Just International

New Year’s Message from Muammar Al Qaddafi

 

In 1989, the following message was released to the Christian World in the form of an open letter, by the revolutionary Muslim leader and martyr, Muammar Qaddafi.  Qaddafi is one of the few Muslim leaders who truly understood the revolutionary doctrine of Tawheed, recognizing the oneness of God and God’s Creation. He dedicated his life to the task of trying to unite us in the fight against tyranny for the good of all humankind.  In this New Year’s message, Qaddafi invites all believers to enter into reflection and dialogue to solve the crisis confronting humanity. 24 years ago it was sent all over the world, but of course was suppressed and remained largely unpublished. As we approach a new year, the Executive committee of ARM (African Revolutionary Movement) has re-released this message because it is as timely today as it was when it was first issued.  We must heed the Leader’s words if we are to overcome the nefarious forces which seek to drive a wedge between African and African, African and Arab, Arab and Arab, Muslim and Muslim and Christian and Muslim. This mayhem is having a devastating impact in Africa, the so-called Middle East, an area that we refer to as Afrabia, and the entire world. Certainly it is only the forces of white supremacy and imperialism that can benefit from such division and chaos.

An Open Letter to the Christian World from the Brother Leader

All the people of the world and perhaps Heaven’s Angels too, have grown weary of repeatedly exchanging the age old, false congratulation of ‘Happy New Year’.

Heads of State send such congratulatory expressions to one another while many of them proceed to commit actions which make the New Year an unfortunate, miserable and deadly one. Could we not meditate profoundly and recollect some verses from the Holy Quran, as well as the Holy Bible and the New Testament, which say: ‘But help ye one another unto righteousness and pious  duty. Help not one another unto sin and transgression.’

Let us remember how Christ vehemently reproached the people in the first sermon he gave in Jerusalem for having forgotten God’s Word and surrendering themselves to conceit. How he reproached the Priests for neglecting the service of God for their greed. How he reproached the Scribes for imparting corrupt teachings and giving up the Divine Law, and reproached the scholars for rendering the Law of God ineffective.

Now without a Christ to reprimand those who have forgotten God, those who are conceited, those who are greedy, those who are culturally corrupt and those who are transgressors of the Divine Law, we have but to reproach one another for our sins and to reprimand ourselves for such transgressions.

We must understand that we are far from the teachings of Christ and very close to the teachings of Satan. The great and rich powers spend fortunes to develop and manufacture nuclear weapons, intercontinental missiles, space programs and techniques to advance their psychological warfare programs, at a time when all the peoples of the earth are suffering from disease, malnutrition, starvation and the exorbitantly soaring cost of living.

These powers are led by Satan indeed. Their book is neither the Holy Quran nor the Holy Bible.

We are badly in need of a reiteration of the teachings of Christ where we shall find him calling for unity and saying – ‘Hands off Palestine, the birthplace of Christ – Grace be upon him – and hands off all the oppressed, colonized and persecuted peoples.’

How much the world needs Christ again. We need to abandon the excessive drinking, drug taking and immoral acts that people are encouraged to engage in around the world on every New Year’s eve and instead, on this particular night, we should go to places of worship to pray, ask forgiveness and to reflect upon the Divine Law and the way of life it prescribes for us all.

I know that the conceit of man and his straying from the right path is far stronger than my outcry, but nonetheless, I am offering the world these words. Let us remember this phrase from the Holy Bible – ‘AND IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE WORD…’

Muammar Al Qaddafi
1942-2011

Republished by ARM (African Revolutionary Movement)
Email: arm@riseup.net

Aam Aadmi Party: Beginning Of A Novel Experiment In Politics

By Dr Sandeep Pandey

30 December, 2013

@ Citizen News Service

With the formation of Aam Aadmi Party government in Delhi the country is going to witness a novel experiment in politics. The first target has been the VIP culture. Arvind Kejriwal has refused to accept security, beacon fitted vehicle and a government bunglow not only for himself but all his ministers. In a country where most people become politician to avail of all these facilities it is going to be a trend setting decision. In fact, the facilities given to people’s representatives and bureaucrats should be drastically cut down. This is an unnecessary wastage and burden on the tax payer.

People’s representatives and bureaucrats should use their own vehicles or public transport and own houses or guest houses. They get enough salary to take care of these expenses themselves. The bureaucracy is already preparing to hike its salaries and perks by proposing the seventh pay commission. The salaries of bureaucrats need to be cut down rather than increased. During the years of economic reforms the gap between the rich and the poor has galloped. It is time to revise the wages of unorganised sector in upward direction and not the service class.

The bureaucrats must also learn to mingle with people. In most offices of senior government officials one needs a pass to enter. The pass is made only if the office of the official informs the people at the gate. This implies that you cannot meet a bureaucrat unless you know him/her through some connection. It is possible for ordinary people to meet politicians at home but the bureaucrats don’t entertain people at home. This system of requiring a pass should be done away with. If AAP leaders can do without security why can’t the bureaucrats learn to come out of their secure environs.

The biggest change that the AAP government will bring about is restraining corruption. Since AAP doesn’t need black money to finance its politics, there is no need for their leaders to become part of the existing corrupt political culture. AAP is the first party after the communist parties which has kept account of its political donations and expenditure properly and made them public. The check on day to day corruption will be a big relief to the people and end of commission raj will bring efficiency in the system. Overall the governance will improve. Arvind Kejriwal started his social activism from fighting corruption in income-tax department, electricity department and in the Public Distribution System in lower income localities. His colleague Santosh Koli, who was recently killed, emerged from the grassroots struggle against corruption in PDS. PDS and other social welfare schemes are of great concern to the poor and can really help in poverty alleviation. Corruption is proving to be a big road block in ending poverty in this country.

The most amazing change that AAP is going to bring about is in the decision making process. People will be involved in most decisions taken in open meetings of mohalla sabhas. In a country where so far only the elite and that too in closed rooms has been taking decisions which impact the lives of majority of the people it is going to be a welcome departure. When decisions are taken collectively chances are that wrong decisions will not be taken. There will be checks and balances among people themselves. Hence chances of AAP MLAs becoming corrupt are slim as the people are going to keep a strict vigil on their representatives and AAP has put in place an internal Lokpal which will deal with complaints against people within the party. When political bosses don’t indulge in corruption it will be easier to put pressure on the bureaucracy to change its ways. Then bureaucracy and lower employees will have no excuse to justify corruption. AAP has changed the set of leaders at top. But it is going to be a tougher task to tame the arrogant and corrupt bureaucracy and the attendant government machinery. It is time that the idea of making service sector truly service oriented may be considered. People should not work in service sector for salaries and perks. They should volunteer to work for service sector. Like people have taken time out from their jobs to work for AAP a similar model could be considered for running the governments. Why do we need permanent bureaucrats? Most of them have used their service for personal aggrandizement anyway.

If people get involved in decision making and a number of things are done with collective labour we may not need as many government employees as there are presently whom it has become an uphill task to manage. Most of them have formed unions which oppose any progressive moves. For example, recently government school teachers in UP protested against the corruption in education department but there was no word uttered on teacher absenteeism in schools during the demonstration.

Mood in the country is upbeat. People are joining AAP in big numbers. There are some who want to contest election too. An IIT Kanpur engineer who is a ferrocement expert and presently teaches at MNREC, Allahabad, has offered his technology to AAP government to build houses for poor. Two serving engineers of UP Power Corporation Limited have told Citizen News Service (CNS) to work out cost of electricity so that AAP can fulfill its promise in Delhi. A policewoman called to say that she doesn’t trust politicians and Arvind must accept security. Common people feel it is their government and everybody wants to contribute in whatever they can. This is certainly sign of political transformation at work.

(The author is a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee and a senior social activist who writes for Citizen News Service – CNS. He is the Vice President of Socialist Party (India) and member, National Presidium, Lok Rajniti Manch. He has led National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM) and is a former faculty of IIT Kanpur. Presently he is a faculty at Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) BHU. He did his PhD from University of California, Berkeley and is a visiting faculty for a number of US Universities and IITs in India. Email: ashaashram@yahoo.com)

Shared under Creative Commons (CC) Attribution License

Iraq’s Persecuted Christians

By Hussein Al-Alak

29 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The Christmas day attacks against Iraq’s Christian community, has once again thrust this besieged and dwindling minority back into the media.

Iraqi Christians have been reduced from a sizeable minority of over 1.4 million people under Saddam, to less than 450.000, since the introduction of Democracy, in 2003.

But the Christmas day bomb attacks, which killed over thirty people and injured countless others, is not unique to Christians in Iraq and since Al-Qaeda made their first appearance after the US/UK invasion, for over a decade, Christianity has carried a certain death sentence.

Examples of Crimes

The Bishop of Mosul reported in 2006, that a fourteen year old boy had been found crucified in Al Basra. That same year, Paulos Iskandar, the Syriac-Orhtodox priest had his body dumped, having been beheaded by terrorists.

In March 2008, Paulos Faraj Rahho, archbishop of Mosul’s Chaldean community, was found dead after being abducted, while Youssef Adel, an Assyrian Orthodox priest, was fatally shot in a drive-by attack in Karrada, one of Baghdad’s safest and most diverse neighbourhoods.

In October 2010, an attack by the Islamic State of Iraq left 58 people dead, after more than 100 people had been taken hostage during the evening Mass, at the Our Lady of Salvation Catholic cathedral in Baghdad.

Other incidents include the looting of churches and bomb attacks against congregations. Priests, deacons and nuns have also been victims of sectarian kidnappings and killings, with corpses and decapitated heads being left on the doorsteps of churches.

What Next?

Many hostage negotiators, who deal directly with cases relating to Iraqi Christians, have noted different dialects of Arabic spoken by kidnappers, to that of Iraqi Arabic, with experts stating how ransom money is often used to fund further terrorist activities.

The increase in terrorist activities in Iraq, coincides with advances being made by Assad in neighbouring Syria, with groups like Al-Qaeda, taking advantage of the vast borders, to cross from Syria into Iraq.

The United States have called on regional leaders, to take measures to police the funding and recruitment for Jihadist groups, and to deter the flow of foreign fighters into Syria, which includes over 200 British citizens, who go on to conduct suicide bombings against innocent civilians in Iraq.

Hussein Al-Alak is a British based journalist and is chairman of the Iraq Solidarity Campaign UK. Hussein is also a member of the Royal British Legion and a mental health advocate for Combat Stress. You can follow him on Twitter @TotallyHussein. He blogs at http://totallyhussein.blogspot.co.uk

“Protect Our Children’s Privacy”

Hi, and Merry Christmas.

I’m honored to have the chance to speak with you and your family this year.

Recently, we learned that our governments, working in concert, have created a system of worldwide mass surveillance, watching everything we do.

Great Britain’s George Orwell warned us of the danger of this kind of information. The types of collection in the book — microphones and video cameras, TVs that watch us — are nothing compared to what we have available today. We have sensors in our pockets that track us everywhere we go.

Think about what this means for the privacy of the average person. A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They’ll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves — an unrecorded, unanalyzed thought. And that’s a problem, because privacy matters. Privacy is what allows us to determine who we are and who we want to be.

The conversation occurring today will determine the amount of trust we can place both in the technology that surrounds us and the government that regulates it. Together, we can find a better balance. End mass surveillance. And remind the government that if it really wants to know how we feel, asking is always cheaper than spying.

For everyone out there listening, thank you, and Merry Christmas.

http://vimeo.com/82666985

 

South Sudan Slides Toward Civil War

By Bill Van Auken

23 December, 2013

@ WSWS.org

As South Sudan slid toward civil war, President Barack Obama warned Saturday against “any effort to seize power through the use of military force.” In an earlier statement, Obama said South Sudan was “at the precipice” and added that the “fighting threatens to plunge South Sudan back into the dark days of its past.”

The country was carved out of Sudan less than two-and-a-half years ago with Washington’s full support. Despite its oil wealth, the landlocked and impoverished country remains heavily dependent on US and other international aid.

Washington’s warning followed the Pentagon’s dispatch of 45 US troops to the South Sudanese capital of Juba to secure the US embassy and assist with the evacuation of US nationals and others from the violence-wracked country.

It coincided with an incident in which US warplanes were fired upon by rebel forces, wounding four American military personnel, one of them seriously. The incident took place in Bor, the capital of eastern Jonglei state, which has been at the center of the fighting between forces loyal to US-backed President Salva Kiir and those backing his ousted former vice president, Riek Machar.

Kiir is from South Sudan’s Dinka ethnic group, the country’s largest (approximately 15 percent), while Machar is an ethnic Nuer, the second largest community (approximately 10 percent). While backers of both men are drawn from various groups, the fighting has increasingly taken on an ethnic dimension, with reports of attacks on civilians by ethnic-based gangs from both sides.

Bor fell to rebel forces backing Machar last week, and reportedly the rebels mistook the US aircraft—Ospreys, designed to take off and land like helicopters and fly like planes—for Ugandan aircraft backing government troops.

Uganda has sent hundreds of its own troops into South Sudan, and there have been reports of bombings by Ugandan warplanes, which the Ugandan government denies.

Thousands have been killed or wounded in the fighting, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands driven from their homes, many of them crowded into United Nations peacekeeping bases for protection. An attack on one of these bases last Thursday by what UN officials described as “unknown assailants” killed three Indian peacekeepers and 11 civilians.

Obama’s warning against any military seizure of power strongly suggests Washington support for Kiir’s thoroughly corrupt and authoritarian government and its claim to be responding to a coup attempt. Backers of Machar, however, dispute this claim, insisting that the nationwide fighting began as an armed clash within Kiir’s presidential guard between Dinka and Nuer soldiers, which ignited tensions that have been simmering since Kiir sacked Machar and over half his cabinet last July. Fighting spread in the capital of Juba and then across the country.

Machar and his supporters charge that Kiir seized on the fighting as a pretext for a military crackdown aimed at liquidating all of his political opponents. Machar, who had vowed to challenge Kiir in an election set for 2015, has demanded that Kiir step down, insisting that he has “repeatedly violated the constitution and was no longer the legitimate president.”

The Financial Times reported that the home of Rebecca Garang, the widow of the founder of the modern South Sudanese separatist movement and a former minister sacked by Kiir, was surrounded by government troops, who opened fire from all sides. Under house arrest, she had joined with Machar Pagan Amum, a former secretary-general of the ruling party, and other senior politicians in charging Kiir with employing “dictatorial tendencies” that threatened to “create instability in the party and in the country.”

The Financial Times cited unnamed Western diplomats and security experts as disputing Kiir’s charge of a coup, which has apparently been embraced by the Obama administration. “This was not a coup attempt, but a move by the president to round up potential plotters and challengers,” it quoted one “foreign observer” as saying. “It certainly looks like Salva Kiir’s night of long knives.”

The position of the government appeared more precarious Sunday after it acknowledged that it no longer controls the northern city of Bentiu, the capital of the key oil-producing state of Unity. The commander of the Fourth Division based there, General James Koang, disbanded the local government, declaring himself the military governor and backing Machar. Loyalist troops were overwhelmed and driven out of the city. According to reports from South Sudan, rebel forces have already begun taking over at least some of the state’s oil fields.

At least 16 oil workers have been reported killed in fighting in Unity state, and China National Petroleum Corporation, the largest oil producer operating in South Sudan, is attempting to evacuate its personnel.

The government’s loss of this oil-producing region raises the prospect of it being cut off from its main source of funding. It also increases the threat that Sudan, to the immediate north, will become involved, as it too relies on revenues from the delivery of South Sudanese oil via a pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea.

The country is a focal point for broader geo-political conflicts. Washington was the key supporter of South Sudanese separatism. It was the lead power in brokering a 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement to end a more than-two-decade-long conflict that had claimed more than 2 million lives, setting the stage for the establishment of South Sudan as a separate country.

The main motive for US machinations in the region was to weaken China, which had established close economic and political relations with the government of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir. More than 60 percent of Sudan’s oil was exported to China, which was the largest shareholder in the two major oil consortiums operating in the country. It also was Sudan’s major supplier of arms.

Since 1997, Washington has maintained economic sanctions against Sudan, claiming that the government in Khartoum is a “state sponsor of terrorism” and “poses an extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” The US played the principal role in pushing through war crimes charges against al-Bashir at the International Criminal Court, whose authority Washington itself refuses to recognize.

The formation of the US military’s African Command, or Africom, was heavily bound up with the US bid to supplant Chinese influence in the region, and in Sudan in particular. South Sudan has been discussed as a possible base for Africom.

While the deal to split Sudan—previously Africa’s largest nation—in two left South Sudan with the lion’s share of the territory’s oil wealth, the US bid to supplant China’s dominance in this field has proven less successful. Despite its alignment with Washington and political hostility over Beijing’s close ties with Khartoum, the regime in South Sudan has allowed China to maintain its role as the largest oil producer—followed by Malaysia and India—in part because of its offer of loans and infrastructure projects that Western energy conglomerates cannot match.

Ironically, Washington’s maintenance of Khartoum on its list of state sponsors of terrorism has stymied any significant role by US companies in South Sudan, as Sudan receives a share of the profits from South Sudanese oil deals.

Given US imperialism’s stake in South Sudan and its increasing reliance on military superiority to offset economic challenges from rivals like China, there is a real threat that the present internal conflict can become the pretext for a US “humanitarian” intervention. Any such military operation would inevitably further inflame the high level of tensions generated by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and the advanced preparations in the Pacific for a military confrontation with China.

Implementation Of US-Iran Interim Nuclear Deal Stalls

By Keith Jones

23 December, 2012

@ WSWS.org

Negotiators for Iran and the P-6—the US, its European allies (Britain, France, and Germany), Russia and China—extended a two-day meeting on implementing last month’s interim agreement on Iran’s nuclear program into a third and fourth day. The “technical” negotiations concluded Sunday without agreement, however, due to what Iran termed “serious differences.”

It is now almost a month since the interim deal was reached, but Iran and the great powers have not been able to agree on how it will be implemented and when it will come into force.

Conferring by telephone Sunday afternoon, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the P-6’s lead representative, European Union Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, agreed that the “technical” or “expert-level” negotiations will resume after Christmas.

Coming after several rounds of such “technical” talks, however, yesterday’s inconclusive outcome has clearly irritated and troubled Iran’s government. Iranian officials have publicly questioned whether the interim agreement will hold.

Speaking at a joint press conference Sunday with the Italian Foreign Minister Emma Bonino, Zarif said, “The talks on implementing the accord are not easy. … I hope all sides will avoid delving into issues that could become troublesome and complicate the process.”

The parties to the negotiations are tight-lipped about them, but Abbas Araqchi, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and the country’s deputy foreign minister told an Iranian news agency Sunday, there are “serious differences of opinion over the implementation of the deal.”

Without specifically naming the United States, Araqchi said earlier last week that given previous instances of double-dealing by some of the P-6 countries, it could not be excluded that the interim agreement will collapse.

In the interim agreement, Iran has made sweeping concessions to Washington and its allies, agreeing to freeze and in important cases roll back its nuclear program, as well as subjecting its nuclear facilities to the most intrusive-ever inspection regime.

In exchange, the US and its allies have offered Iran minimal easing of the economic sanctions that have halved its oil exports since 2011 and frozen it out of the world banking system. According to the US, the sanctions “relief” will provide Iran only an additional $7 billion over the 6-month life of the agreement, equal to what the sanctions are costing Iran in foregone oil revenues in just 6 weeks. Some $4.3 billion of the $7 billion is Iran’s own money, payments for oil exports owed by China, India and other Asian countries frozen by the US-EU sanctions.

A major stumbling block in the finalization of the agreement is Washington’s determination to ensure that this minor relaxation of sanctions not inadvertently provide Tehran with any way to access more than the stipulated $7 billion. Moreover, so as to maintain maximum leverage, the US reportedly want the frozen funds to be released incrementally, thus making each release the occasion for further US demands.

Apparently, the US and its allies are also demanding fresh guarantees to ensure that Iran fulfills its pledge not to enrich uranium beyond five percent and the right for International Atomic Energy Agency officials to inspect ballistic and other military sites from which have hitherto been barred.

In a provocation, the Obama administration placed an additional 18 Iranian companies under its sanctions regime on December 12, meaning they will be barred from access to the world banking system.

This action led Iran’s government to immediately suspend the technical talks and accuse the US of violating the “spirit” of the interim accord, which commits Washington to refrain from imposing fresh sanctions while the two sides seek to reach a final agreement. But the Iranian government walkout was clearly directed at least as much at containing growing opposition within Iran to the interim deal as sending a message to Washington.

With Iran’s economy reeling under the sanctions’ impact and fearing social unrest, Iran’s bourgeois-clerical regime has signaled its eagerness to reach an accommodation with US imperialism—including offering to assist the US in stabilizing the broader Middle East under its hegemony, from Afghanistan to Lebanon, and to provide US and EU energy companies privileged access to Iran’s vast oil and natural gas resources.

But significant sections of the Iranian elite are perturbed by the scope of the concessions ceded by the government of President Hassan Rouhani, especially as the crippling sanctions remain in place and the US continues to brandish the threat of increased war.

After a storm of protest, Zarif was forced to retract remarks he’d made earlier this month in which he sought to justify the interim nuclear deal by asserting that the US would only need “a couple of bombs” to destroy Iran’s infrastructure.

Rebutting Zarif’s remarks, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Mohammad Ali Jafari, said, “American bombs may cause damage to our infrastructure, but the missile and strategic capabilities of the IRGC are remarkable.” Commenting on the nuclear agreement, he said Iran had “given the maximum and received the minimum.” Heeding the call from Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei for all factions of the state and elite to support the government’s attempt to reach an accommodation with Washington, Jafari hastened to add that the interim deal had not crossed Iran’s “red lines.”

The Obama administration, meanwhile, continues to reach out to key regional allies, most importantly Israel and Saudi Arabia, with assurances of unreserved US support and—in the case of Israel—direct participation in formulating US demands in a “final agreement” with Iran.

Underscoring the US’s determination to bring Iran to heel, Obama himself publicly declared in a recent speech that he didn’t consider the chances of a final US-Iran deal at “more than 50-50.” Secretary of State John Kerry told Congress he had come away from the talks that led to the interim agreement “with serious questions about whether or not they’re ready and willing to make some of the choices that have to be made.”

And while Obama and Kerry are opposing a bill unveiled by 26 Senators last Thursday—half of them Democrats—calling for the imposition of still harsher sanctions on Iran that would cut off all its oil exports should the US find Tehran violate the interim agreement or its expires without a final agreement; the president has said that if additional sanctions are needed Congress can impose them “in a day, on a dime.”

Significantly the US, has moved to bar Iran from next month’s UN-backed international conference on a political settlement to the Syrian conflict, because Tehran has not agreed to its demand that it accept that the Syrian regime of Bashir al-Assad, it close ally, must abdicate and allow a “transitional government,” in which half the seats would be held by the US-sponsored Islamist-led opposition.

“Our partners in the United States are still not convinced that Iran’s participation would be the right thing to do,” said UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi Friday.

Who is to Blame for the Crisis in South Sudan?

By Nile Bowie

26 December, 2013

The nascent civil war in South Sudan is a product of kleptocratic governance, systemic corruption, and political posturing that has reignited deep ethnic divisions between the nation’s two largest ethnic groups.

The world’s youngest nation has been in disarray since December 14th, when sporadic gunfire and skirmishes broke out in the capital, Juba. Shortly after, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir announced that a coup had been attempted by members of his own presidential guard allied with Riek Machar, the ambitious former vice president who was purged in July. Since then, the country has been destabilized by fighting between government forces and members of the army loyal to Machar, forcing tens of thousands to abandon their homes and seek shelter in squalid UN bases throughout the country. Reports indicate that rebels have captured swathes of territory, including areas such as Bentiu, a northern provincial capital in the country’s most oil-rich region, and other economically strategic areas. Kiir belongs to the Dinka – the country’s most powerful and populous ethnic group – while Machar is ethnically Nuer, and sources claim that brutal ethnic violence has broken out between the two groups with heavy involvement by government forces.

Juba has insisted that its forces have only protected civilians and have not taken part in massacres despite numerous reports of security forces arbitrarily targeting civilians belonging to the Nuer ethnic group. The resulting violence has prompted the UN to add nearly 6,000 international troops and police officers to the more than 7,600 peacekeeping forces already in the country.

The United States – which has been South Sudan’s main political backer prior to and since its independence in 2011 – has firmly declared their support for Kiir’s government and warned rebels against attempts to seize power through the use of military force. Though the current crisis has undeniable ethnic dimensions that have reemerged as a consequence of historically unsettled animosity between the Dinka and Nuer people, the crux of the problem is political. The rampant corruption and misuse of governmental authority in political and economic affairs has divided the ruling party (the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement or SPLM), while the state’s inability to provide basic services and alleviate poverty has created widespread disenchantment in a society that was widely hopeful that independence would bring lasting peace.

Salva Kiir’s ‘Dinkocracy’

Critics of President Kiir, who enjoys sweeping constitutional authority, accuse him of ruling the country like a tyrant after unexpectedly purging former vice president Machar and his entire Cabinet after Machar announced plans to challenge Kiir in 2015 presidential elections. Kiir’s relations with dissenting factions of the SPLM steadily deteriorated since the purge, including with party heavyweight Pagan Amum, who has been the South’s chief negotiator with the Sudanese government in Khartoum on separation issues and border disputes after independence. Kiir, perhaps attempting to hedge against growing discontent toward his rule, forced more than 100 army generals into retirement in an effort to bring more loyal figures into the military. These features of Kiir’s one-man-rule have contributed to the creation of a disgruntled faction in the army that backs Riek Machar, including a renegade faction of the army led by General Peter Gatdet Yak, whose forces stormed SPLA bases in Jonglei state and took full control of military equipment and heavy weapons.

In such a diversely heterogeneous state, the increasing ethnic dimension of this conflict is a testament to Kiir’s failure to build an inclusive and representative political order. Rather, many complain that Kiir has reinforced the Dinka tribe’s influence over political, military, and economic affairs. Abhorrent levels of corruption have triggered mass distrust in the political system; reports indicate that thousands of fake names have been found on security payrolls and the government admits that officials have stolen some $4 billion dollars from its coffers. Riek Machar’s credentials are hardly any better; he is seen as an opportunist for siding the Sudanese government in Khartoum at various times during the civil war that raged for two decades prior to South Sudan’s secession, and is historically accused of exploiting ethnic relations as a means of mobilizing support for his own factions. Machar is not a rebel leader controlling an organized opposition structure by any means; disgruntled factions have allied with him over their discontent with the way Kiir has run the country. The thousands of people who have taken refuge in UN bases throughout the country – even in the capital – is telling sign of how little faith people have in proper governance and the army’s ability to protect them.

A question the West should be asking…

The SPLM has received support from the US and Israel throughout the duration of the civil war fought between southern rebels and Khartoum, which has historically had unfriendly relations with the West and has moved very closely to China in recent times to jointly develop the country’s oil wealth prior to the separation. Romantic notions for self-determination did not motivate the West to support southern secession; the objective was to partition Sudan and deprive Khartoum of economically relevant territory in the south where most of the oil fields lay. In exchange for the financial, material, political, and diplomatic support received from the West, the new government in Juba endorsed a ‘Faustian pact’ with its sponsors to open its economy to international finance capital and multinational interests – the government in Juba even applied for IMF membership before it had even officially gained independence from Sudan.

Despite supporting the South’s independence with diplomatic muscle and military aid, the United States has been unable to gain a foothold in the country’s oil sector; Juba’s crippled economy remains dominated by Asian companies, primarily from China. South Sudan must rely on pipelines that run through Khartoum to export its oil, and the two countries produced around 115,000 barrels of oil per day in 2012, less than half the volume produced in the years before South Sudan’s independence; both sides have nearly gone to war over disputed oil fields that straddle a poorly demarcated border. Judging from poor economic performance of both countries since the parititon and the dramatic loss of the life in ongoing crisis, the experiment of South Sudanese independence is failing.

Those countries that supported the partition of a unified Sudan for narrow economic and geopolitical interests have failed by off-shoring their nation-building responsibilities to multinationals and investors who lack interest and confidence in developing anything outside the oil sector, creating a situation where state-officials loot billions while food insecurity is rampant throughout the country. In effect, the foreign-sponsors of the SPLM have encouraged a system of ‘trickle-down economics’ without the trickle-down, which is an inseparable dimension to the current political crisis. It would be highly unlikely that the US would renege on their support for Juba or scale back weapons sales or military aid, even if Salva Kiir continues running the country like a ‘president-for-life.’

As South Sudan stands on the precipice of a brutal civil war, policy-makers and pundits in the West should ask themselves if supporting dialogue and reconciliation between parties in a unified Sudan would have been wiser than supporting the birth of a nation that has been marred by instability since its inception.

 

Are 9/11 Truthers Anti-Semites? An Interview With Elias Davidsson

By Dr. Ludwig Watzal

22 December, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

More than twelve years have passed since 9/11 happened. Although the 9/11 Commission produced a voluminous “9/11 Commission Report”, it did not provide answers to central questions concerning the circumstances of this horrendous crime. Critical observers have noted numerous glaring omissions, contradictions, anomalies and misrepresentations in this report. Even the Chairman and Vice-Chairman of the 9/11 Commission admitted in a joint book they later published, that their report was deficient in many ways and that the Commission had been lied to by government agencies. One of the reactions to this deficient report was the emergence of a “truth movement”, which consists of experts from different scientific fields, who question the official narrative and demand a truly independent investigation of the crime.

Elias Davidsson is one of these “truthers” who challenges the official narrative on 9/11. He is also concerned about the claim made by some “truthers” that Israel was behind the attacks. He is not, by any means, a sympathizer of Israel . On the contrary, as his writings demonstrate, he not only denounces the oppressive policies of the State of Israel against the Palestinians, but considers that state as inherently dangerous for its neighbors. The fact should be mentioned that he is Jewish and has family in Israel .

Davidsson’s concern appears justified. The catchwords “9/11 and Israel ” produce over 66 million hits on Google. Immediately after the attacks some traces to an “Israeli connection” were publicized in U.S. media, including by media notoriously supportive of Israel , such as Fox News.

About this and other topics regarding 9/11, I talked to Mr. Davidsson after he presented in Bonn , Germany , in November 2013, his book “Hijacking America’s mind on 9/11”, released in May in New York .

Ludwig Watzal: A few months ago you published the book „Hijacking America’s mind on 9/11”. What made you write this book twelve years later, when all questions concerning the 9/11 attacks seem to have been answered?

Elias Davidsson: In 2002, it was pointed out to me, that the official account on 9/11 is dubious. Until then, I believed what mass media told us, namely that the mass murder had been orchestrated by Al Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden and executed by 19 fanatic Muslims. At first, I doubted that the contrary evidence – published by Thierry Meyssan – was credible. Yet, my sense of curiosity led me nevertheless to check the facts. I discovered that grounds for suspicion were justified. This led me to extend my research of 9/11. I was not alone in this endeavor. One of the main focuses of such research was the puzzling demise of the Twin Towers . A consensus is gradually emerging among engineers and architects that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center and building WTC No 7 had been demolished by explosives and/or more exotic means. This conclusion implies official malfeasance and complicity in mass murder. Yet the question remained nagging me, what to make of the other part of the official account, namely the alleged participation of 19 Islamic fanatics in hijacking four airliners, steering them to death and succeeding to avoid interception by the US air force. I decided, therefore, to search for evidence supporting these claims. I discovered that such evidence does not exist. Not a shred of it. This may sound unbelievable, yet despite the most exacting searches, I could not find any such evidence. I also discovered that there exists no evidence that passenger airliners crashed on 9/11: The FBI actually admitted to have failed to link the wreckage of the crashed aircraft to the airliners that were allegedly hijacked. Having made these discoveries, I found it necessary to deal with an additional puzzle, namely what to make of the telephone calls that were allegedly made from the hijacked planes and in which passengers and crew members reported hijackings. I spent a great deal of time to track and analyze all known phone calls. These analyses represent until now, to my knowledge, the most thorough examination of the 9/11 phone calls. I concluded that the callers did not report real events. They did not lie, yet did not say the truth. I won’t reveal here the solution of this paradox and its sinister sequels. Readers are invited to track my analysis and draw their own conclusions from the wealth of details provided in the book. As I finished the book, any doubt that might have lingered in my mind regarding the identity of the 9/11 plotters, dissipated: I became convinced that 9/11 was an inside job by the US military.

LW: There are still many people who believe that the alleged hijackers were able to steer an airliner onto the Pentagon.

ED: To these individuals I only say: The first step in investigating a plane crash is to determine its identity and the identities of its passengers. The next step would be to determine who among the passengers might have had a motive and the capabilities to cause the crash. In the case of 9/11, neither the identities of the debris were determined nor was the presence of the 19 suspects in the planes ever proven. For this reason, it is moot to examine their alleged flight skills. One does not examine the flight skills of ghosts. Those who nevertheless attempted to examine the flight skills of the alleged hijackers discovered that precisely the pilot of flight AA77, which allegedly crashed on the Pentagon, was a completely incompetent pilot who could not, according to his teachers, properly maintain a one-motored Cessna in the air. While even an amateur pilot might have been able to steer an aircraft onto the huge roof of the Pentagon, professional pilots doubt that any pilot could have steered a Boeing 757 horizontally at 500 mph with an altitude of 15 feet above the ground (the aircraft is said to have crashed horizontally on the side of the Pentagon between the first and second floor).

LW: Shortly after the attacks the story of Osama bin Laden and his men were aired worldwide and nobody dared to question it. Do you think that bin Laden from a cave in Afghanistan could have masterminded such an attack with dilettantes armed with box cutters?

ED: Before asking whether bin Laden could have masterminded anything, it is worthwhile to note that the U.S. government had never accused him of complicity in 9/11, as admitted by the FBI in 2006. The U.S. government did not even take seriously the conclusion of the German Upper Court of Hamburg (Oberlandesgericht), that Osama bin Laden had selected Mohamed Atta and his friends to conduct 9/11. This conclusion was not shared by the US . This leaves us with the question what role Osama bin Laden played during the years in which he was depicted as a master terrorist: Was he a willing or unwitting US agent, as some maintain, or a genuine, but pathetic, fighter against Americans and Jews, as others maintain? This question has, however, no direct bearing on 9/11. A true history of Osama bin Laden has still to be written.

LW: In a speech before the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco on October 3, 2007, General Wesley Clark mentions an accidental meeting with Paul Wolfowitz in 1991 at the Pentagon in which Wolfowitz said that the US could use its military in the Middle East without being stopped by the Russians: “We have got about 5 to 10 years to clean up those old Soviet client regimes – Syria, Iran, Iraq – before the next great superpower comes on to challenge us.” And Clark continued: “This country was taken over by a group of people with a policy coup. Wolfowitz and Cheney and Rumsfeld, you can name a half of dozen collaborators from the ‘Project of a New American Century’. They wanted us to destabilize the Middle East , turn it upside down, and make it under our control.” Taking this statement into account and link it to the call of this “Project” for a “new Pearl Harbor ”, what comes up to your mind regarding 9/11?

ED: It is fairly logical that after the demise of the Soviet bloc, the US had an immense window of opportunity to secure its global hegemony for decades to come. But doing so required immense resources and thus the approval of the US population. Such approval could only be secured if a traumatic event would arise, which could be ascribed to a deadly enemy. The mass-murder of 9/11 filled the bill. Such reasoning is no proof that 9/11 was an inside job. It is, however, a proof that the U.S. administration, acting on behalf of Corporate America and the military-industrial complex, possessed a huge motive to see a “new Pearl Harbor” occur. Wolfowitz was correct in assessing the window of opportunity as five to ten years. There exists evidence that the United States began “manufacturing” its new epochal enemy (Islamic terrorism), replacing the Red Menace, precisely around 1990.

LW: The circumstances surrounding 9/11 seem to be the West’s newest and greatest taboo. To question the official narrative endangers a person’s career. Even the academic community seems afraid to ask the relevant questions. You have been in direct contact with representatives of academia over 9/11. What is your experience?

ED: The overwhelming majority of academics do not wish even to discuss 9/11, let alone examine the nuts and bolts of these events. Part of this fear is that of being ostracized by peers or even endangering one’s career. Another part of the fear is that discovering the truth about 9/11 would inevitably shatter the questioner’s comfortable world view. I suspect that many academics regard 9/11 as a Pandora’s Box, best kept locked. If 9/11 was indeed an “inside job”, that would mean that political parties, media, the business community and the judiciary have been lying to us through their teeth for more than a decade and based their various policies, including wars and massive surveillance, on a monumental lie. Not many people are willing to live with such conclusions about their cherished institutions, even if such conclusions are, in my view, justified. We have here, I argue, an unprecedented case of mass denial, a pathological phenomenon that undermines the fundaments of the Age of Reason.

LW: In an recently published article by Eric Walberg on the website “dissident voice” , the author hinted at a connection between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the CIA concerning the 9/11 attacks. Does such collaboration makes more sense to you than the “official” story?

ED: It is possible that various states, including Saudi Arabia , Pakistan , Israel , Germany , have provided the United States some assistance in preparing 9/11. However – and this is an important caveat – I do not believe that the governments of these states or even their intelligence services, knew about the plans of 9/11. The U.S. planners would have been foolish to share the plans of 9/11 with other states. Thus, it is likely that the Saudi authorities helped recruit some individuals to be used as patsies in the United States and later designated as hijackers. But it is unlikely that the Saudis were advised about the ultimate role of these patsies.

LW: Shortly after the attacks there were media reports on a possible “Israeli connection”. These reports centered on Larry Silverstein, Dov Zakheim, the five “dancing Israelis” and the “Israeli art students”. Please could you unravel this tangle of guesswork for the public and give us your judgment?

ED: Larry Silverstein was and is a known real-estate mogul in New York . He is Jewish and a known friend of Israeli politicians, such as Ariel Sharon and Benyamin Netanyahu. He was for many years the owner of WTC No. 7, a 47-floor building that housed, inter alia, New York City ‘s Emergency Center , offices of the CIA, SEC, the Secret Service and other government bodies. In 2001, the City of New York decided to lease out the Twin Towers to private investors. One of the bidders was Larry Silverstein.

Larry Silverstein is suspected in some circles for the above reasons to be an accomplice to the mass murder of 9/11, in which several of his own employees died. Yet, he did not make any effort to cover his alleged tracks. He leased the WTC just six weeks before 9/11, announced this lease to the world, insured it against terrorism for a whopping $3.2 billion and “admitted” in a documentary film to have given on 9/11 the authorization to “pull” WTC 7 (that is to demolish the building). He then sued insurance companies for double damages, because each tower was hit by a separate aircraft, thus displaying what would be widely regarded as greed. He even admitted to have escaped death by canceling a meeting at the WTC on 9/11. And he has never attempted to conceal his friendship with controversial Israeli politicians, such as Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu.

We have here all the requisite elements: A greedy Jew, proximity to the crime, motive. It is precisely the high visibility of Larry Silverstein as an ideal villain that makes me hesitate to implicate him in the crime. His alleged complicity is simply too obvious. It is difficult to believe that a person implicated in planning arson would take out a lease of the building six weeks before the crime and announce his agreement publicly. It is even more difficult to believe that a smart businessman, such as Silverstein, would risk the electrical chair in a criminal enterprise whose outcome he could not foresee. It is far more probable that Silverstein was framed into leasing the World Trade Center by the real plotters, precisely because he is greedy, because he is Jewish and because his ties to Israel. More to the point: Silverstein was not in a position to manage the hijacking exercises conducted by the military on the morning of 9/11, not in a position to steer airplanes against buildings and not in a position to wire WTC 7 within hours to demolish the building. Whatever his alleged role in 9/11, if any, the coordinators of Operation 9/11 did not sit in his office, but presumably in the Pentagon, led by Donald Rumsfeld. Larry Silverstein, however, represents an ideal bogeyman.

The fact that Mr. Silverstein did not demonstrate any interest in investigating the demise of the Twin Towers he had leased, is no evidence of malfeasance: In that he acted like most Americans, who till this day do not wish to ask questions and know the truth.

Dov Zakheim is another such ideal bogeyman. He is an ordained rabbi who made it to a high position in both government and private business. He worked in the Pentagon between 1985 and 1987. From 1987-2001, Zakheim was CEO of SPC International, a high-technology firm that manufactures, inter alia, equipment to remotely control aircraft. During 2000, he served as a foreign policy advisor to George W. Bush. He was hired as a Comptroller of the Pentagon in the spring of 2001. On September 10, 2001 , Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Secretary, announced to a stupefied internal Pentagon audience that the Pentagon could not track $2.3 trillion dollars in its books. This statement disappeared, as it were, into the memory hole the next day because of the deadly events, but continues to be widely quoted by Jew-bashers, who connect these missing funds to Zakheim. A Google search on the string “$2.3 billion Zakheim” yields no less than 150,000 hits. But is it at all true that the Pentagon could not track $2.3 trillion, as Rumsfeld claimed? And if that was the case, could Zakheim make that money disappear from Pentagon accounting within a few months? And if he could do so, why wasn’t he accused, charged and prosecuted? But probably the most important question is: Why did Rumsfeld make at all this statement, and precisely on the eve of 9/11? Wouldn’t a political leader rather attempt to conceal such apparent malfeasance? Or was there a hidden motive behind this bizarre announcement?

In order to implicate Israel in the events of 9/11, the story of the “five dancing Israelis” is often invoked. There is no dispute that five young Israelis were seen photographing the Twin Towers after they were hit and possibly making signs that were interpreted as celebration. They were arrested by the New York police after a woman, only known as Maria, called the police to report their suspicious conduct, as seen from her window. Interestingly, it was highlighted in the media that these Israelis were found in the possession of box cutters when they were arrested. The theme of box cutters was to remain attached to the alleged hijackings. A mere coincidence? The boys were, anyway, kept in detention in the United States for several weeks, and then deported to Israel . Two of them appeared in an Israeli TV show and said that they were photographing the Twin Towers to “document the event”. They implied that this had been their task but did not say who tasked them with that mission. This episode suggests Israeli foreknowledge of the events. Another case of foreknowledge, also involving Israelis, is an email message received by two employees of the Israeli company Odigo two hours before the attacks. It has not been determined who sent the message and the reason for informing Odigo. One explanation would be that the plotters wished to connect Israel somehow to the attacks.

And finally, we have the canard that 4,000 Jews, forewarned, did not come to work to the World Trade Center on 9/11. A mere glance at the names and backgrounds of the WTC victims suffices to rubbish this story. Many Jews died in the Twin Towers . While this story is false, it is actually based on an authentic news report that appeared in the Jerusalem Post on September 12, 2001 . According to that report, the Israeli Foreign Ministry expressed its concern about the fate of 4,000 Israelis (not “Jews”) believed to be present around or in the World Trade Center . It is not known from where the Ministry obtained the figure of 4,000. As it turned out, only 2-3 Israelis died at the World Trade Center . In order to assess whether this low ratio of Israeli fatalities is plausible or not, it would have been necessary to know how many Israeli nationals actually worked in the Twin Towers and on which floors they worked. I could find no such information. It is known, however, that an Israeli shipping company (ZIM) moved its offices from the WTC shortly before 9/11. It is not known where exactly these offices were located in the buildings. This move is also invoked by some observers as a sign of foreknowledge. If ZIM was forewarned, who was doing the warning and made ZIM thus a suspect?

LW: What might be the motives for linking Israel to 9/11?

ED: Presuming, as I do, that 9/11 served U.S. imperial – and more generally Western – interests and was executed by entities under the control of the U.S. military, the plotters had evidently to conceal their trail and engage in serious efforts to impute their crime to others. Until now they did so by attributing the crime to 19 Islamic hijackers, who are presumably dead (or never existed). As this initial story is being increasingly debunked, a fall-back position for the plotters would be to blame the attack on other entities. Recent attempts are made by members of the U.S. Congress, for example, to blame 9/11 on the Saudis. But who are better placed as bogeymen than Jews or Israel ? The Nazis used this method with great success. Why wouldn’t the US elite repeat this sordid game, if it fears that its days are counted? I suspect therefore that the “ Israel did it” meme in regard to 9/11 is maintained over low fire by powerful forces in the United States in reserve for the day when the American people will discover that 9/11 was an inside job. If that should happen, the US elite would suddenly “discover” evidence that Jews within the Pentagon orchestrated 9/11 in cooperation with the Mossad; that American Jews led hapless Americans to attack other countries; that Jews were responsible for the introduction of torture and extra-judicial executions and that the PATRIOT Act was a Jewish project to control Americans.

LW: After you rubbished the official narrative and the so-called Israel link, who, in your view, could have had the largest interest to commit such a horrendous crime? What geopolitical and geostrategic interests could the US have in engineering such an operation?

ED: As I already mentioned above, I consider it beyond dispute that the US military planned and executed the mass-murder of 9/11 on behalf of the US elite (which, evidently, includes also persons of Jewish descent). The operation served multiple purposes, all beneficial to the US elite: It provided justification for the occupation of Afghanistan, a strategically location in Central Asia; it provided justification for destroying and rebuilding Iraq (both of which were profitable to U.S. corporations); it provided justification for a U.S.-led global War on Terrorism; it provided justification for huge increases in military appropriations and corresponding profits of the military-industrial complex; it provided justification for the erosion of constitutional rights and international law; it provided justification for global Big Brother measures, led by the NRO and NSA; and it provided the justification for the establishment of a new and profitable security industry. All of these developments have been detrimental to human rights, individual freedoms and global peace. That is one of the reasons why I consider that challenging the official myth of 9/11 is one of the most urgent tasks facing humanity today.

LW: Mr. Davidsson thank you very much for the interview.

Elias Davidsson was born in 1941 in Palestine to Jewish parents. His parents were born in Germany but had to immigrate to Palestine due to the Nazi persecution of Jews. He lived in his youth in France , Germany and the United States until he settled finally in Iceland in 1962. After working for 20 years in the computer field, he changed to musical occupation, as a music teacher, choir master, arranger and composer. In parallel to his profession, Davidsson has for many years been involved in activism and research regarding social and global justice, peace, anti-racism and human rights. Since 1990, Davidsson has focussed on the role of international law as a tool for peace and published several scholarly articles in legal journals.

Dr. Ludwig Watzal works as a journalist and editor in Bonn, Germany .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7NsXFnzJGw

The Logic of 9/11

Climate Change And The Rise And Fall Of Civilizations

By Emily Sohn

22 December 2013

@ NASA

Mayan pyramid in Chichen-Itza, Mexico. Space observations provide clues as to how ancient civilizations, like that of the Mayans and the Old Kingdom of Egypt, collapsed. Credit: Shutterstock.

Mayan pyramid in Chichen-Itza , Mexico . Space observations provide clues as to how ancient civilizations, like that of the Mayans and the Old Kingdom of Egypt , collapsed. Credit: Shutterstock.

The search for the fabled city of Ubar began with a cold call to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1982.

Documentary filmmaker Nicholas Clapp had heard stories about a lost settlement in the Arabian Desert that was once teeming with riches. At some point many centuries ago, Ubar had disappeared into the sand, and Clapp wondered if he might use NASA spacecraft to look for it.

“When he called, he was obviously not part of the lunatic crowd we often get calls from,” says Dr. Ron Blom, Program Manager for Solid Earth Science and Natural Hazards at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Nick stood out because he had actually done quite a bit of homework.”

And so the search began.

Ancient outpost

Using Clapp’s historical research as a guide, Blom and his team used the space shuttle Challenger CK to take images that allowed them to detect ancient tracks in the desert. Some of the roads ran beneath modern sand dunes but all of them converged on a central point: in southern Oman in the Middle East . There, archaeological excavations showed that the team had indeed located Ubar, which it turned out had actually been an important water source and an outpost where camel caravans assembled to transport frankincense.

Once surrounded by mighty towers that eventually sunk into the sand, Ubar is just one in a growing list of ancient sites that are emerging with help from satellite imagery. Also known as “remote sensing data”, images taken from high above the surface of the Earth can show subtle signs of long-lost societies that are impossible to see from the ground.

This pair of images from space shows a portion of the southern Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula in the country of Oman. On the left is a radar image of the region around the site of the fabled Lost City of Ubar. On the right is an enhanced optical image taken by astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle. Credit: NASA/JPL.

This pair of images from space shows a portion of the southern Empty Quarter of the Arabian Peninsula in the country of Oman . On the left is a radar image of the region around the site of the fabled Lost City of Ubar. On the right is an enhanced optical image taken by astronauts onboard the Space Shuttle. Credit: NASA/JPL.

As scientists dig in to these sites, they are turning up evidence that changes in climate – both large and small – are at least partly responsible for the rise and fall of many ancient civilizations. Even though Ubar is now located in one of the driest places on Earth, the region was once much wetter and full of underground water sources. Ubar disappeared when water levels dipped so low that a sinkhole formed and enveloped the outpost.

An Egyptian kingdom, likewise, collapsed during an extended drought 4,200 years ago. Droughts have also been linked to the fall of the Maya around 900 AD and the demise of the spectacular Cambodian city of Angkor in the early 1400s.

It’s not surprising that climate change has doomed so many populations, Blom says. After all, it was when weather patterns finally became predictable about 11,500 years ago that complex civilizations finally formed in the first place. A stable climate ensured that crops would grow year after year, and a reliable source of food freed people to settle down and develop culture.

Since then, many civilizations have blossomed into greatness and subsequently disappeared into rubble. As scientists try to piece together the history of where people lived a long time ago, they are increasingly turning to the most modern of technologies: spacecraft that offer an unprecedented view of Earth from above.

Earth from above

There are a variety of ways to spot long-buried settlements in satellite images. In the search for Ubar, Blom and colleagues used computers to enhance images taken in the visible and infrared wavelengths by Challenger CK, allowing them to peer up to 15 feet beneath the surface of the sand. As they analyzed the sizes and proportions of dust, rocks and sand grains, they could see the boundaries of ancient roads.

Modern roads and ancient tracks in Oman, as seen from space by the Landsat satellite. Credit: NASA/USGS.Modern roads and ancient tracks in Oman , as seen from space by the Landsat satellite. Credit: NASA/USGS.

In modern-day Iraq and Syria , Harvard archaeologist Jason Ur and colleagues have used NASA satellite images to identify thousands of possible locations for ancient Mesopotamian cities by looking for patches of lighter, drier soil. Those spots indicate where mud brick structures may have collapsed.

In the case of the Maya and other lost cities in Central and South America , the jungle is quick to grow over ancient buildings and other structures, but scientists look to satellite imagery for slight differences in vegetation patterns. Where once there was development, the soil is stressed enough to support plants that are different from those growing in untouched soils. Seeing those vegetation shifts from above helps archaeologists zero in on where to dig.

“Lowland Amazonia is bigger than the continental United States ,” says William Woods, a geographer and archaeologist at the University of Kansas , Lawrence . “The only way of discovering these new things is with remote sensing and on-the-ground truthing [measurement verification].”

As archaeologists continue to turn up ever more signs of collapsed civilizations, they are finding plenty of evidence that climate shifts are at least partly to blame for the decline in many cases. Those links offer the opportunity to protect the future of our own society by learning from the mistakes of our ancestors.

“When we excavate the remains of past civilizations, we very rarely find any evidence that they as a whole society made any attempts to change in the face of a drying climate, a warming atmosphere” or other changes, Ur says. “I view this inflexibility as the real reason for collapse.”

“Today we have an unbelievable ability to learn about our environment and communicate what we learn to all of society,” he adds. “We need to take better advantage of our communication technology advances in the face of a changing climate.”

Central Africa crisis: Cherchez La France

A bitter colonial legacy and mismanagement of state power are key factors behind the violence in the CAR

By Abdi Ismail Samatar

21 December 2013

@ Al Jazeera

The ongoing conflict in the Central Africa Republic (CAR) should be put within its regional context first. CAR is part of a region in Africa which has witnessed some of the most brutal colonial and post-colonial atrocities than any other region in the continent. To the South of CAR is Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the epicenter of a modern hell that has consumed over three million lives during the last thirty year. Northeast of CAR is Sudan whose conflict has produced a million casualties and the displacement of untold millions.

To the southeast is Uganda where Idi Amin fed his political opponents to crocodiles and where, for thirty years, the Lord’s Resistance Army has terrorised the rural population of northern Uganda. Further southeast, is Rwanda where close to a million civilians were butchered in the 1994 genocide, and Burundi where civil war and political instability has left behind a human tragedy. The cost of this regional catastrophe has been the death of several million Africans and the devastation of livelihood of many more in a region that has some of the richest natural resources in the world.

A simplistic news coverage

Superficial academic and journalist reports have characterized many of these conflicts -including the ongoing one in CAR- as tribal in nature. The most prominent of these has been the depiction of the Rwanda genocide as the consequence of deep rooted animosity between the Tutsi and Hutu communities. Similarly, the conflict in the Sudan, before the division of the country into two, was described as a war between Muslim and Christian or Arabs against Africans. Now it is claimed that the Dinka and Neur are killing one another in South Sudan. Characterising conflicts in the continent as either tribal or religious has a long history.

Many, however, fail to realize that the causes of these conflicts are not necessarily ethnic or religious in nature but  can be better kexplained within the context of existing political and economic forces that are driven by illegitimate exploitation of state power. Such misuse of governmental authority turns the state into a sectarian force rather than an authority that accents the commonalities of the population. The sectarian exploitation of the state by those in power, and the political opposition’s use of communal relations as a means of mobilising support to seize power, produced communal conflicts where  they did not exist before.

The bitter legacy of French colonialism

African countries have been politically “independent” from European colonial powers for nearly sixty years; however, some of the legacy of European savagery still remains in the continent. For example, the idea of dividing cultural communities into separate political entities, on the basis of cultural or ethnic boundaries, was an invention of colonial powers and lives on. Unfortunately, many African leaders, and some of their political opponents, have internalised that ideology as a means to stay in power or gain political authority.

French colonialism in Central Africa was known for three fundamental qualities. First, it administered the territory as a French fiefdom where the native population was subjected to one of the most brutal authoritarian regimes. In so doing, the French established a political culture where force, rather than popular consent, was the source of authority. Second, the French authority, and its commercial allies, exploited the territory’s resources, not to advance the native population’s wellbeing but their own and that of France. By setting up  ts authoritarian administration, colonial France transformed cultural groups, ethnic or religious, into state managed political categories.As with all colonial regimes, this strategy of divide and rule was meant to undermine the common political project of the African people and to prolong French dominance.

Struggling with the past

The Central African Republic was in a sorrow shape in 1960 when it became nominally independent from France and had to overcome several inherited liabilities. Although France was no longer in charge of the territory, nevertheless, it pulled the strings from behind the scene.

France continued to have significant role in CAR military affairs and often called the shot, directly or indirectly, through its military capabilities, including local allies. Another key factor was that the local elite appeared to have no clue of their onerous national responsibilities as many of them were poorly educated and beholden to the former colonial master. Rather than transform colonial structures in order to serve the local population, the elite mismanaged the inherited system and made it even worse; while exploiting the country’s resources for their own ends.

Liberation did not bring freedom and accountability. Instead it ushered in a new form of authoritarianism whose cruelty went beyond imagination. This order was best represented by the self- proclaimed Emperor Bokassa who ruinously reined from 1965 to 1979. Bokassa was replaced by another coup which French Commandos in the country assisted. More coups followed until the last year when a rebel movement overthrew the government. France, for its part, has always acted behind the scenes. Most recently, it sent  troops to stop the conflict that is ravaging the country; a conflict whose genealogy goes back to France.

Causes versus consequences of the conflict

Much of the media and political coverage of the disaster in the CAR has been framed along sectarian lines (Muslim-Christian) or ethnic cleavages. Such characterisation of the conflict is not unique. Other conflicts in the continent have been looked at from the same prism.  But In the CAR, one can only hear whispers that Muslims and Christian communities have historically lived side by side without much sectarian acrimony. Given this harmonious historical relationships, how can we explain the origins, nature, and dynamics of the conflicts in the country?

Two factors can be considered central to the calamity. First, the horrible legacy of French colonialism left behind a devastated economy and induced a post-colonial political order which reinforced the worst forms of exploitation and authoritarian rule. Second, CAR’s post-colonial political elite have used the state not as an agent to develop the country and enhance civic commonalities among the population, but as an instrument to loot state resources, brutalise the political opposition, marginalise communities en mass, and ultimately deploy the colonial strategy of divide and rule.

Misrule and abuse of state power have led to the fragmentation of communities, polarisation of political opinion, and the de-legitimation of the core responsibility of the government. Without popular legitimacy, delivery of services, justices, and the development of  new collective shared political values, there is little chance the country can be rebuilt.

When the authoritarian state imposed violence on the population, the later has resorted to desperate measures by mobilisng communal sentiments to resist tyranny and consequently a viscous circle of tyranny and violence was created. Such is the line of causation of the tragedy in the CAR and several other countries in Africa, including Southern Sudan today: It is the political mismanagement of the state which produces religious or ethnic strife rather than the other way around.

A reversal of  this atrocious cycle requires national leadership of extra-ordinary vision (of Mandela courage, wisdom, and humility), tenacity, and an international community not driven by expedience. France does not have the moral standing to provide a guide for the international community given its very long disreputable record in CAR. This leaves the African Union (AU) to step up its efforts. Among the AU members best qualified to take the lead are South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Rwanda.

Abdi Ismail Samatar is Professor and Chair of Department of Geography, Environment & Society

University of Minnesota, Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria and former President of

African Studies Association.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

Source:

Al Jazeera