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By International Energy Agency‌

25 August, 2013

@ Iea.org

In 90 minutes, enough sunlight strikes the earth to provide the entire planet’s energy needs for one year. While solar energy is abundant, it represents a tiny fraction of the world’s current energy mix. But this is changing rapidly and is being driven by global action to improve energy access and supply security, and to mitigate climate change.

Around the world, countries and companies are investing in solar generation capacity on an unprecedented scale, and, as a consequence, costs continue to fall and technologies improve. This publication gives an authoritative view of these technologies and market trends, in both advanced and developing economies, while providing examples of the best and most advanced practices. It also provides a unique guide for policy makers, industry representatives and concerned stakeholders on how best to use, combine and successfully promote the major categories of solar energy: solar heating and cooling, photovoltaic and solar thermal electricity, as well as solar fuels.

Finally, in analysing the likely evolution of electricity and energy-consuming sectors – buildings, industry and transport – it explores the leading role solar energy could play in the long-term future of our energy system.

By Taylor Luck

25 August, 2013

@ TheWashingtonPost

MAFRAQ, Jordan — Just 16 years old, Mohammed Hamad was heading to war.

The lanky Syrian teenager was joining what United Nations officials warn might be the start of a flood of underage fighters enlisting in rebel ranks. About half of the 200 new recruits who board buses each week to Syria from Jordan’s sprawling Zaatari refu­gee camp are under 18, U.N. officials at the camp estimate.

Hamad said it was his duty to “fight in the name of God to take back the country’’ from government forces.

“If my generation doesn’t take up arms, the revolution will be lost,’’ he said, shortly before boarding a bus for the border on a three-day journey to join rebel forces on the outskirts of his home village in southern Syria.

The flow of fresh troops has helped the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army replenish ranks rapidly diminished by a series of recent losses.

But it also has prompted unease from U.N. officials, who in an internal report this month warned of growing “recruitment by armed groups, including of under-aged refugees” in Zaatari and across the region, indicating that the rebels may no longer be honoring a pledge to bar fighters younger than 17.

“We are concerned by reports that some groups may be attempting to use Zaatari as a recruitment center, and we are doing everything in our power to make sure it stays a refugee camp and not a military camp,” Andrew Harper, the U.N. refugee agency’s representative in Jordan, said in an interview.

After more than two years of conflict that has already claimed more than 100,000 lives, some rebel commanders defend the use of teenage fighters as inevitable.

“Many of these young men’s fathers and older brothers have died before them,” said Abu Diyaa al-Hourani, commander of a Free Syrian Army battalion outside the Syrian border town of Sheikh al-Maskin. He said that Syrians as young as 15 serve in his 800-man unit, whose average age has plunged to 19, down from 25 not long ago.

“It is only natural for the next generation to carry on the fight,” he said.

Conscription in the Syrian army is compulsory for all males once they reach the age of 18, according to the military.

At the camp, rebel officials say that theirs remains an all-volunteer force and that prospective recruits are carefully vetted. But the officials acknowledged that verifying birth dates may be all but impossible in camps where few refugees have access to birth documents.

“At the end of the day, if they can carry a gun and are willing to fight, who are we to say they can’t?” said Ayman al-Hariri, a member of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella opposition group, who coordinates repatriation from Zaatari, home to more than 100,000 Syrians.

The families of the young fighters receive monthly benefits from the Free Syrian Army, including salaries and even priority in the distribution of food aid and cash assistance within the camp, refugee officials said. In interviews, several parents — some of whom arrived in Zaatari with little more than the clothes on their backs — said those incentives had influenced their family’s decision.

Um Majed al-Homsawi, 45, said she allowed her 17-year-old son, Ahmed, to return to Syria to fight only after recruiters agreed to provide her family with a fully furnished trailer complete with air conditioning, an upgrade from their standard-issue U.N. canvas tent.

“My daughter has asthma and my husband has had three heart operations — we couldn’t survive in a tent in the desert,” Homsawi said as she placed a kettle atop a propane stove in her recently delivered trailer. “My son decided to join the Free Syrian Army not only to save his country, but to save his family.”

Rebel officials say Zaatari’s proximity to major fighting in southern Syria has transformed the camp into the major supplier of fighters for rebel battalions suffering an average loss of 50 fighters per week.

In the camp, rebel officials said, the Foreign Syrian Army carries out background checks, physical examinations, agility tests and “mental and emotional” evaluations of potential recruits.

On a recent day, Syrian National Coalition and Free Syrian Army representatives in a pair of unmarked prefabricated trailers received a long line of teenage camp residents seeking to enlist with rebel forces.

A group of young men whom the recruiters had rejected for being too young, too weak or otherwise unfit for battle gathered outside. But the young men said they remained determined to join the fight.

“I am going to wait here every day until the Free Syrian Army accepts me, or until Sept. 10,” said Ahmed Saeed, a resident of the city of Daraa whose 17-year-old brother left to fight alongside the Free Syrian Army last week.

“Then I will turn 15.”

By Barry Grey

24 August, 2013

@ WSWS.org

US officials have outlined a series of options that are being considered for a direct assault by American and allied military forces against Syria, using Wednesday’s alleged chemical weapons attack as the pretext. The stepped-up military preparations make clear that the events on Wednesday are part of a provocation to justify yet another neo-colonial war in the Middle East.

The growing threat of direct US intervention in the war for regime-change against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was also underscored Friday by President Obama, who used an interview on CNN to indicate he was seeking to marshal international support and some form of legal cover for a US-led attack.

The New York Times reported in a front-page article Friday that senior officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the intelligence agencies met with White House officials for three-and-a-half hours Thursday to outline possible military measures. The article cited unnamed officials, who said no decision was reached amid internal differences over whether to launch direct US military action in the coming days.

According to the Times, the military options discussed ranged from cruise missile strikes launched from US ships currently deployed in the Mediterranean Sea to a full-scale air war targeting civilian as well as military sites. The newspaper wrote: “The targets could include missile or artillery batteries that launch chemical munitions or nerve gas, as well as communications and support facilities. Symbols of the Assad government’s power—headquarters and government offices—also could be among the proposed targets, officials said.”

The Wall Street Journal, also in a front-page article, reported that the Pentagon on Thursday was “updating target lists for possible air strikes on a range of Syrian government and military installations… as part of contingency planning should President Barack Obama decide to act.”

The newspaper continued: “US military options include potential strikes on ‘regime targets,’ including Syrian government functions crucial to its war effort. In addition, options include strikes on Syrian military ‘delivery capabilities and systems’ that are either used directly in attacks with poison gas or to facilitate them, from command-and-control facilities to front-line artillery batteries, officials said.”

Other options being drawn up reportedly include “standoff” attacks that would not require sending US planes into Syrian air space, such as the missile attacks launched this year by Israel against Syrian targets.

“These options are being fine-tuned by military officials,” the Journal reported, “so that Mr. Obama can act in short order if a determination is made that Mr. Assad’s forces carried out chemical attacks and if Mr. Obama chooses to respond with force.”

The preparations for direct US military action come amidst a propaganda barrage by the government and the media using still unsubstantiated reports of a chemical weapons attack on towns to the east of Damascus to accuse the Syrian regime of war crimes and justify an escalation of the imperialist-led sectarian war that has already devastated the country.

Estimates of fatalities in the attack, all coming from opposition militias and officials or groups that support them, vary wildly from 130 to 2,000, and no evidence has been produced to implicate the Syrian government, which denies having played any role.

 

Nor has any US, French or British official or media commentator explained what the Syrian regime would have to gain from carrying out such an attack at this time. The government has in recent weeks been dealing major military blows to the US-backed and US-armed opposition militias, including the Al Qaeda-linked Al Nusra Front, and this week launched an offensive to retake the Damascus suburbs, which are currently under the control of Al Nusra.

Moreover, the alleged chemical attack occurred just days after the arrival of a United Nations inspection team, invited by Syria to investigate previous alleged chemical attacks. Why would the regime carry out a chemical attack only a few miles from the capital, where the UN inspections team is based?

The so-called “rebels,” on the other hand, would have ample reason to carry out a provocation, under conditions where they face being driven from their sanctuaries near the capital and are locked in a bitter fight with local Kurdish militias. The Al Qaeda cutthroats of Al Nusra are eminently capable of killing scores or even hundreds of civilians to promote their reactionary agenda.

Opposition militias have boasted of possessing chemical weapons and being prepared to use them, and last May Turkish media reported the arrest of Syrian “rebels” holding sarin nerve gas. Also in May, UN official Carla Del Ponte reported that there was “strong, concrete” evidence that sarin had been used by Western-backed forces.

Obama simply ignored these facts and in June announced, without providing any proof, that the US had concluded the Syrian regime had used chemical weapons. This was used as the pretext to announcing the direct US arming of the so-called “rebels.”

For the US, a major escalation in Syria could, it is argued, salvage its flagging war to topple the Assad regime, the only Arab ally of Iran, and install a puppet regime that would sign onto a US-led war against Tehran. Washington considers the Iranian regime an obstacle to its drive to establish unchallenged US hegemony in the oil-rich Middle East.

Such are the real calculations behind the hypocritical blather about human rights and protecting civilians. Another advantage of an escalation in Syria is the potential to distract public attention from the ongoing and undeniable mass killing being carried out by the US-backed military junta in Egypt. No US official or media outlet is demanding US military action to protect civilian protesters being murdered in Egypt, which only demonstrates the double-standard employed by US imperialism when it comes to “human rights.” Such things apply only to regimes the US wants to remove, not to those it backs.

The New York Times on Friday joined the media campaign for stepped-up war in Syria, writing in an editorial that “the United States and other major powers will almost certainly have to respond much more aggressively than they have so far” if the deaths outside of Damascus “prove to be the work” of the Assad regime.

In his CNN interview, conducted Thursday and broadcast Friday morning, Obama called the alleged chemical attack a “big event of grave concern.” He stressed Washington’s demand, which has been taken up by US allies Britain and France and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, that the Syrian government allow the UN inspection team immediate access to the area where the attack reportedly occurred.

This demand, which ignores the fact that the East Ghouta area is still controlled by Al Nusra, appears to be designed to create a pretext for military escalation. “We don’t expect cooperation,” Obama said of the Assad regime, “given their past history.”

It remains to be seen whether Damascus will agree to this demand, which has been seconded by its main international ally, Russia. Assad has good reason to fear a trap and frame-up, given the role of the UN in sanctioning and participating in every imperialist war of aggression from Afghanistan to Iraq to Libya.

While arguing for a degree of caution, Obama proceeded to outline a case for direct US military intervention, stating, “Then that starts getting to some core national interests that the United States has, both in terms of making sure that weapons of mass destruction are not proliferating as well as needing to protect our allies, our bases in the region.”

He further indicated a desire to rally the support of Washington’s allies in Europe and the Middle East behind a US-led attack on Syria as well as concern over providing a legal fig leaf for such a move. “If the US goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear evidence that can he presented,” he said, “then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it, do we have the coalition to make it work…”

Meanwhile, the drumbeat for war was stepped up Friday by both American and British officials. Obama administration officials said that US intelligence had detected activity at Syrian chemical weapons sites before Wednesday’s alleged attack. The unnamed officials said US intelligence agencies were “now leaning to the conclusion that Syria did use chemical weapons.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague in a statement on television said the chances the Syrian opposition was responsible for the attack were “vanishingly small.” He continued, “We do believe this is a chemical attack by the Assad regime on a large scale,” and added that “we don’t rule out any option for the future.”

Russian officials continued to call the alleged chemical attack a provocation carried out by the opposition. The Russian ambassador to Lebanon, Alexander Zasypkin, was quoted by the official Syrian news agency, SANA, as saying, “I’d like to remind that the issue of chemical weapons should not be exploited for serving other goals as was the case in Iraq.”

The Russia Foreign Ministry declared, “More new evidence is starting to emerge that this criminal act was clearly provocative… On the internet, in particular, reports are circulating that news of the incident carrying accusations against government troops was published several hours before the so-called attack. So, this was a pre-planned action.”

Even in advance of any open US military attack, US involvement in the fighting in Syria is increasing. Euronews.com on Thursday cited separate French and Israeli reports that Jordanian, Israeli and American commandos are heading up hundreds of Syrian rebels they have trained in a drive on Damascus. “The reports claim a force of some 300 men crossed into Syria from Jordan on August 17, with a second group crossing on the 19th” the web site reported.

It continued: “Analysts say this is stage one of the US strategy, training and leading in the field handpicked members of the Free Syrian Army to carve out a southern buffer zone along the Jordanian and Israeli border within which rebel forces can be trained and based.”

The US-instigated and backed sectarian civil war in Syria continues to stoke up sectarian conflicts across the entire region. On Friday, two car bombs exploded in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, killing 42 people and wounding hundreds more. The bombs targeted the Sunni population and follow a series of bomb attacks against the Lebanese Shiite-dominated Hezbollah movement.

In addition, Israeli warplanes on Friday struck a so-called “terror site” between Beirut and Sidon. It was the first Israeli air raid on the area since the 2006 Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon.

The mounting provocations and war preparations against the Assad regime threaten to unleash a far wider and more bloody war across the Middle East—one that could bring the US into direct conflict with Russia and China.

By Greg Palast, Vice Magazine

24 August 13

@ readersupportednews.org

When a little birdie dropped the End Game memo through my window, its content was so explosive, so sick and plain evil, I just couldn’t believe it.

The Memo confirmed every conspiracy freak’s fantasy: that in the late 1990s, the top US Treasury officials secretly conspired with a small cabal of banker big-shots to rip apart financial regulation across the planet. When you see 26.3 percent unemployment in Spain, desperation and hunger in Greece, riots in Indonesia and Detroit in bankruptcy, go back to this End Game memo, the genesis of the blood and tears.

The Treasury official playing the bankers’ secret End Game was Larry Summers. Today, Summers is Barack Obama’s leading choice for Chairman of the US Federal Reserve, the world’s central bank. If the confidential memo is authentic, then Summers shouldn’t be serving on the Fed, he should be serving hard time in some dungeon reserved for the criminally insane of the finance world.

The memo is authentic.

I had to fly to Geneva to get confirmation and wangle a meeting with the Secretary General of the World Trade Organisation, Pascal Lamy. Lamy, the Generalissimo of Globalisation, told me,

“The WTO was not created as some dark cabal of multinationals secretly cooking plots against the people… We don’t have cigar-smoking, rich, crazy bankers negotiating.”

Then I showed him the memo.

It begins with Larry Summers’ flunky, Timothy Geithner, reminding his boss to call the Bank bigshots to order their lobbyist armies to march:

“As we enter the end-game of the WTO financial services negotiations, I believe it would be a good idea for you to touch base with the CEOs…”

To avoid Summers having to call his office to get the phone numbers (which, under US law, would have to appear on public logs), Geithner listed the private lines of what were then the five most powerful CEOs on the planet. And here they are:

Goldman Sachs: John Corzine (212)902-8281

Merrill Lynch: David Kamanski (212)449-6868

Bank of America: David Coulter (415)622-2255

Citibank: John Reed (212)559-2732

Chase Manhattan: Walter Shipley (212)270-1380

Lamy was right: They don’t smoke cigars. Go ahead and dial them. I did, and sure enough, got a cheery personal hello from Reed – cheery until I revealed I wasn’t Larry Summers. (Note: The other numbers were swiftly disconnected. And Corzine can’t be reached while he faces criminal charges.)

It’s not the little cabal of confabs held by Summers and the banksters that’s so troubling. The horror is in the purpose of the “end game” itself.

Let me explain:

The year was 1997. US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was pushing hard to de-regulate banks. That required, first, repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act to dismantle the barrier between commercial banks and investment banks. It was like replacing bank vaults with roulette wheels.

Second, the banks wanted the right to play a new high-risk game: “derivatives trading”. JP Morgan alone would soon carry $88 trillion of these pseudo-securities on its books as “assets”.

Deputy Treasury Secretary Summers (soon to replace Rubin as Secretary) body-blocked any attempt to control derivatives.

But what was the use of turning US banks into derivatives casinos if money would flee to nations with safer banking laws?

The answer conceived by the Big Bank Five: eliminate controls on banks in every nation on the planet – in one single move. It was as brilliant as it was insanely dangerous.

How could they pull off this mad caper? The bankers’ and Summers’ game was to use the Financial Services Agreement (or FSA), an abstruse and benign addendum to the international trade agreements policed by the World Trade Organisation.

Until the bankers began their play, the WTO agreements dealt simply with trade in goods – that is, my cars for your bananas. The new rules devised by Summers and the banks would force all nations to accept trade in “bads” – toxic assets like financial derivatives.

Until the bankers’ re-draft of the FSA, each nation controlled and chartered the banks within their own borders. The new rules of the game would force every nation to open their markets to Citibank, JP Morgan and their derivatives “products”.

And all 156 nations in the WTO would have to smash down their own Glass-Steagall divisions between commercial savings banks and the investment banks that gamble with derivatives.

The job of turning the FSA into the bankers’ battering ram was given to Geithner, who was named Ambassador to the World Trade Organisation.

Bankers Go Bananas

Why in the world would any nation agree to let its banking system be boarded and seized by financial pirates like JP Morgan?

The answer, in the case of Ecuador, was bananas. Ecuador was truly a banana republic. The yellow fruit was that nation’s life-and-death source of hard currency. If it refused to sign the new FSA, Ecuador could feed its bananas to the monkeys and go back into bankruptcy. Ecuador signed.

And so on – with every single nation bullied into signing.

Every nation but one, I should say. Brazil’s new President, Inacio Lula da Silva, refused. In retaliation, Brazil was threatened with a virtual embargo of its products by the European Union’s Trade Commissioner, one Peter Mandelson, according to another confidential memo I got my hands on. But Lula’s refusenik stance paid off for Brazil which, alone among Western nations, survived and thrived during the 2007-9 bank crisis.

China signed – but got its pound of flesh in return. It opened its banking sector a crack in return for access and control of the US auto parts and other markets. (Swiftly, two million US jobs shifted to China.)

The new FSA pulled the lid off the Pandora’s box of worldwide derivatives trade. Among the notorious transactions legalised: Goldman Sachs (where Treasury Secretary Rubin had been co-chairman) worked a secret euro-derivatives swap with Greece which, ultimately, destroyed that nation. Ecuador, its own banking sector de-regulated and demolished, exploded into riots. Argentina had to sell off its oil companies (to the Spanish) and water systems (to Enron) while its teachers hunted for food in garbage cans. Then, Bankers Gone Wild in the Eurozone dove head-first into derivatives pools without knowing how to swim – and the continent is now being sold off in tiny, cheap pieces to Germany.

Of course, it was not just threats that sold the FSA, but temptation as well. After all, every evil starts with one bite of an apple offered by a snake. The apple: the gleaming piles of lucre hidden in the FSA for local elites. The snake was named Larry.

Does all this evil and pain flow from a single memo? Of course not: the evil was The Game itself, as played by the banker clique. The memo only revealed their game-plan for checkmate.

And the memo reveals a lot about Summers and Obama.

While billions of sorry souls are still hurting from worldwide banker-made disaster, Rubin and Summers didn’t do too badly. Rubin’s deregulation of banks had permitted the creation of a financial monstrosity called “Citigroup”. Within weeks of leaving office, Rubin was named director, then Chairman of Citigroup – which went bankrupt while managing to pay Rubin a total of $126 million.

Then Rubin took on another post: as key campaign benefactor to a young State Senator, Barack Obama. Only days after his election as President, Obama, at Rubin’s insistence, gave Summers the odd post of US “Economics Tsar” and made Geithner his Tsarina (that is, Secretary of Treasury). In 2010, Summers gave up his royalist robes to return to “consulting” for Citibank and other creatures of bank deregulation whose payments have raised Summers’ net worth by $31 million since the “end-game” memo.

That Obama would, at Robert Rubin’s demand, now choose Summers to run the Federal Reserve Board means that, unfortunately, we are far from the end of the game.

 

By Pepe Escobar

16 August, 2013

@ Russia Today

An Egyptian woman mourns over the body of her daughter wrapped in shrouds at a mosque in Cairo on August 15, 2013 (AFP Photo / Khaled Desouki)

Egypt’s ‘bloodbath that is not a bloodbath’ has shown that the forces of hardcore suppression and corruption reign supreme, while foreign interests – the House of Saud, Israel and the Pentagon – support the military’s merciless strategy.

Stop. Look at the photos. Linger on dozens of bodies lined up in a makeshift morgue. How can the appalling bloodbath in Egypt be justified? Take your pick. Either it’s Egypt’s remix of Tiananmen Square, or it’s the bloodbath that is not a bloodbath, conducted by the leaders of the coup that is not a coup, with the aim of fighting “terror”.

It certainly was not a crowd clearing operation – as in the New York Police Department ‘clearing’ Occupy Wall Street. As a Sky journalist tweeted, it was more like “a major military assault largely on unarmed civilians”, using everything from bulldozers to tear gas to snipers.

Thus the scores indiscriminately killed – with crossfire estimates ranging from the low hundreds (the “interim government”) to at least 4,500 (the Muslim Brotherhood), including at least four journalists and the 17-year-old Asmaa, daughter of top Muslim Brotherhood politician Mohamed El Beltagy.

El Beltagy, before being arrested, said, crucially, “If you do not take to the streets, he [as in General Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, the leader of the coup that is not a coup who appointed the interim government] will make the country like Syria.”

Wrong. Sisi is not Bashar al-Assad. Don’t expect passionate Western calls for “targeted strikes” or a no-fly zone over Egypt. He may be a military dictator killing his own people. But he’s one of “our” bastards.

What we say goes

Let’s look at the reactions. The lethargic poodles of the European Union called for “restraint” and described it all as “extremely worrying.” A White House statement said the interim government should “respect human rights” – which can be arguably interpreted as the Manning/Snowden/droning of Pakistan and Yemen school of human rights.

That pathetic excuse for a diplomat, NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, at least was blunt: “Egypt is an important partner for NATO through the Mediterranean Dialogue.” Translation: the only thing we really care about is that those Arabs do as we say.

Stripped of all rhetoric – indignant or otherwise – the key point is that Washington won’t cut its $1.3 billion annual aid to Sisi’s army no matter what. Wily Sisi has declared a “war on terror”. The Pentagon is behind it. And the Obama administration is tagging along – reluctantly or not.

Now let’s see who’s in revolt. Predictably, Qatar condemned it; after all Qatar was bankrolling the Morsi presidency. The Islamic Action Front, the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Jordan, encouraged Egyptians to keep protesting to “thwart the conspiracy” by the former regime – as in Mubarakists without Mubarak.

Turkey – which also supports the Muslim Brotherhood – urged the UN Security Council and the Arab League to act quickly to stop a “massacre”; as if the UN and the Saudi-controlled Arab League would interrupt their three-hour-long expense account lunches to do anything.

Iran – correctly – warned of the risk of civil war. That does not mean that Tehran is blindly supporting the Muslim Brotherhood – especially after Morsi had incited Egyptians to join a jihad against Assad in Syria. What Tehran has noted is that the civil war is already on.

Let’s aim for the kill

“Byzantine” does not even begin to explain the blame game. The bloodbath that is not a bloodbath happened as the Sisi-appointed “government” had promised it would engage in a military-supported “transition” that would be politically all-inclusive.

Yet, fed up with six weeks of protests denouncing the “coup that is not a coup,” the interim government changed the narrative and decided to take no prisoners.

According to the best informed Egyptian media analyses, Deputy Prime Minister Ziad Baha Eldin and Vice President for foreign affairs Mohamed ElBaradei wanted to go soft against the protesters, while Interior Minister Gen. Mohammad Ibrahim Mustafa and the Defense Minister – Sisi himself – wanted to go medieval.

The first step was to pre-emptively blame the Muslim Brotherhood for the bloodshed – just as the Muslim Brotherhood blamed Jemaah Islamiyah for deploying Kalashnikovs and burning churches and police stations.

A key reason to launch the “bloodbath that is not a bloodbath” this Wednesday was an attempt by the Muslim Brotherhood to march on the perennially dreaded Interior Ministry. Hardcore Ibrahim Mustafa would have none of it.

Sisi’s minions appointed 25 provincial governors, of which 19 are generals, in perfect timing to “reward” the top military echelon and thus solidify the Egyptian “deep state”, or actually police state. And to crown the “bloodbath that is not a bloodbath,” Sisi’s minions declared martial law for a month. Under these circumstances, the resignation of Western darling ElBaradei won’t make Sisi lose any sleep.

The original spirit of Tahrir Square is now dead and buried , as a Yemeni miraculously not targeted by Obama’s drones, Nobel Peace Prize winner Tawakkul Karman, pointed out.

The key question is who profits from a hyper-polarized Egypt, with a civil war pitting the well-organized, fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood against the military-controlled “deep state”.

Both options are equally repulsive (not to mention incompetent). Yet the local winners are easily identifiable: the counter-revolution, as in the fulool – diehard Mubarakists – a bunch of corrupt oligarchs, and most of all the deep state itself.

Hardcore repression rules. Corruption rules. And foreign domination rules (as in Saudi Arabia, who’s now paying most of the bills, alongside the UAE).

Internationally, the big winners are Saudi Arabia (displacing Qatar), Israel (because the Egyptian army is even more docile than the Brotherhood), and – who else – the Pentagon, the Egyptian army’s pimp. Nowhere in the Milky Way this House of Saud/Israel/Pentagon axis can be spun as “good for the Egyptian people”.

Sheikh Al-Torture is our man

A quick recap is in order. In 2011, the Obama administration never said, “Mubarak must go” until the last minute. Hilary Clinton wanted a “transition” led by CIA asset and spy chief Omar Suleiman – widely known in Tahrir Square as “Sheikh al-Torture”.

Then a Washington inside joke was that the Obama administration had gleefully become a Muslim Brotherhood cheerleader (allied with Qatar). Now, like a yo-yo, the Obama administration is weighing on how to spin the new narrative – the ‘loyal’ Egyptian army courageously wiping out the “terrorist” Muslim Brotherhood to “protect the revolution.”

There was never any revolution to begin with; the head of the snake (Mubarak) was gone, but the snake remained alive and kicking. Now it’s met the new snake, same as the old snake. Additionally, it’s so easy to sell to the uninformed galleries the Muslim Brotherhood = al-Qaeda equation.

Pentagon supremo Chuck Hagel was glued on the phone with Sisi as the July 3 “coup that is not a coup” was taking place. Pentagon spin would want us to believe that Sisi promised Hagel he would be on top of things in a heartbeat. Virtually 100% of the Beltway agreed. Thus the official Washington spin of “coup that is not a coup.” Tim Kaine from Virginia, at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, even extolled those model democracies, the UAE and Jordan, in their enthusiasm for the “coup that is not a coup.”

It’s essential to outline the five countries that have explicitly endorsed the “coup that is not a coup.” Four of them are GCC petro-monarchies (members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, also known as Gulf Counter-Revolution Club); Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Bahrain. And the fifth is that little monarchy, Jordan, the GCC wants to annex to the Gulf.

Even more pathetic than Egypt’s so-called liberals, some leftists, some Nasserists and assorted progressives defending Sisi’s bloodlust has been the volte-face of Mahmoud Badr, the founder of Tamarrod – the movement that spearheaded the massive demonstrations that led to Morsi’s ouster. In 2012, he blasted Saudi Arabia. After the coup, he prostrated himself in their honor. At least he knows who’s paying the bills.

And then there’s Ahmed al-Tayyeb, the Grand Imam of al-Azhar, the Vatican of Sunni Islam. He said, “Al-Azhar…did not know about the methods used for the dispersal of the protests except through media channels.” Nonsense; he has repeatedly praised Sisi.

Feel free to adore my eyelashes

There’s no other way of saying it; from Washington’s point of view, Arabs can kill each other to Kingdom Come, be it Sunnis against Shiites, jihadis against secularists, peasants against urbanites, and Egyptians against Egyptians. The only thing that matters is the Camp David agreements; and nobody is allowed to antagonize Israel.

So it’s fitting that Sisi’s minions in boots asked Israel to keep their drones near the border, as they need to pursue their “war on terror” in the Sinai. For all practical purposes, Israel runs the Sinai.

But then there’s the cancellation of a delivery of F-16s to Sisi’s army. In real life, every US weapons sale across the Middle East has to be “cleared” with Israel. So a case can be made that Israel – for the moment – is not exactly sure what Sisi is really up to.

It’s quite instructive to read what Sisi thinks of “democracy” – as demonstrated when he was at the US War College. He’s essentially an Islamist – but most of all he craves power. And the MB is standing in his way. So they have to be disposed of.

Sisi’s “war on terror” is arguably a roaring success as a PR stunt to legitimize his run for a popular mandate. He’s trying to pose as the new Nasser. He’s Sisi the Savior, surrounded by a bunch of Sisi groupies. A columnist wrote in Al-Masry Al-Youm that Sisi doesn’t even need to issue an order; it’s enough to “just flutter his eyelashes”. The Sisi-for-president campaign is already on.

Anyone familiar with US-propped 1970s tin-pot Latin American dictators is able to spot one. This is no Savior. This is no more than an Al-Sisi-nator – the vainglorious tin-pot ruler of what my colleague Spengler bluntly defined as a banana republic without the bananas.

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 Countercurrents.org

14 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Around 40,000 secularists rallied in Tunis on August 13, 2013 to call for the departure of the Islamist-led ruling coalition.

The rally was organized to celebrate Tunisia’s Women’s Day marking the 57th anniversary of the Code of Personal Status, the country’s cornerstone women’s rights legislation. This legislation, enacted by Habib Bourguiba, was most advanced in the Arab world. Now, the Islamists are trying to cut it down.

The Islamists also organized a women’s demonstration in Tunis, the capital city.

Media reports from Tunisia said:

Amidst a severe economic downturn, a suspension of parliament and a surge in Muslim militant attacks, Tunisia’s government, led by the Islamist party Ennahda, is grappling with secularists’ calls for its resignation.

“Go, Go Ennahda … the people want to bring down the regime,” chanted the crowd of mainly female secularist protesters, in one of the largest opposition protests to be held in front of parliament in Bardo Square. “Tunisian women today are telling the Islamists ‘Get out, we want a modern government’,” said a protester named Sonia.

The secularists’ march was flooded with flags and images of assassinated opposition politicians Mohamed Brahmi and Chokri Belaid.

The march moved slowly towards the National Constituent Assembly building in Bardo along a crowded street. Chants include “The Tunisian woman is not Ennahdhawi,” an adjective coming from Ennahdha.

As the secularists’ march started from Bab Saadoun, crowds grew quickly. They called for the fall of Ennahdha.

A few kilometers away, several thousand Islamists had a rally. The Islamists marched to put on a show of support for Ennahda.

A speaker at the Ennahdha rally, Fadhila Snoussi, a spokesperson for the National League for the Tunisian Family, has said “The Tunisian woman became free only after the revolution.”

Islamists’ support drops

Citing a Gallup poll result a report by UPI on August 13, 2013 said:

Confidence in Tunisia’s Islamist-led government has dropped from 56 percent in March 2012 to 32 percent in May.

The polling by the Gallup organization revealed an even bigger drop in approval of the country’s leadership during the same period. It went from 60 percent in 2012 to 23 percent in May 2013.

Fifty-nine percent of Tunisians polled by Gallup reported they are living comfortably while 41 percent indicated they are having difficulty just getting by.

Gallup said it found a link between the current political crisis and Tunisia’s deteriorating labor market.

Seventy-one percent of Tunisians reported it was a bad time to find a job locally.

Gallup’s polling of 1,053 adult Tunisians was conducted May 20-30 by face-to-face interviews. The poll carried a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

 

14 August, 2013

The Palestinian Christian Initiative (Kairos Palestine) issued a statement strongly denouncing the Israel attempts to recruit Arab Palestinian Christians, in historic Palestine to the Israeli military that occupies their people.

The statement came in response to the Israeli decision to form a joint committee of Palestinian Christians, and the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, with the aim to encourage and act on recurring young Arab Christians in the Israeli army.

Kairos stated that the officials who are encouraging enlistment in the occupation army are conducting provocative actions that harm Christian Churches, national interests and the Christians themselves.

“Those who call for recruiting Christians to the occupation army do not represent us, do not represent our Churches, and do not represent the Christians”, Kairos said, “It seems that some of those who have been deceived chose a wrong path that does not serve our interests and faith as Arab Christians”.

It added that trying to recruit the Christians is immoral, and harms the Palestinian Christian identity in the Holy Land.

“We need to be united, we need to protect our national identity, only our Arab, Palestinian, identity will be able to protect us, and protect our interests”, Kairos said, “Our choice will not be sectarian, but will only be national unity between all Palestinians regardless of their beliefs and faith”.

The statement came after Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ordered the formation of a committee to recruit Arab Palestinian Christians in the country to the Israeli military.

The decision was made after Netanyahu held a meeting on Monday with Father Jubrael Naddaf, known for his stances encouraging enlistment in the Israeli military despite massive objections the Palestinian Christian community in the country.

When Kairos Palestine was established in December of 2009, it published its mission statement calling for people, justice and equality, expressed it rejection to the Israeli occupation, all sorts of apartheid in the world, and called for justice and equality.

This document (Kairos) is the Christian Palestinians’ word to the world about what is happening in Palestine. It is written at this time when we wanted to see the Glory of the grace of God in this land and in the sufferings of its people. In this spirit the document requests the international community to stand by the Palestinian people who have faced oppression, displacement, suffering and clear apartheid for more than six decades.

The suffering continues while the international community silently looks on at the occupying State, Israel. Our word is a cry of hope, with love, prayer and faith in God. We address it first of all to ourselves and then to all the churches and Christians in the world, asking them to stand against injustice and apartheid, urging them to work for a just peace in our region, calling on them to revisit theologies that justify crimes perpetrated against our people and the dispossession of the land.

In this historic document, we Palestinian Christians declare that the military occupation of our land is a sin against God and humanity, and that any theology that legitimizes the occupation is far from Christian teachings because true Christian theology is a theology of love and solidarity with the oppressed, a call to justice and equality among peoples.

This document did not come about spontaneously, and it is not the result of a coincidence. It is not a theoretical theological study or a policy paper, but is rather a document of faith and work. Its importance stems from the sincere expression of the concerns of the people and their view of this moment in history we are living through.

It seeks to be prophetic in addressing things as they are without equivocation and with boldness, in addition it puts forward ending the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land and all forms of discrimination as the solution that will lead to a just and lasting peace.

The document also demands that all peoples, political leaders and decision-makers put pressure on Israel and take legal measures in order to oblige its government to put an end to its oppression and disregard for the international law. The document also holds a clear position that non-violent resistance to this injustice is a right and duty for all Palestinians including Christians.

The initiators of this document have been working on it for more than a year, in prayer and discussion, guided by their faith in God and their love for their people, accepting advice from many friends: Palestinians, Arabs and those from the wider international community. We are grateful to our friends for their solidarity with us.

Source: http://www.kairospalestine.ps/?q=node/40

 

 

By Maulana Wahiduddin Khan

14 August, 2013

@ http://www.newageislam.com

There is much talk these days about different kinds of activism. One hears of political activism, social activism, community activism, media activism, judicial activism, and so on. A section of Muslim religious leaders have launched a new form of activism of their own—what can be called ‘fatwa activism’. They think that by issuing a flurry of Fatwas they can reform Muslim society. So, one hears of scores of Fatwas against un-Islamic dress, Fatwas against women being present at certain religious places, Fatwas calling for the killing of people accused of traducing the Prophet, Fatwas demanding the banning of books by controversial authors, Fatwas declaring some persons as apostates and insisting on their social boycott, Fatwas announcing television or other things to be Haram or forbidden, Fatwas declaring banking to be un-Islamic and so on. Fatwas of these sorts have been issued in their thousands in recent years, but almost all of them have proved to be practically without any impact. They have not been able to produce the changes that they intended to.

In the modern period I know of just one instance where a Mufti refused to give a fatwa despite being asked to do so. I am of the opinion that this approach is the right one. This instance concerns a noted Indian Islamic scholar, Maulana Abdul Haq Haqqani, who died in 1831. He was the author of a commentary on the Quran. In his period, the British had replaced gold and silver coins with paper money. This new form of money appeared to be unacceptable according to the rules of traditional Fiqh or Muslim jurisprudence. The Maulana was asked to issue a fatwa on the matter to judge whether this was Islamically-acceptable or not. However, he declined to give the fatwa, and simply said, ‘My fatwa [in this regard] won’t work. Instead, the paper money will.’ In such matters, this is the correct Islamic approach to take.

The literal meaning of the word fatwa is ‘opinion’. A fatwa can take two forms. The first is in the form of a question asked to a Mufti by a person with a regard to a matter directly concerning himself or herself with the intention of gaining guidance thereby. For instance, a sportswoman asks a Mufti what he feels is an islamically- legitimate sports-dress for her. It is proper and appropriate for the Mufti to give a fatwa in response to this form of request.

The second way of eliciting a fatwa relates to a particular social evil in the wider society, regarding which an individual approaches a Mufti for a fatwa on his own. It is not proper for the Mufti to give a fatwa in response to this sort of question. If he does so, the fatwa is unlikely to have any positive role or influence in correcting the social ill that it seeks to address. Instead, it can turn out to be a cause for giving Islam a bad name. This has happened in numerous cases. To paraphrase the words of Maulana Abdul Haq Haqqani whom I referred to earlier, such Fatwas did not work and the social ills they sought to combat remained as before. Thus, scores of Fatwas have been delivered on a variety of social ills, against bida’t or wrongful innovations in religion, against polytheistic customs, against dowry, against television and cinema, against loudspeakers in mosques, against interest on bank deposits, against men shaving their beards, against wearing Western clothes, against English education and so on. But, needless to say, all these Fatwas proved to be of little or no effect.

According to what I have studied so far, only a person who has a question relating directly to himself or herself should approach a mufti for a fatwa. A Mufti should issue Fatwas only in such cases. A fatwa must not be asked or issued when the matter does not directly concern the person who requests it. For instance, if a person approaches a mufti, asking him if it is permissible to say prayers behind the imam of a particular mosque whose beard is short, it is not right for the mufti to issue a fatwa in this regard. To do so might well cause strife and chaos (Fitna).

The question then arises of what the proper Islamic method of social reform is. This proper method is one of persuasion and guidance, through writings and lectures, and not through delivering condemnatory Fatwas. People should be addressed in such a way that the advice given to them impresses itself in their hearts and they then recognize and act on that advice on their own. In today’s terms, this could be termed as ‘educational activism’. Islam’s approach to solving social ills is through this sort of educational activism, rather than ‘fatwa activism’.

A guiding principle in this matter is to be found in a narration which is contained in the Sahih al-Bukhari. According to this report, Hazrat Ayesha (r.a.) said that the Quranic verses that were revealed in the initial stages of Islam dealt with heaven and hell so that in this way people’s hearts would be softened enough to receive the Islamic message. Then, gradually, after people had developed adequate capacity to accept Divine laws, the Quranic commandments prohibiting adultery and the consumption of alcohol were revealed. Had these commandments been revealed in the initial stages of Islam, people may not have accepted them, and, instead, might have refused to give up adultery and consuming alcohol.

From this instance one can understand that general social reform cannot happen through delivering Fatwas against social ills. Rather, for this sort of work, people’s capacity and willingness to accept and act on divine guidance must first be developed. Only after this can religious laws be enforced. To issue orders, in the form of Fatwas, in the absence of developing people’s capacity to accept religious guidance is no solution at all. Often, it is not ignorance of religious rulings that causes social ills. Rather, the basic cause is the lack of the appropriate spirit among people.

This is why social reform cannot begin with the issuing of Fatwas. Rather, it has to begin with seeking to inculcate and promote the right spirit among people and to ignite their consciousness and their capacity and willingness to abide by the teachings of the faith. Only after this work has been sufficiently done should issues be explained to people using the language of the religious law. Without developing this inner spirit among people, seeking to cure social ills by issuing Fatwas from without would be of no use. This is putting the cart before the horse.

The only criterion for judging ‘fatwa activism’, or, for that matter, any other form of activism, is its efficacy in producing the hoped-for results. Only those methods of activism are worthwhile that actually succeed in achieving their goals. Action must always be result-oriented. The present-form of ‘fatwa activism’ must be seen and evaluated in the light of this basic principle.

This is a translation of Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s essay titled Fatwa Activism Ya Educational Activism? in his book Islam Aur Intihapasandi (‘Islam and Extremism’) (Positive Thinkers Forum, Bangalore, n.d., pp. 14-17)

URL: http://www.newageislam.com/spiritual-meditations/maulana-wahiduddin-khan/-fatwa-activism–versus–educational-activism-/d/13018

 

 

By Countercurrents.org

12 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Tunisia’s Tamarod (Rebel) movement has collected 1.6 million signatures demanding the dissolution of the country’s constituent assembly and resignation of the government. The Tamarod made this announcement on Sunday. The figure would amount to some 15 percent of the country’s population.

Media reports from Tunisia said:

Tamarod’s organizers said their aim was to gather two million signatures to press for the government’s resignation and to establish a new union government.

Meanwhile, Rached Ghannouchi, the head of Tunisia’s ruling Islamist party Ennahda, and Mustapha Ben Jaafar, speaker of the National Constituent Assembly, are to meet Houcine Abassi, the chief of the country’s most powerful trade union UGTT on the political crisis. The union made the announcement.

The union can paralyze the country with strike action.

The planned meeting comes after Ben Jaafar announced the suspension of the assembly’s work drawing up a new constitution while the Islamist-led government and the opposition hold talks on ending the political crisis. Ben Jaafar has proposed the UGTT as mediator for the talks. The union has called for the resignation of the Islamist-dominated cabinet and its replacement by a government of technocrats.

Ennahda has rejected the proposal so far.

Ghannouchi earlier had met the head of employers’ organization Utica, Wided Bouchamaoui. Utica too has called for the formation of a cabinet of technocrats.

At the same time, Tunisia’s Tamarod has informed five of its activists were on hunger strike in front of the constituent assembly to demand its dissolution and the resignation of the government.

Tunisia’s opposition coalition, made up of parties from across the political spectrum, has refused to meet Ennahda until a new government is formed.

Hundreds of opposition supporters have kept up protests every night in front of the assembly and on August 6, tens of thousands took part in demonstrations.

The opposition is hoping to raise the pressure on the government with a new demonstration on August 13 to mark the anniversary of the promulgation of the Personal Status Code in 1956 under Tunisia’s first president, Habib Bourguiba. The code gave Tunisians unequalled rights in the Arab world at the time, and the country’s ruling Islamists have regularly been accused of trying to roll them back.

Ennahda’s critics have blamed the Islamists for the rise of the ultra-conservative Salafist movement in the country since January 2011, whose violent actions are a threat to stability in the country.

By Anitha.S

12 August, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Darley sits alone in the small room of her Short Stay Home in Thiruvananthapuram, away from her own home by the side of the Neyyar river. Neyyar originating from the Agastyakoodam mountain in Southern Western Ghats has been desecrated by deforestation in the hills, dams and of late indiscriminate sand mining. Darley’s small home in Olathanni, 3 kms from the Neyyatinkara Municipality sits on a pinnacle as the river which changed course with sand mining has sunk 15- 20 feet below the land. Olathanni now has an added qualification as a village with the maximum number of points along the shore from which sand mining boats enter the dying river.

Darley grew up on the banks of the Neyyar when it had all the glory of a live flowing river.With bamboo and many native trees bordering its banks, the villagers depended on the pure water for irrigation, drinking and other needs. The wells were perennially full of water.Not so anymore. The wells in most areas have either dried up or water level has sunk along with capsizing of the well itself. The well with “purest and sweetest water” ( Darley’s own words) disappeared and she had to dig another one which is so deep that drawing water is a difficult task. Darley gives an account of the biodiversity in the sand bars that formed in the river- the trees and fresh water prawns and fish that she and her friends caught with their towels. The soft tapioca that grew in the low lying areas with rich alluvium brought down by the river waters as it flooded the banks every monsoon.

The sand mining started two decades back, initially as individual attempts for self use.Later on it became a concerted activity which soon became a law and order situation. There are now many laws and regulations as sand has become a main revenue for local bodies. According to Darley, new avenues for corruption and crime has sprung up with this. She narrates how sand mining, illicit brewing and abuse of women go hand in hand in the area with support from the Police and Revenue authorities.

Darley started noticing that the flow, depth and other characteristics of the river was changing rapidly. She started protesting slowly and then her voice gained momentum and volume. The authorities were amazed at the steadfastness and commitment with which Darley walked the offices with her innumerable complaints, submissions and reports. The sand mining mafia were irritated and intimidated by her presemce in their vicinity as a watch dog.They tried all the age old tricks to get her out of the way- stone pelting, verbal abuse, character assassinations, isolation and direct attack.Her house was looted, her dear pet dogs killed one by one, her cats kidnapped (!).But they did not dare touch her.When media with support of certain environmentalists and social workers in Neyyatinkara started coming in, there was momentary withdrawal but the mining did not stop.

An year back, Darley was incapacitated by an accident and was in the hospital for many months.She has been put under extreme pressure by her family, the sand miners and authorities to sell off the land and move away. Darley wants to live and die here as she is protected by the soul of her parents and the river. Her one woman fight to protect the land where she has her roots and the river has been in news for a long time. Though there are many cases for her and against her, there has been no concrete move to protect and regulate the sand mining.One wonders why when facts point out that mining cannot continue anymore. A scientific study done more than a decade ago recommended that the indiscriminate mining in Neyyar river for sand has to be legally controlled and banned. The combination of extractive activities going on here which include sand mining from the river bad along with rock, clay and red sand is spelling the death knell for the area. The sinking of the river bed along with erosion of the banks has taken away precious land all along the banks.

This year, the rains which lashed mercilessly eroded the narrow path leading to the Surrealist setting to Darley’s home. The walls of her home and the toilet was already on the verge of collapse. The slope of the land almost 20 feet higher than the river behind her home, which has been held by a bamboo clump and some trees gave way in the rains. This was the situation in which the Police has got Darley here to the city of Thiruvananthapuram to stay “ safe”. Away from the familiar home, the insecure state of which Darley has been seeking solution to all those in power for many years, Darley is lost. Years of verbal and physical abuse, days and months of isolation, negligence from relatives and friends, Darley has created a make- believe world of her own where negative forces and occult means is being used to annihilate her. But somewhere along the ramblings and hidden among the disconnected words and sentences, one could sense this bold lady’s ardent wish to see her Neyyar flow unfettered, liberated from the sand miners and greedy hands, spreading real prosperity and wealth to all. Darley says she will keep asking the questions about development and mining, about injustice and corruption till her last breath. That alone will take her close to the protection from her parents and the river.

Anitha.S in conversation with Darley in her Short Stay Home in Thiruvananthapuram along with Sonia George and Parvathy Binoy on 9.8.2013

(sarmaji1916@gmail.com)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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