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By Nile Bowie

23 June, 2013

Despite the bellicose rhetoric emanating from Pyongyang, the situation has subsided. If outside parties are interested in seeing a more rational North Korea, it is worth using every opportunity to engage with it, especially in high-level talks.

North Korea now finds itself under tougher sanctions that target its financial sector, and a neighbor in Beijing that is growing increasingly less patient with the young Kim’s saber rattling.

After recent talks with the South, the first in over two years, were stymied by shrewd diplomatic disagreements and eventually shelved, Pyongyang called for high-level talks with the United States. US officials responded coldly to Pyongyang’s offer and insinuated that they would not abandon their preconditions-for-dialogue approach. Washington spokesmen also told the media that the North could not talk its way out of sanctions, and that Pyongyang would be judged “by its actions and not its words.” The preconditions refer to Pyongyang dismantling its nuclear weapons program before any iota of cooperation with the US can take place, something the North has adamantly refused to do.

There are a few key reasons why Pyongyang will almost certainly never dismantle its nuclear program voluntarily. On the domestic front, the attainment of a nuclear deterrent during the heyday of the late Kim Jong-il has been trumpeted as the greatest achievement of the nation, and more importantly, the Dear Leader.

State media, which often weaves militaristic rhetoric with race-based nationalism, has depicted the nuclear program as a guarantee that the Korean race would be forever protected from foreign threats – and with no access to non-state media, the North Korean people understandably endorse that narrative.

Pyongyang has also been taking notes, and they’ve noticed that when countries have nuclear weapons, they are usually not attacked – and even when a country dismantles its nuclear program in exchange for diplomatic engagement with the West, security is never a guarantee. Whether or not we would like to admit it, the fact that the Kim dynasty is in its third generation is proof that their overall strategy has worked, at least to preserve the regime.

‘Actions, not words’

Nobody can deny that the North is an oppressive state – it has violated UN resolutions and overseen institutional human rights abuses – but it is still necessary to attempt seeing things from their perspective.

Washington talks of judging others by actions rather than words, and so, Pyongyang was naturally on the defensive when the US brought in nuclear-capable B2 stealth bombers during war games with the South earlier this year.

Although the rhetoric coming out of Washington was not as bellicose as that of Pyongyang, the US military’s mock nuclear bombing of the North sent a threatening message that would garner a hardline reaction from any country. (Imagine the Cubans flying nuclear-capable bombers off the waters of Florida.)

Overview of a national meeting at the April 25 House of Culture to mark the 20th anniversary of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il’s election as chairman of the DPRK National Defence Commission (NDC) in Pyongyang (AFP Photo / KCNA via KNS)

Several commentators have pointed out how the military exercises held annually by South Korea and the United States have violated international law by provocatively firing live rounds into disputed maritime areas; a strong case can be made that they undermine Pyongyang’s territorial integrity.

If we judge others by actions and not words, these exercises unnecessarily raise antagonisms and are a major obstacle to any diplomatic cooling of the situation.

Not to condone Pyongyang’s belligerence, but the US has conducted more nuclear tests than any other nation, and South Korea launched a satellite using a long-range rocket just seven weeks after the North launched theirs; these countries are not subjected to crippling sanctions and mock invasions.

Pyongyang legitimizes its defiance because it feels that the outside world is backing it into a corner and attempting to legally thwart its capacity to develop and defend itself. As others have pointed out before, the US is unwilling to seriously engage North Korea because it does a better job serving the Pentagon’s interests with all its huffing and puffing.

Is Beijing pivoting away from Pyongyang?

The strategic pivot to Asia taking place under the Obama administration is, no matter how much the US denies it, a move to counter the growing military and economic pre-eminence of China.

As a result, it is in Washington’s interests to maintain a heighted state of tension on the Korean Peninsula, without the situation bubbling over into war, so as to dramatically increase US military presence in the region under the guise of the North Korean threat, while undertaking enormously lucrative weapons contracts with allied countries in the region.

Under the incumbent administration of Chinese President Xi Jinping, Beijing has begun modestly increasing pressure on Pyongyang. Obama and Xi met recently for unofficial talks in California, and word is that both leaders will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state, and have agreed to work together to deepen cooperation and dialogue to achieve de-nuclearization.

This approach is different than that of previous Chinese policy, which vocally opposed Pyongyang’s nuclear adventurism, but took to promoting economic reform as a means of normalizing the regime’s conduct, with little emphasis on consequences.

At past meetings of the biannual Pyongyang International Trade Fair, which brings companies to the North to invest in various projects, more than 70 percent of participants came from China.

In a huge shift in direction, Beijing has barred Chinese companies from attending this year’s fair – though, that doesn’t mean those companies aren’t still doing business there. China still has deep economic interests in the North, which they will not walk away from so easily.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (centre R, front), accompanied by his wife Ro Sol Ju (centre L, front) and senior officials of the party and North Korean Army paying respect to late leader Kim Jong Il at the Kumsusan Palace in Pyongyang for the first anniversary of his death (AFP Photo / KCNA via KNS)

In 2012, Pyongyang leased two small islands to China with the purpose of experimenting with economic reforms. It was expected that Chinese companies would build factories and hire cheap North Korean labour to manufacture various products, and since the Islands are closer to the Chinese side of the Yalu river, whatever reforms take place there will not effect what goes on in the North substantially.

Socialism with Korean characteristics?

The Chinese have been trying to coax Pyongyang into making economic reforms in line with‘Deng Xiaoping thoughts,’ the man who steered the early days of China’s economic reforms and gave rise to what is referred to today as ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’.

North Korea hasn’t been entirely receptive to enacting economic reforms, because such a move would engender risk. So far, it has allowed farmers to keep a percentage of their produce for private sale and has allowed street-markets to exist, mirroring the earliest seedlings of reform in post-Mao China.

The two islands leased to the Chinese, Hwanggumpyong and Wihwa, haven’t gotten off the ground, due to the unstable investment climate. The Kaesong Industrial Complex, made up of South Korean owned factories inside North Korean territory that employs North Korean labor to manufacture goods for export, was closed by Pyongyang during the tension earlier this year, causing thousands to lose their jobs and the North taking a major financial hit by sabotaging a valuable source of foreign capital.

Pyongyang is an extremely stubborn actor and is unwilling to make serious reforms, probably because it feels it lacks the political security to do so. So what does the North want? In May, it promised to restart the Kaesong complex if the South ceases all “hostile acts and military provocations,” i.e., its annual war-games with the US – Seoul shot back saying that Pyongyang’s demands were “completely incomprehensible and unfair.”

And so, the Koreans keep going in diplomatic circles. No major countries would be willing to recognize North Korea as a nuclear-state, but if the outside world wants more leverage on the nuclear issue, attempts to establish greater trust with Pyongyang are a necessity – otherwise, this situation will continue to grow into something unmanageable and more dangerous.

The first step should be re-establishing the North’s joint economic projects with Seoul and Beijing, because a more isolated and desperate Pyongyang is not in the interests of the people in the region.

By Julian Assange

22 June, 2013

@ Wikileaks

It has now been a year since I entered this embassy and sought refuge from persecution.

As a result of that decision, I have been able to work in relative safety from a US espionage investigation.

But today, Edward Snowden’s ordeal is just beginning.

Two dangerous runaway processes have taken root in the last decade, with fatal consequences for democracy.

Government secrecy has been expanding on a terrific scale.

Simultaneously, human privacy has been secretly eradicated.

A few weeks ago, Edward Snowden blew the whistle on an ongoing program – involving the Obama administration, the intelligence community and the internet services giants – to spy on everyone in the world.

As if by clockwork, he has been charged with espionage by the Obama administration.

The US government is spying on each and every one of us, but it is Edward Snowden who is charged with espionage for tipping us off.

It is getting to the point where the mark of international distinction and service to humanity is no longer the Nobel Peace Prize, but an espionage indictment from the US Department of Justice.

Edward Snowden is the eighth leaker to be charged with espionage under this president.

Bradley Manning’s show trial enters its fourth week on Monday.

After a litany of wrongs done to him, the US government is trying to convict him of “aiding the enemy.”

The word “traitor” has been thrown around a lot in recent days.

But who is really the traitor here?

Who was it who promised a generation “hope” and “change,” only to betray those promises with dismal misery and stagnation?

Who took an oath to defend the US constitution, only to feed the invisible beast of secret law devouring it alive from the inside out?

Who is it that promised to preside over The Most Transparent Administration in history, only to crush whistleblower after whistleblower with the bootheel of espionage charges?

Who combined in his executive the powers of judge, jury and executioner, and claimed the jurisdiction of the entire earth on which to exercise those powers?

Who arrogates the power to spy on the entire earth – every single one of us – and when he is caught red handed, explains to us that “we’re going to have to make a choice.”

Who is that person?

Let’s be very careful about who we call “traitor.”

Edward Snowden is one of us.

Bradley Manning is one of us.

They are young, technically minded people from the generation that Barack Obama betrayed.

They are the generation that grew up on the internet, and were shaped by it.

The US government is always going to need intelligence analysts and systems administrators, and they are going to have to hire them from this generation and the ones that follow it.

One day, they will run the CIA and the FBI.

This isn’t a phenomenon that is going away.

This is inevitable.

And by trying to crush these young whistleblowers with espionage charges, the US government is taking on a generation, and that is a battle it is going to lose.

This isn’t how to fix things.

The only way to fix things is this:

Change the policies.

Stop spying on the world.

Eradicate secret law.

Cease indefinite detention without trial.

Stop assassinating people.

Stop invading other countries and sending young Americans off to kill and be killed.

Stop the occupations, and discontinue the secret wars.

Stop eating the young: Edward Snowden, Barrett Brown, Jeremy Hammond, Aaron Swartz, Gottfrid Svartholm, Jacob Appelbaum, and Bradley Manning.

The charging of Edward Snowden is intended to intimidate any country that might be considering standing up for his rights.

That tactic must not be allowed to work.

The effort to find asylum for Edward Snowden must be intensified.

What brave country will stand up for him, and recognize his service to humanity?

Tell your governments to step forward.

Step forward and stand with Snowden.

Julian Assange is an Australian editor, activist, journalist, and founder of Wikileaks.

 

 

By Franklin Lamb

22 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Many Lebanese and Syrian supporters of this regions Resistance culture, increasingly led by Hezbollah, are chastising, for a number of reasons, their former Islamist ally Hamas. Pillorying them with accusations that the latter are ingrates who are creating a host of problems for Hezbollah and its support for the Syrian regime, during the continuing crisis. Unnecessary problems, it is frequently asserted, that inure to the benefit of their mutual arch enemies, the Zionist colonizers of Palestine and their American and Arab enablers.

An outsider living near the center of the Hezbollah security zone in Dahiyeh, South Beirut, including this observer, hears from friends and neighbors both sides of this rancorous ‘domestic argument’. Having respect for, and being a supporter of both, one feels a bit awkward– rather like a good friend of a married couple, who are engaged in an increasingly acrimonious marital spat.

While sympathetic to each friends seemingly legitimate complaints with the other, one does not want to take sides for a few reasons with one being the risk of appearing disloyal to mutual friends and alienating perhaps both while being labeled a weak charactered “friend betrayer.”

Yet one cannot disagree with the Palestinian community in both Syria and Lebanon who repeatedly assert that they want to stay neutral in the Syrian crisis, whick appears unlikely to end anytime soon. Palestinian refugees, who have manifold problems in Palestine as well as Syria and Lebanon, want to stay sidelined from internecine conflicts and focus on trying to survive and staying focused on confronting their only enemies, those being the ones who stole and are still living on their land and villages.

Some supporters of Hezbollah and the Palestine Resistance seek to avoid exhibiting dirty laundry to public view, but given the voracious craving of media outlets linked to various local parties and foreign sponsors, there is much pressure and opportunity to condemn each side by broadcasting, some real but many illusory, Hezbollah-Palestinian cross border conflicts. This mutually destructive phenomenon is becoming commonplace and appears to be spreading.

Hezbollah’s local Palestinian problem started to form in the spring of 2011 as the Syrian crisis quickly gained momentum. Some Palestinians joined the rebels and nearly 28 months into the maelstrom, unknown numbers continue fighting the Assad government. But the numbers do appear to this observer to be a tiny fraction of the unemployed, discouraged Palestinian youth, facing a bleak future because they are bared by Lebanese law from even the most elementary civil rights to work or to own a home. Some have succumbed to the allure of $ 200 per month, free cigarettes, and an AK-47 and have joined one the literally hundreds of militias operating in Syria with affiliated jihadists currently scoping out and probing Lebanon.

Some point out those Palestinian refugees in Syria should not be seen as betraying those who have helped them most. This includes the undeniable fact that Palestinian refugees in Syria have been granted by its government, for more than six decades, rights to education, medical care, housing, employment, even with the government, as well as preferential treatment in many instances. In addition, Syria has granted them identity and travel documents, on a basis that no other Arab League country has ever granted them. This despite decades of Arab potentates blathering interminably about supporting the ‘bloodstream and sacred cause of Palestine.”

So there is festering resentment among some when certain media blare that Palestinian groups such as Hamas, are with the rebels and are insisting that Hezbollah fighters not enter Syria under any pretext. Hamas stands accused of closing their Damascus offices, accepting a $ 400 grant from Syria’s nemesis Qatar, and of joining the US-Israel axis by harming their own people as well as undermining the Resistance to the Zionist regime in the process. Certain other Palestinians in camps such as Yarmouk in Syria and Shatila in Lebanon tacitly accuse Hamas of abandoning the Palestinian cause and misguidedly sparking sectarian strife with Hezbollah. Others argue just the opposite and blame Hezbollah.

Some Palestinians are also said to be carrying guns for the Saida, Lebanon based, Salafist cleric Sheikh Ahmed al-Asir, the imam of Sidon’s Bilal bin Rabah Mosque, while supporting his anti-Hezbollah-Assad regime movement which is trying to unite Sunnis, who make up roughly 85% of the world’s Muslim population, to eliminate Shia Muslims.

Syrian government forces claim that Hamas has even trained Syrian rebels in the manufacture and use of home-made rockets. Some Hezbollah fighters go further and complain that they taught Hamas many of their battlefield skills and they turned around and used their fighting skills and IED’s against Hezbollah forces in al-Qusayr and are preparing to do the same, with larger numbers, in the coming battle for Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.

Many supporters of Hezbollah believe Hamas and some other Palestinian factions were being needlessly provocative when a few officials issued an unusual admonishment of Hezbollah on 6/17/13, calling on their ally and mentor of more than 20 years to direct its firepower at Israel and demanding that it withdraw from Syria. “We demand of Hezbollah to withdraw its forces from Syria and call on it to leave its weapons directed only at the Zionist enemy,” read a statement allegedly from Hamas, posted on the Facebook page of its deputy political leader Moussa Abu Marzouq.

Despite its withdrawal from Syria in early 2012, Hamas, as an Islamic organization as opposed to some of its individual members and a few officials, has been wary of publicly criticizing Hezbollah for its military support of the Assad regime. On 6/5/13, the London-based daily Al-Quds Al-Araby reported that a schism existed within Hamas regarding its attitude toward Hezbollah. Hamas’s military wing, the Izz Ad-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, reportedly endorsed the alliance with the Syria-Hezbollah axis, while its political leadership opposed it. Some have questioned the accuracy of this report.

Other more petty accusations have been made by some Hezbollah supporters, for example that Hamas and perhaps others had prevented some Palestinian camp residents in Ein el Helwe and Jalil camp near Baalbek, from burning refugee aid packages provided by Hezbollah for Syrian and Palestinians forced to flee Syria. The reasons cited were that the Palestinians felt they could not, given moral Islamic values, accept “blood” gifts, even of much needed food.

This observer met with some Palestinian leaders from different factions and is satisfied by their explanations that this was not the case. Hezbollah has given emergency aid to all the Palestinian camps. What happened with the symbolic burning of a few parcels was entirely politically motivated and organized by certain salafists in Saida and a few troublemakers from the pro-Saudi/US factions, including rump elements from the so-called pro-western March 14 alliance. That issue has now been resolved by Palestinian popular committees and the Hezbollah donors and hopefully will not recur.

Some Hezbollah partisans complain that certain Palestinian factions have circulated rumors in the media accusing the Resistance of wrongdoing and thereby are in effect collaborating with the US and Israel to divide and weaken the National Lebanese Resistance.

Yet additional criticism of certain Palestinian factions, specifically Hamas, relates to the nature and future of the movement’s relationship with the state of Qatar which is accused of essentially appointed itself godfather of all the Islamist and Muslim Brotherhood movements in the region. According to some criticism, Hamas’s change of stands has caused the movement to lose the credibility and popularity that it once enjoyed from diaspora Palestinians and the Arabs.

The Palestinians’ Hezbollah Problem

Revisiting the “marital spat” analogy, some of the accusations against certain Palestinians mirror those made against Hezbollah.

Some Lebanese analysts and some camp Palestinians have warned that Hezbollah’s foray into Syria is fueling a Sunni-Shiite polarization that threatens to feed extremism on both sides and catapult the conflict to the wider region

Syrian opposition groups reported on 5/30/13 that Hezbollah had ordered Hamas’s representative in Beirut, Ali Baraka, to leave the country immediately over Hamas’s public support for Syrian rebels fighting Assad. Baraka denied the report, telling Lebanese media and his neighbors there was no change in the relationship between the two organizations. Baraka’s assessment may be a bit understating the reality, but it is not too late to fix this problem. As of today, this observer’s kitchen balcony overlooks over the Hamas office in central Haret Hreik and it is clear that the Hamas office is still functioning.

The Hamas disagreement with Hezbollah still stands but both parties have agreed to discuss it by holding a series of meetings. In response to a question on this subject, former Foreign Ministry undersecretary in the ousted government in Gaza Ahmad Youssef, pointed out that Hamas needs and very much wants the support of all the powers and sides in the region to face the colonial Zionist implantation, what some refer to as “the 9th Crusade.” Youssef explained: “We needed and still need Iran and Hezbollah. However, the movement’s position is that this behavior had damaged the relations which we wanted to be close and strong with the party.” Next month, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abass will reportedly visit Lebanon to meet with Palestinians who fled Syria for Lebanon as is expected to attempt a Hamas-Hezbollah Musalaha or reconciliation.

The Resistance to the Zionist colony has multiple pillars two key ones of which are Hezbollah and the Palestine National Movement, which itself is becoming international, given that world opinion increasingly opposes the illegitimate apartheid regime still clinging to occupy Palestine. Both of these powerful forces as well as a growing number of others, including hundreds of militia now fighting in Syria, share one, if not other, common objective which must not be squandered by relatively soluble problems. And that bond is the shared reason d’etre to liberate every inch of occupied Palestine from the river to the sea and to return-by all means necessary. They share a moral, religious duty to struggle until victory in achieving the full right to return for the rightful indigenous inhabitants and their off-spring, from the 531 Palestinian villages that were ethnically cleansed 65 years ago. It is latter who, post liberation, who will decide, based on one person one vote without religious preferences, for all Jews and Arabs who choose to live in peace, how best to rebuild and administer Palestine on the basis of absolute equality before the law.

Neither Hezbollah or certain Palestinians now fighting each other in Syria, and god-forbid soon in Lebanon if the US-Israeli is successful in achieving this project which both are investing in, need the 2-cents worth of advice from this foreign observer.

But surely most from each camp will agree that this is not the time for Hezbollah and the Palestinians to use their over stretched resources to right perceived wrongs claimed to have been inflicted by the other. There will be time enough to discuss that, if either group is still feeling unjustly wronged, after Palestine is freed from its racist colonial yoke.

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

By Eric London

22 June, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed on Friday that the UK intelligence agency GCHQ and the NSA record the content of phone calls, email messages, Facebook posts and browser histories of tens of millions of people. By tapping into fiber-optic cables—the infrastructure through which all Internet traffic must pass—the two agencies have created a systematic procedure for procuring, filtering and storing private communications.

The leak is the latest in a series that have left the US and UK governments scurrying to cover up their deeply antidemocratic maneuvers with scripted lies. It comes one day after the release of secret FISA Court documents showing the NSA has almost complete latitude to monitor the communications of US residents (See, “NSA monitoring US communications without a warrant, documents show”)

Hours after the release of the latest documents, the US government announced that it was filing charges against Snowden under the Espionage Act, which contains a possible penalty of execution.

“Nobody is listening to your telephone calls,” President Obama said in a public speech two weeks ago. UK Foreign Minister William Hague told MPs last week that there is “a strong framework of democratic accountability and oversight” within the national intelligence apparatus.

According to documents leaked to the Guardian, and reported by Glenn Greenwald, however, GCHQ and the NSA have set up a complex scheme by which the intelligence agencies collect data and content from the communications of at least tens of millions of people. Officials monitor the data and content of those communications and then store what they deem valuable.

Described by GCHQ with the revealing titles “Mastering the Internet” and “Global Telecoms Exploitation,” the programs expose the repeated claims of President Obama and his coconspirators as outright lies.

Through the “Tempora” program, the two agencies have been tapping and storing hundreds of petabytes of data from a majority of the fiber-optic cables in the UK over the past 18 months. The NSA has a similar program in the US, as revealed in an Associated Press report last week.

First, GCHQ handles 600 million “telephone events” each day by tapping over 200 fiber-optic cables, including those that connect the UK to the US. According to the Guardian, GCHQ is able to collect data at a rate “equivalent to sending all the information in all the books in the British Library 192 times every 24 hours” by processing data from a minimum of 46 fiber-optic cables simultaneously.

The data is then transmitted to a government database and shared with the NSA, which is given top clearance. Lawyers for the GCHQ told their American counterparts that it was “your call” as to what limitations should be in place for data sifting and storage.

According to the leaked documents, these massive databases have been built up over the past several years through widespread corporate collaboration. GCHQ colludes with an array of companies it calls “intercept partners,” and sometimes forces them to hand over huge quantities of data for inspection and storage. The corporate agreements were kept highly guarded under fears that public knowledge of the collusion would lead to “high-level political fallout.”

Once the data is collected, the agencies then filter information through a process known as Massive Volume Reduction (MVR). Through this process, information is pared down to specific individuals, email addresses, or phone numbers. The NSA identified 31,000 “selector” terms, while GCHQ identified 40,000. The leaked documents reveal that a majority of the information extracted is content, including word-for-word email, text and phone recordings.

Through Tempora, GCHQ and the NSA have set up Internet buffers that allow the agencies to watch data accumulate in real-time and store it for less than a week for content or 30 days for metadata.

“Internet buffers represent an exciting opportunity to get direct access to enormous amounts of GCHQ’s special source data,” agents explained in the leaked documents. Valuable information is presumably removed from this temporary buffer and kept on file in intelligence storage facilities.

This information filtration system is not aimed at eliminating the possibility of storing the data of innocent people. In fact, this is precisely the purpose of the surveillance programs. Rather, unnecessary information is sifted out because the governments do not yet have the ability to store such vast quantities of communications content and metadata.

Despite these technological limitations, the immensity of the Tempora program was best described by GCHQ attorneys who acknowledged that listing the number of people targeted by the program would be impossible because “this would be an infinite list which we couldn’t manage.”

GCHQ officials bragged that its surveillance program “produces larger amounts of metadata than NSA,” and were told by GCHQ attorneys that “[w]e have a light oversight regime compared with the US.” The latter statement is extraordinary given the fact that the FISA Court allows the NSA to operate almost entirely without constraint.

Friday’s revelations highlight the international character of the global surveillance programs. Far from being satisfied by storing the content of the communications of its own residents, the US and UK governments are working together to create an unprecedented database of international intelligence.

The intimacy of the two spy agencies is evidenced by an order given by NSA head Keith Alexander in 2008: “Why can’t we collect all the signals, all the time? Sounds like a good summer homework project for [British and American spy center] Menwith!”

Snowden noted Friday that “it’s not just a US problem. The UK has a huge dog in this fight. They [GCHQ] are worse than the US.”

Just like their American counterparts, the GCHQ attorneys have attempted to place a legal veneer over the facially illegal spying operations of the government.

GCHQ lawyers have invoked paragraph four of section 8 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to run around the legal requirement that intelligence officials acquire a warrant before performing a wiretap. Since this would have required GCHQ to acquire a warrant for every person in the UK, the attorneys instead have claimed that they can perform indiscriminate data mining operations with a “certificate” from a minister.

In a briefing document released by Snowden, GCHQ attorneys claim that these certificates “cover the entire range of GCHQ’s intelligence production.”

Under Ripa, GCHQ officials may also seek a Sensitive Targeting Authority (STA), which would allow them to spy on any UK citizen “anywhere in the world” or on a foreign person in the UK.

A lawyer for GCHQ also noted in the secret documents that the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, which oversees the intelligence agencies, has “always been exceptionally good at understanding the need to keep our work secret,” and that a tribunal set up to monitor the agencies has “so far always found in our favor.”

Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a signatory, states: “Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence,” and that “[t]here shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society…”

In Britain as much as the United States, the ruling class is engaged in activity that is in flagrant violation of these democratic principles.

By Pepe Escobar

June 21, 2013

@ Information Clearing House

Protests in Brazil indicate what goes way, way beyond a cheap bus fare.

When, in late 2010, Dilma Rousseff was elected President after eight years of the impossibly popular Lula, a national narrative was already ingrained, stressing that Brazil was not the “country of the future” anymore; the future had arrived, and this was a global power in the making.

This was a country on overdrive – from securing the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics to a more imposing role as part of the BRICS group of emerging powers.

Not unlike China, Brazil was breathlessly exploiting natural resources – from its hinterland to parts of Africa – while betting heavily on large agribusiness mostly supplying, you guess it, China.

But above all Brazil fascinated the world by incarnating this political UFO; a benign, inclusive giant, on top of it benefitting from a lavish accumulation of soft power (music, football, beautiful beaches, beautiful women, endless partying).

The country was finally enjoying the benefits of a quarter of a century of participative democracy – and self-satisfied that for the past ten years Lula’s extensive social inclusion policies had lifted arguably 40 million Brazilians to middle class status. Racial discrimination at least had been tackled, with instances of the Brazilian version of affirmative action.

Yet this breakneck capitalist dream masked serious cracks. Locally there may be euphoria for becoming the sixth or seventh world economy, but still social exclusion was far from gone. Brazil remained one the most (deadly) unequal nations in the world, peppered with retrograde landowning oligarchies and some of the most rapacious, arrogant and ignorant elites on the planet – inevitable by-products of ghastly Portuguese colonialism.

And then, once again, corruption raised its Hydra-like head. Here’s a first parallel with Turkey. In Brazil as in Turkey, participative democracy was co-opted, ignored or forcefully diluted among an orgy of “mega-projects” generating dubious profits for a select few. In Turkey it revolves around the ruling party AKP’s collusion with business interests in the “redevelopment” of Istanbul; in Brazil around public funds for the hosting of the World Cup and the Olympics.

The new capitalist dream could not mask that the quality of life in Brazil’s big cities seemed to be on a downward spiral; and that racism – especially in the police – never went away while the demonization of peasant and Native Brazilian leaders was rampant; after all they were obstructing the way of powerful agribusiness interests and the “mega-projects” craze.

What can a poor boy do

There’s no Turkey Spring – as there’s no Brazilian Spring. This isn’t Tunisia and Egypt. Both Turkey and Brazil are democracies – although Prime Minister Erdogan has clearly embarked on a polarizing strategy and an authoritarian drive. What links Turkey and Brazil is that irreversible pent-up resentment against institutional politics (and corruption) may be catalyzed by a relatively minor event.

In Turkey it was the destruction of Gezi park; in Brazil the ten-cent hike in public bus fares was the proverbial straw that broke the (white) elephant’s back. In both cases the institutional response was tear gas and rubber bullets. In Turkey the popular backlash spread to a few cities. In Brazil it went nationwide.

This goes way, way beyond a cheap bus ride – although the public transport scene in Brazil’s big cities would star in Dante’s ninth circle of hell. A manual worker, a student, a maid usually spend up to four hours a day back-and-forth in appalling conditions. And these are private transport rackets controlled by a small group of businessmen embedded with local politicians, who they obviously own.

Arguably the nationwide, mostly peaceful protests have scored a victory – as nine cities have decided to cancel the bus fare hike. But that’s just the beginning.

The mantra is true; Brazilians pay developed world taxes and in return get sub-Saharan Africa quality of service (no offense to Africa). The notion of “value for money” is non-existent. It gets even worse as the economic miracle is over. That magical “growth” was less than 1% in 2012, and only 0.6% in the first quarter of 2013. The immensely bloated state bureaucracy, the immensely appalling public infrastructure, virtually no investment in education as teachers barely get paid $300 a month, non-stop political corruption scandals, not to mention as many homicides a year as narco-purgatory Mexico – none of this is going away by magic.

Football passion apart – and this is a nation where everyone is either an expert footballer or an experienced coach – the vast majority of the population is very much aware the current Confederations Cup and the 2014 World Cup are monster FIFA rackets. As a columnist for the Brazilian arm of ESPN has coined it, “the Cup is theirs, but we pay the bills.”

Public opinion is very much aware the Feds played hardball to get the “mega-events” to Brazil and then promised rivers of “social” benefits in terms of services and urban development. None of that happened. Thus the collective feeling that “we’ve been robbed” – all over again, as anyone with a digital made in China calculator can compare this multi-billion dollar orgy of public funds for FIFA with pathetically little investment in health, education, transportation and social welfare. A banner in the Sao Paulo protests said it all; “Your son is ill? Take him to the arena.”

Remember “Standing Man”

The neo-liberal gospel preached by the Washington consensus only values economic “growth” measured in GDP numbers. This is immensely misleading; it does not take into account everything from rising expectations for more participative democracy to abysmal inequality levels, as well as the despair of those trying to just survive (as in the orgy of expanded credit in Brazil leaving people to pay annual interest rates of over 200% on their credit cards).

So it takes a few uprooted trees in Istanbul and a more expensive shitty bus ride in Sao Paulo to hurl citizens of the “emerging markets” into the streets. No wonder the Brazilian protests left politicians – and “analysts” – perplexed and speechless. After all, once again this was people power – fueled by social media – against the 1%, not that dissimilar from protests in Spain, Portugal and Greece.

Unlike Erdogan in Turkey – who branded Twitter “a menace” and wants to criminalize social networking – to her credit Rousseff seems to have listened to the digital (and street) noise, saying on Tuesday that Brazil “woke up stronger” because of the protests.

The Brazilian protests are horizontal. Non-partisan; beyond party politics. No clear leaders. It’s a sort of Occupy Brazil – with a cross-section of high-school and college students, poor workers who struggle to pay their bus fare, vast swathes of the tax-swamped middle class who cannot afford private health insurance, even homeless people, who after all already live in the streets. Essentially, they want more democracy, less corruption, and to be respected as citizens, getting at least some value for their money in terms of public services.

The die is cast. Once again, it’s people power vs. institutional politics. Remember “Standing Man” in Taksim Square. The time to take a stand is now.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for Asia Times/Hong Kong, an analyst for RT and TomDispatch, and a frequent contributor to websites and radio shows ranging from the US to East Asia.

 

By Franklin Lamb

20 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Beirut: The Group of Eight leaders meeting in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, having called for an international conference on the ongoing crisis in Syria to be held “as soon as possible” could not agree on much else that might end the civil war anytime soon there. The White House now is reportedly in private agreement with Russia and Iran that the Assad government will remain in power until next year’s election.

Consequently, an 18 month old US-led Plan B has been dusted off by the Obama administration according to Washington Congressional and Beirut diplomatic sources. If successful, there is growing confidence among pro-Zionist neocons in Congress that while Syrian regime-change has failed for several reasons that thwarted the Gulf funded military campaign, Syria can still be brought to heel through an economic campaign dressed to look, well, down right “humanitarian.”

The term “equivalent of the Marshall Plan” is being employed by some in the White House and Pentagon this month to describe a proposed large-scale “humanitarian rescue program” being prepared for Syria, according to some Western diplomats based in Lebanon.

However, the 1948 Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program or ERP) was an American program to aid Europe, through which the United States provided $ 13 billion, in today’s monetary terms, approximately 100 billion dollars of economic support, to help rebuild European economies devastated by war.

With respect to Syria, the “ equivalent of the Marshall Plan” currently being finalized is very different from what General George |C. Marshall explained to his Harvard University audience, 66 years ago this month, when he announced the post WW II initiative.

The already project Syria amounts to 19th century economic imperialism as a means to achieve control of Syria by hijacking its economy while shielding Israel from the rising tide of protests in this region, as armed groups across the spectrum are beginning to focus on directly confronting the Zionist theft and continuing occupation of Palestine.

What Washington has in mind constitutes an attempt to gain control over Syria by controlling its economy via contracts for rebuilding the country and “lending” the hoped for post-Assad Syrian government as much as 300 billion dollars to be secured by Syrian assets. IMF economists estimate the value of the public sector in Syria, exceeds half a trillion dollars. Under the US-led pan, creditors can take control of ownership of the public sectior, if Syria accepts the plan for pledges to secure debt. The buyers of the debt will be largely American and indirectly Israeli businessmen as well as from the Gulf. Qatar specifically is gambling on this plan, to work with “international parties”, to immerse Syria in debt, and then drive the country to sell the private sector at a very small fraction of their true values.

Some who are warning against the scheme point out that Syrians are capable of rebuilding their own country and have the labor force and raw materials to do it. Foreign aid will be welcomed by the Syrian government but not at the price of ceding the Arab Syrian Republic to a new western crafted economic order. What is hidden in the war on Syria is reported to be much bigger than has been divulged to date, and involves winding down the military actions in favor of economic aggression against the Syrian population which the layers of US sanctions to date is just a harbinger.

In this context, according to Western Diplomatic sources, the US government and some Gulf countries have tried to bribe Rami Makhlouf, a cousin of Syria’s President, to break with the government and leave the country. Some other well-known figures have also been offered large sums of cash to break ranks. Last month, one prominent Syrian nationalist who works with the government told this observer of receiving a $ 50 million dollar offer to defect and leave Syria. The official rejected the bribe and ridiculed the government that made the offer by explaining that as proud Syrian nationalists, no amount of money would break the sacred bond between Syrians and their country.

With respect to Mr. Maklouf, he did not react to being placed on the US Treasury Department’s “Specially Designated Nationals” (SDN) list which blocks assets and prohibits, under severe penalties, U.S. citizens from dealing with them, nor did he dignify an American clemency offer with even a reply. Rather he has maintained his steadfast support for Syria in the face of several attempts to assassinate him as well as targeting him, as a leader of the Syrian business community, with American orchestrated (OFAC) defamatory media campaigns, to pressure Presidenrt Bashar al-Assad to break with him. Rather than rejecting Syria for American offers of protection, Makhlouf channeled much of his assets for the benefit of domestic charities and rehabilitative projects, providing jobs for the unemployed and loans for small investors as well as “at cost” family housing for many of the internally displaced. This initiative continues. Makhlouf has provided his borse shares in the largest telecommunications companies in Syria to charity associations in order to insure financial independence and resources that the Authority can rely upon, to ease somewhat, the devastating effects on the current crisis on the Syrian civil society.

According to analysts among the Western diplomatic corps in Beirut, many wealthy Syrian capitalists fell into the U.S. trap, wherein SDN economic sanctions prompted them to leave Syria and defect from the regime. The United States and its European partners continue to wage an economic war against Syria by imposing crippling sanctions which are affecting the lives of ordinary citizens in many ways from food and fuel costs to medical care.

Why Rami Makhlouf and other strong nationalists in Syria’s business community are being targeted as a prelude to fully launching the US-led “Syrian Marshall Plan” is that their bonds with Syria as well as their business acumen are blocking the Western scheme because they provide the Syrian government with much needed additional financial strength to rebuild Syria, in cooperation with other countries, but without being subject to the economically fatal conditions the US-led plan envisages. Many in the financial and academic community view the proposed SMP plan as nearly certain to hold the Syrian economy hostage to foreigners for scores of years.

The US Treasury Department considers Makhlouf and others like him in the Syrian business community as fully capable, if allowed, of helping Syria’s government to collect huge sums from international investors to help rebuild Syria without being subject to Western domination.

“The anti-Mahhlouf black propaganda campaign, according to a Washington DC source familiar with the intensified preparations, commented that the SMP was designed to include a wide ranging assault in the visual and written media, audio, as well as in the electronic media: “ Almost certainty funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both of which like their western partners who are actually constructing the SMP project, view Makhlouf as a key obstacle to realizing their plans to hijack and control the Syrian economy as part of a soft war, whereby the US and its allies, western and middle eastern, controls Arab economies while keeping US boots off the grounds of Arabia or spending more US treasure in this region.”

Targeting Rami Makhlouf, and other Syrian businessmen by Qatari media and other Arabic paid media outlets, is designed to hit Syria economically, because weakening the Syrian economic security at its core, is a more certain path, than endless military campaigns, to quickly smash the state. Makhlouf and his colleagues are seen as preventing this.

The ultimate goal of Qatar and certain Gulf countries, with US complicity, is not just expanding their investments in this region, as much as Doha is intent on connecting the Arab world to the American-Zionist axis politically and economically. The speed with which Israeli, Gulf, and Western businessmen showed up at the Corinthian, Radisson, and Rixos hotels in Tripoli, Libya, literally within days of the murder of Moammar Qaddafi, “to help rebuild this country” is instructive on these same interests seeking to control a war damaged country by removing obstacles. Indeed, Russian intelligence reported at the time that the salafists who apprehended Qaddafi in Serte on October 20, 2011, as he attempted to flee, received verbal instructions from a Gulf country (UAE) to kill him in order to eliminate competition for dominating the Libyan economy and to silence those who might torpedo their best laid plans..

The targeting of Mr. Rami Makhlouf and dozens of like-minded Syrian businessmen, who refused to abandon their country, continues. Yet today, like thousands of other Syrian volunteers including the approximately 10,000 who work with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (SARCS) their time and resources serve their country in order to lessen the suffering of the civilian population. They have stood firm and did not flee, as did some corrupt former supporters and officials of the government.

This week, Syria’s President put the goal of the Marshall Plan for Syria succinctly, without identifying it, “What is happening in Syria is a project for those states to push a non-submissive state towards the brink and to look for a new president who says ‘yes’ (to their orders). They have not found and they will not find in the future,” Assad stressed while adding, “The interference is a blatant violation of international law and the sovereignty of this country; they (western states and their Gulf allies) want to destabilize the country and spread chaos and backwardness.”

 

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

By Stuart Littlewood

16 June, 2013

@ Redressonline.com

The US ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Eileen Chamberlain Donahoe, has branded Richard Falk as “unfit to serve in his role as a UN Special Rapporteur.”

It seems that in his role monitoring the occupied Palestinian territories he’s in the habit of expressing views that don’t coincide with the twisted dogma of the pro-Israel lobby and its handmaidens, like Donahoe and Susan Rice, the outgoing US ambassador to the UN and National Security adviser-designate This attack is merely the latest in a long line of attempts to smear, vilify and dump Falk.

Donahoe’s biography on the US mission website includes this high-tone gem. “On the front lines of the Obama administration’s strategy of multilateral engagement to promote democracy and respect for universal human rights, Ambassador Donahoe and the US delegation work to ensure that the courageous voices of human rights defenders from around the globe are heard.”

Yes, but only if they’re singing off the Tel Aviv hymn-sheet, lyrics by Mark Regev, also known as Mark Freiberg, Israel’s Australian-born chief propagandist.

She told the Human Rights Council:

The best way to truly address human rights issues in Israel and the Palestinian territories is to end the underlying conflict and forge a comprehensive peace. For this reason, the United States continues to work vigorously on a simultaneous two-track strategy: a political negotiations track which ultimately results in a two-state solution, with a secure Israel and a sovereign Palestine living side by side in peace and security, and equally a Palestinian institution-building track in preparing for a future Palestinian state.

Get real, darlin’. How does any of this actually tackle the underlying conflict or restore long-denied human rights to Palestinians still languishing under the jackboot of the Israeli occupation after 65 years?

According to The Times of Israel, Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says his organization agrees with Donahoe that Falk is unfit to serve in his role. “If he does not leave voluntarily, the Human Rights Council should remove him. Mr Falk’s attempt to paint himself as the victim of an Israeli government-sponsored defamation campaign, carried out by UN Watch, has echoes of classical anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.”

Well, judge for yourselves.

Meet the other “smear” artists       

United Nations Watch, an advocacy group affiliated with the American Jewish Committee, recently submitted a draft resolution to the UN Human RIghts Council demanding the termination of Falk’s mandate. It includes a long list of wild allegations like these:

>> Falk is so extreme in his support for the Hamas terrorist organization that even the Palestinian Authority has sought to remove him, on grounds that he is a “partisan of Hamas”.

>> Falk recently published an article seeking to downplay, reinterpret and justify the latest call by Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal to destroy Israel, a member state of the United Nations.

A member state that is contemptuous of the rules of membership and permanently on the wrong side of international law.

Falk published on his website a cartoon showing a dog wearing a Jewish head covering, and with “USA” written on its body, urinating on a depiction of justice and devouring a bloody skeleton, for which he was condemned by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

Wish I’d seen that!

Falk endorsed a virulently anti-Semitic book entitled The Wandering Who? an act condemned by the British Foreign Office.

The book was also endorsed by Kathleen Christison, John Mearsheimer, James Petras, Karl Sabbagh, William Cook, Jeff Gates, Ramzy Baroud, Samir Abed-Rabbo, Robert Wyatt, Eric Walberg and Makram Khoury. These are sane, intelligent and knowledgeable people.

Here is what Falk actually wrote.

Gilad Atzmon [the book’s author] has written an absorbing and moving account of his journey from hard core Israeli nationalist to a de-Zionized patriot of humanity and passionate advocate of justice for the Palestinian people. It is a transformative story told with unflinching integrity that all (especially Jews) who care about real peace, as well as their own identity, should not only read, but reflect upon and discuss widely.

Atzmon kindly sent me a copy, an excellent and timely work.

Falk has falsely and absurdly accused Israel of planning a “Palestinian holocaust”.

How would the clowns at UN Watch describe Israel’s carefully planned Operation Cast Lead and the great slaughter it caused among innocent civilians trapped and imprisoned in the narrow confines of the Gaza Strip, and the deliberate devastation of infrastructure necessary to human life, not to mention the starvation imposed by the cruel seven-year blockade?

Falk has become one of the world’s most high-profile supporters of 9/11 conspiracy theorists who accuse the US government of orchestrating the destruction of the Twin Towers as a pretext to launch wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The conspiracy looks less and less like a theory.

>> He promotes the writings of David Ray Griffin, who has produced 12 books describing the World Trade Centre attack as “an inside job”.

>> Falk has repeatedly appeared on the “TruthJihad.com” show of Kevin Barrett, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and holocaust sceptic who rails against the “ethnic Jews” who he says run Washington and the media.

>> In 2011 Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon issued an unprecedented condemnation of Mr Falk’s 9/11 remarks, saying they were “preposterous” and “an affront to the memory of the more than 3,000 people who died in that tragic terrorist attack”.

Reuters news agency reported that UN Watch had written to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon demanding that he “strongly condemn Mr Falk’s offensive remarks and… immediately remove him from his post”. A Ban Ki-moon condemnation has all the force of a slap with a wet kipper.

US Ambassador Susan Rice denounced Falk’s 9/11 remarks as “despicable and deeply offensive”, condemned his “one-sided and politicized approach”, deplored his comments for being “so noxious that it should finally be plain to all that he should no longer continue in his position”, and noted that “the cause of human rights will be better advanced without Mr Falk and the distasteful sideshow he has chosen to create”.

In conclusion the UN Watch’s issued a resolution which:

1. Finds that Mr Falk has committed gross and systematic violations of his duties as a council expert, including his obligation to uphold the highest standards of competence, integrity, probity, impartiality, equity, honesty and good faith;

2. Deeply regrets that Mr Falk has failed to heed calls for his resignation as expressed by Palestinian, American and other delegates to the United Nations, thereby obliging the council to exercise its responsibility and protect the credibility and integrity of its procedures;

3. Decides to terminate the mandate of Mr Richard Falk, effective immediately.

Fair comment

Falk’s “noxious” remarks about 9/11 simply broke the ridiculous taboo and questioned the US administration’s refusal to hold a proper independent inquiry. His “crime” was saying that the US administration’s reluctance to address the awkward gaps and contradictions in the official story, identified by several scholars, only fuelled suspicions of a conspiracy.

He suggested that “what may be more distressing than the apparent cover-up is the eerie silence of the mainstream media, unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events: an Al-Qaeda operation with no foreknowledge by government officials”.

 

This is fair comment and worded with sufficient care to avoid causing offence. After all, there can be no greater affront to the memory of the 3,000 than the Obama administration’s obvious reluctance to seek the truth.

And there are millions of us out here who are right behind Richard Falk because he stands for justice. We are not amused by indications that the official explanation of 9/11 doesn’t add up. Nor are we happy that it was used to sucker our own governments into sacrificing troops and treasure in unlawful, unwinnable wars that have caused mega-deaths and endless suffering to innocent civilians, trashed our good name abroad and made us vulnerable to reprisals at home.

And for what? Simply to advance the crazed ambitions of the US-Israeli Axis of Greed.

The ever-servile British government is also eager to stick the knife in, as demonstrated in this letter on 6 June by the Foreign Office’s Philippa Thompson, Deputy Team Leader of the Equality and Non-Discrimination Team (what a fatuous job title). It was written in reply to a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act following a UK press release on 24 April 2013 containing a statement on comments made by Richard Falk.

It said the British government strongly objected to Falk’s comment that the “United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks”. The relevant paragraph from Falk’s article for the Foreign Policy Journal reads:

The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks, and these may yet happen, especially if there is no disposition to rethink US relations to others in the world, starting with the Middle East.

These words should be framed and hung in every foreign minister’s office across the globe.

Thompson wrote that in the same article Falk said: “As long as Tel Aviv has the compliant ear of the American political establishment, those who wish for peace and justice in the world should not rest easy.” She (and, presumably, her bosses) believed the article was “resonant of the longstanding anti-Semitic practice of blaming Jews (through the state of Israel by proxy) for all that is wrong in the world”. This was unacceptable, she stated, but did not explain why.

Actually, Falk’s remarks are quite OK with those who take an interest in the evil that’s going on around us. But we perfectly understand how his observations are inconvenient to the hooligan élite who are bent on more mayhem.

Falk is also under attack from the American Jewish Committee, an organization that aggressively promotes Israel’s interests. The AJC’s executive director, David Harris, on 23 April 2013, said about Falk: “His malicious propaganda regarding the US and Israel – and his glaring inability to see the stark truth about extremist violence and terrorism – has no place in any international body that takes itself and its mission seriously.”

The AJC’s stated vision embraces “democratic values, respect for human rights and peaceful conflict-resolution”, yet Harris and his buddies seem blind to the terror, violence, utter brutality and total disrespect for others’ rights that have become Israel’s trademark.

Whose national interest are they working for?

Earlier this month the AJC welcomed the appointment of Susan Rice as President Obama’s National Security Adviser. With gushing praise it announced:

With regard to the Middle East, Ambassador Rice has strenuously opposed Iran’s nuclear ambitions and human rights transgressions…. She has sought to mobilize international action in the face of the ever mounting death toll in Syria, and stood up for Israel whenever needed, which in the UN, regrettably, is all too often, whether in the Security Council, General Assembly or other UN organs…

Again and again, she has tried to block Palestinian efforts in the world body to do an end-run around direct negotiations with Israel… For all these reasons, AJC was very proud to present Ambassador Rice with our Distinguished Public Service Award…

It shows how desperate the Israel lobby is to keep the Palestinians locked in the going-nowhere vacuum of direct negotiations while the criminal Tel Aviv regime keeps robbing them of their lands and resources at gun-point. Rice has played her part and been rewarded.

The AJC has had it in for Falk for years. Back in March 2008 it was “outraged” over his election to the UN Human Rights Council as the new UN Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories. It claimed Falk had repeatedly accused the US of being responsible for many of the world’s ills and compared Israel with the Nazi regime. His election, it said, underlined the bias of the UN Human Rights Council and his mandate reflected an inherent and fundamental bias. “While charged with investigating the conduct of the Israeli government in the Palestinian areas, he has no authority from the Human Rights Council to investigate major abuses of human rights perpetrated in the same areas by the Palestinian Authority and by Palestinian terror organizations.”

Of course not. There’s a big difference but the AJC just din’t get it.

Meanwhile, Donahoe, Rice, Obama and all their fancy talk of “multilateral engagement to promote democracy and respect for universal human rights” have done nothing to end the decades of abuse of human rights in the Holy Land.

Richard Falk, let’s remind ourselves, is an emeritus professor of international law, author of over 20 books and editor of 20 more. He clearly knows his stuff. Isn’t it time someone gave him a medal – a big clunky one – for maintaining his integrity in this hissing vipers’ nest?

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

By Bill Van Auken

13 June, 2013

@ WSWS.org

At least 60 people, including women, children and the elderly, were killed in a massacre of Shia Muslims by US-backed “rebels” in eastern Syria Tuesday.

The sectarian slaughter in the village of Hatlah in the province of Deir Ezzor near the border with Iraq, was reported by both the Syrian government and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based group that supports the Western-backed militias trying to overthrow the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

A video posted online showed Islamist gunmen bragging about killing Shias and burning and looting their homes. A spokesman for the group, a Kuwaiti, declared that they killed for their religion and calling on Sunnis in Kuwait and elsewhere to do the same. Another exposed a covered corpse saying, “Look Shi’ites, this is how you will end up, you dogs.”

The killings came on the same day that a pair of suicide bombers blew themselves up in the busy Marjeh Square in the heart of Damascus, Syria’s capital, killing 15 people and wounding another 31. The terrorist attack took place near a police station.

The Deir Ezzor massacre, in which an estimated 1,500 gunmen took part, underscored the increasingly open sectarian character of the US-backed war for regime change in Syria, under conditions in which the so-called rebels have suffered a series of serious military defeats.

Al Qaeda-affiliated gunmen of the Al Nusra front and other Sunni Islamist militias have become the predominant forces in what pseudo-left elements in the West insist on calling the “Syrian revolution,” with many thousands of Islamist fighters having entered the country from neighboring Arab states as well as from as far away as Chechnya, the former Yugoslavia and elsewhere in Europe.

Particularly in the wake of the Syrian army’s retaking of Qusair, the strategically important town in the central province of Homs that served as a conduit for arms and foreign fighters coming into Syria from Lebanon, the “rebels” and their supporters have fomented increasingly rabid sectarianism. The pretext for this has been the aid given to the Syrian government forces by members of the Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, who crossed the border to help retake Qusair from Al Nusra and its allies.

In the aftermath of the battle, the media and leading Sunni clerics—particularly in Saudi Arabia and the monarchical Persian Gulf Sunni petrol states that have provided much of the money and arms for the “rebels”—have cast the Syrian conflict as a virtual holy war against Shi’ites.

Well-known Sunni cleric Yusuf al Qaradawi, who is based in Qatar and enjoys the support of its monarchy, called for every able-bodied Sunni across the region to go and fight the Shias in Syria and declared that Iran was determined to “devour” the Sunnis.

Qaradawi’s sectarian fanaticism is a reflection of the increasing desperation of his patrons. Britain’s Channel 4 quoted Qatari Deputy Prime Minister Ahmas Bin Abdullah Bin Zaid al Mahmoud addressing the US-Islamic Word Forum in Doha this week as stating: “Should … the United States fail to offer prompt and decisive assistance to the Syrian people to aid them in fulfilling their aspirations, we fear that the crisis at hand might have even more serious repercussions on neighboring states, the Arab region, and world peace.”

Having laid out an estimated $3 billion to arm and pay mercenaries in Syria, Qatar’s royal house fears its efforts are going up in smoke and that defeat may undermine its own grip on power.

In the wake of the government’s regaining control over Qusair, the Syrian military has begun to push into areas of the central city of Homs held by the Western-backed “rebels.” It is preparing a major offensive to regain full control of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial center near the Turkish-Syrian border.

The fear that the forces that the West and its allies among the Gulf State monarchies have fielded and armed as their proxies in the war for Syrian regime change are losing was also expressed in statements by French officials this week.

“We need to re-balance things because over the past few weeks the troops of Bashar al-Assad and especially Hezbollah and the Iranians, along with Russian arms, have gained considerable ground,” said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

Fabius indicated that this “re-balancing” was to take place through a major escalation of the Western intervention, including France together with Britain and the US directly arming the “rebels.” Ostensibly, Washington and its NATO allies have, until now, supplied only “non-lethal” assistance, but in reality, the CIA as well as British, French and German intelligence have provided direct aid, including the CIA’s coordination of the arms flow paid for by the Saudi and Qatari monarchies.

“We shouldn’t arm them for the sake of arming them, but there has to be a rebalancing,” Fabius continued. “Nobody is talking about sending troops on the ground, but the resistance fighters must be able to defend themselves.”

Fabius said that he had discussed the issue Tuesday with US Secretary of State John Kerry and claimed that Paris would wait until August 1 before sending weapons. This was the date agreed to by the European Union, after Britain and France succeeded in overturning an EU arms embargo on Syria.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary William Hague arrived in Washington Wednesday for discussions on Syria. White House officials have indicated that the members of the National Security Council are reviewing options for an escalation of the US intervention this week, including the direct arming of the anti-Assad militias and the imposition of a no-fly zone. That would entail a major US bombing campaign against Syria.

Other meetings on the crisis confronting Washington and its allies were scheduled elsewhere. The Turkish media reported that Tamir Pardo, the director of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, flew secretly into Turkey Wednesday to discuss the Syrian situation with his counterpart, Hakan Fidan, head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT).

According to some reports, Pardo emphasized Iran’s role in the Syrian events and also apparently suggested Iranian involvement in the mass protests that have swept Turkey for the past two weeks. Turkey has been one of the main supporters of the so-called rebels, and Syria has repeatedly charged that Israel is giving them covert backing in a bid to overthrow Assad and undermine both Iran and Hezbollah.

British Prime Minister David Cameron also announced that Russian President Vladimir Putin would fly to London next week for talks on Syria.

By Ramzy Baroud

13 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

My friend Hanna is Syrian and also happens to be Christian. The latter fact was rarely of consequence, except whenever he wished to boast about the contributions of Arab Christians to Middle Eastern cultures. Of course, he is right. The modern Arab identity has been formulated through a fascinating mix of religions, sects and races. Christianity, as well as Islam, is deeply-rooted in many aspects of Arab life. Needless to say, the bond between Islam and Christianity is simply unbreakable.

“I am Christian, but, in terms of culture, I am equally a Muslim,” he told me by way of introduction to a daunting realization. “But now, I am very worried.”

Hanna’s list of worries is long. Lead amongst them is the fact that Christian Arabs in some Arab societies are increasingly viewed as ‘foreigners’ or ‘guests’ in their own countries. At times, as was the case in Iraq, they are punished by one extremist group or another for embracing the same religion that US-western zealots claim to represent. Churches were blown up in brutal retribution for a savage war that President George W. Bush and many of his ilk maintained to be between good and evil, using the most brazen religious references as they savaged Iraq, sparing neither Muslims nor Christians.

During the early years of the war, many Arab intellectuals seemed wary of the sinister divide that the US was erecting between religions, sects and communities. Many in Arab media referenced past historical experiences when other imperial powers – namely Britain and France – resorted to the ‘divide and conquer’ stratagem. Those attempts in the first half of the 20th century resulted in much bloodshed and lasting scars in many communities. Lebanon is the obvious example with Iraq prevailing.

In response to the colonial attempts at busying the Arabs with internal conflicts, Arab nationalists had then wrangled with a discourse that proved of immense value to modern Arab identity. To escape the pitfalls of religious and sectarian divides, and to unleash the untapped energies of Arab societies, there was an urgent need to articulate a new language expressing a unifying pan-Arab political discourse. In post-World War II, the rise of Arab nationalism was the force to be contended with, from Egypt, to Iraq and to Syria. It was a battle of wills involving imperialist powers, later joined by the United States. It was also local, tribal elites fighting for their own survival. The nationalists’ discourse was meant to inspire, from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s thundering speeches in Egypt, to Michel Aflaq’s eloquent thoughts in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. At least then, it seemed to matter little that Nasser was an Egyptian Sunni Muslim, and that Aflaq was a Greek Orthodox Christian.

Aflaq was profound, and his insistence on the vitality of the Muslim character to Arabs was a testament to a generation of nationalists that since then, has all but completely faded. He spoke of Arab unity, not as a distant dream, but a practical mechanism to snatch liberty from many sinister hands. “What liberty could be wider and greater than binding oneself to the renaissance of one’s nation and its revolution?” he said during a speech. “It is a new and strict liberty which stands against pressure and confusion. Dictatorship is a precarious, unsuitable and self-contradictory system which does not allow the consciousness of the people to grow.”

Many voices echoed that sentiment in Arab nations near and far. Poets recited the will of freedom fighters and artists rendered the language of philosophers. While Arab nationalist movements eventually fragmented, were weakened or defeated, an Arab identity survived. Long after Nasser died, and even Anwar Saddat signed the Camp David accords, thus breaking with Arab consensus, school children continued to sing “Arab homelands are my home, from the Levant to Baghdad, from Najd to Yemen and from Egypt to Morocco.”

The war over Arab identify however never ceased, as it continued to manifest itself in actual and figurative ways. Israel and western powers, vying for military dominance, regional influence and ultimately resources, did the best they could to shatter the few semblances that sustained a sense of unity among Arab nations that survived despite numerous and perhaps insurmountable odds.

The Lebanese civil war (1975-1990) left deep wounds that continue to fester. The Iraq war was particularly painful. While Lebanon civil strife involved well-demarcated sects, the alliances were in constant influx. But Iraq’s civil war, encouraged and sustained with direct American involvement to weaken Iraqi resistance to US-British occupation, was well-defined and brutal. Muslim Shia and Sunni engaged in a bitter struggle as US troops wreaked havoc in Baghdad. Members of all sects paid a heavy price for the fighting, which also damaged the national identity of Iraq and made a mockery of its flag and national anthem. The sociopolitical impact of that war was so severe, it resuscitated a reactionary discourse that forced many communities to see themselves as members of one group or another, each fighting for its own being.

Soon after the Egyptian revolution, I walked the streets of Cairo, reminiscing, with much giddiness – about the past and the encouraging future. A ‘new Egypt’ was being born, one with ample room for all of its children. An Egypt where the poor are giving their fair share, and where Muslims and Christians and the rest would march forward, hand in hand, as equals, compelled by the vision of a new generation and the hopes and dreams of many more. It was not a romantic idea, but thoughts inspired by millions of Egyptians, by bearded Muslim men protecting churches in Cairo against government plots to stir religious tensions, by Christian youth guarding the Tahrir square as Muslim youth prayed, before they all resumed their fight for freedom.

Despite my insistence on optimism, I find the current political discourse hateful, polarizing and unprecedentedly defeatist. While Muslim political elites are sharply divided between Shia and Sunni, assigning layers of meaning to the fact that one is born this way or that, this wrangling has been weaved into a power play that has destroyed Syria, awakened past animosities in Lebanon and revitalized existing conflict in Iraq, further devastating the very Arab identity.

Iraq’s historical dilemma, exploited by the US for immediate gains, has now become a pan-Arab dilemma. Arab and Middle Eastern media is fomenting that conflict using terminology loaded with sectarianism and obsessed with erecting the kind of divides that will bring nothing but mistrust, misery and war.

Resurrecting Nasser’s and Aflaq’s Arab nationalism might no longer be possible, but there is a compelling need for an alternative discourse to the type of intellectual extremism that justifies with disturbing lucidity the butchering of the inhabitants of an entire village in Syria because of their sect or religion. My friend Hanna has every reason to worry, as all Arabs should.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By Nadezhda Kevorkova

10 June , 2013

@ Reuters

The outcome of the presidential election in Iran will have a resounding effect across the Middle East and the whole world. While the West dubs the poll unrepresentative, little is done to understand the nature of Political Islam which governs the nation.

The previous 2009 elections came amid a large-scale opposition campaign to review the voting results – but that was before the Arab Spring, while the future elections have dovetailed with a crisis of the revolution in Egypt, a war in Syria and a wave of unrest in Turkey.

In 2009, the Muslim world saw the US as its archenemy, and Iran – mostly as a friend: it persevered in its nuclear program, disagreed with Americans, advocated Palestine’s interests and backed both Hamas and Hezbollah. However, with the Syrian conflict now in full swing, the Muslim world has been virtually forced into a Sunni vs. Shia standoff.

This makes the upcoming vote a turning point for Iran, the Middle East and the whole world.

Now that the US has already panned the elections as fraudulent, will the opposition resort to the methods it used back in 2009? Will it lead to an upheaval in the country? Will the US offer a helping hand to the opposition? We shall find out very soon.

Few in the West have any idea at all of the Iranian political landscape.

To make matters clear, they have labeled the contenders ‘conservatives’ and ‘reformists’ – a deeply flawed classification.

The leading reformist, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who was disqualified from the presidential race by the Guardian Council, and ex-president Mohammed Khatami, who reportedly decided not to run, are high-ranking Muslim clericals.

‘Conservatives’, on the contrary, hold strongly secular views. It is Khatami who once introduced the idea of the Dialogue of Civilizations as a response to Samuel Huntington’s Clash of Civilizations. But when he met the Spanish Queen, he made a point by refusing to shake her hand.

Another reformist, Ayatollah Rafsanjani, leads an important clerical council in the country. His son is a pistachio tycoon, but the ayatollah still lives a modest lifestyle not far from Imam Khomeini’s house in an ex-slum called Jamaran.

An Iranian conservative, President Ahmadinejad in many ways owed his victory in the previous polls and his popularity to his unassuming attitude. When he was a city mayor, he wore a casual jacket and lived in a poor neighborhood. At the same time, a university professor, he could easily plunge into discussing philosophical matters, shocking the political elite into a stupor.

Conservatives in Iran are against the very symbol of what the West calls a conservative regime – putting clericals into high offices.

Now the outcome of the Iranian election is pretty unpredictable – for a number of reasons.

Political preferences of Tehran’s residents and the rest of the country are very divergent: while in the capital the politically active intellectuals would like to see a ‘consensus candidate’ at the helm, Iran on the whole is dominated by adherents of the Islamic Revolution – which stands for refusing to cooperate or enter into any agreements with the West. That’s why Tehran is by no means a thermometer of nationwide sentiments.

Iranians are a highly disciplined nation. And it’s not only about how millions instantly respond to political issues. It’s also about a high voter turnout and observers from all the candidates at the polls. I saw all of this with my own eyes in 2009.

Contrary to what the Western media say, an Iranian does not face a ballot of eight unfamiliar contenders.

Each candidate has a strong background and his own supporters.

A two-week debate offers all the runners an opportunity to answer questions on their vision of economy, politics and culture.

And while a Western viewer will say the debate would do better with a healthy amount of squabbling and wrangling, Iranians are happy with what they have. In Iran, they do not make a show of the elections. The debate enables a politically vocal majority to make their ultimate choice.

Nature of ‘political Islam’

But there is one more thing to remember. Most Iranians are constantly in touch with influential scholars, men and women alike, who know the sharia law and the Quran very well. In one family, husband and wife may well sign up to different schools of thought.

During the holy month of fasting and on holidays, Iranians invite these spiritual teachers to visit them and talk to their friends and family.

Such intellectual exchanges constitute a very important part of life in Iran – one that people abroad are unaware of. They’re not religious events or chatting over a cup of tea, or philosophy clubs – it’s just that people are constantly seeking intellectual discussion.

The scholars themselves have regular contacts with other scholars from their schools of thought and ayatollahs. It’s important to understand that in this respect there’s no uniformity in Iran – there are various schools of thought that don’t agree with either Imam Khomeini’s or Rahbar (The Supreme Leader of Iran) Khamenei’s ideas. (However, people who run for president have to more or less fall in line with Khamenei’s stance.)

There’s a consensus among the Iranian population on several key issues, such as the fact that the Islamic Revolution offered a new path for the people; that Iran has a right to its nuclear program and development; and that women’s rights are more respected in Islam than in Western law, which is inferior to Sharia law. The rest, like mullahs’ role in politics, the necessity of theocratic rule, the right to protest and dissent, and various cultural and behavioral phenomena, are considered to be topics open for debate. In Iranian people’s experience and tradition, it is necessary to regularly discuss such issues with scholars in order to comprehend them more fully.

A scholar is a central figure for seminars of this kind, but he or she is not a priest and definitely not a deity.

These ties between people – strong, but unseen by the outsiders – pervade Iranian society, strengthening it.

That’s what the Iranians mean by “political Islam”. It existed before the Islamic Revolution, secured its success, allowed dozens of millions of people to receive education and accounted for the country’s rapid progress in scientific and technological spheres.

It’s impossible to tell which school of thought a person adheres to simply by the way they look. For example, public servants of any kind all wear strict hijabs or ordinary suits, but that doesn’t mean they all follow the same school of thought. It doesn’t even mean they are religious or indicate which party they support.

Foreigners assume that Iranian women that wear make-up and have their hair done are somehow protesting against the regime, and find themselves at a loss when they see these same women in mosques. And they are completely stupefied when they see women in strict hijabs taking part in demonstrations. Iran is, indeed, a mystery.

Illegitimate and unrepresentative or..?

So who will be elected the country’s 7th president in the 11th presidential elections heavily depends on this complex mechanism – political Islam. The US State Department has already declared the election illegitimate, claiming that the candidates “do not represent the people”.

Let’s try to determine if that is the case. It should be mentioned that Iranian politics is an exotic and unusual thing for Western people. In order to make sense of it, it is important to know about a politician’s origins, his occupation before and after the Iranian Revolution, his status, which is far more challenging than distinguishing between the Western bipartisan systems, where the differences between the parties boil down to their stances on taxes, abortion and gay rights.

 

The so called “conservatives” include five candidates: Saeed Jalili, Ali Akbar Velayati, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel, and Mohsen Rezaee.

Saeed Jalili

Experts say Saeed Jalili is most likely to win. But predictions don’t always work in Iran. In 2005, analysts didn’t even notice Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the first round, but in the second round he beat Rafsanjani himself.

Saeed Jalili is 47 years old, making him the youngest of the eight candidates. He was born in Mashhad, a home of many Shia holy places. Many revolution minded students came out of this city. He is the main negotiator for the nuclear program, so Iranians hear his name all the time, since the media in Iran and all over the world follow this topic closely.

In 2007, he became secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, making him the chief negotiator for Iran’s nuclear program. With the country’s nuclear policy a topic of intense interest at home and abroad, he is a household name in Iran.

Jalili holds a Ph.D in political science and philosophy from Imam Sadeq University in Tehran.

During the war, he served as a member of the Basij volunteers of the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution, which certainly wins him some points with the people. He was senior director of policy planning in the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and also served as Deputy Foreign Minister.

He didn’t announce his candidacy until very recently. Despite being a member of the Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, he will run as an independent candidate.

Experts say that even though he never was a policy maker per se, he has a strong political will and knows what tough confrontation is like. But this won’t win him people’s votes. However, the fact that a number of registered candidates withdrew in favor of Jalili, shows that he has a serious chance to win.

In the first round of debates, Jalili promised to stand strong against “the arrogant Western countries”. The Iranian people can identify with this, they understand his stance and promise to avoid the policy of compromise. While the West sees it as “entrenched conservatism”, for the Iranians this represents the continuity of Iran’s resistance policy, which most of the people support.

Jalili also commented on a very important issue: “We registered 850 thousand new marriages in the last year, so we need to come up with a housing program in order to accommodate the needs of these new families.” So basically he is going to focus on making sure that young couples can afford to buy or rent a place. In Iran, this is considered a high priority issue.

He also mentioned renovation of old buildings. Few people outside Iran know that Iranians blame the shah for destroying Tehran’s historic streets. Apparently only the Mahdi is allowed to “make streets straight”, so basically the shah played the Mahdi.

Ali Akbar Velayati

Some experts had declared Ali Akbar Velayati as the most likely winner.

Velayati is 67 years old. He was born in a small village outside Tehran. He studied pediatrics in Tehran and Johns Hopkins University in the US. He was arrested when he was 17 – this was during the rule of Mohammad Reza Shah.

In the last two years he initiated a number of summits for Arab Spring leaders, which Iranians call “Islamic Awakening”. He was able to bring together representatives of many different groups – from Taliban to Salafi groups, HAMAS and Hezbollah. Politicians, charismatic leaders, journalists from all over the world, female activists, and even revolutionary poets have come to his summits. Thanks to Velayati’s efforts, Iran has stayed the leader of the Arab revolution.

He used to be a Minister of Foreign Affairs, and today he is the foreign affairs advisor to the Supreme Leader of Iran.

Velayati is part of the “2+1” coalition (Velayati, Ghalibaf, and Haddad-Adel). There is still a possibility that they will withdraw in favor of Jalili. Velayati has already endorsed him.

Bagher Ghalibaf

One of the most vibrant and hard-boiled contenders is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.

Ghalibaf, 51, was also born in Mashhad to a Kurdish father. In Iran, contrary to what Western propaganda is saying, the national/ethnic issue is a minor one, so all the attempts to use it to spur turmoil have failed. Khamenei, for instance, is Azerbaijani.

Previously, Ghalibaf used to stand at the helm of the Iranian police. After that, he headed the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps and was the Iranian Army Commander. Since 2005, he has enjoyed skyrocketing approval ratings as the Mayor of Tehran.

After he announced he’d be running as an independent candidate, a video went viral on the Internet showing Ghalibaf order troops to open fire on student protesters at Tehran University in 2003. Another similar video soon followed.

Ghalibaf has gone hard on his political rival Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who won the 2005 elections. In an interview to Iranian news agency Tasnim he said, ‘Since when has the Holocaust become a leading issue of our foreign policy? Iran has never been against Judaism.’

That was his response to Ahmadinejad repeatedly raising this topic in public.

The truth of the matter is that Ahmadinejad has never spoken against Judaism or Jews and welcomed numerous rabbi delegations. Iran rejects Zionism as a fundamental ideology for the state of Israel, believing that it runs counter to Judaism.

Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel

Gholam Ali Haddad-Adel is unlikely to oppose the coalition.

Adel, 68, comes from Tehran. His daughter is married to the son of the Supreme Leader of Iran. In 2004-2008, he was the first secular Speaker in Parliament. He is a member of the Expediency Discernment Council (resolves differences between the Parliament and the Council of Guardians, headed by Rafsanjani) and the High Council of Cultural Revolution. Odds are that he will withdraw from the race to back the 2+1 coalition candidate.

With his degree in Physics (the most respected profession in Iran), he also holds a PhD in Philosophy from the Tehran University and is a prolific author. He served in various posts like Vice Minister of Culture and Vice Minister of Education.

(Editore’s note: Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel was a candidate at the time of the report’s publication, but he withdrew from Iran’s presidential race on Monday, semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

“With my withdrawal I ask the dear people to strictly observe the criteria of the Supreme Leader of the Revolution [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] when they vote for candidates,” Haddad-Adel said in a statement.)

Mohsen Rezaee

Mohsen Rezaee’s chances to win remain slim, in spite of his revolutionary past.

Rezaee is 58 and comes from Khuzestan. He was born into a semi-nomadic family of Lurs – a Persian ethnic group living in the Southwestern Zagros Mountains.

Shortly after the war with Iraq began, at the age of 27 he became the youngest commander to lead the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, when his predecessor was killed in a terrorist attack. A hero of the war, he resigned from his post in 1981. For several years, he worked as Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council.

Before the Revolution, he studied engineering at the Iran University of Science and Technology. In 2001, he earned a PhD in Economics.

In 2006, Argentina issued an arrest warrant for Rezaee and six more Iranians in connection with a  1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos-Aires. Rezaee’s son, Ahmad, defected to the United States and reportedly told officials that his father was behind the attack. Argentina has never asked Iran to extradite Rezaee.

This invalidates his presidential bid: in spite of his enormous popularity, a future president cannot be blacklisted by the Interpol or face a risk of arrest abroad.

Hassan Rouhani

The reformists have promised to unite behind one presidential nominee by June 8. As Aytollah Rafsandjani is no longer running for office, there are three possible candidates left.

Hassan Rouhani is considered to be the conservatives’ main rival, but he is a cleric and as such will not be able to provide serious competition.

 

Hassan Rouhani is 64. He was born in Sorkheh. He used to be a member of the Assembly of Experts, as well as the Expediency Council and the Supreme National Security Council.  He has been the head of the Center for Strategic Research since 1992.  He also took part in negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear program.

He is an independent candidate, but the reformist leaders, former president Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, have supported his bid.

During the debates on the economic situation he raised the unemployment issue, saying there are 3 million unemployed people in Iran, 800,000 of whom hold college degrees.

Last week, during Rouhani’s campaign rally in Jamaran Mosque, several of his supporters were arrested. Saeedollah Badashti, the head of the youth branch of Rouhani’s followers, and others were arrested for chanting slogans in support of Mirhossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi – the opposition candidates who led demonstrations after 2009 presidential election. Both of them are currently under house arrest.

“With your support, we will open all the locks which have been fastened upon people’s lives during the past eight years. You, dear students and heroic youth, are the ones who support economic recovery and improving living standards. We will restore our country’s dignity,” Rouhani said.

Mohammad Reza Aref

Mohammad Reza Aref is 61. He was born in Yazd. He was Vice-President under Khatami, from 2001 to 2005. He is an electrical engineer and a professor at the University of Tehran and Sharif University of technology.  Currently Mohammad Reza Aref is a member of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution and the Expediency Discernment Council.

The polls show that Aref could become a successful candidate, but since the key reformist politicians have supported Rouhani he is likely to withdraw from the race.

During the debates Aref blamed Ahmadinejad for the country’s economic and political problems. He is in favor of privatization, which, in his view, is the only way to ensure economic growth. He hasn’t stop at criticizing Ahmadinejad, however, and proceeded to say that all of Iran’s problems are the conservatives’ fault. Nevertheless, he promised that as president, he would not tolerate criticism towards his predecessors, i.e. Ahmadinejad, Khatami, Mousavi and Rafsanjani.

The least known candidate is Mohammad Gharazi, who is also likely to withdraw from the race.

During a press conference before the debates Gharazi said, “I have no money or campaign managers, but I have an anti-inflation strategy”.

Gharazi is in Rafsanjani’s circle – he was Minister of Communication under Rafsanjani and Minister of Petroleum under Mousavi. He hadn’t been very politically active, so his bid for presidency was quite unexpected, and quite unexpectedly approved.

Out of 75 million Iranians, just over 50 million have a right to vote in the upcoming presidential election that will be held on Friday, June 14. Polling stations have been set up in schools, mosques and colleges. All the candidates will have their observers at every polling station.

Nadezhda Kevorkova is a war correspondent who has covered the events of the Arab Spring, military and religious conflicts around the world, and the anti-globalization movement.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.