1922 by the League of Nations to maintain order and peace in Palestine. The Zionists undertook “a war against the British Mandate Government, its Police and Soldiers” while it lobbied and subverted the MP’s in Westminster with propaganda and money. Here are the words Weizmann and Ben-Gurion promised the Mandate Government:

•  “if further action was taken against them (by the British Mandate Government) to destroy Zionism, then there would be a blood bath. Nothing could prevent it. Nobody would be safe in Palestine  (July 12, 1946, Rhodes Archive Documents). If need be, we shall take the country by force. If Palestine proves too small, her frontiers will have to be extended” (Ben Gurion, Appendix LVc).

This war set the British Government against its own soldiers and police, yea against the nations of the world that had authorized Britain to manage Palestine, and its own Balfour Declaration wording, to appease the Zionists that made this period one of the most destructive and humiliating experienced by the British people through their elected representatives. When in 1948, May of 1948, the Mandate soldiers and police returned home they were virtually shunned by the MPs as Robert Fisk notes in his piece, “The Forgotten Holocaust.”

Let’s move beyond the “outrage and shock” experienced by Mr. Benjamin, dig through the defecation if you will, to understand why he avoids telling the truth. Should he care to find it, he need only travel a few miles to Oxford , specifically seek in the Rhodes House Archives the “Top Secret” files of Sir Richard C. Catling lodged in a long card board box tied with a shoestring. Catling was Assistant Head Deputy of the Criminal Investigation Division of the Mandate Police. His file contains almost 500 pages of evidence detailing the subterfuge of the Jewish Agency that ostensibly cooperated with the British Government as Jewish immigrants came to Palestine . The documents were seized by the Mandate authorities from the Jewish Agency and its affiliated terror groups, the Haganah, Stern and Irgun “gangs.”

Two reports are included, one from High Commissioner Hugh MacMichael written in 1941 and sent to the British Secretary of State’s office and the second Catling’s report from 1947. The contents of these documents and the commentary of the reports were published by myself as Editor of The Plight of the Palestinians: a Long History of Destruction. That volume was published in 2010 by Macmillan Company with offices in London and New York . More than 20 renowned writers from around the world contributed to this work that describes the original intent of the Zionists as they terrorized the British authorities and the Palestinians from 1939 to May 14, 1948 and never stopped to this day. It is a book about genocide in Palestine .

How do you say that kindly? How do you make people, Jews and gentiles alike, feel comfortable talking about such behavior? How do you atone for the massacres of innocents as the Jewish armies raped, pillaged, slaughtered or drove out the residents of 418 towns and villages in Palestine while the British forces there had to stand by and watch because their fellow British politicians in Westminster called the shots?

Seven to eight hundred thousand Palestinians were driven from their homes and lands, into exile in foreign countries or into Gaza . They are a people without a homeland, contrary to the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. No passports, no recognized rights to employment or medical care or support of any kind—in Beirut and other cities in Lebanon , in Syria , in Jordan . To this day they live in refugee camps, thousands imprisoned with no place to go, no right of return, yet any Jew living anywhere in the world, who never stepped foot in Palestine, who has no Semitic blood in his/her veins, has a “right of return.” How can this be? Where is the justice?

Where is the cry of lamentation by the British MPs for allowing these conditions to persist? Why a cry of “Outrage and Shock”? What hypocritical nonsense from the “Good” people of Britain who walk around in pin striped suits and glittering pearls asking for “decency” and “respect” and “kindness” toward those who suffered the holocaust because they would be appalled at such “words” as David Ward uttered. I’m sorry, I don’t believe the Jews of the concentration camps would be “shocked and outraged” by such words; I think they would be “shocked and outraged” if the MPs and the Deputies of British Jews did not speak against the horrors the Zionist government of Israel has perpetrated on the Jews in the name of Judaism. Perhaps they can speak through me:

THE GHOSTS OF TEREZIN

I saw the pictures children drew at Terezin

As they clustered in the attic’s closing darkness, —

Pictures of the sun beyond the rain,

Of Mothers muffled in scarves and solemn dress,

Of Fathers proud beneath their yarmulkas, —

All waiting patiently the promised day

When they would board the silver train

And flee to the Holy City.

And I wept at their plight,

The silent, unknown, gnawing fright

That burned within their Ghetto of sin,

This Terezin.

And then before my eyes there came

Another scene, so strange, as if incarnate in the first

That burst untimely before my weeping heart;

A scene more ravaged than Terezin,

Of streets and alleys swamped in sewage and despair

Where children breathed the fetid air of hate

That smoldered like steaming ashes there.

Suddenly appeared above the graves, the ghosts of Terezin,

Arising like mist around the crematorium;

Fathers and Mothers, in their promised land at last,

Grasping children to their breasts.

Silent as sentinels they stood,

And there they wept as they watched in vain

The wardens wander through the camps

Like Gestapo agents of old,

Stark, cold, indifferent to the pain

Of those who huddled beneath the tin roofs,

Encased like the dead in cement boxes

As the acrid stench of lingering sewage

Flowed through the alleys and the homes.

They saw the tanks rattle through the streets

With ranks of soldiers scurrying behind,

Seeking the vermin that infested this place, –

Homeless, nameless, without a face, —

Sneaking through this ghetto in the dark of night

To drive the children from this transport town,

This resurrected refugee camp, this new Terezin,

Where the new Jew wanders the world

Like the Jews of Terezin,

Joined in their loneliness and despair

As they watch their children there

Become the walls of Terezin!

The “despatch” sent by MacMichael to the Secretary of State resulted from an investigation into the funding practices and use of those funds by various Jewish organizations.

The memorandum illustrates … the fact that the Mandatory is faced potentially with as grave a danger in Palestine from Jewish violence as it has ever faced from Arab violence, a danger infinitely less easy to meet by the methods of repression which have been employed against Arabs. In the first place, the Jews … have the moral and political support … of considerable sections of public opinion both in the United Kingdom and the United States of America . … all the influence and political ability of the Zionists would be brought to bear to show that the Jews in Palestine were the victims of aggression, and that a substantial body of opinion abroad would be persuaded of the truth of the contention. (i)

Quite obviously, MacMichael understands that the Mandatory has little power at home over the zealous actions of the Zionists as they manipulate public and political opinion even as they expand their terrorism against the British Mandate government in Palestine . This is an untenable position to be in, responsible for government control and security of those under its authority, i.e. Palestinians as well as Jews, knowing that the Jews are set on driving the British out of Palestine, and knowing that the home government can offer little help.

To bolster his points, MacMichael offers the following:

… the Jews in Palestine are by no means untrained in the use of arms … large numbers have received training in the Palestine Police… or in His Majesty’s Forces. At the present time, in addition to approximately 10,000 Jews in His Majesty’s Forces, there are 5,800 in various units of the police force and 15,400 special policemen (31,000) … When to those men … are added the illicit ‘defence’ organizations of the Jews (Haganah alone had an estimated 60-70,000 men by 1945, see Mss, Med. S20 Appendix XXI), it will be evident that the Jewish people in arms would numerically and in calibre be a very formidable adversary. (ii)

This is in 1941before the full deployment of Jewish terrorism against the legitimate Palestine government got under way.

MacMichael and Catling found themselves missing one of Catling’s primary supports for the waging of “irregular warfare” drawn from his image of the 3-legged stool that required the support of the people, the commander and his army and the government, an image, no doubt, from his childhood in Suffolk where his family were butchers and farmers. But the situation only got worse as the end of WWII loomed. The Haganah carried out anti-British military operations, including the kidnapping, killing and booby trapping of soldiers’ bodies, conducted against the Mandate Government while the home government remained silent under the pall of Israeli Zionist propaganda. (iii)

But recording the acts of terrorism does not do justice to the conditions the Mandate government faced. MacMichael describes the reality of the forces aligned against the police in Palestine .

    A second matter which deeply impressed me is the almost Nazi control exercised by the official Jewish organizations over the Jewish community, willy nilly, through the administration of funds from abroad, the issue of labor certificates in connection with the immigration quota…. The Royal Commission were, in my view, fundamentally at error in describing the Jewish community in Palestine as “intensely democratic”. … The Zionist organization, the whole social structure which it has created in Palestine , has the trappings but none of the essentials of democracy. The community is under the closed oligarchy of the Jewish official organizations which control Zionist policy and circumscribe the lives of the Jewish community in all directions…. The reality of power is in the Agency, with the Haganah, the illegal military organization, always in the background. (iv)

And so the authorities in Palestine , the legal authorities, have no power to enforce measures that would curtail terrorism against their own police. “The use of force cannot be contemplated at present as any such action would have to be on a very large scale.” MacMichael understands that he can get no help from the Jewish community, even from those who find themselves at odds with the Agency’s methods or morality. The consequences to the individual Jew for disobedience is horrendous as the second document seized from the Zionists in 1947 attests.

But we’ll stop here; David Ward’s comment was nothing to condemn. He didn’t know of the years before the end of WWII when the Zionists were destroying Mandate Palestine and the indigenous people there. Yet he knew enough to ask a discerning question. Did the Jewish people learn anything from their experience under Hitler’s rule? The Zionists did quite obviously and they used it and continue to use it to decimate and destroy the Palestinian people, to disarm truth with distortion, to steal land and subjugate the innocent, and to verbally defecate with deafening verbal, righteous indignation, to avoid the reality and truth that could be discovered if their actions were brought before the International Courts.

Should anyone care to extend their interest in this deception you might read “Deception as Truth: the Myth of Mid-East Peace,” “The Birth Date of Fratricide: May 14, 1948 ,” “A Miscarriage of Birth: a Miscarriage of Justice,” and the Introduction to the book, The Plight of the Palestinians .

(i) MacMichael, Harold. (1947). “Memorandum on the Participation of the Jewish National Institutions in Palestine in Acts of Lawlessness and Violence” The Palestine Police, Jerusalem , 7-31-1947 in Catling file.

(ii) MacMichael. “dispatch.” 1.

(iii) Ibid., “Despatch.” 2.

(iv) Ibid., “Despatch.” 2.

William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com

By Dirk Adriaensens

28 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The inhuman prison system in Iraq , a legacy of the US occupation

Azzaman reported on 25 January : The question “How many times did you blow yourself up?” is part of a joke doing rounds in Iraq . It refers to a prisoner who under duress and in order to prevent his interrogators from torturing him any further admitted that he had blown himself up several times. For his tormentors the response was ‘good’ enough to brand him ‘terrorist’ and keep him behind bards without proper trial for many years. Many Iraqi prisoners, some of them still languishing in their prison cells and other released, speak of their torture and imprisonment in Iraqi jails in these terms.

Hurling empty and ridiculous accusations is part of the skills that U.S. troops and their jailers have bequeathed Iraqi security forces. The shortest way for an Iraqi in custody today is to quickly confess to the accusation hurled at him to escape humiliation and torture.

The issue of tens of thousands of jailed Iraqis is at the top of demands of Iraqi demonstrators and protesters. Stories of families being destroyed following the arrest of their breadwinners without charges and proper trial are common in Iraq . Some of the prisoners started their terms at the age of 19 or even younger and have been in jail for many years without trial.

Would the government have the guts to ponder the future of a young generation in prison for so long and of children whose father has been jailed simply on ungrounded suspicions and for so long? What kind of future awaits them? The government should listen carefully to the demands of the hundreds of thousands of protesters who have taken to the streets of major cities in central Iraq .

Freeing prisoners and putting an end to jailing people without proper trial is only a first step. Maliki’s government should be dissolved and put on trial. Reparations should be paid to all the victims who have been unjustly and illegally detained for so many years, including the detainees in American administered prisons.

Many Human Rights Organisations, including The B Russell s Tribunal, have frequently alarmed the world community about the horrible conditions in Iraq prisons, where torture, rape, sodomy and outright murder are endemic.

34 Detainees tortured to death in 3 months

Journalists obtained a list of 34 names of detainees who died in prison after being tortured, within three months in 2012. The list is a formal document from the Ministry of Justice, requested by the Human Rights Committee in the Iraqi Parliament. Most of these prisoners had no autopsy reports from the Forensic Medical Department.

When the spokesman of Ministry of Justice, Haidar al-Saadi, was asked about this , he denied the validity of this information, and accused external parties conspiring secretly and promoting lies. When the reporter gave him the official documents in which the Ministry of Justice confessed of the death of the detainees he became speechless and did not know the answer but he promised the reporter to prepare the answer the next day. Unfortunately, when the BBC called him the next day he closed his phone!!!

Women imprisoned for many years instead of their husbands and sons

The Iraqi News Network reported on 16 January that Hussein Al-Shahristani, the Deputy Prime Minister of Energy and Chairman of the Ministerial Committee that was formed to study the demands of the demonstrators visited one of the women prisons in Baghdad . Al-Shahristani found out that there was a female inmate who was there for six years and her case was never submitted to court. She was arrested because her son was suspected to be involved in terroristic activities. A few days ago, Noori Al-Maliki assured that the government would never allow arresting the mother, the wife, the son, or the sister instead of the wanted husband or father, and that everyone is responsible for his / her own crime. That is a lie, one more to be added to Nouri’s credentials.

When the woman was asked about the reason behind her arrest, she said that her son entered his house one day carrying a black sack containing items she didn’t know about. The security forces came to their house the next day and arrested her because she didn’t report her son to the authorities about that sack. The woman used to live in one of the eastern areas and remained in prison for the last six years without any judicial procedure. Wesaal Al-Jaf, the Member of the Human Rights Parliamentary Committee confirmed that there are a huge number of detainees whose cases have not enough evidence to back the accusations. Al-Jaf demanded to form a united investigation group to review the cases of the detainees. It is known now that every institution, whether civil or military, has its own detention centers or secret prisons. Al-Jaf added that releasing the prisoners is the first step towards a just judicial system.

Torture and murder in Al Rasafah secret prison

Many Iraqi families have testified that their sons are in a secret prison in Al-Rasafah Prisons Compound , named Quarries 13, run by the Iraqi Correction Office, under the authority of the Ministry of Justice. Al-Rasafah Prisons Compound includes many public prisons, like Al-Rasafah 1 st ,2 nd ,3 rd ,4 th , and the 5 th Prisons, in addition to the uncovered secret prison, in which the prisoners face torture every day. When the families went to visit their sons, entrance was prohibited. The Prison Management didn’t confirm or deny whether their sons were imprisoned there or not, but the Management assured the visitors that there are more than 50 prisoners in that building, and they cannot call their families or consult a lawyer. The families said their sons were in that prison for 3 to 5 years, and they knew nothing about this until the released prisoners told them.

One of the released prisoners said that he was in that secret prison. The Prison consists of metal caravans divided into small cells 2 meters long and 1 meter wide. The ground and walls are all of rusty iron, the toilet is inside this cell too, and is sometimes blocked so the dirty water floods out. In the winter, the rain pours inside and fills the cells. Many prisoners have serious diseases, like scabies, as a result of this terrible condition. The prisoners are enduring continuous torture and many of them died after the harsh torture.

New information about the torture of the security guards of Al-Hashimi & Al-Isawi

IraqiRabita reported recently that they have received new information about the methods of torture used against the security guards of Al-Hashimi and Al-Isawi. The investigators have been torturing those guards continuously for 14 days, using electricity, beating, cutting their tongues with sharp razors and then filling their mouths with salt.

A committee from the Ministry of Interior came to see one of those prisoners, then a judge sent by Al-Maliki met him, the prisoner told the judge that he couldn’t walk, so they wrapped him with a blanket and carried him. The judge told the prisoner that this was a “political issue” and that he couldn’t do anything for him. One of the imprisoned guards told the investigator who was beating him to stop hurting him if he had some honour left. The investigator replied that the guard and his family have no honour, and that he will slaughter all the Sunni Iraqis and throw them in the Tigris River .

These are the names of some of the investigators who tortured the guards on a sectarian basis:

•  Major Ali Hasan Al-Bahadli: an ex convict, accused of murder and rape. Maliki released him to torture people especially for this case.

•  Lt.Colonel Nema Al-Gharbawi.

•  Saad Al-Lami – the judge who supports all of this.

Another prisoner said that they brought a laptop into the prison facility with files of crimes, and that the prisoners had to memorize those crimes, to confess those crimes in front of the media or the judges, then they checked if the prisoners had “memorized” those crimes well. In case there’s a proven crime, but the prisoner is Shiite, the prison management blackmails that prisoner and asks a lot of money. In return, they “transfer” his accusations to a Sunni prisoner from the arrested guards and release the Shiite.

Ahmad, One the brothers of Al-Hashimi’s guard Muhammad Shawqir, visited the prison and asked about his brother. Instead they arrested him on false grounds. Then he was brought before a judge and when the judge said he was innocent, they brought him back to his cell and accused him of another crime, and so forth.

One of Al-Hashimi’s security guards who is now in jail told IraqiRabita :

On 31 December 2012 , we had a very long session of beating and torture. There were 12 security guards of Al-Isawi with us. The torture session was to prepare them to sign some confessions, this time against the Al-Anbar heads of tribes, Ali Hatam Al-Sulaiman and Abu Risha.

The oddest thing was that the investigators told the prisoners that they had to confess against Masoud Barazani, that he was “leading and funding death squads in Mosul to kill the academics and the Imams in the mosques”.

In the morning, they brought cameras from Al-Iraqia TV to record those confessions on TV. So, the prisoners started to accuse Ali Hatam that he bombed many areas in Al-Anbar, Ramadi and Ana, and that Abu Risha killed many of his opponents in Ramadi and Heet, and was cooperating with Al-Qaeda to raid checkpoints. They recorded those confessions to be used by Maliki when needed.

One of Al-Hashimi security guards who is now in jail called me, telling me the following:

In December,31st,2012 , we had a very long session of beating, swearing and torture, there are 12 security guards of Al-Eesawi with us, the torture was to prepare them to sign on some confessions ,this time was on Al-Anbar heads of tribes,one of them is ( Ali Hatam Al-Sulaiman) and ( Abu Reesha).

What was also odd is that the investigators told the prisoners that they have to confess on Masoud Barazani, and that the latter is leading and funding death squads in Mosul to kill the academics and the Imams in the mosques.

In the morning, they brought cameras from Al-Iraqia TV to make those confessions on TV .So, the prisoners started to accuse Ali Hatam that he bombed many areas in Al-Anbar, Ramadi and Ana, and that Abu Risha killed many of his opponents in Ramadi and Heet, and was cooperating with Al-Qaeda to raid checkpoints. They recorded those accusations to be used when needed.

If the accusations are false, who are the real criminals?

Here are some clues. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Al-Maliki himself has dropped all charges against mass murderer Ismael Hafid Al-Lami .

This well-known criminal nicknamed Abu Diri was summoned to Al-Rasafah Criminal Court, after a direct decision by Nouri Al-Maliki to drop all charges against that man. Ismael Al-Lami was accused of many sectarian killings, kidnapping, torturing and burying the victims alive. Nouri Al-Maliki headed the Asaib Ahlul Haq Militia and they formed a Special Operations Cell. This Cell is connected directly with Al-Maliki’s Office and is run by Abu Diri himself. Its main duty is to assassinate everyone opposing Al-Maliki policy. Abu Diri is a well-known killer of Iraqis, carried out many crimes in 2006 and 2007 on behalf of the Al-Mahdi Militia, Al-Jaafari and Iran . He used terrible ways to torture and killed many Iraqis, whether they were Sunni or Shiite. Later, he escaped to Iran and joined the Iranian Basij, but he went back to Iraq after an invitation from Al-Maliki himself.

Jawad Al-Bolani, the former Minister of Interior escaped to Beirut after a scandal of being involved in terroristic activities . Hamid Al-Mutlag, the Iraqi League Representative said that the former Minister of Interior Jawad Al-Bolani escaped to Beirut , after it was discovered he was involved in terrorist activities. Al-Mutlag demanded the government to take legal actions against the officials who have corruption cases in order not to allow them to escape the country, assuring that when those corrupted people escape, and no one punishes them, the Iraqi people would never trust the government again.

Al-Mutlag said in a statement that such an escape by Al-Bolani increased the suspicions of corruption. Al-Mutlag added that Al-Bolani had connections with terrorist activities from the first day of his job as Minister of Interior. The Parliament Defense and Security Committee have ample evidence about terrorist operations supervised by Al-Bolani and his brother. Al-Mutlag added that it’s the duty of the government to arrest such criminals to submit them to the Iraqi judiciary.

Al-Zamili: from serial killer as Deputy Minister of Health to Parliament Member in a committee to provide security for the iraqis!

To make things even worse, and to fully understand the anger of the Iraqi people and the demands of the Iraqi protest movement, here is the incredible case of Hakim Al-Zamili .

Hakim Al-Zamili was well known when Ibrahim Al-Jaafari was the Prime Minister in Iraq . The Iraqis used to call him the Butcher of the Ministry of Health (MOH), because he was leading militias that kidnapped employees from the MOH, or patients from the hospitals and health centres, to kill them and throw them on the garbage dump. He also formed a militia to watch the families who visited the morgues to look for their sons who were killed. A member of this militia would address one of the family members and if the victim was a Sunni, he would contact the militia to kidnap that family member and kill him. Hospitals became a source of horror for every Sunni in Iraq , because as soon as they would enter a hospital, they would be kidnapped and brutally killed.

When he held that position, the MOH distributed medicines that caused miscarriages to pregnant women. So, Al-Elwiyah Hospital registered the miscarriages of 25 infants daily.

The most famous crimes Al-Zamili was that when his militia kidnapped Dr.Al-Al-Mahdawi who was nominated to be the Deputy Minister of Health, they met with Al-Mahdawi in the MOH building, and there he and his security guards were kidnapped, and until now they are still missing.

He was accused of kidnapping Ammar Al-Saffar, the second nominated Deputy Minister of Health, although Al-Saffar was from the Dawa Party. No one found his corpse or found out anything related to his kidnapping, until the Dawa Party closed the case for unknown reasons.

After many complaints, and after his crimes exceeded all limits, when even Al-Maliki couldn’t stop this murderous creature, the American Forces arrested him and submitted him to the Iraqi Judiciary, accused of kidnapping tens of innocent people. After he was arrested, he directly confessed things about the Minister of Health, he also mentioned to the Americans the names of 61 members of death squads in Baghdad , Najaf and Samawah. He confessed that he used the ambulances to transport weapons and wanted members of the Mahdi Militia, and to transport the kidnapped victims to the Kalf-al-Sadda Area to kill them there. After those confessions and details the Americans formed a committee headed by Colonel Mark Martins, this committee transferred Al-Zamili and Hameed Al-Shammari, the Head Security Guard in the MOH, into an open court, saying that this trial would be more important than the trials of Saddam’s regime officials .

But, since the Iraqi judiciary is terribly corrupted, and the Mahdi Militia controls the courts, the judiciary and the police stations, all the accusations against Al-Zamili were dropped, and he was finally released after the witnesses failed to testify against his crimes. That’s how Al-Zamili was released after less than a year, although the Americans claimed that his trial would be the trial of the decade! Later it was discovered that his militia threatened the judges and witnesses, kidnapped their family members and threatened to rape and kill them, even when the Coalition Forces assured their safety !

The MOH under Al-Jaafari’s rule was controlled by the Sadr bloc. Dr.Ali Al-Shammari, the ex- Minister of Health was nominated by the Sadrists. But, after Dr. Al-Shammari found out about the crimes the Mahdi Militia against the Sunnis in the MOH, after he noticed that he was actually leading a Ministry of kidnapping and torture and a slaughter house, not a Ministry, he was threatened by the Sadrists when he dismissed many criminals who used to work in the MOH, as Ismael Haqqi, the Red Crescent President declared. Dr.Al-Shammari decided to seek help from the Americans, had loads of evidences and files that proved corruption and crimes committed by the Sadrists and the Mahdi Militia in the MOH. He also decided to leave his job because of those crimes. The accusations incriminated Al-Mahdi Militia and Muqtada Al-Sadr personally, crimes committed in every department related to the MOH. Unfortunately, the Americans also decided to ignore those evidences and closed the case. Were they themselves involved? Were these militias used as local stooges to carry out their counterinsurgency program? All the available evidence points in that direction.

Having a person like Al-Zamili in the Iraqi Parliament despite his terrible crime record, tells us that Iraq is run by a group of criminals, supervised by a parliament that is more criminal than the government itself. He is a Parliament member now, and there’s no need to be astonished if we find him one day as the Minister of Justice. Hadi Al-Ameri has no diploma, but he’s the Minister of Transportation, Ali Al-Adeeb has no doctorate certificate, but he’s the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research, so, contemporary Iraq has the dubious reputation to give important positions to criminals.

After all these and other cruelties and human rights abuses inflicted upon the Iraqi people, does it come as a surprise that millions of people are currently demonstrating against this corrupted government? The Iraqi people want to live in peace and dignity, and they want security for their families. They are fed up with this country that looks more like a huge open air concentration camp than as a “blossoming democracy”.

Translation of Iraqi reports: Lubna Al Rudaini

Dirk Adriaensens is coordinator of SOS Iraq and member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Between 1992 and 2003 he led several delegations to Iraq to observe the devastating effects of UN imposed sanctions. He was a member of the International Organizing Committee of the World Tribunal on Iraq (2003-2005). He is also co-coordinator of the Global Campaign Against the Assassination of Iraqi Academics. He is co-author of Rendez-Vous in Baghdad , EPO (1994), Cultural Cleansing in Iraq , Pluto Press, London (2010), Beyond Educide, Academia Press, Ghent (2012), and is a frequent contributor to GlobalResearch, Truthout, The International Journal of Contemporary Iraqi Studies and other media.

By Alistair Dawber

Sunday 27 January 2013

@ The Independent

Israel has admitted for the first time that it has been giving Ethiopian Jewish immigrants birth-control injections, often without their knowledge or consent.

The government had previously denied the practice but the Israeli Health Ministry’s director-general has now ordered gynaecologists to stop administering the drugs. According a report in Haaretz, suspicions were first raised by an investigative journalist, Gal Gabbay, who interviewed more than 30 women from Ethiopia in an attempt to discover why birth rates in the community had fallen dramatically.

One of the Ethiopian women who was interviewed is quoted as saying: “They [medical staff] told us they are inoculations. We took it every three months. We said we didn’t want to.” It is alleged that some of the women were forced or coerced to take the drug while in transit camps in Ethiopia.

The drug in question is thought to be Depo-Provera, which is injected every three months and is considered to be a highly effective, long-lasting contraceptive.

Nearly 100,000 Ethiopian Jews have moved to Israel under the Law of Return since the 1980s, but their Jewishness has been questioned by some rabbis. Last year, the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who also holds the health portfolio, warned that illegal immigrants from Africa “threaten our existence as a Jewish and democratic state”.

Haaretz published an extract from a letter sent by the Ministry of Health to units administering the drug. Doctors were told “not to renew prescriptions for Depo Provera for women of Ethiopian origin if for any reason there is concern that they might not understand the ramifications of the treatment”.

Sharona Eliahu Chai, a lawyer for the Association of Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI), said: “Findings from investigations into the use of Depo Provera are extremely worrisome, raising concerns of harmful health policies with racist implications in violation of medical ethics. The Ministry of Health’s director-general was right to act quickly and put forth new guidelines.”

By Franklin Lamb

26 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

What a difference a week can make. The heaviest snow in Syria in a quarter-century, some claimed, last week’s storm closed for a time even the main highway from Damascus to Beirut.

But that was then and now its spring in Damascus, or so it feels to those of us used to New England Januarys. It’s nearly downright balmy here. Spring flowers are bursting out all over and the city parks are crowded with mothers pushing baby carriages, kids playing and young lovers cooing softly on the park benches. Park workers are raking the dead leaves and others trimming the palm trees and piling the branches neatly on flatbed trucks.

What “civil war”? What “crisis”? One is tempted to ask himself even though there continues to be intermittent “thuds” and a jet streaking overhead now and then en route apparently to one of the suburbs where clashes erupt intermittently.

It’s been a rough winter and perhaps we are just experiencing here a false spring. Yet one senses a palpable sigh of relief and even some optimism while talking to citizens, NGO staffers and some officials. It could be partly the wonderful weather but perhaps also a realization that a corner may have been turned, peace and security will be restored and the killing ended. Some refugees are to be seen returning to Damascus. Syrians and Palestinians from Lebanon — yet there are still traffic backups with cars piled high with personal belongings crossing over to Lebanon at the Masnaa border checkpoint. Meanwhile the Ministry of Interior in Damascus has pledged various forms of help to those who heed the governments call to “come back home to your people.”

Energized by the exhilarating park ambiance this observer decided to walk to UNESCO headquarters for an appointment. Plus it can be kind of tough at times to find a taxi these days.

Perhaps I should have remained in the park. Lord knows that this observer has experienced his share of irate women shouting at him over the years. Being raised by three older sisters and a no-nonsense German/Italian mother- all of them unmercifully wanting to correct my behavior was a mere harbinger of things to come. But, even with this “training”, I was ill prepared for what the lady at the UNESCO office here in central Damascus unleashed on me.

And I had not done the lady wrong.

Except, perhaps, that I happen to be an American and there is plenty of anger here among the Syrian public, the NGO’s, and increasingly the international legal community among others — not toward the American people but toward the US government — over the effects of its sanctions which are severely and illegally targeting the civilian population. At the same time they are directly contributing to prospects of irreparably damaging many of this millenary country’s historic sites.

According to archeological experts here, Syria, with its six UNESCO world heritage sites testifying to its deserved reputation as being one of the most archeologically well-preserved cradles of civilization, may soon to be the most wantonly destroyed in modern times (Iraq being the other). This frequently-predicted catastrophe is a result, not only of war in the usual sense, but war in its more subtle form of US-led sanctions aimed at political regime change.

Of particular concern to UNESCO, whose UN mandate includes registering and protecting World historical sites, is the preservation of the Ancient Cities of Damascus, Bosra, Palmyra, Aleppo, Crac des Chevaliers and Qal’ at Salah El-Din, as well as the ancient villages of Northern Syria.

This week, the Syrian Directorate of Antiquities and Museums has released its detailed report of acts of vandalism and illegal excavations by armed groups and foreign thieves across Syria. The Directorate has documented violations against archeological sites and Syrian museums, as well the emerging phenomenon of artifact forgery. In Aleppo, the Antiquities division reported that al-Diriya caves in Samaan Mountain suffered from acts of sabotage, adding that “terrorists have looted the equipment of excavations, wooden columns and timbers.”

Also, this week, Human Rights Watch issued a report that Saudi-Qatar-US backed militants destroyed religious locations following a four-day investigation in the provinces of Latakia and Idlib. According to HRW, a Husseiniyah (a congregation hall for Shia commemoration ceremonies) was destroyed by the militants in Idlib, while two Christian churches were looted in Latakia. The Middle East director at the Human Rights Watch, Sarah Leah Whitson claimed that Syria “will lose its rich cultural and religious diversity if armed groups do not respect places of worship.”

Against this backdrop, it is not totally surprising that my UNESCO hostess, less than half a minute after I entered her office, literally threw at me a statement in French from Director Irina Bokova of the UNESCO HQ in Paris. It read:

“I am deeply distressed by the daily news about the escalation of damage to cultural heritage throughout Syria. We saw damage to the Citadel in July and the souks ten days ago, and the Umayyad Mosque, heart of the religious life of the city, one of the most beautiful mosques in the Muslim world, is being severely endangered. In Northern Syria, the region of the Ancient Villages inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2011 is heavily struck and it seems that the invaluable Saint-Simeon Byzantine complex might have been torched.”

Before I could finish reading, the lady exclaimed: “These testimonials from the past!…” raising her voice and glaring at me while pointing to the posters of Syrian historical sites on her wall, “the destruction of this heritage for which your sanctions are partly responsible. Your government is responsible today and will be tomorrow, for the whole of humanity.” When I was eventually able to get a word in sideways, I explained that I had come to her office precisely because I have been studying the immoral, illegal and “un-American” sanctions and that I was spending my time in Syria learning first-hand about the sanctions’ utter disregard for the humanitarian concerns of the Syrian people — in contravention to what one hears repeatedly from US officials.

When I added, I don’t know any Americans who would condone what the Congress and our government have been doing, if they knew the facts on the ground, she did calm down a bit and said she understood what I was saying and more or less agreed. She then mentioned a national poll conducted on 13 January by the Better World Campaign, an organization that works to support U.S.-U.N. relations, that showed that 83 percent of US citizens believe it is important that their country provide funding to UNESCO and want the US to lift its sanctioning of UNESCO and pay its withheld budget contribution, which accounts for 22% of the UN specialized agency’s budget.

“Let me tell you something!” she exclaimed and launched into describing the dire effects of the current US-led sanctions on UNESCO’s work in preserving and protecting historical sites. In her view, the American assault on UNESCO and its work began when UNESCO committed a sin in March of 2011 by admitting Palestine as a full member.

She explained: “For months our offices had been warned by Israeli officials and then Americans, that there would be a big price-tag were we to admit Palestine.” And there was. In October 2011, the U.S. cut off funding to UNESCO as payback for admitting Palestine as a member and in November 2012, the United States was one of nine member states out of 193 in the General Assembly who, on behalf of the Zionist occupiers of Palestine, tried to unsuccessfully bar Palestine from gaining non-member observer state status at the UN.

UNESCO and some other NGO staff here claim that much of the damage here could have been prevented if there was a lifting of the US 2011 cut-off of UNESCO’s budget. As a direct result, UNESCO cannot even replace more than 400 staffers who left from normal attrition or even hire “neighborhood watch,” local volunteer personnel, to coordinate the guarding by of many archeological sites around Syria.

Regarding the other layers of US-led sanctions targeting the civilian population here, a survey by NGO’s on the impact of the fake “medicine and foods” exemptions will soon be released. Its indictment of the US-led sanctions is severe. Contrary to Washington and NATO mythology, the “medicine and foods” exemptions do not exist in reality because suppliers of both fear being accused of violating the great number of sanction details. Washington and Brussels are acutely aware of this fact.

Among the data that will be presented in the soon-to-be released analysis, are cases of cancer patients who need weekly medicines but are now only able to receive them twice a month, with the expected dire consequences. The same obtains for many other long term care patients who need specific medicines, even as generic as penicillin, which are no longer available as they were before the US-led sanctions.

Just as I was preparing to leave her office, she softened a bit and asked this observer. “See here, I generally like Americans who we come in contact with here but how can you explain these sanctions — or those in Iraq or Afghanistan that have killed so many?”

I tried to explain that we have a culture clash in America that means that many Americans overwhelmingly support UNESCO and the work of all sixteen of the UN Specialized Agencies but we also have politicians like Arizona Senator John McCain and South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham who never saw a war they did not like. The former just returned from another visit to the region and apparently learned nothing except that he still wants a military solution.

The latter, who is known for his jokes on Capitol Hill that as a “true southerner” he never got over the American Civil War or what it did to American society, has repeatedly expressed his view of US “economic” sanctions by declaring recently, “Sanctions are good but they need to be tougher! Cut the bastards off at the knees.”

Senator Graham also noted his agreement with former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright who made the repulsive statement that the deaths of 500,000 children in Iraq from a US “economic sanctions” regime that “exempted foods and medicine” but in reality was a starvation program “was worth the price.”

Ironically, it was the arch-nemesis of the Confederacy, Yankee General William Tecumseh Sherman, who might agree with Graham regarding sanctions against a civilian population. What has bothered Senator Graham since he first studied the Civil War in school, according to one Congressional source, is that the Yankee February 17, 1865 captured Graham’s state capital of Columbia, South Carolina. It was not pretty and most of the central city was destroyed. But the Yankee and the Confederate might just agree on targeting civilian populations with economic sanctions. Wrote Sherman, shortly before his March to the Sea which fatally cut the south in two:

“We are not fighting against enemy armies, but against an enemy people, young and old, rich and poor, and they must feel the iron hand of war in the same way as organized armies.”

I left the UNESCO office sort of crestfallen. Not because of the lady’s roughness with me, but rather because of the realization, yet once again, that our species quite simply does not learn much from history and apparently will repeat it until the end of times. May God protect the people, everywhere, from the politicians.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in Syria and can be reached c/o fplamb@gmail.com

By Countercurrents.org

26 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The second anniversary of Egypt’s uprising saw thousands of Muslim Brotherhood opponents massed on January 25, 2013 in Cairo’s Tahrir Square – the centre of the uprising against Mubarak – to rekindle the demands of a revolution they say was stolen by the Muslim Brotherhood. Protests across the country saw violent street battles, torching of Muslim Brotherhood offices, storming of government offices, deployment of troops and armored personnel carriers . The protest marches that began on the early hours of the day continued into night. There were nine deaths including deaths of eight protesters, who were shot.

An Al Ahram online report [1] said:

Government offices were stormed and violent street clashes erupted in several governorates around Egypt, with events continuing into the night.

As night fell on a day of demonstrations and marches, violence was reported in four governorates – Tanta, Minya, Suez and Mahalla; clashes have also been reported in Damanhour and Alexandria during the January 25, 2013 afternoon.

In Cairo, violence that had flared up the day before the anniversary continued around protest flashpoints near Tahrir Square throughout the day.

According to live footage by private satellite channel ONTV, the governorate headquarters in Suez was set on fire. There were violent clashes between protesters and police forces around the perimeter of the building.

In Minya, violent clashes with rocks and Molotov cocktails erupted between Muslim Brotherhood members and protesters in front of the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters. Police fired teargas to disperse the crowds.

In Tanta, eight protesters and two policemen were injured during violent clashes around the vicinity of the city’s security directorate, reported Al-Ahram’s Arabic news website.

In Mahalla, clashes were also seen, with protesters setting the governor’s office on fire by throwing Molotov cocktails at the building.

In the evening, the Nile Delta city of Damanhour, the Freedom and Justice Party headquarters was raided by unknown assailants.

Clashes erupted in front of the governorate headquarters in Egypt’s second city of Alexandria earlier on January 25, 2013 afternoon.

Hundreds of demonstrators who identified themselves as members of the ‘Black Bloc’ – a new anti-Brotherhood protest group – formed lines as they approached the government building and were met with teargas by the security forces. Several protesters of the Black Bloc also stormed an Alexandrian court building during the violence.

A Reuters report [2] said:

Egypt’s armed forces deployed troops in the city of Suez early on January 26, 2013 after nine people were shot dead during nationwide protests against president Mursi, underlining the country’s deep divisions.

Eight of the dead, including a policeman, were shot dead in Suez, and another was shot and killed in the city of Ismailia, medics said.

Another 456 people were injured across Egypt, officials said, in unrest on Friday fuelled by anger at Mursi and his Islamist allies over what the protesters see as their betrayal of the revolution.

The troops were deployed in Suez after the head of the state security police in the city asked for reinforcements. The army distributed pamphlets to residents assuring them the deployment was temporary and meant to secure the city.

Friday’s anniversary laid bare the divide between the Islamists and their secular rivals.

In Suez, the military deployed armoured vehicles to guard state buildings as symbols of government were targeted across the country.

Street battles erupted in cities including Cairo, Alexandria, Suez and Port Said. Arsonists attacked at least two state-owned buildings. An office used by the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party was also torched.

“Our revolution is continuing. We reject the domination of any party over this state. We say no to the Brotherhood state,” Hamdeen Sabahy, a popular leftist leader, told Reuters.

The Brotherhood decided against mobilizing for the anniversary, wary of the scope for more conflict after December’s violence, stoked by Mursi’s decision to fast-track an Islamist-tinged constitution rejected by his opponents.

There were conflicting accounts of the lethal shooting in Suez. Some witnesses said security forces had opened fire in response to gunfire from masked men.

Before dawn in Cairo, police battled protesters who threw petrol bombs and firecrackers as they approached a wall blocking access to government buildings near Tahrir Square.

Clouds of teargas filled the air. At one point, riot police used one of the incendiaries thrown at them to set ablaze at least two tents erected by youths.

Police fired teargas to disperse a few dozen protesters trying to remove barbed-wire barriers protecting the presidential palace. A few masked men got as far as the gates before they were beaten back.

Teargas was also fired at protesters who tried to remove metal barriers outside the state television building.

Skirmishes between stone-throwing youths and the police continued in streets around the square into the day. Ambulances ferried away a steady stream of casualties.

Protesters echoed the chants of 2011’s historic 18-day uprising. “The people want to bring down the regime,” they chanted. “Leave! Leave! Leave!” chanted others as they marched towards the square.

“We are not here to celebrate but to force those in power to submit to the will of the people. Egypt now must never be like Egypt during Mubarak’s rule,” said Mohamed Fahmy, an activist.

There were similar scenes in Suez and Alexandria, where protesters and riot police clashed near local government offices. Black smoke billowed from tyres set ablaze by youths.

Protesters broke into the offices of provincial governors in Ismailia and Kafr el-Sheikh in the Nile Delta. A local government building was torched in the Nile Delta city of al-Mahalla al-Kubra.

With an eye on parliamentary elections likely to begin in April, the Brotherhood marked the anniversary with a charity drive across the nation.

Writing in Al-Ahram, Egypt’s flagship state-run daily, Brotherhood leader Mohamed Badie said the country was in need of “practical, serious competition” to reform the corrupt state left by the Mubarak era.

Mursi’s opponents say he and his group are seeking to dominate the post-Mubarak order. They accuse him of showing some of the autocratic impulses of the deposed leader by, for example, driving through the new constitution last month.

“I am taking part in today’s marches to reject the warped constitution, the ‘Brotherhoodisation’ of the state, the attack on the rule of law, and the disregard of the president and his government for the demands for social justice,” Amr Hamzawy, a prominent liberal politician, wrote on his Twitter feed.

A BBC report [3] added:

President Mursi has appealed for calm.

Critics accuse Mursi of betraying the revolution.

In a message on Twitter, Mursi called on Egyptians “to adhere to the values of the revolution”.

In central Cairo, clashes between demonstrators and police were reported into the early hours of January 26, 2013.

Some protesters have held sit-ins in the capital, saying they will only return home when Mursi leaves office.

On January 25, 2013, tens of thousands of people turned out to voice their opposition to Mursi and his supporters in the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.

The liberal opposition accuses Morsi of being autocratic and driving through a new constitution that does not protect adequately freedom of expression or religion.

The government is also being blamed for a deepening economic crisis.

One of the demonstrators at Cairo’s Tahrir Square, Momen Asour, said he had come to demand an end to President Mursi’s rule. “We have not seen anything, neither freedom, nor social justice, or any solution to unemployment, or any investment,” he said. “On the contrary, the economy has collapsed.”

Another protester, Hamoud Rashid, said the protests were a “natural reaction to the country being in a worse state than it was under Mubarak”.

“They have stolen the revolution from the revolutionaries, and we are here to reclaim the revolution,” he said.

Patrick Kingsley and Abdel-Rahman Hussein reported [4] from Cairo:

By evening the interior ministry estimated that at least 55 security personnel had been hurt in Cairo, Alexandria and Suez.

For many on the streets of Cairo there was a painful sense of deja vu. “There’s no military dictatorship any more, but there are the beginnings of a theocratic one,” said Karim, a protester.

Hisham Abdel-Latif, another protester who took part in one of several feeder marches that snaked their way towards Tahrir from the Cairene suburbs, said Egyptians were “now ruled by a gang that is exactly the same as the Mubarak gang, except they now have beards”.

Violence broke out in the early hours of the morning, as police burned down two tents in Tahrir Square. For much of the day, police and protesters then took it in turns to lob chunks of rubble over two makeshift walls built to protect the interior ministry from attack.

One of the stone-throwers, Karim Ali, said it was revenge for the protesters killed by police since 2011. “The police are behaving the same as they did during the Mubarak years,” he said.

Many Egyptians fear Mursi has only the interests of Islamists at heart.

In particular, the opposition was incensed by the way he bypassed judicial protocols in November to push through a new constitution that the left sees as the first step towards Islamic law.

Many also blame Mursi for failing to tackle Egypt’s creaking infrastructure – over 70 Egyptians have died in train accidents since December – and its dire economic predicament. Foreign reserves have fallen drastically in recent weeks.

“I’m here to get rid of Mursi,” said Moustapha Magdi, an unemployed commerce graduate on a march from Giza. “First Mubarak, then Tantawi, now Mursi. We are only ruled by bastards.”

Magdi criticized Mursi’s failure to prosecute members of the military who killed Egyptians during and since the revolution.

“Where are these people? They are outside. They are not in prison. There is no justice,” he said.

Elsewhere in Cairo, protesters and supporters of the regime clashed outside a Muslim Brotherhood office. There was also violence in Port Said and outside the presidential palace in Heliopolis.

In the New York Times, David D. Kirkpatrick’s Cairo datelined report headlined “Deadly Riots Erupt Across Egypt on Anniversary of Revolution” [5] said:

There were street battles around government buildings across the country, including the Interior Ministry, the presidential palace and the state television building in the capital.

Muslim Brotherhood offices were ransacked or burned in at least three cities, including Ismailia, the Suez Canal town where the group was founded 85 years ago.

In the most striking episode, masked men attacked the offices of the Brotherhood’s Web site in Cairo, upending furniture, littering the floor with broken glass and papers and smashing computers. Several witnesses said the assailants came in a large group to the third floor, carrying pellet guns and acid to burn through the padlock, and left with computer hard drives.

“They said, ‘We are here to destroy this place,’ ” said Ragab Abdel Hamid, 36, a printer who works for a liberal organization in the same building and tried to contain the attack. “It was planned.” Unknown assailants had blasted the metal doors to the same office with a fire bomb just days before, leaving flame marks, and the gates had been refortified.

The violence — from Alexandria in the north to Aswan in the south — dramatized the deepening chasm of animosity and distrust dividing the Brotherhood from its opponents. Although the Islamists of the Brotherhood have dominated elections since the ouster of Mubarak in 2011, another broad segment of the population harbors deep suspicions of the group’s conservative ideology, hierarchical structure and insular ethos.

“Egyptians will never let the Muslim Brotherhood rule — over our dead bodies,” said Heba Samir, 36, catching her breath by the Nile after fleeing tear gas outside the state television building.

Many demonstrators said they had returned to Tahrir Square on Friday because they blamed the Brotherhood for failing to fulfill the demands of 2011: “bread, freedom and social justice,” as the chants went at the time.

The Constitution that the Brotherhood pushed to a referendum last month deeply divided the country, with opponents complaining it fails to protect individual liberties. In Tahrir Square on Friday, banners demanded the fall of the “Brotherhood Constitution.”

“The Egyptian people had so many dreams and the reality on the ground is, everything is still the same,” said Mohamed Adl, 41, a teacher who carried a sign with a handwritten poem accusing the Brotherhood of making “injustice the guard of our lives.”

Protesters began dismantling concrete barriers that had been erected around the Interior Ministry building to contain earlier demonstrations. The security forces began firing tear gas to stop them, and more than two dozen people were injured in intermittent battles that lasted through the night.

By early Friday afternoon in Cairo, protesters at one corner of Tahrir Square had begun scaling the barriers to throw rocks at the security forces massed around the ministry building. And the officers, as they typically do, threw rocks back, and plumes of tear gas rose overhead past a church steeple up the street. As the volleys escalated, a few canisters landed inside a makeshift field hospital in the church, flooding the clinic with choking fumes.

Osama Amir, 22, a student leaving that fight, said he did not know how it started or why. “People have lost confidence in the central security forces, so when there is a chance to beat them up, we will beat them up,” he said.

After dark, the battles of rocks, pellet guns and gas bombs had spread. Smoke from trash fires filled Tahrir Square.

Many protesters argued that the Brotherhood had forfeited its legitimacy. “The big lie is that the Muslim Brotherhood is the majority,” said May Ramadan, 37, an employee of the American University in Cairo. “They are not, they are fascists, and they are liars.”

Another report [6] said:

Some protesters torched a police vehicle in front of Egypt’s High Court.

Protesters threw Molotov cocktails on police forces during the clashes.

In a message posted on Facebook and Twitter, Mursi said: “Egypt’s [security] apparatuses will chase the criminals and bring them to justice.” [7]

Source:

[1] Ahram Online, Jan 25, 2013, “Violence intensifies in several Egyptian governorates as night falls on Jan 25 anniversary”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63282/Egypt/Politics-/Violence-intensifies-in-several-Egyptian-governora.aspx

[2] “Egypt deploys troops in Suez after 9 killed on anniversary of uprising”

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/01/26/uk-egypt-anniversary-idUKBRE90N1E820130126

[3] Jan 26, 2013, “ Egyptian army deployed in Suez after anniversary unrest”,

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-21208982

[4] guardian.co.uk, Jan 25, 2013, “Violence flares in Egypt on anniversary of revolution”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/25/egypt-violence-anniversary-revolution-streets

[5] Jan 25, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/middleeast/tens-of-thousands-fill-tahrir-square-on-anniversary-of-egyptian-revolt.html?ref=egypt&_r=0

[6] Ahram Online, Jan 24, 2013, “Egypt protesters torch police car as clashes intensify near Tahrir Square”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63224/Egypt/Politics-/UPDATED-Egypt-protesters-torch-police-car-as-clash.aspx

[7] Ahram Online, Jan 26, 2013, “Egypt’s Morsi says will ‘bring criminals to justice’”,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/63292/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt%E2%80%99s-Morsi-says-will-%E2%80%98bring-criminals-to-justic.aspx

By Graham Peebles

26 January, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Losing the will to live

London : India has the largest number of smallholder farmers in the World, 600 million by some estimates. From this army of workers one impoverished desperate man, or indeed woman, with a noose of debt around their neck takes his or her own life on average every thirty minutes, A statistic barely comprehensible, representing the tidal wave of suicides that has swept through the farming community in the last 15 years.

The agrarian crisis of which farmer suicides are a tragic consequence is a mega calamity, rooted in one fundamental cause,which P. Sainath (i) ,rural editor for The Hindu describes as ‘the drive towards corporate farming’, predicated by the “predatory commercialization of the countryside”, that is forcing “the biggest displacement in Indian history”. Shocking and destructive it should be seen as part of a greater whole of interconnected issues facing India . Sainath makes this clear, “don’t detach this crisis from the overall political, economic social direction of the country, he says.

The number of farmer suicides – the largest in human history is estimated to have reached 300,000+ and rising as we speak. Add to this the 400 a day who attempt suicide and fail, the 2,200 that daily quit farming and the one and a half million family members affected by suicides, plus the millions facing the very issues that are driving the tragedy, and the scale of the inferno begins to be clear. Shocking, as they are, these figures are an indication only ; women are one of eight groups who are generally excluded from official data because most do not have title to land. A woman is not classed as a farmer, she is a farmer’s wife, and her suicide is not included in the figures, nor are The Center For Human Rights and Global Justice at New York University’s (HRGJ) (ii) report on farmer suicides tells us, “family members of farmers who have committed suicide—who themselves take over farming land, and subsequently commit suicide because of debt”, and less surprisingly the Dalit and Adivasi (indigenous) people are also invisible to a government who ignores them in death as in life.

The major cause of this epidemic is indebtedness to banks and moneylenders, hiding behind the debt however is twenty years of market liberalization at the hands of the government that has withdrawn all agricultural support, failed to invest in irrigation, improve the availability of rural credit, or provide farmers with alternative seed purchasing options – other than GM shopping. HRGJ convey government statisticsstating: “that 241,679 farmers in India committed suicide between 1995 and 2009”, the majority are cash crop farmers, growing cotton being particularly hazardous work. Suicides have been highest in the states of Maharashtra , Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, and West Bengal , all high cotton producing areas.

Growing disadvantage

As a result of economic liberalization, designed and sold by the parents of globalization or market fundamentalism; the IMF and the World Bank, India has become integrated into the global market and what Sainath(iii) calls ‘McEconomics– it tastes the same everywhere’. The state has increasingly withdrawn from the public sector and become “ more interventionist on behalf of the corporate world and the super elite.” As state support for farmers was withdrawn India opened up to huge foreign corporations and their equally mega native partners.

The foreign multinationals were at a huge advantage because as HRGJ makes clear, “the price of their products was set artificially low as a result of agricultural subsidies in their home countries,” affecting the costs to Indian (and African) farmers, secondly and equally devastating, “the Indian government’s removal of quotas, duties, and tariffs on imports made it cheaper for these entrants to import their products into the country.” Whilst these policies implemented some twenty years ago have as HRGJ makes clear “helped usher in dramatic economic growththis growth has been unevenly distributed, largely benefiting the nation’s elite, while the majority continues to endure grinding poverty.” Sound familiar; political loyalty in corporate politics lying firmly with the corporations, the duty of politicians in market fundamentalism beingcontinual accelerated growth and maximum profit, no matter the human or environmental cost.

Genetically modified mayhem

With the invasion of multinational corporate man came his agricultural weapon of choice, GM modified cottonseed. The Monsanto Bt seed has flooded the Indian market, to the extent that in some Indian states it is now impossible to buy non-Bt seed, despite the unconvincing evidence to its efficacy. With no choice and convinced by blanket advertising and misleading demonstrations made in ideal conditions, 95% of farmers take loans and invest in GM Bt seeds that, the New York Times ( 16/10/12 ) (iv) report, “ can cost three to eight times the cost of conventional seeds”. In addition to authorized distributors a black market has thrived, that as shortages appear, can set “prices as high as 2,000 rupees ($38) per packet, leading to a profusion of bootlegged seeds illegally marketed as genetically modified products.”

Costs of seed, fertilizers and pesticides, all incidentally supplied by the same company, have increased year on year. One farmer relates in the NY Times how “the old pesticide used to cost us 200 rupees per litre…. Now I have to pay between 2,000 to 3,000 rupees. And I need to apply it more and more every year.” With low yields and low market rates as well as the collapse of government investment Indian farmers are increasingly dependent on loans resulting in a debt cycle that is inescapable.

As well as costing the earth the Bt cottonseed demands a great deal more water, a fact that is being hidden from Indian farmers unable to read the English instructions and water warnings on seed packaging – an accidental corporate oversight, no doubt. With poor irrigation, most farmers rely on rainfall to feed crops. When the monsoon rains fail, so does the crop, leaving the farmer with a massive debt to service and the prospect of further loans to continue farming the following year. The lifeblood of the Indian farmer is in danger of becoming even more scarce as the government goes ahead with the privatization of water (as we collectively shake our heads in disbelief) and irrigation pathways, sold no doubt into the hands of Indian corporations. One doubts there are farmer, Dalit or Adivasi cooperatives in the bidding – so much for participatory democracy.

Critics of GM seeds maintain, “the solution to increasing costs and spiralling debtis a shift toward organic and eco-friendly farming methods.” The NY Times reports, “and these are low technology, simple to use, not costly methods – you don’t have the high costs of pesticides or genetically modified seeds.” Monsanto unsurprisingly offer a different answer to this social tragedy: “Buy more BT seed,” they suggest,” with the hope of increasing yields. Unsurprisingly, they dodge any responsibility for farmer suicides, asserting that claims attributing debt to the impact of the thirsty, expensive Bt seed are spurious and “misinformed”. Corporate responsibility beginning and ending at the door marked profit.

A Legacy of debt

A suicidal farmer’s debt does not, alas, die with him: loans merely become the responsibility of the wife (or husband) of the victim, who in many cases repeat the final desperate act, some families have witnessed two or three suicides. Dowries add to the mountain of debt for families in poverty, and widows under the unbearable pressure of huge debt and the burden of finding a husband for their daughters, may in desperation take their own lives.

The cycle of debt has created a spiral of death and extended multiple suffering; Children whose Father or Mother commits suicide are forced to quit school or university and take up the reins of the farm. Sainath describes one young man, symptomatic of many thousands, “I see a child trying to be a man whose eyes tell you how scared he is, pitchforked into a position he is not ready for”. Entrapment the order of the day, keeping people in a position of permanent anxiety, depleted of energy and with no state support, completely at the mercy of market forces and unable to resist. In the 1960s and 70s, when agricultural reforms where tabled in India, Sainath relates there was a peasant revolt, “in the ‘1990s and 2000s there is mass suicide and despair,” outcomes causing less obstruction to the corporate political plan, of the commercialization of everything and everyone, everywhere.

In the face of what is suicide on epidemic proportions the Indian government is guilty of appalling neglect, moral and legal- they are signatories to all the key international human rights conventions and are obliged to respect, protect and observe the human rights of farmers and their families. Instead, and in keeping with corporate politics, a plethora of fundamental human rights are being ignored. HRGJ list the rights breached, as: “the right to life; the right to an adequate standard of living; the right to work; the right to food; the right to water; the right to health; and the right to an effective remedy among other rights.” Instead of meeting its responsibilities the government has followed the bureaucratic line of least resistance and set up a series of committees to examine the crisis. It is the Indian way, according to Sainath: “You keep forming committees until somebody gives you the report you want. There have been 13 reports on farmer suicides, for example.” These are pointless distractions from a government that, whilst ignoring the human rights of the most vulnerable members of Indian society, subsidizes the wealthy and procrastinates as farmers in deep despair drink pesticide or rat poison to escape the interminable torture of debt.

The governments actions and inaction have fanned the flames of the crisis, sending a message of indifference loud and clear to farmers and rural communities, and of unity and shared interests to corporations eager to work to ‘commercialize the countryside’ with government backing and poste haste. Farmer suicides are a blood red stain of shame on the democratic pretentions of the Indian government that is duty bound and legally required to act on behalf of the men, women and children being marginalized in rural areas, many who have farmed the land for generations, and are now unable to compete against the machinery of economic fundamentalism that is crushing them totally.

Notes

(i) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4q6m5NgrCJs

(ii) www.chrgj .org/publications/docs/every30min.pdf

(iii) P. Sainath: “Slumdogs vs. Millionaires: Rural Distress in the Age of Inequality” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1OlgDw5tQ4

(iv) http://india.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/16/in-india-gm-crops-come-at-a-high-price/

Graham Peebles is Director of The Create Trust, www.thecreatetrust.org A UK registered charity (1115157). Running education and social development programmes, supporting fundamental Social change and the human rights of individuals in acute need. Contact , E: graham@thecreatetrust.org