Archives: Articles

Where America brings drones, the Chinese build roads. Al-Shabaab and co march in lockstep with this new imperialism
By John Pilger
9 October, 2013
@ The Guardian
Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world”, wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. Nothing has changed. The shopping mall massacre in Nairobi was a bloody facade behind which a full-scale invasion of Africa and a war in Asia are the great game.
The al-Shabaab shopping mall killers came from Somalia. If any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia. Sharing a language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. “When they are made to hate each other,” wrote a British colonial official, “good governance is assured.”
Today Somalia is a theme park of brutal, artificial divisions, long impoverished by World Bank and IMF “structural adjustment” programmes, and saturated with modern weapons – notably President Obama’s personal favourite, the drone. The one stable Somali government, the Islamic Courts, was “well received by the people in the areas it controlled”, reported the US Congressional Research Service, “[but] received negative press coverage, especially in the west”. Obama crushed it; and last January Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, presented her man to the world. “Somalia will remain grateful to the unwavering support from the United States government,” effused President Hassan Mohamud. “Thank you, America.”
The shopping mall atrocity was a response to this – just as the Twin Towers attack and the London bombings were explicit reactions to invasion and injustice. Once of little consequence, jihadism now marches in lockstep with the return of unfettered imperialism.
Since Nato reduced modern Libya to a Hobbesian state in 2011, the last obstacles to Africa have fallen. “Scrambles for energy, minerals and fertile land are likely to occur with increasingly intensity,” report Ministry of Defence planners. As “high numbers of civilian casualties” are predicted, “perceptions of moral legitimacy will be important for success”. Sensitive to the PR problem of invading a continent, the arms mammoth BAE Systems, together with Barclays Capital and BP, warns that “the government should define its international mission as managing risks on behalf of British citizens”. The cynicism is lethal.British governments are repeatedly warned, not least by the parliamentary intelligence and security committee, that foreign adventures beckon retaliation at home.
With minimal media interest, the US African Command (Africom) has deployed troops to 35 African countries, establishing a familiar network of authoritarian supplicants eager for bribes and armaments. In war games a “soldier to soldier” doctrine embeds US officers at every level of command from general to warrant officer. The British did this in India. It is as if Africa’s proud history of liberation, from Patrice Lumumba to Nelson Mandela, is consigned to oblivion by a new master’s black colonial elite – whose “historic mission”, warned Frantz Fanon half a century ago, is the subjugation of their own people in the cause of “a capitalism rampant though camouflaged”. The reference also fits the son of Africa in the White House.
For Obama, there is a more pressing cause – China. Africa is China’s success story. Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossil fuels. Nato’s bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers. More than jihadism or Iran, China is Washington’s obsession in Africa and beyond. This is a “policy” known as the “pivot to Asia”, whose threat of world war may be as great as any in the modern era.
This week’s meeting in Tokyo between John Kerry, the US secretary of state, Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, and their Japanese counterparts accelerated the prospect of war. Sixty per cent of US naval forces are to be based in Asia by 2020, aimed at China. Japan is re-arming rapidly under the rightwing government of Shinzo Abe, who came to power in December with a pledge to build a “new, strong military” and circumvent the “peace constitution”.
A US-Japanese anti-ballistic-missile system near Kyoto is directed at China. Using long-range Global Hawk drones the US has sharply increased its provocations in the East China and South China seas, where Japan and China dispute the ownership of the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands. Both countries now deploy advanced vertical take-off aircraft in Japan in preparation for a blitzkrieg.
On the Pacific island of Guam, from where B-52s attacked Vietnam, the biggest military buildup since the Indochina wars includes 9,000 US marines. In Australia this week an arms fair and military jamboree that diverted much of Sydney is in keeping with a government propaganda campaign to justify an unprecedented US military build-up from Perth to Darwin, aimed at China. The vast US base at Pine Gap near Alice Springs is, as Edward Snowden disclosed, a hub of US spying in the region and beyond; it is also critical to Obama’s worldwide assassinations by drone.
‘We have to inform the British to keep them on side,” McGeorge Bundy, an assistant US secretary of state, once said. “You in Australia are with us, come what may.” Australian forces have long played a mercenary role for Washington. However, China is Australia’s biggest trading partner and largely responsible for its evasion of the 2008 recession. Without China, there would be no minerals boom: no weekly mining return of up to a billion dollars.
The dangers this presents are rarely debated publicly in Australia, where Rupert Murdoch, the patron of the prime minister, Tony Abbott, controls 70% of the press. Occasionally, anxiety is expressed over the “choice” that the US wants Australia to make. A report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute warns that any US plan to strike at China would involve “blinding” Chinese surveillance, intelligence and command systems. This would “consequently increase the chances of Chinese nuclear pre-emption … and a series of miscalculations on both sides if Beijing perceives conventional attacks on its homeland as an attempt to disarm its nuclear capability”. In his address to the nation last month, Obama said: “What makes America different, what makes us exceptional, is that we are dedicated to act.”
John Pilger’s new film, Utopia, is released on 15 November.

Sectarian hatred is moving from Syria  into the mainstream  of Turkey’s political life. Patrick Cockburn explains the complex battle lines
By Patrick Cockburn
6 October 2013
@ The Independent
The poison of sectarian hatred is spreading to Turkey from Syria as a result of the Turkish government giving full support to militant Sunni Muslims in the Syrian civil war.
The Alevi, a long-persecuted Shia sect to which 10-20 million Turks belong, say they feel menaced by the government’s pro-Sunni stance in the Shia-Sunni struggle that is taking place across the Muslim world.
Nevzat Altun, an Alevi leader in the Gazi quarter in Istanbul, says: “People here are scared that if those who support sharia come to power in Syria, the same thing could happen in Turkey.” He says that the Alevi of Turkey feel sympathy for the Syrian Alawites, both communities holding similar, though distinct, Shia beliefs and the Alevi oppose Turkey’s support for rebels fighting to overthrow Syria’s Alawite-dominated government.
Sectarian faultlines between the Sunni majority and the Alevi, Turkey’s largest religious minority, have always existed but are becoming deeper, more embittered and openly expressed. Atilla Yeshilada, a political and economic commentator, says that “anything [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdogan says against the Alawites of Syria is full of sectarian innuendoes for the Alevi”.
Alawites who have fled to Turkey to escape the violence in Syria often find they are little safer after they have crossed the Turkish border. They say they dare not enter government-organised refugee camps because they are frightened of being attacked by the rebel Free Syrian Army as soon as it is discovered they are not Sunni.
Some Alawites have found their way to Istanbul where they are being looked after by the Alevi community. “A month ago we found Alawites wandering the streets of Istanbul and sleeping in parks where they earned a little money selling water and paper bags,” says Zaynal Odabashi, the head of the Pir Sultan Abdal Alevi cultural and religious centre in Gazi district where 180,000 out of a population of 520,000 are Alevi. He says that “we decided to take them in though the governor of Istanbul told us not to”, explaining that some 40 Syrian Alawite refugees are living in large tents at his centre alone and another 400 have been found places to sleep in houses nearby. The three million Syrian Arab Alawites may differ in religious practices from the Turkish Alevi, but they both follow core Shia beliefs such as reverence for the Twelve Imams. They both feel threatened by Sunni militants and know they are easily identifiable as even the poorest house has pictures of the Shia saints on the walls.
“They consider us as non-believers,” says Mr Odabashi, adding: “Of course, our people feel sympathy for the Alawites and we are against Turkey’s involvement in the war in Syria.”
Alawite refugees fed and housed by the Alevi tell grim tales of torture, disappearances and death. On a mat outside a big tent at the Pir Sultan centre lay an elderly looking man who said he is a Turkoman Alawite from Damascus whose district had been captured by the Free Syrian Army that held him and his 12-year-old daughter for up to 27 days.
His frightened eyes darted nervously around as he said his name was Ali Jabar and he was not sure of some details of what had happened to him because he had been blindfolded all the time he was held. His captivity began when there was a ring at his door at midnight and a voice said a neighbour needed to see him, but when he opened the door a man hit him on the head with his gun butt.
He was blindfolded by his captors whom he identified as the Free Syrian Army. They asked him if he believed in Bashar al-Assad and demanded he curse Imam Ali, but he had said: “No, not even if you cut my throat.”
They whipped him and set fire to a plastic bag so molten plastic dripped on to to his back. He rolled up his shirt to reveal half-healed whip marks and burns and took off his shoes to show where several of his toenails had been ripped out with pliers. He expected to be killed, but instead the men who held him threw him out of a car on a country road where he was found by a shepherd. He does not know what has happened to his daughter.
Ali Jabar later met other Alawite Turkomans who had fled from Aleppo and were sleeping in parks in Damascus. They managed to secure enough money to take 42 of them to Turkey in a bus, but they thought it was too dangerous for them to enter Turkish refugee camps. They finally reached Istanbul where they did not know where to go until the Alevi of Gazi offered to help them. Turkish government supporters deny or play down the connection between the Alevi and the Alawites but there is a common bond as both feel endangered by growing Sunni hostility to all Shia sects, regardless of their precise religious beliefs. Dogan Bermek, the president of the Alevi Foundation, a lobbying group mostly made up of better-off Alevi, asserts: “In Syria and in Turkey we are all the same Alevi. The differences between us are only regional because we have developed in different regions without contacts. We are on the same road though it has a thousand paths.”
How great is the danger of Sunni-Shia hostilities that have torn apart Iraq, Syria and Bahrain in the last decade erupting in Turkey? There are marked differences in religious observances between the Sunni majority and the Alevi who do not use mosques, but worship in some 3,000 prayer houses where men and women dance and sing during services. As a large Shia minority under the Ottoman Empire, the Alevi were persecuted and massacred as dissidents and potential sympathisers with the rival Shia Safavid empire in Iran. Oppression of the Alevi was much like that of Roman Catholics in Ireland by Britain from the 16th century on and it continued after the foundation of the modern Turkish state, with at least 8,000 Alevi Kurds of Dersim in the south-east being slaughtered in the late 1930s.
The Alevis became the bedrock of opposition movements in Turkey and make up much of the membership of leftist parties. In 1993 their spiritual leaders, intellectuals and artists held a festival in the eastern city of Sivas to celebrate a 15th-century poet. Trapped in a hotel by a mob of thousands of Sunnis protesting, among other  things, at the presence of the Turkish translator of Salman Rushdie, some 35 people were burned to death without the police intervening.
Three years later there was an assault on Alevis by the police, killing 20 people in the same Gazi quarter where Syrian Alawites are now taking refuge.
Since Erdogan won his first general election in 2002 there has been less state violence. But during the protests that started in Gezi Park in Istanbul this summer, all five of the demonstrators killed across the country came from the Alevi community.
This is probably as much a token of their prominence in protests as it is of the police targeting them. It is also a sign that Alevi anger is growing because of memories of past violence against them; discrimination which turned them into second-class citizens and lack of state recognition or support for their religion.
I attended a meeting in an Alevi prayer house called a Cem in Umraniye district on the Asian side of Istanbul, where Alevi activists were setting up an organisation to fight for their rights. Complaints about discrimination abounded: an attempt to set up a joint Sunni mosque and Alevi prayer hall in Ankara was condemned as an attempt to assimilate them and as unworkable because the Alevi would be singing when the Sunni were praying. A delegate said Alevi did not fast at Ramadan but at another time of year, making cohabitation in the same building difficult. There was a lack of state education about Alevi beliefs and resentment at Sunni slanders about their religion.
“The government doesn’t treat us as human beings,” said one delegate. “We pay taxes but we don’t get anything back.”
Resentful though the Alevi are at their treatment, they are at least dealing with a powerful government capable of meeting many of their demands. Mr Erdogan has no difficulty in apologising for events like the Dersim massacres carried out on behalf of a secular authoritarian state in the past. The Alevi do not forget past persecution, objecting to the government’s intention to name the third Bosphorus bridge after Selim the Grim, an Ottoman Sultan of the early 16th century regarded as an ogre by the Alevi, whom he slaughtered by the thousand. Not all the reasons are negative for the greater Alevi sense of identity and willingness to be more vocal in demanding their rights: Turkish security forces under Mr Erdogan are less violent  than they used to be and protesters are less likely to be imprisoned or harassed by the state.
But the Sunni-Shia civil wars exploding in Syria and Iraq are deepening sectarian differences among the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world.
Turkey is no exception to this trend, has a large Shia minority and is close to the heart of the turmoil. There is already talk of the “Pakistanisation” of Turkish provinces like Hatay and Mardin, which are used by al-Qa’ida-linked groups fighting in Syria as their rear bases. Turkey’s open border policy for rebels means that the Syrian war is spilling across the frontier.
Successful though Turkey has been politically and economically in the past decade, the long battle for power between the AK party and an authoritarian, secular state has created lasting divisions in society. The rising political temperature in Turkey and the region makes rising sectarian differences ever more explosive.

By Stephen Lendman
October 09, 2013
@ Global Research
On October 5, US Delta Force commandos, CIA operatives, and FBI agents abducted Abu Anas al-Liby. Doing so highlights what’s been out-of-control since 9/11.
In the 1980s, al-Liby was one of many CIA-recruited mujahideen fighters. They were used against Afghanistan’s Soviet occupiers.
Ronald Reagan called them “the moral equivalent of our founding fathers.” He characterized Contra killers the same way.
Bin Laden, al-Liby, and many other Al Qaeda fighters were used strategically as both allies and enemies. Most recently, al-Liby was an anti-Gaddafi “freedom fighter.”
In 2000, he was indicted for his alleged role in bombing US Kenyan and Tanzanian embassies in 1998.
He was one of the FBI’s most wanted. He had a $5 million bounty on his head. Washington abducted him lawlessly. It did so on Libyan territory.
US policy is out-of-control. Obama authorizes whatever he wants anywhere worldwide. Rogue leaders operate that way.
On October 8, AP headlined ”Did Obama Swap ‘Black’ Detention sites for ships?”
He ordered alleged “terrorists (interrogated) for as long as it takes aboard US naval vessels.” Al-Libi is held on the USS San Antonio. It’s an amphibious warship.
Throughout his tenure, Obama continued the worst of odious Bush administration practices. The Clinton administration began them. Guilt or innocence doesn’t matter. Suspects are lawlessly abducted.
They’re denied all rights. They’re held secretly at US black sites. Confessions are extracted through torture. Detainees say anything to stop pain.
Guantanamo is the tip of the iceberg. Dozens of US torture prisons operate globally. Afghanistan, Egypt, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and many other complicit US allies host them.
They permit indefinite detention, interrogations, torture and other forms of abuse.
They assist in capturing and transporting detainees. They allow use of their domestic airspace. They provide intelligence information.
America is by far the world’s leading human rights abuser. No nation in history matches its ruthlessness. It’s out-of-control. It’s unaccountable. It’s waging war on humanity. It’s doing it globally.
Reprieve is UK-based. It promotes rule of law accountability. It works to “secure each person’s right to a fair trial.” It tries to “save lives.”
In June 2008, it said America “may have used as many as 17 ships as floating prisons.”
“About 26,000 people are being (lawlessly) held by the US in secret prisons – a figure that includes land-based detention centers.”
“(I)nformation suggests up to 80,000 have been ‘through the system’ since 2001.”
So have thousands more under Obama.
Former Pentagon spokesman Navy Commander Jeffrey Gordon lied earlier, saying:
“We do not operate detention facilities on board Navy ships.” They’re in “Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.”
They’re in at least 54 complicit countries. According to Reprieve:
“Prison ships have been used by the US to hold terror suspects illegally since the days of President Clinton.”
“US government sources have confirmed that both the USS Bataan and the USS Peleliu have been used to hold prisoners.”
“Reprieve investigations suggest that a further 15 ships have been used to hold prisoners beyond the rule of law since 2001.”
They’re “interrogated aboard the vessels and then rendered to other, often undisclosed, locations.”
Reprieve legal director Clive Stafford later said:
“(W)e’ve identified thirty-two prison ships, sort of prison hulks you used to read about in Victorian England, which have been converted to hold prisoners, and we’ve got pictures of them in Lisbon Harbor, for example.”
“And these are holding prisoners around the world, as well. And there’s a bunch of proxy prisons – (in) Morocco, Egypt, Jordan and other countries – where this stuff is going on.”
“And this is a huge concern, because the world focus is on Guantanamo Bay, which really is a diversionary tactic in the whole war of terror or war on terror, whatever you’d like to call it.”
“And actually, most of these people who have been severed from their legal rights are in these other secret prisons around the world.”
According to a former detainee:
“One of my fellow prisoners in Guantanamo was at sea on an American ship before coming to Guantanamo.”
“He was in the cage next to me. He told me that there were about 50 other prisoners on the ship.”

 
“They were all closed off in the bottom of the ship. The prisoner commented to me that it was like something you see on TV.”
“The people held on the ship were beaten even more severely than in Guantanamo.”
Reprieve calls the USS Bataan one of America’s “most infamous ‘floating prisons.’ ”
John Walker Lindh was sent there. So was Australian David Hicks. Lindh was maliciously called the “American Taliban.”
Hicks was sold to US forces for bounty. Both men were lawlessly held. They were brutally tortured. Thousands of others have been treated the same way.
Obama promised to end lawless Bush administration practices. They continue out-of-control.
America’s war on terror authorizes anything goes. On September 18, 2001, Congress passed a joint House-Senate Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) for “the use of United States Armed Forces against those responsible for the recent attacks launched against the United States.”
On October 26, Patriot Act lawlessness followed. On November 13, Military Order Number 1 authorized the president to capture, kidnap or otherwise arrest non-citizens anywhere in the world for any reason.
US citizens are now vulnerable. Anyone can be arrested or abducted. They can be held indefinitely without charge, evidence, due process, trial, or other judicial fairness protections.
Torture is official US policy. Bush established it. On September 17, 2001, he signed a secret finding.
It authorized the CIA to “Capture, Kill, or Interrogate Al-Queda Leaders.”
It mandated establishing secret global facilities to detain and interrogate them. Doing so without guidelines on proper treatment was OK’d.
Detainees were declared “unlawful enemy combatants.” Obama calls them “unprivileged enemy belligerents.”
He authorized their murder or capture and indefinite detention. Torture remains official US policy. The worst of Bush administration practices continue.
International, constitutional and US statute laws no longer apply. Diktat power replaced them. Today’s America reflects out-of-control lawlessness.
In 2007, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) published a report titled “Off the Record: US Responsibility for Enforced Disappearances in the ‘War on Terror.’ ”

It discussed ghost detainees held in secret black sites. It revealed how America lawlessly uses “proxy detention.”
It demonstrates that “far from targeting the ‘worst of the worst,’ the system sweeps up low-level detainees and even involves the detention of the wives and children of the ‘disappeared.’ ”
Doing so violates core rule of law principles. CCR documented torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. Obama continues the worst of Bush administration policies.
Separately, CCR discussed ghost detainees and black sites. Forced disappearance victims became “ghosts.”
“Black sites” are secret US prisons operating globally – on land and at sea.
“What is ‘enforced disappearance,’ ” asked CCR? “Is it legal?”
The practice violates “numerous treaties binding on the United States” It spurns “international humanitarian law.”
It occurs when Washington “arrests, detains or abducts a person (without) acknowledg(ing) (having done so) or the location” where targeted individuals are detained.
Doing so denies them core legal protections. It’s official US policy. American citizens are vulnerable. No one anywhere is safe.
“What are conditions like in the ‘black sites,’ ” asked CCR?
CIA officials admit using so-called “enhanced interrogation (or ‘alternative interrogation’) techniques.”
Doing so constitutes the worst kind of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. Nothing too brutal is out of bounds. Virtually everything is OK.
Former detainees reveal horrific torture they experienced. They were fortunate to survive and be able to explain.
“What do CIA secret prisons have to do with other US detentions?”
Washington operates global black sites. It does so separately or jointly with host countries. It transfers some detainees to foreign-controlled facilities.
“In all cases, (they’re) deprived of any substantive protection of their rights, and reports of torture and abuse are common.”
“Who is held in CIA secret detention?”
Numerous individuals from many countries are targeted. Many were sold for bounty. Some were held because of mistaken identity. The great majority of victims committed no crimes.
Guilt or innocence doesn’t matter. Once abducted, all rights are lost. Boys young as seven were abducted.
“What should be done?”
Lawless abductions, secret detentions, torture and other forms of abuse violate core international, constitutional and US statute law provisions.
America remains unaccountable. So are complicit countries. CCR and other human rights organizations demand these practices cease. Obama pays them no heed.
“What is CCR doing about ghost detention?”
It filed lawsuits demanding release of information. It did so under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
It wants the shroud of secrecy removed. It largely remains. What’s known about Guantanamo diverts from full disclosure about America’s global black sites.
They hold the vast majority of US ghost detainees. They do so lawlessly. Globalized torture is official US policy. So are worldwide secret prisons.
Obama continues the worst Bush administration practices. He added more of his own. He governs by diktat authority. What he says goes.
He operates as judge, jury and executioner. He authorizes cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment. He does so at home and abroad. It continues unabated. Millions are grievously harmed globally.
Rogue leaders govern this way. He’s Caligula writ large. He’s America’s worst ever. He threatens humanity’s survival. It may not survive on his watch.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

By Nile Bowie

11 October, 2013
Although the detention of Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan only lasted a few hours, it was a bold indication of the country’s deepening instability since the civil war that toppled strongman Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. In the early hours of October 10th, militants whisked Zeidan out of a luxury suite in the Corinthia Hotel, regarded as one of the most secure places in Tripoli, without a shot being fired. The gunmen who abducted the prime minister belonged to one of the many former rebel militias now interwoven into Libya’s fragmented power structure as an improvised police force. Militants were angered by the capture of suspected militant Abu Anas al-Libi, who was abducted days earlier off the streets of Tripoli by US Special Forces in connection to the 1998 bombing of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. Prime Minister Zeidan was held over suspicion that he allowed al-Libi’s abduction to take place, despite publically raising concerns over the illegality of the snatch to US authorities.
Reports indicate that Zeidan’s abductors were not willing to let him go, and that another militia – calling itself the ‘Reinforcement Force’ – intervened and freed the prime minister by force. The Libyan leader escaped unharmed, certainly the best scenario that could have resulted from this crisis. Information trickled out slowly in the tense few hour period during which Zeidan’s whereabouts were unknown, and had allied militias not come to his aid, the situation could have spiraled into a hostage crisis or worse. This embarrassing incident speaks volumes about the state of affairs in Libya today, and casts doubt on the government’s ability to maintain order in a state that is now struggling to contain rival tribal militias and Islamist militants with separatist ambitions. The irony is that since NATO provided funding, arms, and air support to topple the previous regime on the basis of “humanitarian intervention,” the country become more lawless, fractured, and unstable, while ongoing violations of Libya’s sovereignty by the US add more fuel to the fire.
Washington’s snatch-and-grab
Since al-Libi’s capture near his home in Tripoli, the militant has been kept captive aboard the USS San Antonio warship in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea and faces interrogations by the CIA, FBI, and US military without access to a lawyer or notification of his legal rights. The use of a US warship as a floating ‘black-site’ where legal rights are withheld violates Article 22 of the Third Geneva Convention, which mandates that any detention premises be located on land. The Obama administration has gotten around international law by justifying al-Libi’s detention under the laws of war, in much the same process used by the Obama Administration for Somali militant Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame in 2011 prior to being taken to the US to face charges. Prime Minister Zeidan – whether or not he colluded with the US over al-Libi’s capture – was detained as a result of the US sidelining international law and operating with impunity inside Libyan territory.
Zeidan gently raised the issue in a press conference days ago in a bid to appease popular outrage over the US commando raid, but stated that the incident would not seriously harm relations with the US. The fragile Libyan government denied that it had played a role in the commando operation, but the New York Times reports that the authorities were “willing to tacitly support the raid as long as they could protest in public.” After less than a year in office, Zeidan could find himself sacked by members of the Libyan Parliament that have sworn to remove him if evidence emerges that he had prior knowledge of the US raid. The growing perception among militias that Libya’s government has become subservient to the United States is inherently dangerous, as it provides a powerful pretext for those groups to challenge Tripoli by force. Libya’s militias were happy to receive support from NATO and the United States – who had the mutual aim of giving Gaddafi an early funeral – but “the revolutionaries” were naïve if they thought that Washington’s interests would be anything other than a main priority in their new state. Although there is a parliament and a prime minister, political power still grows from the barrel of a gun, and militiamen clearly wield control in the absence of an army and police force.
Closing the Pandora’s box of extremism?
During his recent speech to the UN, President Obama offered a weak defense of US foreign policy in Libya, claiming that “countless lives were saved, and a tyrant could not kill his way back to power,” and that “without international action, Libya would now be engulfed in civil war and bloodshed.” As al-Qaeda-linked groups carry out waves of assassinations and thousands of prisoners are held in militia-run clandestine detention centers throughout the country, the Obama administration is clearly not being honest. The widespread persecution of dark-skinned Libyans native to the south of the country continues, while the current government uses Gaddafi-era tactics to track dissenters and loyalists with impunity. The West was correct in thinking that Gaddafi could eventually be toppled with enough force, but they were simply wrong to assume that Libya – with its complex tribal and ethnic demographics – would become a compliant satellite state under the umbrella of a transitional government run by bureaucrats with European-dual citizenship.
PM Zeidan spent the last three decades in exile in Geneva, and though he played a crucial role in persuading France to lend their firepower to the rebels, he came within a hair’s breadth of being consumed by the “revolution” he helped create. Libya holds enormous fresh-water aquifers and the largest oil reserves in Africa, and gaining preferential access to exploit these resources was a major factor in persuading Western states to support the rebels – but instability has caused chaos in the oil sector as militias vie for control over oil fields. Reports indicate that as of July 2013, oil production fell to about 200,000 barrels a day from around 1.3 million, resulting in $5 billion in losses. The absence of a strong and inclusive central government, a state-backed reconciliation process, and a post-Gaddafi constitution all pose major challenges to the stability of the state. There is little to applaud as momentum grows in the provinces of Cyrenaica and Fezzan to break away from the government in Tripoli. Libya is hemorrhaging, and recent events indicate a growing divide between the Western-backed government and the armed groups who are now overtly challenging the fragile state apparatus.

By Richard Falk
10 October, 2013
@ Richard Falk Blog
Background
If the politics of deflection exhibit the outward reach of Israel’s grand strategy of territorial expansionism and regional hegemony, the politics of fragmentation serves Israel’s inward moves designed to weaken Palestinian resistance, induce despair, and de facto surrender. In fundamental respects deflection is an unwitting enabler of fragmentation, but it is also its twin or complement.
The British were particularly adept in facilitating their colonial project all over the world by a variety of divide and rule tactics, which almost everywhere haunted anti-colonial movements, frequently producing lethal forms of post-colonial partition as in India, Cyprus, Ireland, Malaya, and of course, Palestine, and deadly ethnic strife elsewhere as in Nigeria, Kenya, Myanmar, Rwanda. Each of these national partitions and post-colonial traumas has produced severe tension and long lasting hostility and struggle, although each takes a distinctive form due to variations from country to country of power, vision, geography, resources, history, geopolitics, leadership.
An additional British colonial practice and legacy was embodied in a series of vicious settler colonial movements that succeeded in effectively eliminating or marginalizing resistance by indigenous populations as in Australia, Canada, the United States, and somewhat less so in New Zealand, and eventually failing politically in South Africa and Namibia, but only after decades of barbarous racism.
In Palestine the key move was the Balfour Declaration, which was a colonialist gesture of formal approval given to the Zionist Project in 1917 tendered at the end of Ottoman rule over Palestine. This was surely gross interference with the dynamics of Palestinian self-determination (at the time the estimated Arab population of Palestine was 747,685, 92.1% of the total, while the Jewish population was an estimate 58,728, which amounted to 7.9%) and a decisive stimulus for the Zionist undertaking to achieve supremacy over the land embraced by the British mandate to administer Palestine in accordance with a framework agreement with the League of Nation. The agreement repeated the language of the Balfour Declaration in its preamble: “Whereas recognition has thereby been given to the historical connection of the Jewish people with Palestine and to the grounds for reconstituting their national home in that country.”(emphasis added) To describe this encouragement of Zionism as merely ‘interference’ is a terribly misleading understatement of the British role in creating a situation of enduring tension in Palestine, which was supposedly being administered on the basis of the wellbeing of the existing indigenous population, what was called “a sacred trust of civilization” in Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, established for the “well-being and development” of peoples “not yet able to stand by themselves under the strenuous conditions of the modern world.” The relevance of the politics of fragmentation refers to a bundle of practices and overall approach that assumed the form of inter-ethnic and inter-religious strife during the almost three decades that the mandate arrangements were in effect.*
At the same time, the British was not the whole story by any means: the fanatical and effective exploitation of the opportunity to establish a Jewish homeland of unspecified dimensions manifested the dedication, skill, and great ambition of the Zionist movement; the lack of comparable sustained and competent resistance by the indigenous population abetted the transformation of historic Palestine; and then these developments were strongly reinforced by the horrors of the Holocaust and the early complicity of the liberal democracies with Naziism that led the West to lend its support to the settler colonial reality that Zionism had become well before the 1948 War. The result was the tragic combination of statehood and UN membership for Israel and the nakba involving massive dispossession creating forced refugee and exile for most Palestinians, and leading after 1967 to occupation, discrimination, and oppression of those Palestinians who remained either in Israel or in the 22% of original Palestine.
It should be recalled that the UN solution of 1947, embodied in GA Resolution 181, after the British gave up their mandatory role was no more in keeping with the ethos of self-determination than the Balfour Declaration, decreeing partition and allocating 55% of Palestine to the Jewish population, 45% to the Palestinians without the slightest effort to assess the wishes of the population resident in Palestine at the time or to allocate the land in proportion to the demographic realities at the time. The UN solution was a new rendition of Western paternalism, opposed at the time by the Islamic and Middle Eastern members of the UN. Such a solution was not as overbearing as the mandates system that was devised to vest quasi-colonial rule in the victorious European powers after World War I, yet it was still an Orientalist initiative aimed at the control and exploitation of the destiny of an ethnic, political, and economic entity long governed by the Ottoman Empire.
The Palestinians (and their Arab neighbors) are often told in patronizing tones by latter day Zionists and their apologists that the Palestinians had their chance to become a state, squandered their opportunity, thereby forfeiting their rights to a state of their own by rejecting the UN partition plan. In effect, the Israeli contention is that Palestinians effectively relinquished their statehood claims by this refusal to accept what the UN had decreed, while Israel by nominally accepting the UN proposals validated their sovereign status, which was further confirmed by its early admission to full membership in the UN. Ever since, Israel has taken advantage of the fluidity of the legal situation by at once pretending to accept the UN approach of seeking a compromise by way of mutual agreement with the Palestinians while doing everything in its power to prevent such an outcome by projecting its force throughout the entirety of Palestine, by establishing and expanding settlements, the ethnic cleansing of Jerusalem, and by advancing an array of maximalist security claims that have diminished Palestinian prospects. That is, Israel has publicly endorsed conflict-resolving diplomacy but operationally has been constantly moving the goal posts by unlawfully creating facts on the ground, and then successfully insisting on their acceptance as valid points of departure. In effect, and with American help, Israel has seemingly given the Palestinians a hard choice, which is tacitly endorsed by the United States and Europe: accept the Bantustan destiny we offer or remain forever refugees and victims of annexation, exile, discrimination, statelessness.
Israel has used its media leverage and geopolitical clout to create an asymmetric understanding of identity politics as between Jews and Palestinians. Jews being defined as a people without borders who can gain Israeli nationality no matter where they live on the planet, while Palestinians are excluded from Israeli nationality regardless of how deep their indigenous roots in Palestine itself. This distinction between the two peoples exhibits the tangible significance of Israel as a ‘Jewish State,’ and why such a designation is morally and legally unacceptable in the 21st century even as it so zealously claimed by recent Israeli leaders, none more than Benyamin Netanyahu.
Modalities of Fragmentation
The logic of fragmentation is to weaken, if not destroy, a political opposition configuration by destroying its unity of purpose and strategy, and fomenting to the extent possible conflicts between different tendencies within the adversary movement. It is an evolving strategy that is interactive, and by its nature becomes an important theme of conflict. The Palestinians in public constantly stress the essential role of unity, along with reconciliation to moderate the relevance of internal differences. In contrast, the Israelis fan the flames of disunity, stigmatizing elements of the Palestinian reality that are relevantly submissive, and accept the agenda and frameworks that are devised by Tel Aviv refusing priorities set by Palestinian leaders. Over the course of the conflict from 1948 to the present, there have been ebbs and flows in the course of Palestinian unity, with maximum unity achieved during the time when Yasir Arafat was the resistance leader and maximum fragmentation evident since Hamas was successful in the 2006 Gaza elections, and managed to seize governmental control from Fatah in Gaza a year later. Another way that Israel has promoted Palestinian disunity is to favor the so-called moderates operating under the governance of the Palestinian Authority while imposing inflicting various punishments on Palestinians adhering to Hamas.
–Zionism, the Jewish State, and the Palestinian Minority. Perhaps, the most fundamental form of fragmentation is between Jews and Palestinians living within the state of Israel. This type of fragmentation has two principal dimensions: pervasive discrimination against the 20% Palestinian minority (about 1.5 million) affecting legal, social, political, cultural, and economic rights, and creating a Palestinian subjectivity of marginality, subordination, vulnerability. Although Palestinians in Israel are citizens they are excluded from many benefits and opportunities because they do not possess Jewish nationality. Israel may be the only state in the world that privileges nationality over citizenship in a series of contexts, including family reunification and access to residence. It is also worth observing that if demographic projections prove to be reliable Palestinians could be a majority in Israel as early as 2035, and would almost certainly outnumber Jews in the country by 2048. Not only does this pose the familiar choice for Israel between remaining an electoral democracy and retaining its self-proclaimed Jewish character, but it also shows how hegemonic it is to insist that the Palestinians and the international community accept Israel as a Jewish state.
This Palestinian entitlement, validated by the international law relating to fundamental human rights prohibiting all forms of discrimination, and especially structural forms embedded in law that discriminate on the basis of race and religion. The government of Israel, reinforced by its Supreme Court, endorses the view that only Jews can possess Israeli nationality that is the basis of a range of crucial rights under Israeli law. What is more Jews have Israeli nationality even if lacking any link to Israel and wherever they are located, while Palestinians (and other religious and ethnic minorities) are denied Israeli nationality (although given Israeli citizenship) even if indigenous to historic Palestine and to the territory under the sovereign control of the state of Israel.
A secondary form of fragmentation is between this minority in Israel and the rest of the Palestinian corpus. The dominant international subjectivity relating to the conflict has so far erased this minority from its imaginary of peace for the two peoples, or from any sense that Palestinian human rights in Israel should be internationally implemented in whatever arrangements are eventually negotiated or emerges via struggle. As matters now stand, the Palestinian minority in Israel is unrepresented at the diplomatic level and lacks any vehicle for the expression of its grievances.
–Occupied Palestine and the Palestinian Diaspora (refugees and enforced exile). Among the most debilitating forms of fragmentation is the effort by Israel and its supporters to deny Palestinian refugees and Palestinians living in the diaspora) their right of return as confirmed by GA Resolution 184? There are between 4.5 million and 5.5 million Palestinians who are either refugees or living in the diaspora, as well as about 1.4 million resident in the West Bank and 1.6 million in Gaza.
The diplomatic discourse has been long shaped by reference to the two state mantra. This includes the reductive belief that the essence of a peaceful future for the two peoples depends on working out the intricacies of ‘land for peace.’ In other words, the dispute is false categorized as almost exclusively about territory and borders (along with the future of Jerusalem), and not about people. There is a tacit understanding that seems to include the officials of the Palestinian Authority to the effect that Palestinians refugee rights will be ‘handled’ via compensation and the right of return, not to the place of original dispossession, but to territory eventually placed under Palestinian sovereignty.
Again the same disparity as between the two sides is encoded in the diplomacy of ‘the peace process,’ ever more so during the twenty years shaped by the Oslo framework. The Israel propaganda campaign was designed to make it appear to be a deal breaker for the Palestinian to insist on full rights of repatriation as it would allegedly entail the end of the promise of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Yet such a posture toward refugees and the Palestinian diaspora cruelly consigns several million Palestinians to a permanent limbo, in effect repudiating the idea that the Palestinians are a genuine ‘people’ while absolutizing the Jews as a people of global scope. Such a dismissal of the claims of Palestinian refugees also flies in the face of the right of return specifically affirmed in relation to Palestine by the UN General Assembly in Resolution 194, and more generally supported by Article 13 of Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Two Warring Realms of the Occupation of Palestine: the Palestine Authority versus Hamas. Again Israel and its supporters have been able to drive an ideological wedge between the Palestinians enduring occupation since 1967. With an initial effort to discredit the Palestine Liberation Organzation that had achieved control over a unified and robust Palestine national movement, Israel actually encouraged the initial emergence of Hamas as a radical and fragmenting alternative to the PLO when it was founded in the course of the First Intifada. Israel of course later strongly repudiated Hamas when it began to carry armed struggle to pre-1967 Israel, most notoriously engaging in suicide bombings in Israel that involved indiscriminate attacks on civilians, a tactic repudiated in recent years.
Despite Hamas entering into the political life of occupied Palestine with American, and winning an internationally supervised election in 2006, and taking control of Gaza in 2007, it has continued to be categorized as ‘a terrorist organization’ that is given no international status. This terrorist designation is also relied upon to impose a blockade on Gaza that is a flagrant form of collective punishment in direct violation of Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention. The Palestine Authority centered in Ramallah has also, despite occasional rhetoric to the contrary, refused to treat Hamas as a legitimate governing authority or to allow Hamas to operate as a legitimate political presence in the West Bank and Jerusalem or to insist on the inclusion of Hamas in international negotiations addressing the future of the Palestinian people. This refusal has persisted despite the more conciliatory tone of Hamas since 2009 when its leader, Khaled Meshaal, announced a shift in the organization’s goals: an acceptance of Israel as a state beside Palestine as a state provided a full withdrawal to 1967 borders and implementation of the right of return for refugees, and a discontinuation by Hamas of a movement based on armed struggle. Mashel also gave further reassurances of moderation by an indication that earlier goals of liberating the whole of historic Palestine, as proclaimed in its Charter, were a matter of history that was no longer descriptive of its political program.
In effect, the territorial fragmentation of occupied Palestine is reinforced by ideological fragmentation, seeking to somewhat authenticate and privilege the secular and accommodating leadership provided by the PA while repudiating the Islamic orientation of Hamas. In this regard, the polarization in such countries as Turkey and Egypt is cynically reproduced in Palestine as part of Israel’s overall occupation strategy. This includes a concerted effort by Israel to make it appear that material living conditions for Palestinians are much better if the Palestinian leadership cooperates with the Israeli occupiers than if it continues to rely on a national movement of liberation and refuses to play the Oslo game.
The Israeli propaganda position on Hamas has emphasized the rocket attacks on Israel launched from within Gaza. There is much ambiguity and manipulation of the timeline relating to the rockets in interaction with various forms of Israeli violent intrusion. We do know that the casualties during the period of Hamas control of Gaza have been exceedingly one-sided, with Israel doing most of the killing, and Palestinians almost all of the dying. We also know that when ceasefires have been established between Israel and Gaza, there was a good record of compliance on the Hamas side, and that it was Israel that provocatively broke the truce, and then launched major military operations in 2008-09 and 2012 on a defenseless and completely vulnerable population.
Cantonization and the Separation Wall: Fragmenting the West Bank. A further Israeli tactic of fragmentation is to make it difficult for Palestinians to sustain a normal and coherent life. The several hundred check points throughout the West Bank serious disrupt mobility for the Palestinians, and make it far easier for Palestinians to avoid delay and humiliation. It is better for them to remain contained within their villages, a restrictive life reinforced by periodic closures and curfews that are extremely disruptive. Vulnerability is accentuated by nighttime arrests, especially of young male Palestinians, 60% of whom have been detained in prisons before they reach the age of 25, and the sense that Israeli violence, whether issuing from the IDF or the settlers enjoys impunity, and often is jointly carried out.
The Oslo framework not only delegated to the PA the role of maintaining ‘security’ in Palestinian towns and cities, but bisected the West Bank into Areas A, B, and C, with Israeli retaining a residual security right throughout occupied Palestine. Area C, where most of the settlements are located, is over 60% of the West Bank, and is under exclusive control of Israel.
This fragmentation at the core of the Oslo framework has been a key element in perpetuating Palestinian misery.
The fragmentation in administration is rigid and discriminatory, allowing Israeli settlers the benefits of Israel’s rule of law, while subjecting Palestinians to military administration with extremely limited rights, and even the denial of a right to enjoy the benefit of rights. Israel also insists that since it views the West Bank as disputed territory rather than ‘occupied’ it is not legally obliged to respect international humanitarian law, including the Geneva Conventions. This fragmentation between Israeli settlers and Palestinian residents is so severe that it has been increasingly understood in international circles as a form of apartheid, which the Rome Statute governing the International Criminal Court denominates as one type of ‘crime against humanity.’
The Separation Wall is an obvious means of separating Palestinians from each other and from their land. It was declared in 2004 to be a violation of international law by a super majority of 14-1 in the International Court of Justice, but to no avail, as Israel has defied this near unanimous reading of international law by the highest judicial body in the UN, and yet suffered no adverse consequences. In some West Bank communities Palestinians are surrounded by the wall and in others Palestinian farmers can only gain access to and from their land at appointed times when wall gates are opened.
Fragmentation and Self-Determination
The pervasiveness of fragmentation is one reason why there is so little belief that the recently revived peace process is anything more than one more turn of the wheel, allowing Israel to proceed with its policies designed to take as much of what remains of Palestine as it wants so as to realize its own conception of Jewish self-determination. Just as Israel refuses to restrict the Jewish right of return, so it also refuses to delimit its boundaries. When it negotiates internationally it insists on even more prerogatives under the banner of security and anti-terrorism. Israel approach such negotiations as a zero-sum dynamic of gain for itself, loss for Palestine, a process hidden from view by the politics of deflection and undermining the Palestinian capacity for coherent resistance by the politics of fragmentation.
* There are two issues posed, beyond the scope of this post, that bear on Palestinian self-determination emanating from the Balfour Declaration and the ensuing British mandatory role in Palestine: (1) to what extent does “a national home for the Jewish people” imply a valid right of self-determination, as implemented by the establishment of the state of Israel? Does the idea of ‘a national home’ encompass statehood? (2) to what extent does the colonialist nature of the Balfour Declaration and the League mandate system invalidate any actions taken?
Richard Falk is an international law and international relations scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. He is currently serving as a United Nations Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights. http://richardfalk.wordpress.com

By Kourosh Ziabari
11 October, 2013
@ Countercurrents.org
Syria has become a battlefield for the face-off between the forces of government, Al-Qaeda terrorists and foreign-backed mercenaries that are hell-bent on removing President Bashar al-Assad from power. So far, more than 100,000 Syrians have been killed in the civil war which has extricated the Arab country. Thousands of terrorists from different Arab countries and even European nations have been deployed in Syria to fight the government of President Assad.
The U.S. hypocrisy in supporting the Al-Qaeda combatants is the most agonizing reality taking place in Syria. The White House launched a War on Terror following the painful events of September 11, 2001 and killed hundreds of civilians across the world under the guise of fighting terrorism, Al-Qaeda, Taliban and who they call Islamist Jihadists. However, it’s now overtly supporting, funding and arming the same terrorists in Syria just because it cannot reconcile its differences with the Syrian government.
After a chemical attack in the Ghouta district of Damascus killed around 1,400 people, as claimed by the United States, the White House announced that it intends to launch a “surgical”, “limited” military strike against Syria, and that the attack would certainly take place. It later postponed its plans after the Russian government presented a proposal that would demand Syria to destroy its arsenal of chemical weapons. Washington accepted to withdraw its war plans, and as some political analysts noted, suffered a great political setback.
To discuss the ongoing crisis in Syria, the reasons why the United States abandoned its plans for attacking Syria and the future of civil war in the embattled Arab country, Iran Review conducted an interview with prominent political scientist Prof. James Petras.
James Petras is a renowned progressive American philosopher and political scientist and a retired professor of sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary’s University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. He has published over 2,000 articles in such magazines and newspapers as the New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy and Le Monde Diplomatique. His latest book titled “The Arab Revolt and the Imperialist Counterattack” was published in 2011 by the Clarity Press.
What follows is the text of Iran Review’s exclusive interview with Prof. James Petras.
Q: U.S. President Barack Obama had categorically announced that his country will be launching surgical, limited attacks on certain sites in Syria. However, after the Russian proposal was set forth, he retreated from his position and postponed the strike. Don’t you consider this retreatment a diplomatic failure for the United States?

A: I think it was more a political debacle. Let’s put the decision of Obama in context. First, all the opinion polls in the United States indicated that the public, around 65% of the U.S. citizens, opposed a new war involving the United States and only 20% to 25% were in favor and the rest were, at the time, undecided. That’s one big fact. Secondly, the number of Congressmen opposing the war ran close to 9 to 1. So the Congress people themselves in a strong majority were going to vote against Obama’s authorization to engage in a war. For Obama to proceed to bomb Syria in that context, it was a dire consequence impending, I think it would have been a tremendous political defeat and it would have discredited his government at a time when the U.S. government faces a fiscal crisis as it faces the possibility that the debt limit would not be raised which would send turmoil in the financial market. Now, Obama was in an extremely weak domestic position which no president in the recent history has faced.

In that context, he also faced the defeat in the British Parliament and the strong opposition by the European public opinion which was running about 3 to 1. Public opinion in Turkey also strongly opposed. The only ally that Obama really had internationally was Saudi Arabia which is an autocratic dictatorship, Israel which is a racist, anti-Muslim state, and of course the decrepit socialist Hollande in France who has the lowest popularity among the presidents of the recent history. So internationally Obama was also in an extremely difficult situation and actually we look at it from that perspective. The Putin initiative which Obama quickly agreed to, was a life-saver because it allowed Obama a formula for saving face at least in that particular conjunction. But I do want to raise this question; the recent diplomatic moves by the Secretary of State Kerry indicates that the military, aerial attack is still on the agenda as Kerry tries to push through a clause on the agreement which would allow the U.S. to determine circumstances under which it could launch an air attack. So it may be the case that Obama agreed to this diplomatic initiative of Putin in order to neutralize international and domestic opposition and once the opposition subsided, he may take advantage of that to launch an aerial attack using as pretext that Syria is not destroying the chemical weapons fast enough or that the inventory is incomplete, etc. We cannot discount that because the U.S. has signed a previous international agreement, in the recent case with Russia, and in the UN Security Council, on overflight to Libya which turned into full-scale aerial assaults which destroyed President Qaddafi’s army. And the second case is the agreement between Clinton and Mihailovic which was followed by U.S. bomb attacks for several weeks.

So, the United States has a history of making agreements and then violating them. We have to keep that historical precedence in mind.

Q: How could the United States justify a possible military strike against Syria, while Syria had never threatened the U.S. national interests or security? The only pretext they could resort to was that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons against the rebels, but they couldn’t substantiate this claim. What’s your take on that?

A: The international law, as far as the United States is concerned, doesn’t exist. It invaded Afghanistan with no logical, factual basis, accusing them of sheltering Al-Qaeda. The U.S. violated international law by invading Iraq despite the fact that it used fabricated evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction. The U.S. supported Israel’s invasion and bombing of Lebanon and Gaza despite the fact that it was a clear violation of international law and the Geneva Conventions. So, the imperial countries have a history, and especially the United States, a recent history of not abiding by the international law. They have refused to accept Iran’s enrichment of uranium despite the fact that dozens of countries enrich uranium and it has based its attacks on the possibility that Iran could develop a capacity to convert enriched uranium into a weapon, based solely on the Israeli fabricated intelligence. The U.S. intelligence agencies have several times issued reports indicating that there’s no positive evidence involving Iran in the conversion of enriched uranium into a single nuclear weapon. So, I think that to be surprised that the United States is violating international law is equivalent to being very naïve.

Q: The United States is continuing to support the rebels, Al-Qaeda terrorists and other foreign-backed mercenaries in Syria. It’s seems hypocritical that the U.S. is supporting terrorists while it has launched a global War on Terror since the 9/11 attacks. How do you explain this dual-track policy of supporting terrorists who are carrying out operations in their favor while fighting other terrorists elsewhere?

A: I think you can’t use abstract criteria here. Washington has an imperial perspective on this. They use strictly imperial-based criteria. In the case of Libya, the U.S.-backed terrorists fought against the nationalist regime of Gaddafi. That has backfired, of course, because many of the Libyan terrorists are now engaged in subversive activities toward the region including the Sub-Sahara Africa. The U.S. supported Sunni terrorists in Iraq for a substantial period of time after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and the rise of the Shiite government in Baghdad. So we have look back at the Afghan war. The U.S. provided over $5 million arms and logistical support to the Islamic extremists in overthrowing a secular government in Afghanistan. So the question is, what side are the terrorists on? If they’re fighting against the U.S. adversaries, then Washington supports them. If they fight against a U.S. puppet regime, they’re opposed to it. So, you have to separate here any notion of anti-terrorism as a principle. It is terrorism when a country opposes the United States and it is anti-terrorism when the same forces oppose a U.S. adversary. These terms become meaningless in terms of a cognitive meaning.

Q: It’s a logical demand to call on Syria to declare its chemical weapons and bring them under the UN safeguards. However, we also know that Israel possesses not only chemical weapons, but a large arsenal of nuclear weapons, and is the sole possessor of WMDs in the Middle East. Why doesn’t the United States ask Israel to join the international conventions for the prohibition of Weapons of Mass Destruction?

A: Israel is an ally of the United States. Zionists have enormous influence within the administration of Obama. We have Dennis Ross is a notorious advocate of Israel who was appointed by Obama to be the U.S. representative in the Israel-Palestine talks. Dennis Ross is known in Washington to be the attorney for Israel. His partisanship is so blatant. You have some of the leading advisors allied with Israel. The head of the Treasury Department who is organizing sanctions against Iran is David Cohen and his predecessor was Stewart Levy, life-time Zionists who are in most delicate positions in pressuring countries to uphold sanctions against Iran. One could go down the list and identify the power of Zionism in the United States. I wrote a book about the power of Israel in the United States which has been translated in Farsi. But in any case, I think that the criteria that Washington uses in deciding when the nuclear weapons and chemical weapons are good and bad is based on that country’s relationship. Israel and the U.S. worked close together and Iran is a critic of the U.S. imperialism and Zionism and therefore any effort to create nuclear power becomes a pretext to weaken Iran and strengthen Israeli military superiority in the Middle East.

Q: And the final question. We know that the United States has abandoned its plans for attacking Syria, or at least has postponed such an attack. What do you think is the best and most viable solution for ending the crisis and civil war in Syria? What role can the international community play in bringing to an end this violence and bloodshed?

A: Well, I think the Syrian government has taken some very positive steps. First of all, it called for elections in which the domestic, internal opposition, and not the armed opposition, participated and made a substantial impact in the electoral process. Secondly, Syria has agreed to negotiate with the non-terrorist opposition. Thirdly, the terrorists are assassinating the pro-Western opposition and recently in a village on the Turkish border, we saw cases of assassinations and seizure of power by the Islamists. So I think one has to see that any reasonable settlement would follow the lines of negotiations between Syria and the opposition without prior conditions. You cannot exclude Bashar al-Assad from the procedure. I think out of these negotiations, a free election could be called. Once a ceasefire is in place, I think an election in which the terrorists are excluded would probably have to be enforced by the Syrian army and those groups who are calling for a peaceful settlement. Washington cannot play a bubble role here, talk about peace and ship arms to the terrorists and the opposition. Either there has to be a ceasefire, or there has to be a stopping of arms transfers; there has to be a meeting in which the U.S.-backed opposition sits down and negotiates. There has to be a ceasefire and a subsequent election and probably a power-sharing agreement in which the supporters of Bashar al-Assad are going to have an important role. The U.S. strategy is to isolate Iran, encircle Iran and dictate Iran to surrender its nuclear program. It wants to have a platform for aerial assaults in collaboration with Israel. Syria’s independence is vital to the security of Iran, not only its government, but its people and civilization. And I think that’s one of the big reasons why many of us oppose the U.S. war on Syria, because Syria could serve as a trampoline to eliminate any possible allies of Iran in the Middle East.

Kourosh Ziabari
Journalist, writer and media correspondent
www.KouroshZiabari.com

By Keith Jones
11 October, 2012
@ WSWS.org
Iran has rejected Washington’s preconditions for its participation in international deliberations on a “political solution” to the war in Syria—the so-called Geneva Two conference.
The Obama administration, which excluded Iran from the first Geneva conference on Syria, has demanded that Iran sign on to its efforts to coerce the Syrian government of Bashir al-Assad into a “power-sharing” agreement with the Islamist-dominated, US-sponsored and -armed “rebels” as the price for admission to Geneva Two.
Iran, Syria’s closest regional ally, has repeatedly signaled its readiness to work with other Middle Eastern states and the great powers to end the conflict in Syria. In advocating for such a role, Tehran has cited its participation in the December 2001 Bonn conference on Afghanistan, which ratified a US-organized government headed by Hamid Karzai to replace the toppled Taliban regime with which Iran had almost gone to war in 1998.
Furthermore, as part of its recent attempt to affect a rapprochement with the US, Tehran has signaled that, in exchange for the lifting of the punishing economic sanctions the US and its European allies have imposed on Iran, it would be ready to help Washington stabilize states and governments across the region, including in Afghanistan and Iraq.
But for Tehran to accept Washington’s demand that it endorse the communiqué issued by the June 2012 Geneva conference—a communiqué the US has spun as meaning that Assad must relinquish power to a “transitional government” “acceptable” to its rebel proxies—would mean throwing their Syrian allies to their wolves.
Speaking Monday, US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, “If—and this is an if —Iran were to endorse and embrace the Geneva Communiqué publicly, we would view the possibility of their participation (in Geneva Two) more openly.”
Iran was quick to respond. Iran’s Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Marzieh Afkham said Tehran would not agree to any preconditions to its attendance at the Geneva conference.
“If our participation is in the interests of achieving a solution,” declared Afkhram, “then it is not acceptable to impose conditions to inviting the Islamic Republic. We will not accept such conditions.”
Russia, another close ally of the Assad regime, has repeatedly voiced support for Iran’s participation in Geneva Two. And, in a shift, the UN-Arab League Special Envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, recently spoke in favor of an invitation being extended to Tehran.
On Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow and Washington had agreed that the Geneva Two conference should be held in mid-November. He made the statement after meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Forum meeting in Bali, Indonesia.
It is far from certain however that the conference will be held in November or, for that matter ever. Earlier this week, the United Nations envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, conceded the mid-November date was in jeopardy.
A senior leader of the US-sponsored Syrian National Council (SNC), Kamal Al-Labawani, told the London-based daily Asharq Al-Awsat earlier this month that while the SNC had previously said it would participate, it is now “of the view that it is not possible for the Geneva Two conference to be held.”
The evident reason for this shift is the dramatic reversals the “rebels” have suffered in recent months and this despite logistical support from the CIA and arms and money from Washington’s regional allies, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar.
Syrian government forces have been bolstered by volunteers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, as well as fighters from the Iranian-supported Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah.
But the principal reason for the reversals suffered by the US-sponsored rebels is their narrow base of support. The vast majority of Syrians are hostile to their ultra-reactionary Islamist program and this opposition has increased in response to the sectarian atrocities they have committed in areas under their control.
Whatever the ultimate fate of the Geneva Two conference, the US’s attitude toward Tehran’s participation is significant. It underscores the duplicitous and ravenous character of the Obama administration’s reputed “diplomatic opening” to Tehran.
For three decades the US has waged an unrelenting campaign of bullying and threats against Iran’s bourgeois nationalist regime, with the aim of ultimately re-imposing on the Iranian people the type of neo-colonial subjugation that existed under the bloody dictatorship of the Shah.
Under the Obama administration this campaign has reached unprecedented intensity, with the US using fraudulent and unproven claims concerning Iran’s nuclear energy program to justify mounting economic war on Tehran and preparations for military action. Washington has imposed sanctions aimed at throttling Iran’s economy by stopping it export trade, including the oil exports that are the main source of foreign exchange and government revenues, and by denying it access to the world financial system. And it has repeatedly threatened Iran with war, including making public that the Pentagon has made elaborate plans for a “shock and awe” air and naval war on Iran.
The war in Syria—which the US came to the brink of intervening directly in only a month ago—has moreover been largely directed against Iran. “Regime change” in Damascus would deprive Iran of its closest regional ally and of ready means of resupplying its Hezbollah allies.
The US’s basic objectives remain the same—to assert unbridled dominance over the world’s most important oil-exporting region. But facing massive domestic and international opposition to its plans to attack Syria and responding to overtures from Iran’s bourgeois regime, which fears Iran’s economic crisis will lead to working-class unrest, it decided to change tactics.
In pursuing negotiations with Tehran—negotiations that Obama with his “no options are off the able mantra” has emphasized are backed by the threat of war—Washington aims to pressure Tehran to make massive concessions, probe and leverage the cleavages within Iran’s ruling elite, and manipulate domestic US opinion with a view to legitimizing possible future military action.

On the 30^th June 2012 Mohamed Morsi was democratically elected as president of Egypt. However, his presidency ended after one year.General Fatah Al-Sisi, head of the Egyptian Army, brought the new Egyptian government down. Was it a coup or a revolution? Was this a democratically legitimized operation? Is there a future for Egypt? These topics were discussed on the 22^nd of August 2013 at the International Forum called “The Downfall of Morsi and the Future of Egypt” in the International Institute of Advanced Islamic Studies.  The speakers Dr.Chandra Muzaffar, Tan Sri Ahmad AlFarra, Professor Dato’ Mohamad Abu Bakar and Professor Daoud Batchelor mainly share the same views on the current issue.  Without any doubt the removal of President Morsi was not by any means a democratic act and led once again to the rise of the military regime.

Dr.Chandra Muzaffar (President, International Movement For A Just World (JUST)

1. Morsi’s downfall was neither legally nor ethically justifiable. He was legally elected and his election was even legitimized by a referendum.
2. Muslim Brotherhood focused on the wrong aspects of Egyptian society.
3. Opponents agenda

Military: scared of losing their long-term power in Egypt.

Israel: publicly declared their enmity towards the Muslim Brotherhood; deep relations with the Egyptian military.

Saudi Arabia: Backing Salafis and the military; Qatar supports the Muslim Brotherhood – since Saudi Arabia is trying to curb Qatari politics and power -Saudi Arabia takes the Egyptian military’s side.

1. The Muslim Brotherhood will not be able to regain power in the near future.
2. The stabilization of Egypt’s economy is important for its survival.

Tan Sri Ahmad AlFarra (Former Ambassador of Palestine to Malaysia/ Visiting Fellow, ISIS)

The destruction of Egypt has been one of Israel’s main goals, using the well-known, undercover divide-and-conquer strategy to achieve it.  The events in Egypt, were neither a coup nor a revolution, rather it has resulted in a “state of confusion”, partly because of Israeli manipulation.  To overcome this State, democracy has to be given another chance, which means that all the detainees including Morsi have to be freed and the results of a new election have to be respected. Furthermore, Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi has to resign.

Professor Dato’ Mohamad Abu Bakar (Department of International and Strategic Studies Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences )

The Arab nations have always been attacked by the Western world, which tried to implement western and modern values in Arab countries. This was facilitated for the West through the military regime in Egypt. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood has been a barrier for this previous relationship between the West and Egypt, due to the different political agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has reached out to Turkey, Iran and the Hamas. The Muslim Brotherhood should be given some time to prosper. It would be a miracle that after years of dictatorship a perfect democracy would arise immediately.

Professor Daud Batchelor (Environmentalist and Economic Geologist)

According to Islamic teachings Morsi is the legitimate president, since he was elected by the majority of the population. It is a Muslim’s obligation to obey him until he acts in a non-Islamic way, he becomes a tyrant or he is physically not able to fulfill his duties in a proper way. Any opposition to Morsi can be seen as kufr (denying the truth).

Report prepared by Nahid Ghulami and Yasmin Sarwar (They are the interns of JUST from August to September 2013)

By Marinella Corriegga, Vanessa Beeley, Feroze Mithiborwala & Roohulla Rezvi

10 September, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Say No to US War on Syria!!

“Syria you are not alone, we shall not let you down”

The world yet again waits with bated breath, as the clouds of war threaten to drown the voices of peace. The US is once again threatening a sovereign country, under a false pretext & fabricated lies. After Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya where millions of innocent civilians died, now it is the turn of Syria.

Once again US is going to use its lethal weapons and ‘save’ the people, by bombing them under the dubious pretext of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The American unilateralism poses a threat & a challenge to the overwhelming majority of nations that oppose the war. Yet again the US is complicit in destroying & undermining the international political structures & legal framework, even as it tries to speak in the name of the international community. But even though the US stands in splendid isolation, but yet persists with the war.

Thus once again innocent children & entire populations are going to be subjected to the role of helpless guinea pigs, whilst the latest weaponry is yet again tested. Once again residential areas, hospitals, schools, bridges, water supply systems, electric plants, will be targeted by the Cruise missiles, even as the entire civilian & social infrastructure of an entire nation is degraded & destroyed. Once again apache helicopters are going to display their accuracy on civilians, their graves to be marked as collateral damage.

The impending Imperialist-Zionist war on Syria is a threat to the entire region & will soon envelop the entire world into a fratricidal world war, where hundreds of millions of innocents will lose their lives. The very survival of humanity is at stake & thus this is a clarion call for peace.

Enough is enough!!

The overwhelming majority of the people are opposed to the war & are protesting across every nation across the world. The true international community, the comity of nations has spoken out against the attack, but the US imperialist pays no heed due to sheer arrogance & the brute force that it commands.

But this time we are not going to demonstrate & protest in our cities only. We are not going to follow the news of destruction, death & war through the satellite channels any more. We are not ready to sit by & watch a new Iraq and Afghanistan, even as the occupation & destruction of Palestine carries on.

This time, we are going to be there with the people of Syria. This time, for the sake of global peace and justice, we are going to March to Damascus from across the nations of the world, to bring the message of peace & stand in solidarity with the Syrian nation, which is one of the most ancient human civilizations.

Our objective is to resist, to defy & stop the US led war on Syria.

Our objective is to stand witness to the destruction that will be wrecked on this nation & let the world know about the true reality of the genocidal war.

Our objective is to act as a deterrent & protect the civilian & social infrastructure.

Our objective is to stand in solidarity with the Syrian people.

The very fate of humanity is at stake, where the choice is between peace & a global war, a war which will spell certain doom for all of humanity.

Join us from across the world in our collective endeavor for peace!

Join us in the “Global Peace March to Damascus”!

In solidarity

Marinella Corriegga, Vanessa Beeley, Feroze Mithiborwala & Roohulla Rezvi

(For the International Coordination Committee – GPMD)

Contact us on Facebook:

Contact us via message to this page if you wish to take part and we can help you to organise your participation.

Contact us via https://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Peace-March-to-Damascus/597025893693258?fref=ts if you wish to participate.

Thank you