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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

By Eric London

22 June, 2013

@ WSWS.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By Pepe Escobar

June 21, 2013

@ Information Clearing House

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What can a poor boy do

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Remember “Standing Man”

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

By Franklin Lamb

20 June, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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