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By Chris Marsden

29 June, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The United States is to officially begin arms shipments to Syria, after months of doing so through third parties, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

A story placed with the Wall Street Journal cited CIA sources relating plans to start supplying arms directly to the opposition Free Syrian Army “within a month.”

The CIA has already begun shipping weapons to a secret network of warehouses in neighbouring Jordan, in an operation backed by European and Arab powers. It will provide training to forces that are supposedly “moderate” and “separate” from Al Qaeda-linked forces such as the Al Nusra Front.

The shipments will fuel an August offensive against the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The Obama administration cited unsubstantiated US and French claims that pro-Assad forces have used chemical weapons such as sarin on ten separate occasions to claim that a “red line” has been crossed justifying an open policy of arming the opposition.

Vast quantities of weaponry have already been sent via Saudi Arabia to Islamist groups. Washington now claims that weapons sent to “moderates” are the best means of ensuring that Al Nusra’s dominant role can be challenged. This is supposed to be guaranteed by CIA oversight and training by US special operations forces. But the CIA will spend a mere two weeks vetting and training an initial group of fighters.

The US already has 1,000 troops in Jordan providing training.

France is considering sending arms “to balance” the military aid received by the Assad regime from Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, according to Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

In Britain, there is substantial domestic political opposition to sending arms, including within the ruling Conservative Party and its Liberal Democrat coalition partners. This has forced Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a vote in parliament on the issue that might make him dependent upon the opposition Labour Party.

Labour Leader Ed Miliband was invited Wednesday to discuss Syria at the National Security Council in 10 Downing Street. He was last invited to attend a National Security Council meeting in 2011, to sign off on the government’s decision to take military action against former Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

Cameron has also said the government reserves the right to act in the national interest without parliamentary assent.

Washington’s reliance on Saudi Arabia to arm the opposition gives the lie to all claims that it is seeking to prevent Al Qaeda securing weapons, given Saudi intelligence agencies’ close ties to far-right Islamist forces throughout the region.

On Tuesday, speaking alongside US Secretary of State John Kerry, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said that Saudi Arabia would help the Syrian opposition fight in an “invaded country” that was facing “genocide” in “the most effective way we can.”

Saudi Arabia and Qatar will provide heavy weaponry, including hand-held surface-to-air missiles.

Kerry said, “We share a belief with Saudi Arabia and many countries that … this next period of time is an important period of time where decisions could be made that could affect the region for years to come.”

His only caveat on supplying weapons was that “we want to make sure that’s being done in a coordinated way.”

Reinforcing the demand for arms shipments, a team of United Nations inspectors are in Turkey, supposedly to gather information about the possible use of chemical weapons, headed by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom. He is expected to deliver an interim report in July, without any basis for doing so other than to justify a predetermined course of action and, in particular, the military offensive planned to begin in August.

A Turkish official admitted that it is not possible to establish anything conclusively, “As [Sellstrom] cannot travel to Syria.” All he will have will be intelligence and interviews provided by Turkey and alleged victims.

In Saudi Arabia, Kerry made the appropriate noises about seeking a negotiated solution and denied that there were any US or Saudi troops “on the ground” in Syria, because he is formally committed to a peace conference in Geneva—that again will not take place until after the planned military offensive.

Russia is an ally of the Assad regime and is insisting that it will be represented at the Geneva talks alongside Iran. The US also faces opposition from its allies including Italy and Germany to arming the opposition.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Friday that Russia is committed to arranging a peace conference, but other countries and groups are trying to set preconditions. “The opposition, which is supported by the West, and other countries in the region, announced they are not going to the conference as long as the regime doesn’t agree to capitulate,” he said.

On Wednesday, outgoing US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice attacked Russia and China for vetoing action against Syria, calling the UN Security Council’s inaction “a stain” on its reputation. “The council’s inaction on Syria is a moral and strategic disgrace that history will judge harshly,” she pontificated. Rice is set to become President Barack Obama’s national security adviser.

Russia this week announced that it has withdrawn all its military and non-diplomatic civilian personnel out of Syria, including an evacuation of the 70 people at its naval supply station in the Mediterranean port of Tartus. The move does not affect Russia’s ability to operate militarily in either the Mediterranean or in Syria, as Cyprus has agreed the use of its ports. A 16-ship naval task force is still in the eastern Mediterranean.

Politically, however, it indicates an assumption that an escalation of the war is imminent.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel made a diplomatic but nevertheless firm statement that Berlin would not supply weapons to the opposition. Speaking in parliament Thursday, she said that “The hardship of the people of Syria is immeasurably great, their situation is unbearable” and that “anyone with a heart” would want to help them.

“In this desperate situation, which is increasingly threatening the entire region, surely each of us can understand that our friends and partners the US, Britain and France are considering helping parts of the Syrian opposition with weapons shipments,” she said, but added, “Whether this approach can succeed is an entirely different question.”

“The risks, in my view, would be almost impossible to assess,” she said. At the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, she continued, “I made it unmistakably clear that Germany for legal reasons sends no weapons into civil war zones, including Syria.”

Washington, Berlin, London and Paris all face majority domestic opposition to their warmongering in Syria, with only the various pseudo-left groups such as the US International Socialist Organisation, Germany’s Die Linke, Britain’s Socialist Workers Party and France’s New Anti-capitalist Party still denying the obviously sectarian character of the opposition militias.

This week and last, new videos have emerged on YouTube of opposition fighters beheading and shooting Syrian civilians, including two women. Two men, beheaded with a small knife before a cheering crowd, were accused of aiding Assad and were reportedly a priest and another Christian.

On Thursday, four people were killed in a suicide blast in a Christian neighborhood in the Syrian capital, Damascus. The blast took place near the Greek Orthodox Virgin Mary Church in Bab Sharqi. Several people were wounded.

By Countercurrents.org

27 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The Muslim Brotherhood asked Egypt’s former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman to nominate himself for presidency in 2011, Hussein Kamal, former head of Sulieman’s office, said on June 25, 2013.

Kamal said in a press conference in Cairo that a representative of the Brotherhood – from which current President Mohamed Morsi hails – visited Suleiman in Alexandria in the summer of 2011 and asked him to nominate himself for presidential elections.

According to Kamal, the representative told Suleiman, who passed away in July 2012, that this would be on the condition that his vice-president and executive office be made up of Brotherhood members.

“They wanted him to be a puppet president who would implement the orders of the [Brotherhood’s] guidance office,” Kamal said.

“They gave [Suleiman] three months to think about it, but he refused,” he added.

Suleiman announced in 2012 that he would run for presidential elections. However, his presidential bid was turned down by the Supreme Presidential Electoral Committee (SPEC) because he failed to acquire the number of recommendations stipulated by the electoral law.

In a conference held to “reveal information about the Brotherhood’s rule,” Kamal, who currently does not hold any official position, said that he does not represent the Egyptian General Intelligence Service and is speaking for himself as an “Egyptian citizen.”

Kamal, who was also Suleiman’s office head when the former intelligence chief was appointed the country’s vice-president during the 18-day January 2011 uprising, talked about Morsi’s November 2012 constitutional decree, saying that it was sent to the presidency “in an envelope from the [Brotherhood’s] guidance office.”

Kamal described the performance of the Brotherhood and its political arm, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), who have a parliamentary majority, as a “failure.”

In addition, Kamal attacked Qatar calling it a “statelet.”

Qatar has been a prominent source of foreign aid to Egypt since Morsi came to power.

“Who is Qatar’s [prime minister] to say that his country will not leave Egypt bankrupt?” he asked.

Qatari prime minister Hamad bin Jassem said in January that his country would not see Egypt’s economic situation deteriorate to the level of bankruptcy.

The Qatari-owned Al Jazeera Mubashar Masr news channel cut off the broadcast of the conference as Kamal made the comments.

Kamal said that former president Mubarak helped the father of former Qatar emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani when the sheikh overthrew his father in 1995.

Kamal claimed that by helping Egypt financially, Qatar wants to abuse its economy as “it is the Egyptian people who will repay these loans.”

Protests hit all-time high in Morsi’s first year

Egypt experienced 9,427 protests during president Morsi’s first year in power, representing seven-fold increase from those seen during final year of Mubarak regime, International Development Centre claims. [2]

Egyptian dissent has hit an all-time high “since the pharaonic era,” said the Cairo-based Organization.

The IDC’s ‘Democratic Indicator’ report showed an in the number of monthly demonstrations from 176 a month in the last year of the Mubarak regime – which climaxed with January 2011 uprising – to 1140 protests per month in 2013.

The report covers the first year of Morsi’s term in office, from 1 July of last year to 20 June 2013.

The number of protests seen during the first half of the year doubled in the second half, from 500 protests to 1140, eventually culminating in mass anti-government demonstrations on 30 June, the report stated.

The anti-Morsi ‘Rebel’ signature campaign has capitalized on the wave of public discontent, collecting 15 million signatures in support of the president’s ouster, the report notes. The signature drive is spearheading calls for the 30 June protests.

According to the Democratic Indicator, labor protests (4,609) have made up 49 percent of the total number of protests, in which 60 different socio-economic segments took part.

In an indication of this, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has added Egypt to its black list of countries that violate labor rights.

Grassroots support was behind 27 percent of the protests, while participation by political and civilian activists made up 13 percent, the report stated.

Cairo came first in terms of the number of protests seen, followed by the Nile Delta cities of Gharbiya and Sharqiya. The Mediterranean city of Alexandria came in fourth.

“The categories that took part in the protests reflected the hostility of the current regime towards almost all sections of Egyptian society,” the report argued.

The report went on to claim that such hostility had found its way into state institutions, including the judiciary and the interior ministry, “constituting a model of dictatorship by the ruling regime and its hope to dominate authority.”

The chorus of protests throughout the year was predominantly the result of economic and social grievances (67 percent) and labor demands (49 percent).

According to the Democratic Indicator, demands for better housing and public services, along with shortages of fuel, bread and electricity, also acted as catalysts for protest activity.

Attempts by the regime to cement control over the state bureaucracy, marginalization of the political opposition, and clampdowns on freedoms, the report alleges, caused 31 percent of the protests.

The Democratic Indicator went on to claim that Egyptians employed 62 innovative methods to express their dissent, peaceful at times and violent at others.

These ranged from strikes (1,013), sit-ins (811), marches (503), human chains (80) and horn-blowing campaigns (21), as well as 18 no-bill-payment campaigns. The blocking of roads, meanwhile, accounted for 16 percent of the techniques used to voice discontent with the government.

The report claims that an outpouring of public frustration, coupled with dissatisfaction with the regime’s policies among large swathes of the public, has provided fertile ground for violence during planned anti-government protests on 30 June.

The report went on to urge the president to step down before the planned protests in light of the widespread outrage he faces.

The day is expected to include an open-ended counter-demonstration by the president’s Islamist backers, heightening fears of violence.

Source:

[1] June 25, 2013,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/74921/Egypt/Politics-/Brotherhood-asked-exspy-chief-Suleiman-to-run-for-.aspx

[2] Ahram Online, Jun 25, 2013,

http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContent/1/64/74939/Egypt/Politics-/Egypt-protests-hit-alltime-high-during-Morsis-firs.aspx

By Graham Peebles

27 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Dancing to the tune of their corporate benefactors, governments of the ruling G8 countries are enacting complex agriculture agreements delivering large tracts of prime cut African soil into the portfolios of their multinational bedmates.

Desperate for foreign investment, countries throughout Africa are at the mercy of their new colonial masters – national and international agrochemical corporations, fighting for land, water and control of the world’s food supplies. Driven overwhelmingly by self-interest and profit, the current crop of ‘investors’ differ little from their colonial ancestors. The means may have changed, but the aim – to rape and pillage, no matter the sincere sounding rhetoric, remains more or less the same.

Regarded by her northern guides as agriculturally underperforming, Sub-Saharan Africa is seen The African Centre for Biosafety (ACB)i relate, as a “new frontier”, a place to “make profits, with an eye on land, food and biofuels in particular”. Africa, then, is the new Wild West; smallholder farmers and indigenous people are the natives Indians, the multi nationals and their democratically elected representatives – or salesmen – the settlers.

Various initiatives offering what is, indisputably much needed ‘support and investment’ are flowing north to south. Key amongst these is The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition in Africa (NAFSNA), designed by the governments of the eight richest economies, for some of the poorest countries in the world. The New Alliance was born out of the G8 summit in May 2012 at Camp David and, according to, War on Want (WoW)ii, “has been modelled on the ‘new vision’ of private investment in agriculture developed by management consultants McKinsey in conjunction with the ABCD group of leading grain traders (ADM, Bunge, Cargill and Louis Dreyfus) and other multinational agribusiness companies.” (Ibid) It has been written in honourable terms to sit comfortably within the Africa Union’s Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), bestowing an aura of international credibility.

The New Alliance… in land and seed appropriation

At first glance, The New Alliance, with its altruistically-gilded aims, appears to be a worthy development. Who amongst us could argue with the intention as reported by the United Nations (UN)iii, to “achieve sustained and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty over the next 10 years”. The means to achieving this noble quest however, are skewed, ignoring the rights and needs of small-holder farmers and the wishes of local people – who are not consulted during the heady negotiations with government officials local and national, and the multi zillion $ corporations who are swarming to buy their ancestral land. Alliance contracts and deals-done favour wealthy investors, revealing the underlying, unjust G8 initiatives objective, to “open up African agriculture to multinational agribusiness companies by means of national ‘cooperation frameworks’ between African governments, donors and private sector investors”, WoW report.

Poverty reduction (the principle stated aim of the Alliance), will be achieved we are told, not by rational methods of sharing and re-distribution, but USAIDiv 18/05/2012 reveal, by “aligning the commitments of Africa’s leadership to drive effective country plans and policies for food security”. ‘Plans and policies’, drafted no doubt in the hallowed meeting rooms of those driving the ‘New Alliance’: the G8 governments and their cohorts including The World Bank and, pulling the policy strings, the agriculture companies sitting behind them, nestling alongside the pharmaceutical giants and the arms industry magnates. With African governments anxious to eat at the head table, or at least be invited into the cocktail chamber they have little choice but to sign up to such unbalanced ‘plans and policies’.

To date, nine African countries (from a continent of 54 nation states), have committed to The New Alliance. First to sign up were, Tanzania, Ghana and the West’s favoured ally in the region Ethiopia – where wide ranging human rights violations, including forced displacement and rapes have reportedly accompanied land sales, and where over 250,000 people in Gambella have been forced into the Orwellian sounding ‘Villagization Programmes’. Then came Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Cote d’Ivoire, followed by Benin, Malawi, and Nigeria. It is an agreement dripping with strings that promise to entangle the innocent and uninformed. After “wide-ranging consultations on land and farming”, with officials from potential partner countries, the results of which were “ignored in the agreements with the G8”, deals “between African governments and private companies were facilitated by the World Economic Forum”, behind, The Guardian report, firmly closed doors.

Conditional to investment promised by The New Alliance, African leaders, USAID tell us are ‘committed’ – forced may be a better word – “to refine [government] policies in order to improve investment opportunities”. In plain English, African countries are required to, change their trade and agriculture laws to include ending the free distribution of seeds, relax the tax system and national export controls and open the doors for profit repatriation (allowing the money as well as the crops to be exported). In Mozambique, as elsewhere across the continent, local farmers have been evicted from their land under land sales agreements, and The Guardian 10/06/2013v report, “is now obliged to write new laws promoting what its agreement calls “partnerships” of this kind”. A polluted term, disguising the real relationship between African governments and the multi-national ‘investors’, which is closer to master and maid than equal collaborators.

The Alliance offers a combination of public and private money to African countries willing to take the G8 plunge into international political-economic duplicity, with, ACB relate “the large multinational seed, fertiliser and agrochemical companies setting the agenda … and philanthropic institutions (like AGRA and others) establishing the institutional and infrastructural mechanisms to realise this agenda”. Britain has pledged £395 million of foreign aid whilst, according to the UN “over 45 local and multinational companies have expressed their intent to invest over $3 billion across the agricultural value chain in Grow Africa countries [a Programme of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) established by the African Union in 2003.].” In order to get their hands on some of the corporations billions however, African nations are required to “change their seed laws, trade laws and land ownership in order to prioritise corporate profits over local food needs”, Mozambique e.g. is contracted, The Guardian tell us to “systematically cease distribution of free and unimproved seeds”, and is drawing up new laws granting intellectual property rights (IPR) of seeds, that will “promote private sector investment”. In other words, laws are being written that allow foreign companies – ‘investors’ (a word used to mislead and bestow legitimacy) – to grab the land of their African ‘partners’, patent their seeds and monopolise their food markets. In Ghana, Tanzania and Ivory Coast, similar regulations sit on the table waiting to be rubber-stamped.

The re-writing of seed laws, along with the fact that these unbalanced deals allow “big multinational seed, fertiliser and agrochemical companies such as Yara, Monsanto, Syngenta and Cargill to set the agenda”, is a major concern expressed by environmental NGO’s and campaigners, Reuters 20/06/2013vi report. These are concerns that the initiating G8 governments, were they at all troubled by the impact of their meddling, should share.

The wide ownership, by a small number of huge agro-chemical companies of the rights to seeds and fertilisers, is creating, the UN in their report on the Right to Foodvii, state: “monopoly privileges to plant breeders and patent-holders through the tools of intellectual property”. This growing trend, facilitated through the support of the G8 governments is placing more and more control of the worldwide food supply in their hands, and is causing, “the poorest farmers [to] become increasingly dependent on expensive inputs, creating the risk of indebtedness in the face of unstable incomes.” India is a case in question where farmers strangled by debt are committing suicide at a rate of two per hour.

Investment Support Sharing

African farmers, and civil society along with 25 British campaign groups including War on Want, Friends of the Earth, The Gaia Foundation and the World Development Movement, have declared their objections to the New Alliance and asked that the government withhold the £395 million so generously pledged by Prime Minister Cameron. The African civil society are in no doubt that “opening markets and creating space for multinationals to secure profits lie at the heart of the G8 intervention”, they “recognise the New Alliance is a poisoned chalice, and they are right to reject it”, asserts Kirtana Chandrasekaran of Friends of the Earth (FoE).

Having made a continental mess of their own countries’ economies, not to mention the environmental mayhem caused by their neo-liberal economic policies, It is with unabashed colonial arrogance that the G8 governments deem to tell African countries what to do with their land and how best to do it. Not only do they have no genuine interest in Africa, save what can be gained from it, but they have “no legitimacy to intervene in matters of food, hunger and land tenure in Africa or any other part of the world”, as WoW make clear. The New Alliance, according to David Cameron, is “a great combination of promoting good governance and helping Africa to feed its people”. He and the rest of the G8 sitting comfortably club, are, FoE state, “pretending to be tackling hunger and land grabbing in Africa while backing a scheme that will ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of small farmers”. This new deal is “a pro-corporate assault on African nations”, providing ‘investment and support‘ opportunities for greedy investors, looking to further expand their corporate assets with the support of participating governments obliged to provide a selection box of state incentives.

The ending of hunger in sub-Saharan Africa, India and elsewhere, will not be brought about by allowing large tracts of land to be bought up by corporations whose only interest is in maximizing return on investment. Far from providing investment and support for the people of Africa, The Alliance is a mask for exploitation and profiteering: True investment in Africa is, investment in the people of Africa; the smallholder farmers, the women and children, the communities across the continent. It involves working collectively, consulting, encouraging participation and crucially sharing. Sharing of knowledge, experience and technology, sharing the natural resources – the land, food and water, the minerals and other resources equitably amongst the people of Africa and indeed the wider world. Such radical, commonsense ideas would go a long way to creating not only food security but harmony, trust and social justice which just might bring about peace.

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

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The town is back in the hands of Syria’s army but the move says more about local disillusion than military defeat

By Patrick Cockburn

25 June 2013

@ The Independent

Once a rebel stronghold, the town of Tal Kalakh on the Syrian side of the border with Lebanon changed sides at the week-end and is now controlled by the Syrian army. The switch in allegiance is the latest advance by government forces into areas where they have had little or no authority since the start of the revolt in Syria two years ago.

The government is triumphant at the surrender of 39 local leaders of the rebel Free Syrian Army with their weapons, which were ceremoniously stacked against the outside wall of the town’s military headquarters. The exact terms of the deal are mysterious, but there is no doubt that the regular Syrian army now holds all parts of Tal Kalakh, which had a pre-war population of 55,000 and is an important smuggling route for arms and ammunition from Lebanon a couple of miles to the south. Syrian army commanders claimed the reason the rebels had given up in the town so easily was because of their defeat in the battle for the similarly strategically important town of Qusayr, 20 miles away, earlier in June.

The Syrian opposition denied that the town had fallen, saying that there was still fighting going on there. In a three-hour visit, I saw no sign of it. Soldiers and civilians looked relaxed and there were no indications of recent destruction, though there are plenty of buildings damaged by shellfire or pockmarked with bullet holes from fighting in 2011 or 2012. The pro-rebel Al-Jazeera Arabic satellite television channel claimed smoke was rising from the town. I did not see or smell any.

The rebels’ strenuous denial that they had lost an important town without a fight may show a certain desperation on their part. Ahmed Munir, the governor of Homs province, which includes Tal Kalakh, pointed out in an interview that the Syrian army had moved into the town just as 11 major powers, including the US, Britain, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, meeting in Qatar, had promised the rebels more weapons and equipment.

A local FSA commander, who said his name was Khalid al-Eid, explained that he had gone over to the government side along with 20 men he led because of general disillusionment with the uprising. A paunchy man in his early thirties with a black beard and a red baseball cap, he appeared self-confident and almost truculent as he talked about his life as an FSA leader.

He said that before the uprising, he “used to work as a policeman during the day-time and in the family perfume shop in the evening”. He seemed assured he would be able to return to his old routine.

Listening to him impassively were Syrian army officers and some civilians, including Khalid al-Eid’s father, who expelled his son from the family home when he joined the FSA. The deal that brought the army back into Tal Kalakh appears to have been brokered by leading citizens of the town who did not want it to become a battleground again. The devastating destruction at Qusayr when it was stormed over two weeks by the Syrian army and the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah gave a sense of urgency to the final negotiations.

Tal Kalakh may be peaceful now but it has seen much fighting in the recent past. There is an elaborate military checkpoint at the entrance to the town just off the Homs-Tartus main road where documents are checked. The atmosphere in the military headquarters housed in an administrative building of a large grain silo was relaxed, as if nobody expected to do more fighting. The buildings immediately in front of the army’s positions had been wrecked by cannon fire and looked as if they had been abandoned. Armed rebellion had started early in Tal Khalak in May 2011, probably because its position on the Lebanese border made it easy to smuggle in weapons.

The cache of weapons on show by the army – a few mortar bombs, rockets and explosives – were not very impressive. There was also a truck of furniture looted from the local hospital by the rebels on show, but the aging white-painted beds and chairs looked unsaleable.

Beyond a zone of outright destruction in front of Syrian army’s front line there was an area which looked as if shops and houses had been abandoned a long time ago. A government guide who tried to explain why there was nobody on the streets said “it is because it is siesta time and they are all in bed”. But this did not explain the absence of cars or clothes drying on lines in backyards.

The shutters of shops were rusty in places and there was grass growing in cracks in the pavement. Most local inhabitants are likely to have become refugees in Lebanon over a year ago.

Even here there were some government loyalists. Umm Said al-Masri, a woman surrounded by her family, was reopening a vegetable shop. “God bless the army,” she said, confirming that it had reasserted control three days earlier. Her children chanted slogans in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and there were new-looking posters of him on the walls. Deeper into the town more people appeared on the streets and most of the small shops were open, selling everything from fruit to shoes.

Close to the border there are Christian Maronite villages along the steep sides of the hills, houses often having small statues of the Virgin Mary in blue and white robes facing the road. The land falls away quickly to the al-Kabir river at the bottom of a deep wooded valley, which is the frontier between Syria and Lebanon. In this area a donkey specially trained to carry smuggled goods and cross the border without human assistance is said to be worth more than a car.

Everybody seemed to accept that the Syrian army is back for good. The soldiers in checkpoints were not wearing helmets and often not carrying their weapons, as if they did not expect anybody to attack them. Khalid al-Eid said there had been 300-400 FSA in Tal Kalakh before the army’s return but they must have melted back into the local population under an unofficial amnesty or have gone to Lebanon. Soldiers or guerrillas who have switched sides are often an unreliable source of information about their former colleagues because they denigrate them in a bid to impress their new masters. But Khalid al-Eid did say that his men were “paid between $100 and 300 a month and we got an extra $1,000 if we carried out an operation”. He described how he would make Youtube films – “sometimes they show us firing when there was nothing to shoot at” – which would later be shown on al-Arabiya and al-Jazeera satellite television.

What were the exact terms of the deal that replaced the FSA with the Syrian army? Peace did not break out all of a sudden and it had been preceded by a series of local ceasefires and negotiations arranged by leading local townspeople. Monsignor Michel Naaman, a Syriac Catholic priest in Homs, who has often taken part in mediating such agreements said that “older people in the town had seen much of it damaged and did not want it destroyed”.

He adds that there are many other such deals and agreements in the making. For instance in Homs many people have moved to the al-Waar district for safety, its population rising from 150,00 to 700,000. The Old City, which once had 400,000 people in it is almost empty aside from rebel fighters. He says that ceasefires or agreements for rebels to put down their weapons in return for an amnesty are much easier to arrange when all the rebels are Syrians. “When there are foreign Salafi or Jihadi fighters present, as there are in the Old City, an agreement is almost impossible.”

The Governor Ammed Munir believes “one should try to make a deal in each case without a special military operation”. He says that the Old City of Homs is particularly difficult to deal with because “you can’t have an agreement with so many gangs and in case, there are many tunnels into and out of the Old City”. Overall, there is little fighting in Homs province because of the government success at Qusayr and because these local ceasefires are holding. An injection of more arms and money, which may be the result of last weekend’s Doha meeting of the 11 Friends of Syria could bring a new surge in violence but would not produce a decisive result in the civil war.

The Tal Kalakh peace deal is important because no serious negotiations on who holds power in Syria can take place given the present level of violence in the country as a whole. The only way to bring the political temperature down is by local ceasefires and peace deals. The government is gaining ground this year as the rebels did in 2011 but nobody is going to win on the battlefield.

Assad’s uncle sells Paris mansion for knock-down price

The uncle of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has sold his sumptuous seven-storey Paris mansion for a knock-down price, just as French authorities have stepped up investigations into the alleged misuse of public funds by foreign leaders.

Rifaat al-Assad’s Paris property on the exclusive Avenue Foch, overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, had been on sale since last year for €100m (£85m). He abruptly dropped the price three months ago and it was sold for €70m, reportedly to a Russian oligarch.

Rifaat al-Assad – known as the “butcher of Hama” – is the younger brother of the late Syrian president Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father. Rifaat has spent three decades in exile in France after an attempted coup to oust his sibling, but he owns properties elsewhere in Europe, including a mansion in Mayfair. He earned his bloodthirsty nickname after allegedly masterminding the 1982 crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood which destroyed  the Syrian city of Hama and left an estimated 20,000 people dead. “Rifaat al-Assad has a fortune calculated in billions of euros, for which opponents of the Assad family would love to know the origin,” Libération said. France has begun investigating acquisitions stemming from the suspected ill-gotten gains of foreign leaders, in particular three from Africa.

A mansion belonging to the son of Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, close to Mr Assad’s 12,000 foot property on Avenue Foch, was seized earlier this month by French police.

Anne Penketh

 

By James Cogan

24 June, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The “Friends of Syria” meeting in Qatar on June 22 ended with a communiqué announcing that Washington and its allies will “take all necessary practical measures” to arm the right-wing Sunni-based opposition forces, which have served as their proxies in a two-year civil war to overthrow the government of President Bashar al-Assad. The announcement opens up a new stage in the war, and heightens the dangers of a regional sectarian conflagration.

The communiqué of the “Friends of Syria”—the Orwellian name given to the coalition of the US, its NATO allies, Britain, France, Italy, Germany and Turkey, and the Sunni states of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar—can only be described as a criminal and reckless document. It proposes to supply sufficient weapons and supplies to the anti-Assad opposition to enable it to counter the Syrian military ahead of “peace talks” in Geneva. The document also hints at US and NATO military operations along Syria’s borders to prevent Shiite fighters from Lebanon, Iraq and Iran assisting the pro-government forces—even as imperialist aid pours in for the so-called “rebels.”

Once again, the imperialist instigators of the civil war assert that Assad and his close supporters have “no role” in Syria’s future. This is a transparent attempt to foment dissent among pro-Assad forces and trigger the collapse of the government.

Plumbing the depths of hypocrisy, the communiqué expresses “strong concern” over “increasing presence and growing radicalism in the conflict” and “terrorist elements in Syria”. The “terrorists” are Sunni extremist groups, linked to Al Qaeda, that have played the leading role in the fighting against the Assad regime and have been one of the beneficiaries of the weapons sent to Syria by US allies in the region. The stepped-up flow of arms now underway will further aid their sectarian attacks on Syria’s Alawite Shiite minority.

US Secretary of State John Kerry played the leading role in Qatar in pressuring participants to agree to the communiqué. It was adopted in defiance of sharp warnings by Russian President Vladimir Putin against the further arming of the Sunni extremists. Germany and several other countries reportedly raised concerns that the provision of arms would only further fuel sectarian Shiite-Sunni tensions across the Middle East. The US-led proxy war in Syria has already led to an escalation in fighting between rival Shiite and Sunni factions in both Lebanon and Iraq. The German government nevertheless signed off on the document.

The communiqué follows a June 14 declaration by the Obama administration that its unproven and highly dubious assertion that the Assad regime had used chemical weapons justified Washington’s provision of military aid to anti-Assad forces. In fact, as a Los Angeles Times report on June 21 indicated, US intelligence and military officers have been on the ground in Jordan and Turkey since late 2012, training rebel fighters.

Representatives of the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) boasted last week that the US announcement had already resulted in the delivery of sophisticated arms, including armour piercing anti-tank weapons and anti-aircraft missile launchers. FSA spokesman Louay Muqdad told Agence France Presse that the supplies, “will change the course of the battle on the ground.”

Khalid Saleh, a representative of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, told the Washington Post that the US action had sent “a very strong signal to the other countries” to step up their arming of the rebel fighters. Weapons shipments, paid for by the Gulf state monarchies, are allegedly coming in from Libyan arms dealers and include Russian-made Konkurs anti-tank missiles. Fighting has reportedly increased around the northern city of Aleppo as the opposition makes use of the new hardware to launch counter-attacks on Syrian military positions.

The Qatar meeting has been greeted in US strategic and political circles as an important step, but one that must be followed by more direct American military involvement in the Syrian war.

The Washington Post editorial on June 21 called for a Kosovo-style intervention against Syria, implying that an air war should be waged to support the anti-Assad opposition and that a “peace-keeping force”—including American troops—should be sent into the country once the regime fell.

In the USA Today yesterday, Brookings Institution strategic analysts Michael Doran and Michael O’Hanlon likewise called for open intervention to ensure Assad’s overthrow. “We can provide not only light arms, but also heavier weaponry and even air support if necessary,” they wrote.

Spelling out the logic of the regime-change operation, Doran and O’Hanlon asserted: “The calculus of Assad and his Iranian patrons will not change until Aleppo and Damascus are squarely and permanently under rebel control. These are the near-term strategic goals that the US must set for the opposition, and the United States must work to give the rebels the support necessary to achieve them. We cannot expect Assad and his inner-circle elite to accept exile until they are certain that the two major cities of Syria are beyond their control.”

What is being proposed is a bloodbath. The seizure of Aleppo and Damascus would require the bombardment of the two most densely populated urban areas in Syria and the bloody slaughter of the pro-government forces that have, until now, resisted the Sunni forces that Washington is seeking to install in power. Given the sectarian crimes already carried out by Sunni extremist militias, it would also lead to pogroms, particularly against Shiite Alawites.

The determination of the US ruling elite to realise its predatory ambitions to place the entire Middle East under its political and military dominance has produced atrocity after atrocity, above all the massive death and destruction inflicted in Iraq. In Syria, an estimated 90,000 people have already lost their lives. The stepped-up drive now taking place to reduce Syria to a US client-state portends yet more war crimes.

By Countercurrents.org

24 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

DHA PhotoSome 2.5 million protestors hit the streets across Turkey since the unrest began on May 31 over the attempt to demolish Istanbul ‘s Gezi Park . [1]

Only in two cities, Bayburt and Bingöl, people did not attend the protests while 79 cities witnessed big protests. A large majority of the protests were staged in Istanbul and Ankara .

Some 4,900 protesters were detained and 4000 people were injured including 600 riot police.

After the violent clashes slowed down, “standing man” civil disobedience protests increased in the country and everyday some 50 people stood silently in their cities’ centres.

The damage toll showed that 58 public buildings and 337 private businesses were damaged while 240 police vehicles, 214 private cars, 90 municipality buses and 45 ambulances were left unusable. Some 68 city cams, known as MOBESE, were also broken. The total damage costs amounted to 140 million Turkish Liras.

Demonstration joins hands with Gezi Park

Thousands attended to the commemoration demonstration of the 1993 Sivas massacre a week before its 20th anniversary. DHA photo

Thousands attended the commemorationdemonstration. DHA photo

Thousands gathered in Istanbul ‘s Anatolian district of Kadiköy to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Sivas massacre, upon a call from Alevi associations.

A number of unions and the Taksim Solidarity Platform also attended the demonstration. A representative of the platform made a speech emphasizing that their demands had yet to be met by the government.

The crowd was commemorating the killing of 35 people on the night of July 1-2, 1993 , in an arson attack led by a mob on a hotel where many Alevi intellectuals and artists who had come to Sivas for a conference were staying. The controversies surrounding the pogrom have never completely been uncovered and an Ankara court dropped the case on the killings in March 2012, ruling that the charges against the suspects exceeded the statute of limitations. The Madimak hotel has since become a symbol of the discrimination faced by the Alevi community, who has long asked the state to turn it into a memorial museum.

Demonstrators also commemorated Ethem Sarisülük, a young Alevi protester who died after allegedly being shot by police during the Gezi Park events in Ankara .

At the Kadiköy demonstration, Kemal Bülbül, the Chairman of the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association, slammed prime minister Erdogan’s attitude toward the Alevi community. “After saying ‘one confession,’ ‘one religion,’ ‘one language,’ ‘one race,’ he now says ‘one man.’ We don’t accept any of it,” Bülbül said.

He also criticized the choice of the name “Yavuz Sultan Selim” for the future third bridge over the Bosphorus. Known in English as “Selim the Grim,” Selim is the Ottoman Sultan who is well known for slaughtering Alevis, and the Alevi community has repeatedly expressed its outrage over the government’s selection.

Following the bridge furor, President Abdullah Gül proposed to name a future project after Haci Bektas, a mystic who influenced the Alevi faith, or the Alevi poet Pir Sultan Abdal.

“Change the name of the university in Sivas to Pir Sultan Abdal. Establish the Haci Bektas Theology University . Change the name of Tunceli, which is in fact the name of a military operation, back to Dersim. Then we’ll talk,” Bülbül said.

“Establish an inquiry commission into all the people who have been the victim of massacres: Alevis, Armenians, Syriacs, Turks, and Kurds,” he added.

The Kadiköy demonstration came on the same day that Erdogan warned of attempts to “foment ethnic tensions” in Turkey during a rally in Erzurum .

Source:

[1] http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/25-million-people-attended-gezi-protests-across-turkey-interior-ministry-.aspx?PageID=238&NID=49292&NewsCatID=341

[2] Hurriyet Daily News/Anatolia News Agency

NY: *** You’ve been observing Turkey abroad in the academic year and now you’re in Turkey since April. Will you share your observations about Turkey and the Turkish society?

Z: In the last few years Turkey had been in an admirable position. It had been literally a bright star sparkling on the eastern horizon of the western world. It looked like an admirable country which was moving fast with an enviable economic development, with free elections, a respected parliament, and with a young and dynamic population making their mark in Turkish and top world universities. In addition, it was a country that received about 31 million astonished tourists a year. So, Turkey had everything going for it; it was in an enviable position. When these demonstrations started taking place against some of the actions of the prime minister, I thought Turkey had an absolutely unmatchable public relations opportunity of the most extraordinary kind.

NY: *** Why is that, would you explain?

Z: If Ankara had been able to show the world that Turkey was not only a bright country of economic development, but a country which also respected personal freedoms – freedom of thought, freedom of expression, freedom of association, in short human rights – by managing the sit in at the Gezi Park in an appropriate manner, without massive police brutality, Turkey would have become overnight an absolutely admirable star on the eastern horizon. The Gezi incident and the heavy handed police response which followed is a tragic mistake, and a great missed opportunity for Turkey to show its gentler side. Instead, what has happened is that the world has been regaled with horrifying pictures of police in full riot gear attacking peaceful protestors; and all the positive images of Turkey have been ruined. The negativity, the obstinate and irascible responses of the PM may well undermine the tourist trade, as it may endanger the vital financial backing that was provided to Turkey internationally. All this could have been foreseen; it might have further dramatic undesirable consequences. So it is difficult to understand why so much has been risked for so little advantage.  Who needs another eyesore building in lovely public park in Istanbul?

NY: *** How do you think the government could have managed the events; would you elaborate?

Z: As it has been managed in many democratic countries. Some demonstrations need obviously to be restrained for public order, but there are persuasive ways of managing a crisis. In the first few days, serious mistakes were made. The attacks against peaceful demonstrators were clearly unacceptable, and the scenes of those ferocious attacks left a very bad impression despite the shocking reticence of the Turkish media to report them. The President became aware of this, fortunately, and intervened, so did the deputy Prime Minister – they both apologized. That was the right direction. It should have been pursued further.  Regrettably, the positive impressions left by those apologies were immediately reversed by the intemperate statements of the PM returning from Morocco. The requests of the demonstrators, apart from preserving the park were that those authorities who had been responsible for the deaths and the wounded should be prosecuted.  The government eventually agreed to look into the matter.  In any normally democratic country, those responsible for such a major mess would surely have resigned immediately.  The attacks against the group of lawyers and the doctors were scandalous.  The demonstrations were in fact beginning to fade out when the intimidating and hectoring tone of statements coming from Ankara again envenomed the situation; this then was followed by yet another major onslaught of the riot police to clear the park.   Surely, all of this could have been avoided:  the entire incident could have been defused by any junior minister with a subtler touch.

NY: *** Do you sense power fatigue on the side of the government and public?

Z: In the latest Gallup poll, the support in İstanbul for the AK Party had gone down to 30 percent from about 58 percent. That’s a serious drop. It is not unexpected for a party that has been in power for ten years.  It does mean that a lot of people have been dissatisfied in one way or another. It also has much to do with attitudes to authority. The authoritarian style gives the impression that decisions made in Ankara are not to be challenged. So, prime minister makes a decision and the rest of the population has to accept it.  This is not conducive to democracy in a country like Turkey that has now developed a large, literate and lively middle class. The democratic process requires that you consult with citizens in decisions concerning their welfare. Please note: the ends do not justify the means, as the communists would have it.   It is the nature of the means used that determine the character, the quality of the ends achieved.  We must remember the wise words of Gandhi, the much admired leading figure of peace of the 20^th century.  This was indeed his formulation: The ends do not justify the means; it is the nature of the means you use which then create the kind of end that you achieve. This is exactly the problem with the Gezi park incident. There should have been much more consultation, a more open process about decisions concerning the lives of people in Istanbul: the bridge, the new airport, all sorts of things are going on in İstanbul – a more consultative method would have avoided the impression of Sultanism.

NY: *** Do you think people who have been holding anti-government protests have been in search of a way to express themselves? Do you think they have been in streets because they have not found ways or channels to do that in opposition parties? Have their concerns not been addressed properly by political parties?

Z: There does appear to be a democratic deficiency in the public arena. The opposition is weak and divided within itself. The profile of the population has changed dramatically: from a land which was only 25% urban ten years ago we now have 70% of the population who have become urbanites.  The prosperous middle class has been growing and demands greater representation.  The question of liberty has always been a serious issue in Turkey under whatever regime. The tradition of the state has been heavy handed.  It is certainly to the credit of the AK Party that it has been successful in putting the military establishment out of politics. They have been also very successful in increasing the economic development of the country. They have had great success in making public services available to the public – hospitals, schools, universities, airports, etc. These are undeniable and admirable achievements to their credit.  But there has been a real deficit: the way for people to express themselves. The 10% limit on elections to parliament is anachronic: it creates large constituencies that are not represented.  This is particularly true for Kurds and Alevi’s.  Another thing is that AK party is perceived as a party that supports the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Syria. The problem with the Muslim Brotherhood is that they do not and cannot embrace the Turkish Alevis. So the Alevis do not find sufficient breathing space in the society. So do the Kurds. These are the major fault lines in Turkish society which will have to be addressed: The huge Kurdish and the Alevi populations with their demands of universal human rights – in short democracy.

NY: *** Would you elaborate on this idea?

Z: In the past, under the Ottoman Empire a diverse population was managed very effectively until the 19^th century. When Turkey was created as a new nation, Turkey was literally reborn from the ashes of the great catastrophe of World War I. The new formation naturally included the legacy of the Ottoman Empire – it had its Kurds, Alevis, all kinds of ethnic groups and immigrants from the Balkans, from the Caucasus, and of course, non-Muslims.  As you know, I have done a great deal of work on India.  That great civilization is often in my mind.  Like the Ottoman Empire of the past, India today manages a stunningly diverse population. There are more than a billion people speaking many different languages in India, following different religious traditions, and using amazingly different alphabets. Many states in the Indian Union have separate alphabets, and yet they manage an admirable, successful and highly democratic system. Turkey must do the same. The tolerance of much greater local autonomy for the entire country is the only way to a greater and more stable democratic future for Turkey.

NY: *** Isn’t Turkey now at a critical point because it is pre-election time and the election campaign seems to have been started by the Prime Minister because of the recent anti-government protests; he held two mass rallies over the last weekend. And during election campaigns politicians usually put the burning issues on hold; they try to keep the status quo. And there has been a “solution process” already started by the government in regards to the Kurdish issue. What shall we expect in coming days and months?

Z: Elections are not a time of peace and reconciliation. Elections also tend to bring out the major issues. My own sense is that much remains unpredictable. What will happen to the AK Party? Like any mass organization, it is indeed a coalition; includes factions. We might see AK Party’s internal factions rise to the surface. We might well see the same process among the opposition parties. It is perfectly obvious that the Kurdish issue can no longer be handled by the blunt methods of the security forces. Kurds need representation, and they will get political expression one way or another. Today, eastern Turkey is no longer a remote, isolated, forgotten mountain region as it used to be for centuries. Communication is instant today. Eastern Turkey is part of the modern world. This is indeed an opportunity for Turkey. If Turkey can manage an open democratic system, respect universal human rights, respect freedom of expression and association, problems will solve themselves.

NY: *** You mentioned that it was an achievement of the government to put the military back into the barracks. Now, in some parts of the society, there are concerns that the patriarchal guardianship of the military has been replaced by the guardianship of PM Erdoğan. Would you agree with this?

Z: I wouldn’t agree with that.  First of all, Tayyib Erdogan is a legitimately elected leader of a very popular party in a legitimate parliament.  This is a far cry from some generals and their arbitrary rule.  The military came to the fore in Turkey only in times when the civil authority was weak and supine.  The authoritarian reflex comes from our absolutist past.  There is a “devlet” (state) tradition in Turkey deriving from the Ottoman Sultans that regards people as “subjects” of the state. This has to change and is changing:  the “subjects” (reaya or kul) of the past Empire are becoming “citizens” with their individual human rights of a modern nation. Human rights are the most critical element in any democracy in the world. They must be respected. All parts of the Turkish society now demand it, not just the urbanized populations in Turkey. The same demands go for the Kurds. These are the growing pains for a full democracy in Turkey. When this is achieved, Turkey will sparkle again. I regard all this as an opportunity for Turkey.

NY: *** Prime Minister Erdoğan has been severely attacking the international media for not covering the recent events fairly. What is your opinion in this regard?

Z: Regrettably, the Turkish media in general has obviously failed the citizenry. It was sycophantic, fearful of power, ineffective in protecting the personal rights of journalists, and through the vulnerability of its wealthy owners, evidently in the pocket of the powers that be in Ankara.  This was particularly true for TV stations. It was obvious immediately to the public when the Gezi incident got under way that the TV media was not going to be trusted. My impression is that print media is in a relatively better state.  There are many newspapers, and brilliant journalists who are not afraid to speak truth to power.  From Cumhuriyet and Taraf to Zaman and Yeni Safak one finds a lot of devastating criticism of the authorities.  Some in Ankara are making intimidating noises about controlling the internet, prosecuting users of the social media.  This would be yet another public relations disaster.  I hope that good sense prevails.   My own impression is that the respectable sources of the international media – Deutsche Welle, Radio France Internationale, the BBC, CNBC, CNN – have all been extremely reliable, objective. They have been covering the events very closely and responsibly. The criticism of the prime minister in this regard – he speaks of “foreign plots” to demean Turkey – can hardly be taken seriously. He does not seem to follow the media abroad and he does not seem to be well advised. In fact, observers who have been supporting Turkey very strongly in the past – Stefan Fule, Emma Bonino, Marti Ahtisaari come to mind – all had very appropriate statements. It would be useful for people around Davutoglu to pay some serious attention to this and stop pretending that it is all an elaborate conspiracy. The specious argument that the whole thing has been orchestrated by outside powers is simply risible.

NY: *** At the Gezi demonstrations and beyond, we have seen a large number of people elevating Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s posters, and on the other hand, we see a large number of people not doing it. Indeed, PM Erdoğan declared on Tuesday during his regular AK Party group meeting speech that the Gezi protestors were CHP supporters by 70 percent, a party known to have Kemalist tendencies. You’ve written extensively on secularism in Islam and “the cultural revolution in Turkey.” What do you observe in Turkey in regards to social cleavages, especially regarding the secular/Islamist dichotomy which has come to fore once again?

Z: The Ottoman Empire became painfully conscious of the need to catch up with all aspects of “modern science” in the Western world very early indeed.  Nizam-I cedid (the New Order -1789) was a matter of survival.  Modernization through “westernization” was the order of the day through the “long” 19^th century – “long” because it was so painful.  The adoption of western dress codes by Mahmut II , of Western music and painting, and furniture, in the Palace by Abdulmecid, were followed by the 1876 and 1908 Constitutions in the teeth of opposition by the conservatives and by the Sultan.  So the struggle for “progress” became inevitably associated with “westernization”.  Mustafa Kemal Pasha, a high ranking Ottoman general, had been a very close witness to events that led to total disaster at the end of World War I in 1918.   It was again a matter of survival: of life and death, no less.  When he got the chance in 1924 he decided to get a jump start on “progress” by catching up with the “modern world”, the West, when the rest of the world, both Asia and Africa, was still supine under colonial rule.  His dramatic answer to the yearning for “modernization” since 1699 (Karlofca) was to “westernize” Turkish society by means of a thorough “cultural revolution”.  It is undeniable that the shock treatment worked.  If to-day Turkey has almost caught up with the best of the West, (see my reservations above), if it has a functioning democracy and parliament, a large middle class, a literate public, voting rights for women, a huge “scientific” and “industrial” establishment, many first rate Universities, it can be said that Ataturk’s vision of a strong, progressive and independent Turkey has been fulfilled.  When eventually Turkey fulfills the requirements of the Helsinki accords, that is those highest standards for human rights, it will have achieved the yearning of her elites of long centuries.  And that is achievement indeed.

Revolutions naturally receive reactions.  “Cultural revolutions” in the direction of “science” and “modernization” invite inevitable reactions in the direction of their opposites, that is “religion” and “tradition”.  We have been observing this since Selim III.   The debate is still part of everyday conversation in Turkish families.  The longing for a glorious past is played out in the scenes of “Muhtesem Yuz Yil” on popular TV.  The Islam/secular dichotomy is no different than the Christian/secular or Jewish/secular dichotomies in the West.  They all go back to the “Faith” and “Science” debate between Averroes (Ibn Rust), Ibn Arabi, Farabi and al Ghazali in those heady early days.  But that is perhaps for another occasion.

 

By Nile Bowie

23 June, 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Actions, not words’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is Beijing pivoting away from Pyongyang?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialism with Korean characteristics?

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Julian Assange

22 June, 2013

@ Wikileaks

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

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

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

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

Government secrecy has been expanding on a terrific scale.

Simultaneously, human privacy has been secretly eradicated.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But who is really the traitor here?

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

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

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

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

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

Who is that person?

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

Edward Snowden is one of us.

Bradley Manning is one of us.

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

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

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

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

This isn’t a phenomenon that is going away.

This is inevitable.

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

This isn’t how to fix things.

The only way to fix things is this:

Change the policies.

Stop spying on the world.

Eradicate secret law.

Cease indefinite detention without trial.

Stop assassinating people.

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

Stop the occupations, and discontinue the secret wars.

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

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

That tactic must not be allowed to work.

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

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

Tell your governments to step forward.

Step forward and stand with Snowden.

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

 

 

By Franklin Lamb

22 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Palestinians’ Hezbollah Problem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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