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Interview By Kourosh Ziabari

17 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Pepe Escobar is unquestionably one of the world’s leading progressive, anti-war journalists. He is Brazilian and has lived in several countries across the world, including the United States , France , Italy , Singapore , Thailand and Hong Kong . He runs a regular column on Asia Times Online titled “The Roving Eye” in which he writes commentaries and articles about the Middle East and Asia affairs and the U.S. foreign policy. He has been interviewed by Russia Today, Press TV, Al-Jazeera and The Real News Network.

Pepe’s articles have also appeared on such magazines and news websites as Huffington Post, Tom Dispatch, The Nation, Voltaire Net, Salon, Common Dreams, Information Clearing House and Antiwar.com. His first book “Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War” was published in 2007 and his fourth book will be released soon.

Pepe Escobar believes that the United States and its European partners have waged an economic war against Iran by imposing the crippling sanctions which are affecting the lives of ordinary Iranian citizens. He also points out that if Iran had made the folly of assassinating the U.S. civilian scientists, like what the U.S. and Israel did to Iran five times, an all-out nuclear war would have been unleashed against Iran .

With regards to controversy over Iran ‘s nuclear program, Pepe Escobar says that Iran and the West should reach a sustainable, face-saving solution which both ensures Iran ‘s entitlement to its essential rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory, and also alleviates the West’s concerns on the peacefulness of Iran ‘s nuclear activities.

In order to delve into the prospect of Iran-West relations in the wake of standoff over the country’s nuclear program, the impacts of the U.S.-engineered sanctions on Iran’s economy, the upcoming nuclear talks between Iran and the six world powers in Kazakhstan and the possibility of a diplomatic reconciliation between Iran and the United States in the wake of the appointment of John Kerry as the U.S. Secretary of State, I conducted an in-depth interview with Pepe Escobar and asked him some questions on these subjects.

My Spanish friend and colleague Moises Herrezuelo helped me a great deal with the conduction of the interview. What follows is the full text of the interview.

Kourosh Ziabari: Dear Pepe; what’s your viewpoint regarding President Obama’s appointment of John Kerry as the Secretary of State and Chuck Hagel as the Secretary of Defense? Does he intend to send a signal that he wants to solve the challenging issues of the U.S. foreign policy, especially the controversy over Iran ‘s nuclear program in a peaceful and diplomatic manner? Of course John Kerry would be far more lenient than Hilary Clinton, and Hagel is said to have opposed military action and economic sanctions against Iran with a less pro-Israeli attitude. What’s your take on that?

Pepe Escobar: Both Hagel and Kerry narratives in the US are enveloped in a fog of misconceptions.

Unlike the usual Washington brand of armchair warrior, Hagel saw the real thing in Vietnam . Whether he learned the lesson in terms of how imperialism is defeated on the ground is debatable – but at least he learned to be cautious in terms of foreign policy adventures. Those same armchair warriors say he opposed Bush’s surge on Iraq after he had first supported the war/invasion in 2003. That’s not the point; the point is he saw an escalation would lead to nothing, as it did – in fact, it led to less than nothing; the myth that Gen David Petraeus “won” the war with the surge.

Hagel also dared to suggest – discreetly – that the US always blindly following whatever Israel concocts, lethally and with its fabricated “facts on the ground”, would never help in finding a way out of the occupation/ethnic cleansing of Palestine . To say something like this is practically anathema in Washington , even though a lot of well-informed Israelis who live in Israel – and not in Manhattan – share the same position.

There’s also one extremely petty reason for the Hagel nomination being stalled by Republicans senators; in the 2008 US presidential election he refused to endorse the awful John McCain. No, this will never be explained to unsuspecting US citizens by the Washington Post or the New York Times.

Now to Kerry. There was a lot of noise in Washington about the Supreme Leader’s comments on the renewed P5+1 negotiations. The official narrative was that Khamenei wants no deal. Wrong. What the Supreme Leader said is that Tehran won’t negotiate under threat. He has always stressed that the condition for any negotiation is mutual respect – with the Islamic Republic recognized as representing legitimate national interests. When we look at the record in detail, Tehran has countless reasons not to trust Washington . One example is enough; after Iran helped a lot delivering intel – and even actual jihadis – to the Americans in late 2001 in Afghanistan , its reward was to be branded as an “axis of evil” member state.

This time Kerry was wilier. He said the US is “ready to respond” if the meeting in Kazakhstan yields “real substance”. He did not repeat the same old scratched CD – “all options are on the table”. His response was written, not a quote, which means this is serious, straight from the top: diplomacy – at least in theory – should prevail.

In Kerry’s words, “they [ Iran ] have to prove to the world that it [the nuclear program] is peaceful and we are prepared to sit reasonably and negotiate how they can do it.” This is certainly better than what I called the “roll over and die” school of diplomacy that was being applied by two Bush terms and the first Obama administration.

In December, Kerry told the Emir of Qatar that “the United States recognizes Iran ‘s ambitions to be a regional player, and wants a dialogue about what sort of power it will be”. Rhetorically, that’s a sea change. Let’s look at the facts in a few months, especially after the Iranian presidential election.

 

Kourosh Ziabari: President Obama came to office while he had promised that he will reach out to Iran for dialogue on equal footings and based on mutual confidence and respect. But although some progress were made in the Iran-P5+1 negotiations, the stalemate over Iran ‘s nuclear program still remains in place. Why has Obama failed to realize the promise he had made and failed to reach a compromise with Iran ? Why did he renew the sanctions the very first year he came to office?

Pepe Escobar: In this article published last December, I outlined the key reasons why Obama has not fulfilled his promise.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175625/tomgram%3A_pepe_escobar%2C_obama_in_tehran/

I also went much further, stressing that the Big Picture goes way beyond the Iranian nuclear dossier. It involves not only Iran’s right to use civilian nuclear energy but also what I call Pipelineistan – the complex chessboard of oil and gas pipelines all across Eurasia; Washington’s future relations with China – a serious ally of Iran – as well as the rest of Asia; and who will dominate the 21st century energy, transport and trade versions of the old Silk Road across Eurasia.

Obama may have been filled with good intentions in early 2009. But what he may have wanted was, essentially, aborted by the Israel lobby – of which AIPAC is the most vocal component – and Congress. Hardcore pressure also came from the House of Saud and France under that bling bling entity, King Sarko, who later got the boot from French voters. There are plenty of other reasons. The June 2009 election drama in the streets of Tehran was not helpful, to say the least – because the impression was firmly set in Washington that the election was stolen; thus Obama could not justify diplomacy under these circumstances. Also right from the beginning – when we look at the long record, which I detail in a chapter included in a forthcoming book about Obama’s foreign policy – the Obama administration actually adopted a very confusing “dual track” policy – combining diplomacy with the relentless ratcheting up of sanctions. After a while, it was obvious that Obama did not have the balls to challenge the status quo in Washington – which, for all practical purposes, identifies the Islamic Republic as a mortal enemy.

Kourosh Ziabari: One of the reasons why the Iranian leaders cannot trust the United States is that Washington will certainly push for more political concessions if Iran agrees to halt its 20% uranium enrichment. In the past three decades, the United States has militarily and financially assisted such anti-Iran terrorist groups as MKO and Jundallah to carry out acts of sabotage and terrorization in Iran and kill Iranian people, officials and even civilian scientists. Iran also has complained about the allocation of sizeable budgets to fund anti-Iranian media propaganda and finance the so-called pro-democracy NGOs. So Iran is probably right in being suspicious to the United States and its sincerity for entering the talks. What’s your viewpoint in this regard?

 

Pepe Escobar: Let’s examine how the world sees it. The BRICS group of emerging powers, as well as the absolute majority of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – just check their summit last year in Tehran -, they all support Iran ‘s nuclear rights. Japan and South Korea – when not bullied by the West – and they are Iran energy clients, also support a civilian nuclear program, under the NPT. On the other side there’s essentially the US and Canada , the EU and Israel . The case of the EU is pure theater of the absurd. Especially Club Med nations, in southern Europe , have suffered because of the US/EU sanctions on Iran . And still whenever you talk – off the record – with specialists in Brussels, they tell you they wish Europe could do business, and invest, in Iran’s energy industry, because that is the fastest way for Europe to get rid of its (dreaded) dependency on Gazprom. On top of it, US Big Oil is also excluded from doing business in Iran – very bad for business from their point of view. And even Hillary Clinton herself – in her unguarded moments – has admitted that the sanctions mostly hurt Iranian civilians, as in shortage of medicine and food supplies.

Kourosh Ziabari: The United States assumes that by imposing hard-hitting economic sanctions on Iran, it can pit the people against the government and cause a popular uprising or a widespread anti-government resentment; while the reality on the ground is that the sanctions are adversely contributing to the expansion of anti-American sentiments among the Iranians and bringing them closer together to confront the perceived enemy. What’s your viewpoint on that?

Pepe Escobar: That’s another instance of theater of the absurd; (supposedly) grown men in Washington actually believing Tehran must come to the negotiating table while under what for all practical purposes is economic war; attacked by cyber warfare and covert ops; and under relentless threat of regime change. Any average, well-informed Iranian can see that – whether or not he agrees with the powers that be in Tehran . People all across the developing world also see it clearly. If we stick purely to the nuclear dossier, there’s an extremely simple solution; Washington recognizes Iran ‘s right to enrich uranium up to 20%. After that, a deal is a detail. It won’t happen, though, because for Washington , as it stands, Tehran has the right to enrich nothing.

Any informed Western observer – immune to the perennial hysteria of the Bomb, Bomb Iran lobby – would agree with Ambassador Hossein Mousavian, former spokesperson for the Iranian nuclear negotiating team from 2003 to 2005. I have been quoting him for a while, because – technically – this is a solid, fool proof solution to the nuclear dossier. Once again:

“To satisfy the concerns of the West regarding Iran ‘s 20% stockpile, a mutually acceptable solution for the long term would entail a ‘zero stockpile’. Under this approach, a joint committee of the P5+1 and Iran would quantify the domestic needs of Iran for use of 20% enriched uranium, and any quantity beyond that amount would be sold in the international market or immediately converted back to an enrichment level of 3.5%. This would ensure that Iran does not possess excess 20% enriched uranium forever, satisfying the international concerns that Iran is seeking nuclear weapons. It would be a face-saving solution for all parties as it would recognize Iran’s right to enrichment and would help to negate concerns that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons.” http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NH22Ak06.html

There’s another aspect which I consider even more important; Iran not using the petrodollar for its energy trade. Be it in yuan, rubles, gold, barter, this is surely pointing the way towards the exit. China , Russia , even US ally India , a host of developing countries would see nothing better than finally ditching the petrodollar. Saddam and Gaddafi both tried to; look what happened to them. But Iran is not an unarmed Iraq , or a disorganized Libya . Chris Cook has soundly pointed out the wave of the future: an energy-based currency.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/OA19Ak01.html

Kourosh Ziabari: Has the European Union’s oil embargo against Iran had any effects on the already troubled economy of the continent? The Western media have largely remained silent on the possible consequences of the anti-Iran sanctions on the European economy, but in one of your articles last year you talked about the hike in the prices of crude oil as a result of the embargo and that Iran’s Asian clients continue to buy its crude despite the U.S. pressure. How is the situation right now? Can Iran continue to manage its economy without the oil revenues?

Pepe Escobar: Washington ‘s financial blockade of Iran ‘s oil sales is in fact all-out economic war – once again making a joke of international law. But even applying what was in fact Mob-style pressure over Iran ‘s energy clients, and forcing Saudi Arabia to flood the market with an extra 2 million barrels of oil a day was not enough, because some countries fought for exemptions and others continued to trade bypassing the Western-dominated financial system.

Japan – which always bends over backwards to do whatever Washington wants – is indeed getting cozier with Saudi Arabia; they want guarantees they will get emergency oil supplies for the next 20 years. In this case, imports from Iran would not be needed. But Japan is not the norm in Asia . True, the sanctions did bite; Iran ‘s energy exports fell by 40% in 2012. But then they started going up again, because Iran started to implement some very creative solutions – as in buying oil tankers from China , insuring them, and filling them with oil bound for China . Iran may be on the way to set up its own oil distribution network – self-sufficiency is always a good idea. India , for its part, pays for Iranian oil in rupees. The bottom line; whatever Washington concocts, it won’t interfere with the energy requirements of these two crucial BRICS members. On the losing side, once again, there’s only the Europeans.

Kourosh Ziabari: Can the Israeli regime finally drag the United States to a war with Iran ? Will the Obama administration heed the calls of Netanyahu and other hawks in Tel Aviv to enter a war with Iran over its nuclear program? Does Obama have enough courage and authority to resist the pressure by the Israeli lobby and take up diplomacy instead of military confrontation?

Pepe Escobar: The Israel lobby and what we could label as the War Party – mostly Republicans but also Democrats, plus operatives in key positions in the Pentagon, CIA, the industrial-military-security complex, plus corporate media (from Fox News to the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post) – these are the actors who want a war against Iran. Predictably, the Israel lobby unleashed all its artillery against Chuck Hagel – from AIPAC to the Washington Institute of Near East Policy (WINEP), where notorious lobbyists Dennis Ross and Elliott Abrams dwell; after all, Hagel was not putting Israel’s interests above Washington’s, as is the norm. They will not prevail – but they won’t go away either; the “Bomb Bomb Iran” mindset will continue even with Hagel and Kerry, and that includes routine wacko pieces on the Wall Street Journal warning, for instance, about Iran ready to attack Saudi Arabia with nuclear weapons, or routine dismissals every time the Supreme Leader insists nuclear weapons must be eliminated.

There are, of course, pockets of intelligence in this debate – but they are a minority. Check out, for instance, Flynt and Hillary Leverett’s excellent book, Going to Tehran : http://goingtotehran.com/the-book

They are Washington insiders, they have been to Iran , and they are staunchly pro-diplomacy.

Kourosh Ziabari: What’s your viewpoint regarding the United States’ sponsorship of such groups as Jundallah whose aim is to create sectarian conflict in Iran, and MKO which has openly bragged about its intention for a regime change in Tehran ? The U.S. and Israeli-backed terrorists have so far assassinated four Iranian nuclear scientists, but the UN chief and the Security Council haven’t raised any voice in protest. What’s your analysis of these events?

Pepe Escobar: These tactics are classic Divide and Rule – inherited from the British Empire . Jundallah is little more than a gang, trained by the CIA. Mounting the odd cross-border operation in Sistan-Balochistan, killing the odd policeman, and then retreating, that may create a nuisance for Tehran , but it’s a detail. Much more dangerous would be the CIA’s capacity to instigate a nationwide Sunni-Shiite conflict on a mass scale; they don’t have the intel, or the contacts, to do it. MKO is a laughable cult – discredited since Saddam times and with absolutely no support inside Iran ; their capacity of mobilization is negligible. The fact that the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists – which, if conducted by Iran inside the US or Israel , could even provoke a Western nuclear attack – has not raised an eyebrow in the UN Security Council is a graphic illustration of its cosmic incompetence and irrelevance; as absurd as Israel never being condemned for its slow-motion genocidal practices in Palestine .

Kourosh Ziabari: One of the reasons why no solution has been found for Iran ‘s nuclear deadlock can be Israel ‘s nuclear arsenal. Iran has always complained about Washington ‘s exercising double standards on Israel ‘s underground nuclear facilities. Can we imagine that the controversy may be resolved if Israel is disarmed and the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East which Iran and the Non-Aligned Movement have proposed is realized?

Pepe Escobar: That’s ultimate wishful thinking; the idea that Israel would ever get rid of its (“secret”, undeclared) nuclear arsenal of several hundred warheads. That’s one of the dirty secrets behind Israel ‘s hysterical campaign against the Iranian nuclear program. If Tehran , hypothetically, decided to go for a nuclear weapon, abandoning what could be described as a latency period (having enough enriched uranium to build a weapon even on short notice), Israel ‘s strategic advantage would be erased. It would cease to be the only military nuclear power in the whole of Southwest Asia (Middle East, once again, is a silly Westernized concept, same as “ Far East ”). Every actor in Southwest Asia – except Israel – is in favor of a nuclear-free region, even Saudi Arabia .

Kourosh Ziabari: How much impact will the Syria crisis have on the future of Iran-West relations? From one hand, the U.S. and its European allies have explicitly expressed that they will accept no solution for the crisis in Syria but the removal of Bashar Al-Assad from power, and from the other hand, Iran has promised to do its best to make sure that Assad will not go anywhere. Will confrontation on the Syrian front lead to further hostilities and animosities between Iran and the West?

Pepe Escobar: Contrary to a tsunami of predictions that had the Assad regime falling virtually on a daily basis, the awful situation in Syria has reached a stalemate. NATO can’t go for a no-fly zone because Russia and China drew the red line, at least three times. So it won’t be Libya 2.0. Washington has no stomach for a new Middle East war. Turkey – with its “zero problems with our neighbors” policy turned into “a lot of problems with one neighbor” – started seeing this for the quagmire it really is; in fact Prime Minister Erdogan recently started distancing himself from NATO and the EU and making seducing noises towards the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is led by China and Russia. The so-called Free Syria Army has been repeatedly unmasked; little else than weaponized gangs of thugs. Washington – after Benghazi – finally woke up to the fact that Salalfi-jihadis are instrumental in the fighting in Syria . What’s left is the diverging agendas of Saudi Arabia and Qatar ; the Saudis financing hardcore Wahhabis and the Qataris anything that allies with the Muslim Brotherhood. The new coalition opposition – forged by Washington/Doha – is a joke; the leader, Moaz al-Khatib announces they must talk to the regime, but the others say no way, Assad has to leave first (that has always been the one and only mantra). This spells out, unfortunately, a long, protracted, civil war where the real victims will continue to be vast swathes of the Syrian civilian population – drowned by the usual Western crocodile tears about “the suffering of the Syrian people.”

Kourosh Ziabari is an award-winning Iranian journalist and media correspondent. He writes for Global Research, CounterCurrents.org, Tehran Times, Iran Review and other publications across the world. His articles and interviews have been translated in 10 languages. His website is http://kouroshziabari.com

 

 

By Dan Glazebrook

17 February, 2013

@ Counterpunch

Africa’s classic depiction in the mainstream media, as a giant basketcase full of endless war, famine and helpless children creates an illusion of a continent utterly dependent on Western handouts. In fact, the precise opposite is true – it is the West that is reliant on African handouts. These handouts come in many and varied forms. They include illicit flows of resources, the profits of which invariably find their way into the West’s banking sector via strings of tax havens (as thoroughly documented in Nicholas Shaxson’s Poisoned Wells). Another is the mechanism of debt-extortion whereby banks lend money to military rulers (often helped to power by Western governments, such as the Congo’s former President Mobutu), who then keep the money for themselves (often in a private account with the lending bank), leaving the country paying exorbitant interest on an exponentially growing debt. Recent research by Leonce Ndikumana and James K Boyce found that up to 80 cents in every borrowed dollar fled the borrower nation in ‘capital flight’ within a year, never having been invested in the country at all; whilst meanwhile $20billion per year is drained from Africa in ‘debt servicing’ on these, essentially fraudulent, ‘loans’.

Another form of handout would be through the looting of minerals. Countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo are ravaged by armed militias who steal the country’s resources and sell them at sub-market prices to Western companies, with most of these militias run by neighbouring countries such as Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi who are in turn sponsored by the West, as regularly highlighted in UN reports. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, are the pitifully low prices paid both for African raw materials and for the labour that mines, grows or picks them, which effectively amount to an African subsidy for Western living standards and corporate profits.

This is the role for which Africa has been ascribed by the masters of the Western capitalist economy: a supplier of cheap resources and cheap labour. And keeping this labour, and these resources, cheap depends primarily on one thing: ensuring that Africa remains underdeveloped and impoverished. If it were to become more prosperous, wages would rise; if it were to become more technologically developed, it would be able to add value to its raw materials through the manufacturing process before exporting them, forcing up the prices paid. Meanwhile, extracting stolen oil and minerals depends on keeping African states weak and divided. The Democratic Republic of Congo, for example – whose mines produce tens of billions of mineral resources each year – were only, in one recent financial year, able to collect a paltry $32million in tax revenues from mining due to the proxy war waged against that country by Western-backed militias.

The African Union, established in 2002 was a threat to all of this: a more integrated, more unified African continent would be harder to exploit. Of special concern to Western strategic planners are the financial and military aspects of African unification. On a financial level, plans for an African Central Bank (to issue a single African currency, the gold-backed dinar) would greatly threaten the ability of the US, Britain and France to exploit the continent. Were all African trade to be conducted using the gold-backed dinar, this would mean Western countries would effectively have to pay in gold for African resources, rather than, as currently, paying in sterling, francs or dollars which can be printed virtually out of thin air. The other two proposed AU financial institutions – the African Investment Bank and the African Monetary Fund – could fatally undermine the ability of institutions such as the International Monetary Fund to manipulate the economic policies of African countries through their monopoly of finance. As Jean Paul Pougala has pointed out, the African Monetary Fund, with its planned startup capital of $42billion, “is expected to totally supplant the African activities of the International Monetary Fund which, with only US$25 billion, was able to bring an entire continent to its knees and make it swallow questionable privatisation like forcing African countries to move from public to private monopolies.”

Along with these potentially threatening financial developments come moves on the military front. The 2004 AU Summit in Sirte, Libya, agreed on a Common African Defence and Security Charter, including an article stipulating that “any attack against an African country is considered as an attack against the Continent as a whole”, mirroring the Charter of NATO itself. This was followed up in 2010 by the creation of an African Standby Force, with a mandate to uphold and implement the Charter. Clearly, if NATO was going to make any attempt to reverse African unity by force, time was running out.

Yet the creation of the African Standby Force represented not only a threat, but also an opportunity. Whilst there was certainly the possibility of the ASF becoming a genuine force for independence, resisting neocolonialism and defending Africa against imperialist aggression, there was also the possibility that, handled in the right way, and under a different leadership, the force could become the opposite – a proxy force for continued neocolonial subjugation under a Western chain of command. The stakes were – and are – clearly very high.

Meanwhile, the West had already been building up its own military preparations for Africa. Its economic decline, coupled with the rise of China, meant that it was increasingly unable to continue to rely on economic blackmail and financial manipulation alone in order to keep the continent subordinated and weak. Comprehending clearly that this meant it would be increasingly forced into military action to maintain its domination, a US white paper published in 2002 by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group recommended “A new and vigorous focus on US military cooperation in sub-Saharan Africa, to include design of a sub-unified command structure which could produce significant dividends in the protection of US investments”. This structure came into existence in 2008, under the name of AFRICOM. The costs – economic, military and political – of direct intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, however – with the costs of the Iraq war alone estimated at over three trillion dollars – meant that AFRICOM was supposed to primarily rely on local troops to do the fighting and dying. AFRICOM was to be the body which coordinated the subordination of African armies under a Western chain of command; which turned, in other words, African armies into Western proxies.

The biggest obstacle to this plan was the African Union itself, which categorically rejected any US military presence on African soil in 2008 – forcing AFRICOM to house its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, a humiliating about turn after President Bush had already publicly announced his intention to set up the HQ in Africa itself. Worse was to come in 2009, when Colonel Gaddafi – the continent’s staunchest advocate of anti-imperialist policies – was elected Chairman of the AU. Under his leadership, Libya had already become the biggest financial donor to the African Union, and he was now proposing a fast-track process of African integration, including a single African army, currency and passport.

His fate is clearly now a matter of public record. After mounting an invasion of his country based on a pack of lies worse than those told about Iraq, NATO reduced Libya to a devastated failed state and facilitated its leader’s torture and execution, thus taking out their number one opponent. For a time, it appeared as though the African Union had been tamed. Three of its members – Nigeria, Gabon and South Africa – had voted in favour of military intervention at the UN Security Council, and its new chairman – Jean Ping – was quick to recognize the new Libyan government imposed by NATO, and todownplay and denigrate his predecessor’s achievements. Indeed, he even forbade the African Union assembly from observing a minute’s silence for Gaddafi after his murder.

However, this did not last. The South Africans, in particular, quickly came to regret their support for the intervention, with both President Zuma and Thabo Mbeki making searing criticisms of NATO in the months that followed. Zuma argued – correctly – that NATO had acted illegally by blocking the ceasefire and negotiations that had been called for by the UN resolution, had been brokered by the AU, and had been agreed to by Gaddafi. Mbeki went much further and argued that the UN Security Council, by ignoring the AU’s proposals, were treating “the peoples of Africa with absolute contempt” and that “the Western powers have enhanced their appetite to intervene on our Continent, including through armed force, to ensure the protection of their interests, regardless of our views as Africans”. A senior diplomat in the South African Foreign Ministry’s Department of International Relations said that “most SADC [Southern African Development Community] states , particularly South Africa, Zimbabwe, Angola, Tanzania, Namibia and Zambia which played a key role in the Southern African liberation struggle, were not happy with the way Jean Ping handled the Libyan bombing by NATO jets”. In July 2012, Ping was forced out and replaced – with the support of 37 African states – by Dr Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma: former South African Foreign Minister, Thabo Mbeki’s “right hand woman” – and clearly not a member of Ping’s capitulationist camp. The African Union was once again under the control of forces committed to genuine independence.

However, Gaddafi’s execution had not only taken out a powerful member of the African Union, but also the lynchpin of regional security in the Sahel – Sahara region. Using a careful mixture of force, ideological challenge and negotiation, Gaddafi’s Libya was at the head of a transnational security system that had prevented Salafist militias gaining a foothold, as recognized by US Ambassador Christopher Stevens in 2008: “The Government of Libya has aggressively pursued operations to disrupt foreign fighter flows, including more stringent monitoring of air/land ports of entry, and blunt the ideological appeal of radical Islam…Libya cooperates with neighbouring states in the Sahara and Sahel region to stem foreign fighter flows and travel of transnational terrorists. Muammar Gaddafi recently brokered a widely-publicised agreement with Tuareg tribal leaders from Libya, Chad, Niger, Mali and Algeria in which they would abandon separatist aspirations and smuggling (of weapons and transnational extremists) in exchange for development assistance and financial support…our assessment is that the flow of foreign fighters from Libya to Iraq and the reverse flow of veterans to Libya has diminished due to the Government of Libya’s cooperation with other states…”

This “cooperation with other states” refers to the CEN-SAD (Community of Sahel-Saharan States), an organization launched by Gaddafi in 1998 aiming at free trade, free movement of peoples and regional development between its 23 member states, but with a primary focus on peace and security. As well as countering the influence of Salafist militias, the CEN-SAD had played a key role in mediating conflicts between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and within the Mano River region, as well as negotiating a lasting solution to the rebellion in Chad. CEN-SAD was based in Tripoli and Libya was unquestionably the dominant force in the group; indeed CEN-SAD support was primarily behind Gaddafi’s election as Chairman of the AU in 2009.

The very effectiveness of this security system, was a double blow for Western hegemony in Africa: not only did it bring Africa closer to peace and prosperity, but simultaneously undercut a key pretext for Western intervention. The US had established its own ‘Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism Partnership’ (TSCTP), but as Muatassim Gaddafi (Libyan National Security Advisor) explained to Hilary Clinton in Washington in 2009, the “Tripoli-based Community of Sahel-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) and the North Africa Standby Force obviated TSCTP’s mission”.

As long as Gaddafi was in power and heading up a powerful and effective regional security system, Salafist militias in North Africa could not be used as a ‘threatening menace’ justifying Western invasion and occupation to save the helpless natives. By actually achieving what the West claim to want (but everywhere fail to achieve) – the neutralization of ‘Islamist terrorism’ – Libya had stripped the imperialists of a key pretext for their war against Africa. At the same time, they had prevented the militias from fulfilling their other historical function for the West – as a proxy force to destabilize independent secular states (fully documented in Mark Curtis’ excellent Secret Affairs). The West had supported Salafi death squads in campaigns to destabilize the USSR and Yugoslavia highly successfully, and would do so again against Libya and Syria.

With NATO’s redrawing of Libya as a failed state, this security system has fallen apart. Not only have the Salafi militias been provided with the latest hi-tech military equipment by NATO, they have been given free reign to loot the Libyan government’s armouries, and provided with a safe haven from which to organize attacks across the region. Border security has collapsed, with the apparent connivance of the new Libyan government and its NATO sponsors, as this damning report from global intelligence firm Jamestown Foundation notes: “Al-Wigh was an important strategic base for the Qaddafi regime, being located close to the borders with Niger, Chad and Algeria. Since the rebellion, the base has come under the control of Tubu tribal fighters under the nominal command of the Libyan Army and the direct command of Tubu commander Sharafeddine Barka Azaiy, who complains: “During the revolution, controlling this base was of key strategic importance. We liberated it. Now we feel neglected. We do not have sufficient equipment, cars and weapons to protect the border. Even though we are part of national army, we receive no salary”. The report concludes that “The Libyan GNC [Governing National Council] and its predecessor, the Transitional National Council (TNC), have failed to secure important military facilities in the south and have allowed border security in large parts of the south to effectively become “privatized” in the hands of tribal groups who are also well-known for their traditional smuggling pursuits. In turn, this has jeopardized the security of Libya’s oil infrastructure and the security of its neighbors. As the sale and transport of Libyan arms becomes a mini-industry in the post-Qaddafi era…the vast amounts of cash available to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb are capable of opening many doors in an impoverished and underdeveloped region. If the French-led offensive in northern Mali succeeds in displacing the Islamist militants, there seems to be little at the moment to prevent such groups from establishing new bases in the poorly-controlled desert wilderness of southern Libya. So long as there is an absence of central control of security structures in Libya, that nation’s interior will continue to present a security threat to the rest of the nations in the region.”

The most obvious victim of this destabilization has been Mali. That the Salafist takeover of Mali is a direct consequence of NATO’s actions in Libya is not in doubt by any serious analysts. One result of the spread of NATO-backed destabilization to Mali is that Algeria – who lost 200,000 citizens in a deadly civil war with Islamists in the 1990s – is now surrounded by heavily armed Salafist militias on both its Eastern (Libya) and Southern (Mali) borders. Following the destruction of Libya and the toppling of Mubarak, Algeria is now the only state in North Africa still governed by the anti-colonial party that won its independence from European tyranny. This independent spirit is still very much in evidence in Algeria’s attitude towards Africa and Europe. On the African front, Algeria is a strong supporter of the African Union, contributing 15% of its budget, and has $16billion committed to the establishment of the African Monetary Fund, making it the Fund’s largest contributor by far. In its relations with Europe, however, it has consistently refused to play the subordinate role expected of it. Algeria and Syria were the only countries in the Arab League to vote against NATO bombings of Libya and Syria, and Algeria famously gave refuge to members of Gaddafi’s family fleeing NATO’s onslaught. But for European strategic planners, perhaps more worrying than all of this is that Algeria – along with Iran and Venezuela – is what they call an OPEC ‘hawk’, committed to driving a hard bargain for their natural resources. As an exasperated article in the Financial Times recently explained, “resource nationalism” has taken hold, with the result that “Big Oil has soured on Algeria [and] companies complain of crushing bureaucracy, tough fiscal terms and the bullying behavior of Sonatrach, the state-run energy group, which has a stake in most oil and gas ventures”. It goes on to note that Algeria implemented a “controversial windfall tax” in 2006, and quotes a western oil executive in Algiers as saying that “[oil] companies…have had it with Algeria”. It is instructive to note that the same newspaper had also accused Libya of “resource nationalism” – that most heinous of crimes for readers of the Financial Times, it seems – barely a year before NATO’s invasion. Of course, ‘resource nationalism’ means exactly that – a nation’s resources being used primarily for the benefit and development of the nation itself (rather than foreign companies) – and in that sense Algeria is indeed guilty as charged. Algeria’s oil exports stand at over $70bn per year, and much of this income has been used to invest in massive spending on health and housing, along with a recent $23billion loan and public grants programme to encourage small business. Indeed, high levels of social spending are considered by many to be a key reason why no ‘Arab Spring’ style uprising has taken off in Algeria in recent years.

This tendency to ‘resource nationalism’ was also noted in a recent piece by STRATFOR, the global intelligence firm, who wrote that “foreign participation in Algeria has suffered in large part due to protectionist policies enforced by the highly nationalistic military government”. This was particularly worrying, they argued, as Europe is about to become a whole lot more dependent on Algerian gas as North Sea reserves run out: “Developing Algeria as a major natural gas exporter is an economic and strategic imperative for EU countries as North Sea production of the commodity enters terminal decline in the next decade. Algeria is already an important energy supplier to the Continent, but Europe will need expanded access to natural gas to offset the decline of its indigenous reserves.” British and Dutch North Sea gas reserves are estimated to run out by the end of the decade, and Norway’s to go into sharp decline from 2015 onwards. With Europe fearful of overdependence on gas from Russia and Asia, Algeria – with reserves of natural gas estimated at 4.5 trillion cubic metres, alongside shale gas reserves of 17 trillion cubic meters – will become essential, the piece argues. But the biggest obstacle to European control of these resources remains the Algerian government – with its “protectionist policies” and “resource nationalism”. Without saying it outright, the piece concludes by suggesting that a destabilized ‘failed state’ Algeria would be far preferable to Algeria under a stable independent “protectionist” government, noting that “the existing involvement of EU energy majors in high-risk countries like Nigeria, Libya, Yemen and Iraq indicates a healthy tolerance for instability and security problems.” In other words, in an age of private security, Big Oil no longer requires stability or state protection for its investments; disaster zones can be tolerated; strong, independent states cannot.

It is, therefore, perceived to be in the strategic interests of Western energy security to see Algeria turned into a failed state, just as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya have been. With this in mind, it is clear to see how the apparently contradictory policy of arming the Salafist militias one minute (in Libya) and bombing them the next (in Mali) does in fact make sense. The French bombing mission aims, in its own words, at the “total reconquest” of Mali, which in practice means driving the rebels gradually Northwards through the country – in other words, straight into Algeria.

Thus the wilful destruction of the Libyan-centred Sahel-Sahara security system has had many benefits for those who wish to see Africa remain consigned to its role of underdeveloped provider of cheap raw materials. It has armed, trained, and provided territory to militias bent on the destruction of Algeria, the only major resource-rich North African state committed to genuine African unity and independence. In doing so, it has also persuaded some Africans that – in contrast to their united rejection of AFRICOM not long ago – they do, after all, now need to call on the West for ‘protection’ from these militias. Like a classic mafia protection racket, the West makes its protection ‘necessary’ by unleashing the very forces from which people require protection. Now France is occupying Mali, the US are establishing a new drone base in Niger and David Cameron is talking about his commitment to a new ‘war on terror’ spanning six countries, and likely to last decades.

It is not, however, all good on the imperialist front. Far from it; indeed the West had almost certainly hoped to avoid sending in their own soldiers at all. The initial aim was that Algeria would be sucked in, lured into exactly the same trap that was successfully used against the Soviet Union in the 1980s, an earlier example of Britain and the US sponsoring a violent sectarian insurgency on their enemy’s borders, attempting to drag their target into a destructive war in response. The USSR’s war in Afghanistan ultimately not only failed but destroyed the country’s economy and morale in the process, and was a key factor behind the gratuitous self-destruction of the Soviet state in 1991. Algeria, however, refused to fall into this trap, and Clinton and Hollande’s good cop-bad cop routine – the former’s ‘pressure for action’ in Algiers last October followed by French attempts at sucking up 2 months later – came to nothing. Meanwhile, rather than sticking to the script, the West’s unpredictable Salafi proxies expanded from their base in Northern Mali not North to Algeria as intended, but South to Bamako, threatening to unseat a Western-allied regime that had only just been installed in a coup less than a year earlier. The French were forced to intervene to drive them North and back towards the state that had been their real target all along. For now, this invasion appears to have a certain level of support amongst those Africans who fear the West’s Salafi proxies more than the West’s own soldiers. Once the occupation starts to drag on, boosting the credibility and numbers of the guerillas, whilst exposing the brutality of the occupiers and their allies, we will see how long that lasts.

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and journalist. He writes regularly on international relations and the use of state violence in British domestic and foreign policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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By Chris Hedges

17 February, 2013

@ http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/profiting_from_human_misery_20130217/

Marela, an undocumented immigrant in her 40s, stood outside the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, N.J., on a chilly afternoon last week. She was there with a group of protesters who appear at the facility’s gates every year on Ash Wednesday to decry the nation’s immigration policy and conditions inside the center. She was there, she said, because of her friend Evelyn Obey.

Obey, 40, a Guatemalan and the single mother of a 12-year-old and a 6-year-old, was picked up in an immigration raid as she and nine other undocumented workers walked out of an office building they cleaned in Newark, N.J. Her two children instantly lost their only parent. She languished in detention. Another family took in the children, who never saw their mother again. Obey died in jail in 2010 from, according to the sign Villar had hung on her neck, “pulmonary thromboembolism, chronic bronchiolitis and emphysema and remote cardiac Ischemic Damage.’ ”

“She called me two days after she was seized,” Marela told me in Spanish. “She was hysterical. She was crying. She was worried about her children. We could not visit her because we do not have legal documents. We helped her get a lawyer. Then we heard she was sick. Then we heard she died. She was buried in an unmarked grave. We did not go to her burial. We were too scared of being seized and detained.”

The rally—about four dozen people, most from immigrant rights groups and local churches—was a flicker of consciousness in a nation that has yet to fully confront the totalitarian corporate forces arrayed against it. Several protesters in orange jumpsuits like those worn by inmates held signs reading: “I Want My Family Together,” “No Human Being is Illegal,” and “Education not Deportation.”

“The people who run that prison make money off of human misery,” said Diana Mejia, 47, an immigrant from Colombia who now has legal status, gesturing toward the old warehouse that now serves as the detention facility. As she spoke, a Catholic Worker band called the Filthy Rotten System belted out a protest song. A low-flying passenger jet, its red, green and white underbelly lights blinking in the night sky, rumbled overhead. Clergy walking amid the crowd marked the foreheads of participants with ashes to commemorate Ash Wednesday.

“Repentance is more than merely being sorry,” the Rev. Joyce Antila Phipps, the executive director of Casa de Esperanza, a community organization working with immigrants, told the gathering. “It is an act of turning around and then moving forward to make change.”

The majority of those we incarcerate in this country—and we incarcerate a quarter of the world’s prison population—have never committed a violent crime. Eleven million undocumented immigrants face the possibility of imprisonment and deportation. President Barack Obama, outpacing George W. Bush, has deported more than 400,000 people since he took office. Families, once someone is seized, detained and deported, are thrown into crisis. Children come home from school and find they have lost their mothers or fathers. The small incomes that once sustained them are snuffed out. Those who remain behind often become destitute.

But human beings matter little in the corporate state. We myopically serve the rapacious appetites of those dedicated to exploitation and maximizing profit. And our corporate masters view prisons—as they do education, health care and war—as a business. The 320-bed Elizabeth Detention Center, which houses only men, is run by one of the largest operators and owners of for-profit prisons in the country, Corrections Corporation of America. CCA, traded on the New York Stock Exchange, has annual revenues in excess of $1.7 billion. An average of 81,384 inmates are in its facilities on any one day. This is a greater number, the American Civil Liberties Union points out in a 2011 report, “Banking on Bondage: Private Prisons and Mass Incarceration,” than that held by the states of New York and New Jersey combined.

The for-profit prisons and their lobbyists in Washington and state capitals have successfully blocked immigration reform, have prevented a challenge to our draconian drug laws and are pushing through tougher detention policies. Locking up more and more human beings is the bedrock of the industry’s profits. These corporations are the engines behind the explosion of our prison system. They are the reason we have spent $300 billion on new prisons since 1980. They are also the reason serious reform is impossible.

The United States, from 1970 to 2005, increased its prison population by about 700 percent, according to statistics gathered by the ACLU. The federal Bureau of Justice Statistics, the ACLU report notes, says that for-profit companies presently control about 18 percent of federal prisoners and 6.7 percent of all state prisoners. Private prisons account for nearly all of the new prisons built between 2000 and 2005. And nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government are shipped to for-profit prisons, according to Detention Watch Network.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which imprisons about 400,000 undocumented people a year, has an annual budget of more than $5 billion. ICE is planning to expand its operations by establishing several mega-detention centers, most run by private corporations, in states such as New Jersey, Texas, Florida, California and Illinois. Many of these private contractors are, not surprisingly, large campaign donors to “law and order” politicians including New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

In CCA’s annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission for 2011, cited by the ACLU, the prison company bluntly states its opposition to prison reform. “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by the relaxation of enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices or through the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws,” it declares. CCA goes on to warn that “any changes with respect to drugs and controlled substances or illegal immigration” could “potentially [reduce] demand for correctional facilities,” as would “mak[ing] more inmates eligible for early release based on good behavior,” the adoption of “sentencing alternatives [that] … could put some offenders on probation” and “reductions in crime rates.”

CCA in 2011 gave $710,300 in political contributions to candidates for federal or state office, political parties and 527 groups (PACs and super PACs), the ACLU reported. The corporation also spent $1.07 million lobbying federal officials along with undisclosed funds to lobby state officials, according to the ACLU. CCA, through the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), lobbies legislators to impose harsher detention laws at the state and federal levels. The ALEC helped draft Arizona’s draconian anti-immigrant law SB 1070.

A March 2012 CCA investor presentation prospectus, quoted by the ACLU, tells potential investors that incarceration “creates predictable revenue streams.” The document cites demographic trends that the company says will continue to expand profits. These positive investment trends include, the prospectus reads, “high recidivism”—“about 45 percent of individuals released from prison in 1999 and more than 43 percent released from prison in 2004 were returned to prison within three years.” The prospectus invites investments by noting that one in every 100 U.S. adults is currently in prison or jail. And because the U.S. population is projected to grow by approximately 18.6 million from 2012 to 2017, “prison populations would grow by about 80,400 between 2012 and 2017, or by more than 13,000 additional per year, on average,” the CCA document says.

The two largest private prison companies in 2010 received nearly $3 billion in revenue. The senior executives, according to the ACLU report, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million. The for-profit prisons can charge the government up to $200 a day to house an inmate; they pay detention officers as little as $10 an hour.

“Within 30 miles of this place, there are at least four other facilities where immigrants are detained: Essex, Monmouth, Delaney Hall and Hudson, which has the distinction of being named one of the 10 worst detention facilities in the country,” Phipps, who is an immigration attorney as well as a minister, told the gathering in front of the Elizabeth Detention Center. “The terrible secret is that immigration detention has become a very profitable business for companies and county governments.”

“More than two-thirds of immigrants are detained in so-called contract facilities owned by private companies, such as this one and Delaney Hall,” she went on. “The rise of the prison industrial complex has gone hand in hand with the aggrandizing forces of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, which, by the way, has filed suit against the very government it is supposed to be working for because they were told to exercise prosecutorial discretion in their detention practices.” [Click here to see more about the lawsuit, in which 10 ICE agents attack the administration’s easing of government policy on those who illegally entered the United States as children.]

There is an immigration court inside the Elizabeth facility, although the roar of the planes lifting off from the nearby Newark Airport forces those in the court to remain silent every three or four minutes until the sound subsides. Most of those brought before the court have no legal representation and are railroaded through the system and deported. Detainees, although most have no criminal record beyond illegal entry into the United States, wear orange jumpsuits and frequently are handcuffed. They do not have adequate health care. There are now some 5,000 children in foster care because their parents have been detained or deported, according to the Applied Research Center’s report “Shattered Families.” The report estimates that this number will rise to 15,000 within five years.

“I am in family court once every six to eight weeks representing some mother who is surrendering custody of her child to somebody else because she does not want to take that child back to the poverty of Guatemala, Honduras or El Salvador,” Phipps said when we spoke after the rally. “She has no option. She does not want her child to live in the same poverty she grew up in. It is heartbreaking.”

We have abandoned the common good. We have been stripped of our rights and voice. Corporations write our laws and determine how we structure our society. We have all become victims. There are no politicians or institutions, no political parties or courts, that are independent enough or strong enough to resist the corporate onslaught. Greater and greater numbers of human beings will be consumed. The poor, the vulnerable, the undocumented, the weak, the elderly, the sick, the children will go first. And those of us watching helplessly outside the gates will go next.

By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

16 February 13

@ readersupportednews.org

Our movement changed history. While we did not prevent the Iraq war, the protests proved its clear illegality, demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration policies, helped prevent war in Iran, and inspired a generation of activists.

Ten years ago people around the world rose up. In almost 800 cities across the globe, protesters filled the streets of capital cities and tiny villages, following the sun from Australia and New Zealand and the small Pacific islands, through the snowy steppes of North Asia and down across the South Asian peninsula, across Europe and down to the southern edge of Africa, then jumping the pond first to Latin America and then finally, last of all, to the United States.

And across the globe, the call came in scores of languages, “the world says no to war!” The cry “Not in Our Name” echoed from millions of voices. The Guinness Book of World Records said between 12 and 14 million people came out that day, the largest protest in the history of the world. It was, as the great British labor and peace activist and former MP Tony Benn described it to the million Londoners in the streets that day, “the first global demonstration, and its first cause is to prevent a war against Iraq.” What a concept – a global protest against a war that had not yet begun – the goal, to try to stop it.

It was an amazing moment – powerful enough that governments around the world, including the soon-famous “Uncommitted Six” in the Security Council, did the unthinkable: they too resisted pressure from the United States and the United Kingdom and said no to endorsing Bush’s war. Under ordinary circumstances, alone, U.S.-dependent and relatively weak countries like Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Guinea, Mexico and Pakistan could never have stood up to Washington. But these were not ordinary circumstances. The combination of diplomatic support from “Old Europe,” Germany and France who for their own reasons opposed the war, and popular pressure from thousands, millions, filling the streets of their capitals, allowed the Six to stand firm. The pressure was fierce. Chile was threatened with a U.S. refusal to ratify a U.S. free trade agreement seven years in the making. (The trade agreement was quite terrible, but the Chilean government was committed to it.) Guinea and Cameroon were threatened with loss of U.S. aid granted under the African Growth & Opportunity Act. Mexico faced the potential end of negotiations over immigration and the border. And yet they stood firm.

The day before the protests, February 14, the Security Council was called into session once again, this time at the foreign minister level, to hear the ostensibly final reports of the two UN weapons inspectors for Iraq. Many had anticipated that their reports would somehow wiggle around the truth, that they would say something Bush and Blair would grab to try to legitimize their spurious claims of Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, that they would at least appear ambivalent enough for the U.S. to use their reports to justify war. But they refused to bend the truth, stating unequivocally that no such weapons had been found.

Following their reports, French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin responded with an extraordinary call, reminding the world that “the United Nations must remain an instrument of peace, and not a tool for war.” In that usually staid, formal, rule-bound chamber, his call was answered with a roaring ovation beginning with Council staff and quickly engulfing the diplomats and foreign ministers themselves.

Security Council rejection was strong enough – enough governments said no – that the United Nations was able to do what its Charter requires, but what political pressure too often makes impossible: to stand against the scourge of war. On the morning of February 15, just hours before the massive rally began at the foot of the United Nations, the great actor-activist Harry Belafonte and I accompanied South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu to meet with then-Secretary-General Kofi Annan on behalf of the protesters. We were met by a police escort to cross what the New York Police Department had designated its “frozen zone” – not in reference to the bitter 18 degrees or the biting wind whipping in from the East River, but the forcibly deserted streets directly in front of UN headquarters. In the secretary-general’s office on the 38th floor of the United Nations, Bishop Tutu opened the meeting, looking at Kofi across the table and said, “We are here today on behalf of those people marching in 665 cities all around the world. And we are here to tell you, that those people marching in all those cities around the world, we claim the United Nations as our own. We claim it in the name of our global mobilization for peace.”

It was an incredible moment. And while we weren’t able to prevent that war, that global mobilization, that pulled governments and the United Nations into a trajectory of resistance shaped and led by global movements, created what the New York Times the next day called “the second super-power.”

Mid-way through the marathon New York rally, a brief Associated Press story came over the wires: “Rattled by an outpouring of international anti-war sentiment, the United States and Britain began reworking a draft resolution … Diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the final product may be a softer text that does not explicitly call for war.” Faced with a global challenge to their desperate struggle for UN and global legitimacy, Bush and Blair threw in the towel.

Our movement changed history. While we did not prevent the Iraq war, the protests proved its clear illegality, demonstrated the isolation of the Bush administration policies, helped prevent war in Iran, and inspired a generation of activists. February 15 set the terms for what “global mobilizations” could accomplish. Eight years later some of the Cairo activists, embarrassed at the relatively small size of their protest on February 15, 2003, would go on to help lead Egypt’s Arab Spring. Occupy protesters would reference February 15 and its international context. Spain’s indignados and others protesting austerity and inequality could see February 15 as a model of moving from national to global protest.

In New York City on that singular afternoon, some of the speakers had particular resonance for those shivering in the monumental crowd. Harry Belafonte, veteran of so many of the progressive struggles of the last three-quarters of a century, called out to the rising U.S. movement against war and empire, reminding us that our movement could change the world, and that the world was counting on us to do so. “The world has sat with tremendous anxiety, in great fear that we did not exist,” he said. “But America is a vast and diverse country, and we are part of the greater truth that makes our nation. We stand for peace, for the truth of what is at the heart of the American people. We WILL make a difference – that is the message that we send out to the world today.”

Belafonte was followed by his close friend and fellow activist-actor Danny Glover, who spoke of earlier heroes, of Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and of the great Paul Robeson on whose shoulders we still stand. And then he shouted “We stand here today because our right to dissent, and our right to participate in a real democracy has been hijacked by those who call for war. We stand here at this threshold of history, and we say to the world, ‘Not in Our Name’! ‘Not in Our Name!'” The huge crowd, shivering in the icy wind, took up the cry, and “Not in our Name! Not in Our Name!” echoed through the New York streets.

Our obligation as the second super-power remains in place. Now what we need is a strategy to engage with power, to challenge once again the reconfigured but remaining first super-power. That commitment remains.

By Franklin Lamb

16 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Tehran: Truth told, this American observer has attended his share of international conferences and has traveled in more than 70 countries. But never has he visited such a complex country, evolving culture, and striving energized society, populated by idealistic people of great warmth, sense of humor and caring for those in need as he experiences in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Except when traveling in his own country.

Being in Iran during these tense times is to experience an epiphany. Which is that Iranians and Americans have so very many needs and interests in common-yes even in our religious beliefs- that both peoples should immediately repair our countries relations and return to the days when 60,000 Iranian students studied in the US and thousands of Americans lived and worked in Iran- all in singular harmony and with myriad mutual benefits.

The deep connection among Muslims and Christians from the seventh century sacrifice at Karbala by Hussein bin Ali and the first century sacrifice at Calvary by Jesus Christ, established forever a claimed divine principle of sacrifice of one’s self to resist injustice for the greater good of the community. This bond underpins and connects the two religions and their followers inextricably.

There is probably no country more misunderstood in America than Iran And its due almost entirely to politically motivated demonizations and misrepresentations, including, but not limited to, what President Ahmadinejad really said during speeches relating to the US and the West and the historical imperative to liberate occupied Palestine and every country’s right to develop nuclear energy and to live independently and free of US-led western hegemony. Most Americans’ perceptions of Iran, according to Iranian friends, are limited to images of President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad accused of delivering anti-American speeches.

Another example is the media reports of the 2/09/13 celebration of the 34th anniversary of the Iranian revolution where the BBC and most other media reported the crowds were “frenzied and chanting death to America.” I was there and this report is rubbish. I did hear from time to time a few chants mixed in with revolutionary songs, religious exhortations, and just plain fun. Helping others by offering water and heavy laden older citizens or kids was the motif.

People were happy not angry and they could not have been more friendly or curious about the Americans they came upon and who helped them pick up Iranian leaflet flags that blew or were dropped onto the streets as the Americans understood Iranian pride in their flag and not wanting to see it walked on or subjected to disrespect.

One does not have to look further than the morning newspapers for examples and to find the likes of Zionist apologist, Iranophobe and Islamophode Jennifer Rubin, in her Washington Post screed. Ms. Rubin, on Valentine’s Day had only poisonous invective in her heart for any American- even cupid one imagines- who would dare express any remotely objective idea about Iran. Rubin, a former AIPAC volunteer, lambasted Obama’s nominee for Secretary of Defense, former US Senator, Chuck Hagel, as nearly all 52 Zionist organizations in America have done this past month, because he advocates mutual respect and friendship with Iran. Hagel’s unforgiveable sins includee his words on the subject of criminal US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria and the need to build trust and normalize relations through dialogue.

Said Hagel about U.S.-Iran relations: “We shouldn’t be putting conditions on talks or putting all other issues to the side except one issue that we will ‘dictate’ to Iran.” As far back as 2007, Hagel stated that “In the Middle East of the 21st century, Iran will be a key center of gravity… a significant regional power. The United States cannot change that reality. America’s strategic 21st-century regional policy for the Middle East must acknowledge the role of Iran today and over the next 25 years.” Hagel continued: “On Afghanistan, the United States and Iran found common interests — defeating the Taliban and Islamic radicals, stabilizing Afghanistan, stopping the opium production and the flow of opium coming into Iran. From these common interests emerged common actions working toward a common purpose. It was in the interests of Iran to work with the U.S. in Afghanistan. It was not a matter of helping America or strengthening America’s presence in Central Asia. It was a clear-eyed and self-serving action for Iran.”

Hagel may have erred a bit on Afghanistan and the Taliban, but Rubin found Hagel’s point of view treasonous and has joined the the US Zionist lobby’s call for a witch-hunt when she asks her readers: “Why would the president select someone so deferential toward the Islamic revolutionary government? ..During the Congressional recess, the Senate should think about that. And it might be interesting to find out who was helping him with these intensely pro-Tehran speeches.

In Iran today one does not hear Rubinesque hate speech or even lectures about the 1953 US-UK overthrow of Iranian leader Mohammad Mossedeg or the shooting down on July 3, 1988 of the commercial passenger aircraft Iran Air Flight 655 (IIR655) or the US giving chemical weapons to Iraq, during its US backed aggression, or even the assassination of Iranian scientists or a number of other US green lighted aggressions against the country.

Much more often, conversations are likely to turn to the need to improve relations and friendly questions about what foreigners are experiencing in Iran and if they need assistance in doing something or information about their country. Iranians are as open as Americans are by their very nature, and unlike many other countries no subject for discussion is taboo. For this observer it included topics such as the “morality police”, execution of drug dealers and homosexuals, “stoning” of women, attacks on the Bahá’í Faith, which is the country’s second-largest religion after Islam, the 2009 “Green Revolution” and any other subject that came to mine, including drinking alcohol and public dating.

One hilarious conversation this observer had with four early 20’s female students during a Conference last week was about the number (more than 60%) of Chador wearing women who openly wear makeup these days, how Iranian society is changing rapidly, and the amount of hair some women expose while in public and wondering if this was not prohibited by Fatwa and how they deal with it. Their responses were immediate and nearly all at once. No one had even seen one of the Western hyped “morality police” for a long time and they are few and far between. One young lady explained that its true she wears her hijab 2/3’s the way back on her head and “if one of those guys dares to say something I will either tell him to mind his own business or if I am in a good mood I will act really, really surprised, shrug my shoulders, wink at him and say something like, “Oh so very sorry, really I am!. It was a big gust of wind that must have blown it back on my head without me noticing!” Even if there had not even been so much as a soft breeze in days.

Iranian women are smart, strong willed-even a bit pushy at times and naturally alluring. Who would want to join some “morality police” unit? The ladies explained that if one comes up to you on the street and if you are really rude to him and tell him to get lost, or worse, you might get a ticket and your parents would have to come to the police station and sign a pledge that you would try to do better about trying to observe some modesty in public. Again rather different from what the MSM tells us in the West.

And it’s clear whether attending an international conference on Hollywoodism (www.hollywoodism.org) at the Azadi (Freedom Hotel-formerly the pre-Revolution Hyatt ), traveling on the Tehran subway (far cleaner than New Yorks!) exploring street souks, visiting the Holy Defense Museum (explaining the 8 years Iran-Iraq war) or visiting the home of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini, who led the 1979 Revolution and was Iran’s leader until his death on June 3,1989 in or walking, for miles it seemed, among the nearly two million people marching to Azadi Square to commemorate this month’s 34th anniversary of the Revolution when the people of Iran overthrew the American agent, Shah Reza Palavi, that the Iranian people are kind and they are gifted.

When I got on the crowded Tehran subway, two young men immediately stood up to offer this observer their seats. And then we engaged in a very interesting long animated conversation. Said, Hamzeh, “You know, we feel like we understand America and we should be friends. Both of our countries are culturally unique somehow. Your country evolved from European culture but moved in very distinct direction. In our history Islam arrived via the Arabs but as you have been seeing I am sure, our identity is completely different from Arab countries.”

Mahmoud joined in: “Our society is also made up of many minorities, but we have a single Iranian identity and are very proud of our culture. We’re also familiar with Western ways. For the last 200 years, we were open to the Western world and influenced by European culture, even if some of the ideas, like democracy, have never had a chance to really develop properly but we will continue trying. But we also know what it’s like to be a superpower. For us it was a long time ago, but we played an important role in this part of the world for many centuries so we can never see ourselves as subject to western or eastern hegemony.”

No experience impressed a group of American visiting Iran, including this one, than the home of Imam Kohmeini and learning from his neighbors and students about the man, scholar and revolutionary. Visiting his home and Hassineyeh which have been kept just as they were the day he died, one neighbor recounted how

Ayatollah’s Khomeini’s wife Khadije Saghafi, who passed away in 2009, told her friends that she had only one wish her whole life that the Imam never granted to her. And that was that she wished for him to ask her for a glass of water at least once. But he never did. The sweet and gentle husband and father did not want even the wind to visit his family’s faces too harshly or for himself to impose on them. Another neighbor told us, “When we visited his home we often found the Imam washing the dishes, sweeping the floor, and helping in other household chores.

According to others who knew him well, the Imam led a life of utmost piety and spirituality. In the severe winters of Qom, the he would wake up each night, perform ablution the act of washing oneself for ritual purification) with ice water, and offer his night prayers. His Mafatih (prayer almanac) had to be rebound every few weeks because of how much he used it. Before he began lecturing his students on political activism, he emphasized to them the importance of spirituality and attaining the nearness of Allah.

The simplicity of life style and the modesty of Iran’s revolutionary, Imam Khomeini leader has universal appeal including American ideals.

There is every reason for Washington’s new administration to reach out to Iran, not just with words but with actions. The American and Iranian people fervently want this and it wills inestimably benefit both societies. The solution to positive the current straightened Iran-US relations includes contact, visitations, discussions and more discussions and from this both peoples can pressure their governments to leave the past behind and develop bonds of friendship.

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

By Countercurrents.org

15 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

A group of billionaires donated $120m to more than 100 anti-climate groups working to discredit climate crisis reality. The money from the rightists goes to rightist organizations, a normal alliance.

Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent, guardian.co.uk, reported [1] on February 14, 2013:

Conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120m to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, the Guardian has learned.

The funds, doled out between 2002 and 2010, helped build a vast network of thinktanks and activist groups working to a single purpose: to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing “wedge issue” for hardcore conservatives.

 

The millions were routed through two trusts, Donors Trust and the Donors Capital Fund, operating out of a generic town house in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington DC.

Donors Capital caters to those making donations of $1m or more.

Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust told the Guardian that her organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes.

“We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise,” she said in an interview.

By definition that means none of the money is going to end up with groups like Greenpeace, she said. “It won’t be going to liberals.”

Ball won’t divulge names, but she said the stable of donors represents a wide range of opinion on the American right. Increasingly over the years, those conservative donors have been pushing funds towards organizations working to discredit climate science or block climate action.

Donors exhibit sharp differences of opinion on many issues, Ball said. They run the spectrum of conservative opinion, from social conservatives to libertarians. But in opposing mandatory cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, they found common ground.

“Are there both sides of an environmental issue? Probably not,” she went on. “Here is the thing. If you look at libertarians, you tend to have a lot of differences on things like defense, immigration, drugs, the war, things like that compared to conservatives. When it comes to issues like the environment, if there are differences, they are not nearly as pronounced.”

By 2010, the dark money amounted to $118m distributed to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

The money flowed to Washington thinktanks embedded in Republican Party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore.

The ready stream of cash set off a conservative backlash against Barack Obama’s environmental agenda that wrecked any chance of Congress taking action on climate change.

Graphic: climate denial funding

Those same groups are now mobilizing against Obama’s efforts to act on climate change in his second term. A top recipient of the secret funds on Wednesday put out a point-by-point critique of the climate content in the president’s state of the union address.

And it was all done with a guarantee of complete anonymity for the donors who wished to remain hidden.

“The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It’s also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing,” said Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records.

“These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable. There is no transparency, no accountability for the money. There is no way to tell who is funding them,” Davies said.

The trusts were established for the express purpose of managing donations to a host of conservative causes.

Such vehicles, called donor-advised funds, are not uncommon in America. They offer a number of advantages to wealthy donors. They are convenient, cheaper to run than a private foundation, offer tax breaks and are lawful.

That opposition hardened over the years, especially from the mid-2000s where the Greenpeace record shows a sharp spike in funds to the anti-climate cause.

In effect, the Donors Trust was bankrolling a movement, said Robert Brulle, a Drexel University sociologist who has extensively researched the networks of ultra-conservative donors.

“This is what I call the counter-movement, a large-scale effort that is an organized effort and that is part and parcel of the conservative movement in the United States” Brulle said. “We don’t know where a lot of the money is coming from, but we do know that Donors Trust is just one example of the dark money flowing into this effort.”

In his view, Brulle said: “Donors Trust is just the tip of a very big iceberg.”

The rise of that movement is evident in the funding stream. In 2002, the two trusts raised less than $900,000 for the anti-climate cause. That was a fraction of what Exxon Mobil or the conservative oil billionaire Koch brothers donated to climate skeptic groups that year.

By 2010, the two Donor Trusts between them were channeling just under $30m to a host of conservative organizations opposing climate action or science. That accounted to 46% of all their grants to conservative causes, according to the Greenpeace analysis.

The funding stream far outstripped the support from more visible opponents of climate action such as the oil industry or the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, the records show. When it came to blocking action on the climate crisis, the obscure charity in the suburbs was outspending the Koch brothers by a factor of six to one.

“There is plenty of money coming from elsewhere,” said John Mashey, a retired computer executive who has researched funding for climate contrarians. “Focusing on the Kochs gets things confused. You can not ignore the Kochs. They have their fingers in too many things, but they are not the only ones.”

It is also possible the Kochs continued to fund their favorite projects using the anonymity offered by Donor Trust.

But the records suggest many other wealthy conservatives opened up their wallets to the anti-climate cause – an impression Ball wishes to stick.

She argued the media had overblown the Kochs support for conservative causes like climate contrarianism over the years. “It’s so funny that on the right we think George Soros funds everything, and on the left you guys think it is the evil Koch brothers who are behind everything. It’s just not true. If the Koch brothers didn’t exist we would still have a very healthy organization,” Ball said.

On the issue Suzanne Goldenberg’s report [2] provide a more detail account:

The secretive funding channel known as the Donors Trust patronized a host of conservative causes.

But climate was at the top of the list. By 2010, Donors Trust had distributed $118m to 102 thinktanks or action groups which have a record of denying the existence of a human factor in climate change, or opposing environmental regulations.

Recipients included some of the best-known thinktanks on the right. The American Enterprise Institute, which is closely connected to the Republican Party establishment and has a large staff of scholars, received more than $17m in untraceable donations over the years, the record show.

But relatively obscure organizations did not go overlooked. The Heartland Institute, virtually unknown outside the small world of climate politics, received $13.5m from the Donors Trust.

Americans for Prosperity, the Tea Party group seen as the strike force of the conservative oil billionaire Koch Brothers, received $11m since 2002.

Levi Russell, spokesman for Americans for Prosperity, declined to comment on the importance of that support to the organization. “We’re very grateful for each of the millions of activists and donors that make what we do possible,” he said in an email.

The secretive funding network also funded individuals, such as Jo Kwong, an official at the Philanthropy Roundtable who was awarded $200,000 in 2010. And there was strong interest in funding media projects.

Some of the groups on the Donors Trust list would have struggled to exist without being bankrolled by anonymous donors.

The support helped the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (Cfact) expand from $600,000 to $3m annual operation. In 2010, Cfact received nearly half of its budget from those anonymous donors, the records show.

The group’s most visible product is the website, Climate Depot, a contrarian news source run by Marc Morano. Climate Depot sees itself as the rapid reaction force of the anti-climate cause. On the morning after Obama’s state of the union address, Morano put out a point by point rebuttal to the section on climate change.

The gregarious Morano is a former aide to the Republican senator Jim Inhofe notorious for declaring climate change the greatest hoax on mankind.

According to Cfact’s tax filings, Morano, listed as communications director, was the most highly paid member of the organization.

However, Craig Rucker, the group’s executive director, insisted the funding was not critical to their work. “It is not crucial in the least. Climate Depot’s continued operation is not linked to funding from any particular source,” he said.

Source:

[1] “Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/funding-climate-change-denial-thinktanks-network

[2] guardian.co.uk, Feb 14, 2013, “How Donors Trust distributed millions to anti-climate groups”,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/feb/14/donors-trust-funding-climate-denial-networks

By Oliver Campbell

15 February, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Statistics released by the UN and various aid agencies have highlighted the devastating social impact of the two-year Syrian civil war, fuelled by the intervention of the US and its allies. An estimated four million people, or 20 percent of the population, are in need of humanitarian assistance, and more than two million people are internally displaced, amid fears that both numbers will rise sharply as the conflict continues.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) last week revealed that 5,000 Syrians were fleeing the country every day, the highest number since the war began. Almost 800,000 Syrians have now left the country, or registered as refugees.

UNHCR spokesman Adrian Edwards told the media: “This is a full-on crisis. There was a huge increase in January alone—we’re talking about a 25 percent increase in registered refugee numbers over a single month.” More than 260,000 Syrian refugees are living in Lebanon, over 242,000 in Jordan, around 177,000 in Turkey, and almost 85,000 in Iraq.

A Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) report on Syrian refugees in Lebanon, released last week, found that many did not have access to free health care and adequate shelter. In wintry conditions, more than half of those surveyed were housed in inadequate shelters such as unfinished buildings and old schools that “provided paltry protection against the elements.” Roughly a quarter had received no assistance.

The war, which has led to almost 70,000 deaths according to UN estimates, has devastated the medical system inside Syria. According to the World Health Organisation, 55 percent of Syria’s public hospitals have been damaged during the civil war, with over a third effectively closed. Two-thirds of ambulances have been damaged. Hospitals that remain open face chronic shortages of medical supplies.

In an interview last week, MSF co-ordinator in northern Syria, Katrin Kisswani, said: “The healthcare system in Syria has essentially collapsed. We had a cancer patient who was supposed to be receiving chemotherapy. He came to us in a terminal stage and all we could offer was pain relief … Pregnant women basically have nowhere to go and are forced to give birth at home if they’re lucky enough to find a midwife or a traditional birth attendant.”

Last week, UNICEF warned that children were at heightened risk of water-borne diseases because of the damage done to water and sanitation systems in two years of war. Its survey of areas affected by conflict found that water supplies were one third of the pre-war figure—down from 75 litres a day to just 25 litres. Many people were forced to buy water, often of poor quality and at high prices, from mobile tankers. The lack of clean water has led to a surge of cases of Hepatitis A.

There have also been outbreaks of leishmaniasis, particularly around the major city of Aleppo. Leishmaniasis is a parasitic disease, borne by sand flies, that results in skin ulcers resembling leprosy. The World Health Organisation said the disease was caused by poor waste management and lack of hygiene.

The UN World Food Program announced on February 5 that it had increased its aid, and aimed to reach 2.5 million people a month inside Syria. The agency said its aid workers “take advantage of brief lulls in fighting to send food to trapped civilians. Some areas, however, like the old city in Homs and some parts of North Aleppo close to the Turkish border, remain unreachable due to heavy fighting and road insecurity.” It warned that children were increasingly at risk of potentially deadly malnutrition.

Two years of civil war have paralysed the country’s economic life. The country’s gross domestic product has fallen by 20 to 30 percent since the conflict began. Unemployment stands at 37 percent, with fears that it will rise to 50 percent this year.

According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, Syria’s wheat and barley output was below 2 million tonnes in 2012, half the level of previous years. Large areas of the country face bread shortages, leading to major queues outside bakeries.

The humanitarian crisis in Syria is an indictment of the United States, Britain and the other major powers that have deliberately stoked the sectarian civil war, and given support to a rag-tag opposition, dominated by reactionary Islamist tendencies, in a bid to oust the Assad regime and install a pliant puppet government. The US and its allies cynically exploit the social disaster they have helped create, in order to intensify the push to remove Assad.

The rising exodus of refugees from Syria coincides with an escalation of fighting. Fighting has been fiercest in Aleppo province, with opposition forces besieging a number of government military bases. Opposition groups claimed to have seized control of Syria’s largest dam, located in Raqa province on Monday, a military air base in Al-Jarra in Aleppo province on Tuesday, and the bulk of base 80, another military base, also in Aleppo province, on Wednesday. Heavy fighting has also taken place at two military airports in Aleppo province. Clashes have been reported on the outskirts of Damascus.

The fighting has taken a heavy toll, with 145 people, including 66 civilians, reportedly killed across the country on Wednesday. In the city of Aleppo, Syria’s most populous, and formerly the country’s commercial hub, there have been reports of electricity outages, and a lack of water supplies most of this week.

Anti-government forces appear to be concentrating the bulk of their resources on seizing control of military infrastructure and bases, as opposed to the country’s urban centres. There have also been a series of suicide bombings and terrorist attacks, likely carried out by Islamist militias such as Al Nusra. On February 6, 54 people were killed, including 11 women, by a bus bombing outside a defence factory in the village of al-Buraq, near the government-controlled city of Hama in central Syria. The dead were mostly civilians employed by the Syrian Ministry of Defence.

On the same day, two car bombs were detonated in the government-controlled city of Palmyra, also in central Syria. One of the blasts killed 19 government security officers at the local branch of the country’s military intelligence organisation, and injured a number of others. The other bomb, which also targeted a security office, injured 8 civilians. According to the government-controlled press, another car bombing in Arnous Square in central Damascus injured two people.

Unreliable data can incite and escalate a conflict – the latest UN-sponsored figure of 60,000 should not be reported as fact

By Sharmine Narwani

15 February 2013

@ guardian.co.uk

Less than two months after the UN announced “shocking” new casualty figures in Syria, its high commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay estimates that deaths are “probably now approaching 70,000”. But two years into a Syrian conflict marked by daily death tolls, the question arises as to whether these kinds of statistics are helpful in any way? Have they helped save Syrian lives? Have they shamed intransigent foes into seeking a political solution? Or might they have they contributed to the escalation of the crisis by pointing fingers and deepening divisions?

Casualty counts during modern wars have become a highly politicised business. On one hand, they can help alert the outside world to the scale of violence and suffering, and the risks of conflict spreading both within a country’s borders and beyond them. On the other, as in Syria, Iraq, Darfur, the Democratic Republic of Congo and elsewhere, death tolls have routinely been manipulated, inflated or downplayed – a tool for the advancement of political interests.

As if to underline the point, Libya’s new government recently announced that death tolls had been exaggerated during the 2011 Libyan civil war; that there had been around 5,000 deaths on either side – a long way from the reported tens of thousands of casualties that set the scene for Nato’s “humanitarian” intervention, or the 30-50,000 deaths claimed by opponents of this intervention.

While physically present in Iraq, the US and British governments were unable to provide estimates of the numbers of deaths unleashed by their own invasion, yet in Syria, the same governments frequently quote detailed figures, despite lacking essential access.

Syria’s death toll leapt from 45,000 to 60,000 earlier this year, a figure gathered by a UN-sponsored project to integrate data from seven separate lists. The new numbers are routinely cited by politicians and media as fact, and used to call for foreign intervention in the conflict.

But Rami Abdulrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), whose casualty data are part of this count, calls the UN’s effort “political” and the results “propaganda”.

Abdulrahman, whose daily death toll releases are widely quoted in the western media, argues that many of the UN’s casualties don’t exist. “Yesterday in Qahtaniyah, I had a video of 21 people killed, but 19 names only. Other groups said 40 were killed – where are the 40? Tell them to provide me with only 21 names,” he demands, frustrated.

When I interviewed the UN spokesman Rupert Colville in January, he conceded: “We can’t prove most of these people have died.”

And Megan Price, lead author of the UN’s casualty analysis project, whose firm, Benetech, is part-funded by the US state department, explained to me: “We were not asked to do verification of whether the casualties are real.” Benetech’s task was mainly a data collation effort: working from seven separate UN-identified lists, the firm discarded duplicates and victims without names, place and date of death to arrive at the highly-publicised 60,000 number.

But questions about the accuracy of casualty numbers is only part of the story. Dig deeper, and it’s clear that this data also offers an insight into the Syrian conflict at odds with the story that this is essentially about a brutal regime killing peaceful civilians.

With the proviso that the data may itself prove unreliable, Benetech’s research nevertheless offers some useful clues about the makeup of the recorded death toll. Only 7.5% are female, making the casualties in Syria overwhelmingly male. Second, the largest segment of the 30% of victims whose ages are included in the records are between the ages of 20 and 30 – who might be classified as males of “military age”.

The SOHR’s statistics confirm this picture. On 27 December, Abdulrahman cited 148 violent deaths in Syria for that day: 49 rebels, 42 soldiers, three defectors, and the remaining 54 likely to be a mix of noncombatant civilians and unidentified rebels: “It isn’t easy to count rebels because nobody on the ground says ‘this is a rebel’. Everybody hides it.”

According to Abdulrahman’s conservative estimates, at least two thirds of the dead are armed men – an appreciatively different take on the perception of “civilian slaughter” in Syria created by reporting of the UN’s and other unverified casualty numbers. And the UN itself points out that “the analysis was not able to differentiate clearly between combatants and noncombatants”.

Even the civilian death toll is nuanced. There are civilians targeted by the regime through shelling and air strikes, civilians targeted by rebels via mortars, IEDs and urban bombings, and civilians caught in crossfire (not targeted). Further to that, there have been reports of sectarian and political killings by supporters of both sides.

While bald casualty numbers taken out of context have clearly failed to explain what now looks closer to a parity in violence inside Syria, the UN is not wrong that body counts can be valuable indicators in a crisis.

The problem is that, increasingly, death tolls are used as political tools to scene-set for western-backed “humanitarian interventions” in the Middle East and north Africa and – more broadly – against the kinds of negotiated political settlements that could actually reduce or stop the killing.

It’s time to stop headlining unreliable and easily politicised casualty counts, and use them only as one of several background measures of a conflict. It’s essential too that the media help us avoid such manipulation by asking questions about reported deaths: how were these deaths verified? Are they combatants? Who killed them? How do we know this? Who benefits from these deaths? Was this a violent death or one caused by displacement? How is it even possible to count all these dead in the midst of raging conflict?

 

Numbers without context or solid foundations can incite and escalate a conflict, leading to even more carnage. Contemporary casualty data have been inaccurate in so many recent conflicts that it’s time to retire these numbers from the telling of the story.

By Frank Scott

15 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The president gave his annual state-of-the-union reading of a speech that could have been written by the Hallmark Cards Political Greetings Division, touching on all the most important aspects of our national condition:

We are the greatest nation in the history of the world and we have some problems but we’re working on them and not to worry, we’ll continue to be the greatest nation in the history of the world.

That established, the usual chorus of near orgasmic praise from his acolytes was accompanied by carefully worded criticism from neo-liberal progressives who took pains to point out how his sleight of mouth magic this time was much more populist than last time. The neo-conservative regressives took him to task but for all the wrong reasons and the sub-moronic right continue charging him with being born on mars and hating billionaires because he is a communist, but these people require surgery to remove their fingers from their noses. More important was the problem of general consensus among those of the extreme center, the extreme right and the barely discernable left.

At a time when truly radical change is needed we have an extremely mild call for no material change at all, with rhetoric couched in market based packaging and labeling without a thought let alone any action of substance proposed. Thus, a call for more education at a time when tens of thousands of teachers are being laid off and public school budgets are under assault, and a promise of peace by bringing home some troops from Afghanistan while military bases all over the world number more than six hundred and new wars are threatened in Asia and Africa as well as Europe. Especially “populist” was a call for the minimum wage to rise to $9, a royal figure at which a full time worker would still wind up below the family poverty rate. And the same president had opted for a $9.50 wage back in 2008, further proof that not only his rhetoric but the entire economy is sinking.

These are all the usual platitudes employed by any president in these reports to the stockholders that say business is great or will be as soon as a newer product line hits the malls. The lack of material substance and reliance on cheap talk , word games and advertising jargon certainly did not originate with this particular servant of the 1%.

In recent years our consciousness controllers and their Madison Avenue mind managers have verbally transformed the american working class into a middle class , re-labeled workers as associates and convinced many that trillion dollar warfare and the death of hundreds of thousands of people is the experiece of peace. Now the world’s most primitive social democratic ploys to maintain private capital domination have become “entitlements”, which must be cut in an austerity program to save bankers , billionaires and corporate capital from facing financial ruin or worse, social revolution.

Presidents rank slightly above other members of our entertainer class, performing for very high wages to keep a minority in material comfort while supplying the rest of us with immaterial pleasure that keeps is from noticing we haven’t much else to be pleased about. Like the Oscars, the Grammys, the Super Bowl , the World Cup and other prime time shows, these annual speeches draw big crowds and intense coverage by media, though the overwhelming majority of the people pay little attention to them, if any at all. This speaks well for them, but maybe it’s time they start focusing more closely on the politicians rather than escaping their reality by watching the singing, dancing, acting, running , jumping and political posturing that seem to help make life bearable.

We are under the domain of a system whose owners bring us closer to ruin every moment we give our attention to their distractions of our minds from critical thought in order to protect their massive bodies of illegitimate wealth. The continued reliance on our economy’s private parts to bring us out of a depression caused by that masturbatory focus in the first place amount to an attempt to destroy ourselves in a way that might make sex puritans triumphantly gloat . But the attack on all that is even remotely public and socially oriented in a rush to return to complete and total reliance on the deity of market forces under private control is not funny and is bringing all of us closer to a social and environmental breaking point.

This speech reading by the current CEO of corporate America was a defense of all that is wrong and must be changed. The state of this union, and the world, is distress, and the last thing to get us out of the mess we’re in is continued reliance on the fanatic notion of a free market that wildly profits some, at the deadly expense of all.

Frank Scott writes political commentary and satire which is available online at Legalienate http://legalienate.blogspot.com

email: fpscott@gmail.com

By Ramzy Baroud

14 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Soon after the joint US-British bombing campaign ‘Operation Desert Fox’ devastated parts of Iraq in Dec 1998, I was complaining to a friend in the lobby of the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad.

I was disappointed with the fact that our busy schedule in Iraq – mostly visiting hospitals packed with injured or Depleted Uranium Victims – left me no time to purchase a few Arabic books for my little daughter back in the states. As I got ready to embark on the long bus journey back to Jordan, an Iraqi man with a thick moustache and a carefully designed beard approached me. “This is for your daughter,” he said with a smile as he handed me a plastic bag. The bag included over a dozen books with colorful images of traditional Iraqi children stories. I had never met that man before, nor did we ever meet again. He was a guest at the hotel and somehow he learned of my dilemma. As I profusely, but hurriedly thanked him before taking my seat on the bus, he insisted that no such words were needed. “We are brothers and your daughter is like my own,” he said.

I was not exactly surprised by this. Generosity of action and spirit is a distinct Iraqi characteristic and Arabs know that too well. Other Iraqi qualities include pride and perseverance, the former attributed to the fact that Mesopotamia – encompassing most of modern day Iraq – is the ‘cradle of civilization’ and later due to the untold hardship experienced by Iraqis in their modern history.

It was Britain that triggered Iraq’s modern tragedy, starting with its seizure of Baghdad in 1917 and the haphazard reshaping of a country to perfectly fit the colonial needs and economic interests of London. One could argue that the early and unequalled mess created by the British invaders continued to wreak havoc, manifesting itself in various ways – spanning sectarianism, political violence and border feuds between Iraq and its neighbors – until this very day.

But of course, the US now deserves most of the credit of reversing whatever has been achieved by the Iraqi people to acquire their ever-elusive sovereignty. It was US Secretary of State James Baker, who reportedly threatened Iraqi Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz in a Geneva meeting in 1991 by saying that the US would destroy Iraq and “bring it back to the stone age.” The US war which extended from 1990 to 2011, included a devastating blockade and ended with a brutal invasion. These wars were as unscrupulous as they were violent. Aside from their overwhelming human toll, they were placed within a horrid political strategy aimed at exploiting the country’s existing sectarian and other fault lines therefore triggering civil wars and sectarian hatred from which Iraq is unlikely to cover for many years.

For the Americans, it was a mere strategy aimed at lessening the pressure placed on its and other ally soldiers as they faced stiff resistance the moment they stepped foot in Iraq. For the Iraqis however, it was a petrifying nightmare that can neither be expressed by words or numbers. But numbers are of course barely lacking. According to UN estimations cited by the BBC, between May and June 2006 “an average of more than 100 civilians per day (were) killed in violence in Iraq.” The UN reserved estimates also placed the death toll of civilians during 2006 at 34,000. That was the year that the US strategy of divide and conquer proved most successful.

Over the years, most people outside Iraq – as in other conflicts where protracted violence yields regular death counts – simply became desensitized to the death toll. It is as if the more people die, the less worthy their lives become.

The fact remains, however that the US and Britain had jointly destroyed modern Iraq and no amount of remorse or apology – not that any was offered to begin with – will alter this fact. Iraq’s former colonial masters and its new ones lacked any legal or moral ground for invading the sanctions-devastated country. They also lacked any sense of mercy as they destroyed a generation and set the stage for a future conflict that promises to be as bloody as the past.

When the last US combat brigade had reportedly left Iraq in Dec 2011, this was meant to be an end of an era. Historians know well that conflicts don’t end with a presidential decree or troop deployments. Iraq merely entered a new phase of conflict and the US, Britain and others, remain integral parties of that conflict.

One post-invasion and war reality is that Iraq was divided into areas of influence based on purely sectarian and ethnic lines. In western media’s classification of winners and losers, Sunnis, blamed for being favored by former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, emerged as the biggest loser. While Iraq’s new political elites were divided between Shi’ite and Kurdish politicians (each party with its own private army, some gathered in Baghdad and others in the autonomous Kurdistan region), the Shi’ite population was held by various militant groups responsible for Sunni unfortunates. On Feb 8, five car bombs blew up in what was quickly recognized as “Shi’ite areas”, killing 34 people. A few days earlier, on Feb 4, 22 people were also killed in a similar fashion.

The sectarian strife in Iraq which is responsible for the death of tens of thousands, is making a comeback. Iraqi Sunnis, including major tribes and political parties are demanding equality and the end of their disfranchisement in the relatively new, skewed Iraqi political system under Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Massive protests and ongoing strikes have been organized with a unified and clear political message. However, numerous other parties are exploiting the polarization in every way imaginable: to settle old scores, to push the country back to the brink of civil war, to amplify the mayhem underway in various Arab countries, most notably Syria, and in some instances to adjust sectarian boundaries in ways that could create good business opportunities.

Yes, sectarian division and business in today’s Iraq go hand in hand. Reuters reported that Exxon Mobil hired Jeffrey James, a former US ambassador to Iraq (from 2010-12) as a ‘consultant.’ Sure, it is an example of how post-war diplomacy and business are natural allies, but there is more to the story. Taking advantage of the autonomy of the Kurdistan region, the giant multinational oil and gas corporation had struck lucrative deals that are independent from the central government in Baghdad. The latter has been amassing its troops near the disputed oil-rich region starting late last year. The Kurdish government has done the same. Unable to determine which party has the upper hand in the brewing conflict, thus future control over oil resources, Exxon Mobile is torn: to honor its contracts with the Kurds, or to seek perhaps more lucrative contracts in the south. James might have good ideas, especially when he uses his political leverage acquired during his term as US ambassador.

The future of Iraq is currently being determined by various forces and almost none of them are composed of Iraqi nationals with a uniting vision. Caught between bitter sectarianism, extremism, the power-hungry, wealth amassing elites, regional power players, western interests and a very violent war legacy, the Iraqi people are suffering beyond the ability of sheer political analyses or statistics to capture their anguish. The proud nation of impressive human potential and remarkable economic prospects has been torn to shreds.

UK-based Iraqi writer Hussein Al-alak wrote on the upcoming tenth anniversary of the Iraq invasion with a tribute to the country’s ‘silent victims,’ the children. According to Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, he reported, there is an estimated 4.5 million children who are now orphans, with a “shocking 70 percent” of them having lost their parents since the 2003 invasion.

“From that total number, around 600,000 children are living on the streets, without either shelter or food to survive,” Al-alak wrote. Those living in the few state-run orphanages “are currently lacking in their most essential needs.”

I still think of the kindly Iraqi man who gifted my daughter a collection of Iraqi stories. I also think of his children. One of the books he purchased was of Sindbad, presented in the book as a brave, handsome child who loved adventure as much as he loved his country. No matter how cruel his fate had been, Sinbad always returned to Iraq and began anew, as if nothing had ever happened.

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is: My Father was A Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press).