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By Tom Engelhardt

12 February, 2013

@ TomDispatch.com

You could, of course, sit there, slack-jawed, thinking about how mindlessly repetitive American foreign and military policy is these days. Or you could wield all sorts of fancy analytic words to explain it. Or you could just settle for a few simple, all-American ones. Like dumb. Stupid. Dimwitted. Thick-headed. Or you could speak about the second administration in a row that wanted to leave no child behind, but was itself incapable of learning, or reasonably assessing its situation in the world.

Or you could simply wonder what’s in Washington’s water supply. Last week, after all, there was a perfect drone storm of a story, only a year or so late — and no, it wasn’t that leaked “white paper” justifying the White House-directed assassination of an American citizen; and no, it wasn’t the two secret Justice Department “legal” memos on the same subject that members of the Senate Intelligence Committee were allowed to “view,” but in such secrecy that they couldn’t even ask John O. Brennan, the president’s counterterrorism tsar and choice for CIA director, questions about them at his public nomination hearings; and no, it wasn’t anything that Brennan, the man who oversaw the White House “kill list” and those presidentially chosen drone strikes, said at the hearings. And here’s the most striking thing: it should have set everyone’s teeth on edge, yet next to nobody even noticed.

Last Tuesday, the Washington Post published a piece by Greg Miller and Karen DeYoung about a reportorial discovery which that paper, along with other news outlets (including the New York Times), had by “an informal arrangement” agreed to suppress (and not even very well) at the request of the Obama administration. More than a year later, and only because the Times was breaking the story on the same day (buried in a long investigative piece on drone strikes), the Post finally put the news on record. It was half-buried in a piece about the then-upcoming Brennan hearings. Until that moment, its editors had done their patriotic duty, urged on by the CIA and the White House, and kept the news from the public. Never mind, that the project was so outright loony, given our history, that they should have felt the obligation to publish it instantly with screaming front-page headlines and a lead editorial demanding an explanation.

On the other hand, you can understand just why the Obama administration and the CIA preferred that the story not come out. Among other things, it had the possibility of making them look like so many horses’ asses and, again based on a historical record that any numbskull or government bureaucrat or intelligence analyst should recall, it couldn’t have been a more dangerous thing to do. It’s just the sort of Washington project that brings the word “blowback” instantly and chillingly to mind. It’s just the sort of story that should make Americans wonder why we pay billions of dollars to the CIA to think up ideas so lame that you have to wonder what the last two CIA directors, Leon Panetta and David Petraeus, were thinking. (Or if anyone was thinking at all.)

 

“Agitated Muslims” and the “100 Hour War”

In case you hadn’t noticed, I have yet to mention what that suppressed story was, and given the way it disappeared from sight, the odds are that you don’t know, so here goes. The somewhat less than riveting headline on the Post piece was: “Brennan Nomination Exposes Criticism on Targeted Killings and Secret Saudi Base.” The base story was obviously tacked on at the last second. (There had actually been no “criticism” of that base, since next to nothing was known about it.) It, too, was buried, making its first real appearance only in the 10th paragraph of the piece.

According to the Post, approximately two years ago, the CIA got permission from the Saudi government to build one of its growing empire of drone bases in a distant desert region of that kingdom. The purpose was to pursue an already ongoing air war in neighboring Yemen against al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula.

The first drone mission from that base seems to have taken off on September 30, 2011, and killed American citizen and al-Qaeda supporter Anwar al-Awlaki. Many more lethal missions have evidently been flown from it since, most or all directed at Yemen in a campaign that notoriously seems to be creating more angry Yemenis and terror recruits than it’s killing. So that’s the story you waited an extra year to hear from our watchdog press (though for news jockeys, the existence of the base was indeed mentioned in the interim by numerous media outlets).

One more bit of information: Brennan, the president’s right-hand counterterrorism guy, who oversaw Obama’s drone assassination program from an office in the White House basement (you can’t take anything away from Washington when it comes to symbolism) and who is clearly going to be approved by the Senate as our the new CIA director, was himself a former CIA station chief in Riyadh. The Post reports that he worked closely with the Saudis to “gain approval” for the base. So spread the credit around for this one. And note as well that there hasn’t been a CIA director with such close ties to a president since William Casey ran the outfit for President Ronald Reagan, and he was the man who got this whole ball of wax rolling by supporting, funding, and arming any Islamic fundamentalist in sight — the more extreme the better — to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as “the president’s private army.” Now, run by this president’s most trusted aide, it once again truly will be so.

Okay, maybe it’s time to put this secret drone base in a bit of historical context. (Think of this as my contribution to a leave-no-administration-behind policy.) In fact, that Afghan War Casey funded might be a good place to start. Keep in mind that I’m not talking about the present Afghan War, still ongoing after a mere 11-plus years, but our long forgotten First Afghan War. That was the one where we referred to those Muslim extremists we were arming as “freedom fighters” and our president spoke of them as “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers.”

It was launched to give the Soviets a bloody nose and meant as payback for our bitter defeat in Vietnam less than a decade earlier. And what a bloody nose it would be! Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev would dub the Soviet disaster there “the bleeding wound,” and two years after it ended, the Soviet Union would be gone. I’m talking about the war that, years later, President Jimmy Carter’s former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski summed up this way: “What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

That’s all ancient history and painful to recall now that “agitated Muslims” are a dime a dozen and we are (as Washington loves to say) in a perpetual global “war” with a “metastasizing” al-Qaeda, an organization that emerged from among our allies in the First Afghan War, as did so many of the extremists now fighting us in Afghanistan.

So how about moving on to a shining moment a decade later: our triumph in the “100 Hour War” in which Washington ignominiously ejected its former ally (and later Hitler-substitute) Saddam Hussein and his invading Iraqi army from oil-rich Kuwait? Those first 100 hours were, in every sense, a blast. The problems only began to multiply with all the 100-hour periods that followed for the next decade, the 80,000th, all of which were ever less fun, what with eternal no-fly zones to patrol and an Iraqi dictator who wouldn’t leave the scene.

The Worldwide Attack Matrix and a Global War on Terror

Maybe, like Washington, we do best to skip that episode, too. Let’s focus instead on the moment when, in preparation for that war, U.S. troops first landed in Saudi Arabia, that fabulously fundamentalist giant oil reserve; when those 100 hours were over (and Saddam wasn’t), they never left. Instead, they moved into bases and hunkered down for the long haul.

By now, I’m sure some of this is coming back to you: how disturbed, for instance, the rich young Saudi royal and Afghan war veteran Osama bin Laden and his young organization al-Qaeda were on seeing those “infidels” based in (or, as they saw it, occupying) the country that held Islam’s holiest shrines and pilgrimage sites. I’m sure you can trace al-Qaeda’s brief grim history from there: its major operations every couple of years against U.S. targets to back up its demand that those troops depart the kingdom, including the Khobar Towers attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 U.S. airmen in 1996, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998, and the blowing up of the USS Cole in the Yemeni port of Aden in 2000. Finally, of course, there was al-Qaeda’s extraordinary stroke of dumb luck (and good planning), those attacks of September 11, 2001, which managed — to the reported shock of at least one al-Qaeda figure — to create an apocalyptic-looking landscape of destruction in downtown New York City.

And here’s where we go from dumb luck to just plain dumb. Lusting for revenge, dreaming of a Middle Eastern (or even global) Pax Americana, and eager to loose a military that they believed could eternally dominate any situation, the Bush administration declared a “global war” on terrorism. Only six days after the World Trade Center towers went down, George W. Bush granted the CIA an unprecedented license to wage planet-wide war. By then, it had already presented a plan with a title worthy of a sci-fi film: the “Worldwide Attack Matrix.” According to journalist Ron Suskind in his book The One Percent Doctrine, the plan “detailed operations [to come] against terrorists in 80 countries.”

This was, of course, a kind of madness. After all, al-Qaeda wasn’t a state or even much of an organization; in real terms, it barely existed. So declaring “war” on its scattered minions globally was little short of a bizarre and fantastical act. And yet any other approach to what had happened was promptly laughed out of the American room. And before you could blink, the U.S. was invading… nuts, you already knew the answer: Afghanistan.

After another dazzlingly brief and triumphant campaign, using tiny numbers of American military personnel and CIA operatives (as well as U.S. air power), the first of Washington’s you-can’t-go-home-again crew marched into downtown Kabul and began hunkering down, building bases, and preparing to stay. One Afghan war, it turned out, hadn’t been faintly enough for Washington. And soon, it would be clear that one Iraq war wasn’t either. By now, we were in the express lane in the Möbius loop of history.

“Stuff Happens”

This should be getting more familiar to you. It might also strike you — though it certainly didn’t Washington back in 2002-2003 — that there was no reason things should turn out better the second time around. With that new “secret Saudi base” in mind, remember that somewhere in the urge to invade Iraq was the desire to find a place in the heart of the planet’s oil lands where the Pentagon would be welcome to create not “enduring camps” (please don’t call them “permanent bases”!) — and hang in for enduring decades to come.

So in early April 2003, invading American troops entered a chaotic Baghdad, a city being looted. (“Stuff happens,” commented Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in response.) On April 29th, Rumsfeld held a news conference with Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, broadcast on Saudi TV, announcing that the U.S. would pull all its combat troops out of that country. No more garrisons in Saudi Arabia. Ever. U.S. air operations were to move to al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. As for the rest, there was no need even to mention Iraq. This was just two days before President Bush landed a jet, Top Gun-style, on an aircraft carrier off San Diego and — under a White House-produced banner reading “Mission Accomplished” — declared “the end of major combat operations in Iraq.” And all’s well that ends well, no?

You know the rest, the various predictable disasters that followed (as well as the predictably unpredictable ones). But don’t think that, as America’s leaders repeat their mistakes endlessly — using varying tactics, ranging from surges to counterinsurgency to special operations raids to drones, all to similar purposes — everything remains repetitively the same. Not at all. The repeated invasions, occupations, interventions, drone wars, and the like have played a major role in the unraveling of the Greater Middle East and increasingly of northern Africa as well.

Here, in fact, is a rule of thumb for you: keep your eye on the latest drone bases the CIA and the U.S. military are setting up abroad — in Niger, near its border with Mali, for example — and you have a reasonable set of markers for tracing the further destabilization of the planet. Each eerily familiar tactical course change (always treated as a brilliant strategic coup) each next application of force, and more things “metastasize.”

And so we reach this moment and the news of that two-year-old secret Saudi drone base. You might ask yourself, given the previous history of U.S. bases in that country, why the CIA or any administration would entertain the idea of opening a new U.S. outpost there. Evidently, it’s the equivalent of catnip for cats; they just couldn’t help themselves.

We don’t, of course, know whether they blanked out on recent history or simply dismissed it out of hand, but we do know that once again garrisoning Saudi Arabia seemed too alluring to resist. Without a Saudi base, how could they conveniently strike al-Qaeda wannabes in a neighboring land they were already attacking from the air? And if they weren’t to concentrate every last bit of drone power on taking out al-Qaeda types (and civilians) in Yemen, one of the more resource-poor and poverty-stricken places on the planet? Why, the next thing you know, al-Qaeda might indeed be ruling a Middle Eastern Caliphate. And after that, who knows? The world?

Honestly, could there have been a stupider gamble to take (again)? This is the sort of thing that helps you understand why conspiracy theories get started — because people in the everyday world just can’t accept that, in Washington, dumb and then dumber is the order of the day.

When it comes to that “secret” Saudi base, if truth be told, it does look like a conspiracy — of stupidity. After all, the CIA pushed for and built that base; the White House clearly accepted it as a fine idea. An informal network of key media sources agreed that it really wasn’t worth the bother to tell the American people just how stupidly their government was acting. (The managing editor of the New York Times explained its suppression by labeling the story nothing more than “a footnote.”) And last week, at the public part of the Brennan nomination hearings, none of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is supposed to provide the CIA and the rest of the U.S. Intelligence Community with what little oversight they get, thought it appropriate to ask a single question about the Saudi base, then in the news.

The story was once again buried. Silence reigned. If, in the future, blowback does occur, thanks to the decision to build and use that base, Americans won’t make the connection. How could they?

It all sounds so familiar to me. Doesn’t it to you? Shouldn’t it to Washington?

Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as a history of the Cold War, The End of Victory Culture, runs the Nation Institute’s TomDispatch.com. His latest book, co-authored with Nick Turse, is Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050.

Interview By Kourosh Ziabari

11 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The American physician and peace activist Dahlia Wasfi believes that the U.S. government has hypocritically turned a blind eye to the suffering of the people of Bahrain under the oppression and crackdown by the Al Khalifa regime, while using the unrest in Syria to Balkanize and disintegrate the country and further its agenda for the Greater Middle East.

“I think my government wins the contest for whose country’s politicians use double standards the most. US leaders turn a blind eye to the violent repression of protesters by the Al Khalifa regime because Manama , Bahrain hosts the headquarters to the US Fifth Naval Fleet and US Naval Forces Central Command. As long as the American agenda is being served, American leaders have no concerns with human rights violations,” she said in an interview with Fars News Agency.

Dr. Wasfi spent part of her early childhood in Iraq while the former dictator Saddam Hussein was ruling the country. She returned to the US when she was 5, earned her B.A. in Biology from Swarthmore College in 1993 and her medical degree from University of Pennsylvania in 1997.

What follows is the text of Fars News Agency’s interview with Dahlia Wasfi about the 23-month-long crisis in Syria , U.S. support for the Al-Qaeda mercenaries in the war-hit nation and the regional countries’ plans for fragmenting and breaking apart Syria and Iraq .

Q: It seems that the United States and its regional allies are after Balkanizing Syria and Iraq as two Shiite nations that are close to Iran and have firmly stood up against Israel and its policy of colonizing Palestine . Why such regional countries as Turkey , Saudi Arabia and Qatar have joined this vicious campaign of undermining Syria and Iraq ? Is their final objective delivering a heavy blow to Iran after eliminating its two major allies?

A: I believe that the goal for the US is to maintain political control over the region of Western Asia (usually called the Middle East by Westerners) in order to establish control over its precious resources, primarily oil. Israel is also seeking domination of countries in the region in order to continue to expand its borders; to expand its power in the region; and to expand its power in the world. The Zionist agenda was described by Israeli Oded Yinon in his document “ A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties .” Yinon projected the rise of Israel ‘s power in the region by way of the fracturing of neighboring Arab nations along ethnic and/or religious lines. He envisioned that this splintering, as observed in Lebanon , could be repeated in Egypt , Syria , Iraq , and Jordan to weaken them. I see our 21 st century destruction of Iraq , destruction of Libya , and ongoing destruction of Syria as part of the effort to reinforce Western hegemony in the region.

While global superpowers like the US are acting in their own interests, so are regional countries, in order to maximize their own power. (I think it is a reasonable expectation for survival in a region targeted by superpowers.) I regret that I am too ignorant of the individual histories of Turkey , Saudi Arabia , and Qatar to fully address their complicity with the Western agenda. But each government has something to gain from that collaboration. Turkey represses its Kurdish population without question from its Western allies (compare America ‘s silence with Turkey to its belligerence with Saddam Hussein concerning his regime’s repression of Iraqi Kurds. Saudi Arabia is a long-time ally of the US . The 1991 Gulf War was launched from massive military bases in the Kingdom. The Saudi monarchy is a repressive regime, exceedingly wealthy while many Saudis live in poverty. But political and military support from the United States has been a critical factor in the survival of the regime. Qatar has strong economic ties to the US , particularly in dealings of oil and natural gas. The tiny nation is host to the overseas headquarters of US CENTCOM (US Central Command), the Unified Combatant Command of the US Department of Defense.

To address the question, “Is their final objective delivering a heavy blow to Iran after eliminating its two major allies?” I cannot say specifically what the US government’s plan is; I can only say that in general, the US seeks control of the region’s resources. However, in an interview with Democracy Now on March 2, 2007 , Retired General Wesley Clark alluded to a grand US governmental plan to attack seven countries in the region over five years: Iraq , Syria , Lebanon , Libya , Somalia , Sudan , and finally, Iran . This plan was developed by October 2001, within weeks of the events of September 11, 2001 . If this is accurate, then perhaps the US is still saving Iran for last. But we have to remember that prior to the 2003 Shock and Awe invasion, Iraq and Iran were NOT allies. With the loss of security during and after the invasion, Iranian-based religious groups and their militias crossed the border to the west and took control of the southern part of Iraq , Najaf and Karbala in particular. The US also fostered a bloody sectarian conflict in Iraq , severely weakening the country. The destruction of Iraq —a historic adversary of Iran —was a benefit to Iran ‘s power in the region.

Q: The U.S. troops have finally left Iraq after almost one decade of bloody war which claimed thelives of thousands of innocent civilians, including women and children. But there are again efforts in progress to undermine and weaken the Iraqi government. Who are the main elements behind these efforts? Can we say that the United States is following a policy of dominating Iraq ‘s vast oil reserves after superficially pulling out its troops from the country?

A: The US has officially withdrawn from Iraq , but thousands of troops still remain to guard the massive embassy in Baghdad and its “diplomatic” representatives. In addition, thousands of mercenaries and CIA personnel continue to operate in Iraq . (I don’t know for sure, but there is a good chance that Mossad maintains a presence in Iraq as well.)

Because of Nouri Al-Maliki’s friendly relationship with Iran , the US may seek to undermine his power. The Kurds of Iraq have been used repeatedly as a “fifth column” against the leadership in Baghdad . ( A “ fifth column” is a group of people who secretly undermine a larger group, such as a nation, from within.) In the 1970s, with US support, the Kurds were encouraged t o rise up against the regime of Saddam Hussein (described in Tariq Ali’s “Bush in Babylon , p.119). Today, some oil deals in the north are being finalized without approval from Prime Minister al Maliki . This may be another example of Western powers keeping pressure on the government in Baghdad through the Kurds.

As for the demonstrations occurring throughout Iraq today, these are legitimate protests by Iraqis against the corruption and oppression of the current The demonstrators are also decrying Iranian influence in Iraqi affairs. Saddam Hussein’s regime ruthlessly destroyed any opposition to its rule. Because the Ba’athist government was secular, Hussein eliminated religious groups who might threaten his power. Some of these religious leaders were killed; others were exiled and found refuge in Iran . Many of these expatriates supported the US/UK invasion to depose Saddam Hussein. They allied with the US , whose administrators involved them in the new Iraqi government. Members of their militias also became incorporated into the Iraqi police and armed forces, which were then armed and trained by the US .

Q: What do you think about the involvement of Al-Qaeda mercenaries in the war against the Syrian government? It was on the reports that hundreds of Al-Qaeda members have infiltrated into the Syrian soil and are taking part in terrorist operations against the civilians and officials. But it seems that the United States is not discontent with the presence of Al-Qaeda in Syria . What’s your take on that?

A: This is a good example of the hypocrisy of United States policy. We do not stand by one set of values or morals; rather, we stand by a quest for political and economic global supremacy. And I suppose that for my government, the end justifies the means. Regarding Syria, concern has been raised about the possibility of The Nusra Front—a group that evolved out of Al-Qaeda in Iraq—taking control of Syria if Bashar Al-Assad is removed from power . Yet, for the Obama administration, the benefits of deposing Bashar Al-Assad (as if we have the right to meddle in a sovereign nation’s affairs) apparently outweigh the negative consequences—for Syrians and everyone else. The US is covertly supplying the Syrian insurgency with heavy weapons . In similar hypocritical fashion, the US supports aspirations for independence for Iraqi Kurds, but backs Turkey ‘s repression of Turkish Kurds. The Kurdish population is divided primarily between Iran , Iraq , Syria , and Turkey . The divisions were effected when the empirical powers carved up the region following World War I. Though their ancestry and ethnicity is constant, each national Kurdish group is treated differently by the US based on what suits our economic agenda.

Q: On December 16, 2012 the Iranian foreign ministry presented the outlines of a six-step plan for resolving the crisis in Syria, which included terms such as a comprehensive ceasefire, the cessation of the arms smuggling and the complete withdrawal of the foreign-backed mercenaries and troops from Syria. How much can this plan be practically effective in bringing to an end the 22-month-long unrest in the country?

A: That’s very interesting news! I heard nothing about this plan in the Western press, and unfortunately, I am limited to the English language. (I did just locate this report from English Al Arabiya News.) The American corporate media is making an effort to depict Iran as a threatening, rogue state. President Ahmadinejad is characterized as a dangerous, untrustworthy leader. The idea that Iran is putting forth a plan for negotiation and diplomacy to bring resolution to the crisis in Syria goes against our media’s demonization of the Iranian leadership. I wonder if this is why I didn’t hear any news about it.

But a non-violent diplomatic resolution is not what the US is seeking in Syria . The US wants Bashar Al-Assad removed from power. As long as the insurgency in Syria and its various groups are backed by the United States , they will not have to work for compromise. It was a similar situation following the August 2, 1990 occupation of Kuwait by Iraq . The government in Baghdad set forth numerous proposals for negotiations with the United States . They were all refused as “non-starters.” In Syria as in Iraq , the US is pursuing its own political and economic agenda which does not include negotiations.

Q: The United States and its European allies justify their political pressures and proxy war on Syria as part of their efforts to promote democracy in the country and prevent President Assad from “killing his own citizens.” However, they have brazenly turned a blind eye to the killing of protesters and imprisonment of political and peace activists in Bahrain and the repressive measures taken by the Al Khalifa regime against the Bahraini people. Isn’t it some kind of resorting to double standards?

A: Yes! I think my government wins the contest for whose country’s politics use double standards the most. US leaders turn a blind eye to the violent repression of protesters by the Al Khalifa regime because Manama , Bahrain hosts the headquarters to the US Fifth Naval Fleet and US Naval Forces Central Command. As long as the American agenda is being served, American leaders have no concerns with human rights violations. (Actually, my government has not turned a blind eye to the Bahraini regime’s oppression; the Obama administration recently resumed arms sales to the regimeas violent attacks on “their own people” continue.)

The situation was similar with US support of Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq during the 1980s. US government leaders knew very well of his repressive rule. However, because an alliance with Iraq served our agenda to keep the new theocracy of Iran in check after 1979, then-President Ronald Reagan armed and financed the Iraqi Army during the eight year war with Iran .

The US government turned a blind eye to the regime’s human rights violations for the sake of our geopolitical gain. At the same time, though officially the US government condemned Khomeini’s regime, certain US political and military leaders secretly dealt arms with Iran and used the earnings to fund paramilitary terror groups (the Contras) in Nicaragua . US support of the militaries of both Iraq and Iran helped to continue the war for eight long years. This long conflict that weakened both countries—and cost a total of around one million casualties and great suffering for everyone involved—supported the US agenda of controlling the region’s resources, as well as enhancing Israeli national security.

And speaking of hypocrisy, compare the US response to Iraq ‘s occupation of Kuwait and the US responses (or lack thereof) to serial invasions of Palestinian territory and the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967. My government invokes human rights in order to garner public support for its policies; it overlooks human rights violations and atrocities when it suits our economic and political purposes. Certainly, the CIA-led coup of Mohammad Mossadegh is another prime example of our double standards. The democratically-elected Prime Minister of Iran, who won on a platform of nationalizing Iran ‘s oil and oil profits, was removed from power to protect the interests of Western oil companies, namely British Petroleum (BP). So much for democracy.

One of the true reasons for removing Saddam Hussein from power in 2003 was to protect the US dollar. Hussein was committed to changing the currency of the UN’s Oil-for-Food Program from the American dollar to the Euro, which would have devalued the dollar. We had no interest in freedom and liberty for the Iraqi people, as is confirmed by the severe repression in Iraq today. What we are concerned with is supreme economic and political power.

Q: You have written and spoken extensively on the plight of the Palestinian nation. Let’s touch upon that issue as well. Israelis have just taken part in the legislative elections and the extremist right-wing party of Benjamin Netanyahu has won the majority of the seats in the parliament. Will this victory empower Netanyahu and the Likudniks to ratchet up their aggressive measures against the innocent Palestinian civilians? Had the Israeli Occupation Forces launched the Operation Pillar of Defense to solidify their position in the Israeli public and attract more votes?

A: There is a saying from (I think) Mark Twain which states that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. If this is true, then I think we can expect the continuation of the Zionist plan for the complete ethnic cleansing of Palestine; continued Israeli construction of illegal settlements; continued expansion of the borders of the Jewish state; and continued collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza by siege and military assault. It is certainly possible that the launch of Operation Pillar of Defense just prior to the Israeli elections was a calculated show of strength to garner more votes. However, I’m not sure that the Israeli government was able to carry out its plans to their full extent. For the first time, the resistance in Gaza used long-range Fajr-5 missiles , which have the capacity to hit major Israeli city centers, including Tel Aviv. I believe that this development caused the Israeli military to limitthe duration of itsassault (to eight days); I expected the attack to last at least as long as the three weeks of Operation Cast Lead. Nevertheless, Netanyahu’s Likud-Beitenu electoral alliance wonthe January 22, 2013 vote.

Q: What’s your viewpoint regarding the future of the Middle East? Can the United States succeed in putting in power puppet regimes which take its orders and are reluctant to resist the Israeli occupation and American imperialism and finally shape the Greater Middle East which Washington had envisioned?  Haven’t the popular uprisings of the Middle East also known as Arab Spring throw a spanner in the works of the United States and render its plots futile?

A: Oil and natural gas are the life-blood of most developed nations. Whoever controls the flow of oil can control the world’s economies. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said, “ Oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs,” and I think this racist attitude persists in Washington, DC today. This Western quest to control the resources of this region has brought—and continues to bring—so much suffering to the indigenous populations. The US and its ally Israel have picked up where the British and French (among others) Empires left off.

As we see today in Mali, the French are still fighting to hold onto their old colonies. Colonialism is alive and well in the region today, but so is the people’s resistance and struggle for autonomy. The grassroots actions of the so-called “Arab Spring”are trying to establish real self-determination in the region. In response, the US is making efforts to co-opt such movements. I think that this is what happened in Syria, for example, where the movement for change born within the Syrian population became hijacked by foreign interests and foreign mercenaries. But as long as there is life, there is hope. The masses survive and endure the most difficult and traumatic situations. They do not give up their struggle for justice. And so, neither can I.

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 Michael T. Klare

11 February, 2013

@ TomDispatch.com

Presidential decisions often turn out to be far less significant than imagined, but every now and then what a president decides actually determines how the world turns. Such is the case with the Keystone XL pipeline, which, if built, is slated to bring some of the “dirtiest,” carbon-rich oil on the planet from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. In the near future, President Obama is expected to give its construction a definitive thumbs up or thumbs down, and the decision he makes could prove far more important than anyone imagines. It could determine the fate of the Canadian tar-sands industry and, with it, the future well-being of the planet. If that sounds overly dramatic, let me explain.

Sometimes, what starts out as a minor skirmish can wind up determining the outcome of a war — and that seems to be the case when it comes to the mounting battle over the Keystone XL pipeline. If given the go-ahead by President Obama, it will daily carry more than 700,000 barrels of tar-sands oil to those Gulf Coast refineries, providing a desperately needed boost to the Canadian energy industry. If Obama says no, the Canadians (and their American backers) will encounter possibly insuperable difficulties in exporting their heavy crude oil, discouraging further investment and putting the industry’s future in doubt.

The battle over Keystone XL was initially joined in the summer of 2011, when environmental writer and climate activist Bill McKibben and 350.org, which he helped found, organized a series of non-violent anti-pipeline protests in front of the White House to highlight the links between tar sands production and the accelerating pace of climate change. At the same time, farmers and politicians in Nebraska, through which the pipeline is set to pass, expressed grave concern about its threat to that state’s crucial aquifers. After all, tar-sands crude is highly corrosive, and leaks are a notable risk.

In mid-January 2012, in response to those concerns, other worries about the pipeline, and perhaps a looming presidential campaign season, Obama postponed a decision on completing the controversial project. (He, not Congress, has the final say, since it will cross an international boundary.) Now, he must decide on a suggested new route that will, supposedly, take Keystone XL around those aquifers and so reduce the threat to Nebraska’s water supplies.

Ever since the president postponed the decision on whether to proceed, powerful forces in the energy industry and government have been mobilizing to press ever harder for its approval. Its supporters argue vociferously that the pipeline will bring jobs to America and enhance the nation’s “energy security” by lessening its reliance on Middle Eastern oil suppliers. Their true aim, however, is far simpler: to save the tar-sands industry (and many billions of dollars in U.S. investments) from possible disaster.

Just how critical the fight over Keystone has become in the eyes of the industry is suggested by a recent pro-pipeline editorial in the trade publication Oil & Gas Journal:

 

“Controversy over the Keystone XL project leaves no room for compromise. Fundamental views about the future of energy are in conflict. Approval of the project would acknowledge the rich potential of the next generation of fossil energy and encourage its development. Rejection would foreclose much of that potential in deference to an energy utopia few Americans support when they learn how much it costs.”

Opponents of Keystone XL, who are planning a mass demonstration at the White House on February 17th, have also come to view the pipeline battle in epic terms. “Alberta’s tar sands are the continent’s biggest carbon bomb,” McKibben wrote at TomDispatch. “If you could burn all the oil in those tar sands, you’d run the atmosphere’s concentration of carbon dioxide from its current 390 parts per million (enough to cause the climate havoc we’re currently seeing) to nearly 600 parts per million, which would mean if not hell, then at least a world with a similar temperature.” Halting Keystone would not by itself prevent those high concentrations, he argued, but would impede the production of tar sands, stop that “carbon bomb” from further heating the atmosphere, and create space for a transition to renewables. “Stopping Keystone will buy time,” he says, “and hopefully that time will be used for the planet to come to its senses around climate change.”

A Pipeline With Nowhere to Go?

Why has the fight over a pipeline, which, if completed, would provide only 4% of the U.S. petroleum supply, assumed such strategic significance? As in any major conflict, the answer lies in three factors: logistics, geography, and timing.

Start with logistics and consider the tar sands themselves or, as the industry and its supporters in government prefer to call them, “oil sands.” Neither tar nor oil, the substance in question is a sludge-like mixture of sand, clay, water, and bitumen (a degraded, carbon-rich form of petroleum). Alberta has a colossal supply of the stuff — at least a trillion barrels in known reserves, or the equivalent of all the conventional oil burned by humans since the onset of commercial drilling in 1859. Even if you count only the reserves that are deemed extractible by existing technology, its tar sands reportedly are the equivalent of 170 billion barrels of conventional petroleum — more than the reserves of any nation except Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The availability of so much untapped energy in a country like Canada, which is private-enterprise-friendly and where the political dangers are few, has been a magnet for major international energy firms. Not surprisingly, many of them, including ExxonMobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, and Royal Dutch Shell, have invested heavily in tar-sands operations.

Tar sands, however, bear little resemblance to the conventional oil fields which these companies have long exploited. They must be treated in various energy-intensive ways to be converted into a transportable liquid and then processed even further into usable products. Some tar sands can be strip-mined like coal and then “upgraded” through chemical processing into a synthetic crude oil — SCO, or “syncrude.” Alternatively, the bitumen can be pumped from the ground after the sands are exposed to steam, which liquefies the bitumen and allows its extraction with conventional oil pumps. The latter process, known as steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD), produces a heavy crude oil. It must, in turn, be diluted with lighter crudes for transportation by pipeline to specialized refineries equipped to process such oil, most of which are located on the Gulf Coast.

Extracting and processing tar sands is an extraordinarily expensive undertaking, far more so than most conventional oil drilling operations. Considerable energy is needed to dig the sludge out of the ground or heat the water into steam for underground injection; then, additional energy is needed for the various upgrading processes. The environmental risks involved are enormous (even leaving aside the vast amounts of greenhouse gases that the whole process will pump into the atmosphere). The massive quantities of water needed for SAGD and those upgrading processes, for example, become contaminated with toxic substances. Once used, they cannot be returned to any water source that might end up in human drinking supplies — something environmentalists say is already occurring. All of this and the expenses involved mean that the multibillion-dollar investments needed to launch a tar-sands operation can only pay off if the final product fetches a healthy price in the marketplace.

And that’s where geography enters the picture. Alberta is theoretically capable of producing five to six million barrels of tar-sands oil per day. In 2011, however, Canada itself consumed only 2.3 million barrels of oil per day, much of it supplied by conventional (and cheaper) oil from fields in Saskatchewan and Newfoundland. That number is not expected to rise appreciably in the foreseeable future. No less significant, Canada’s refining capacity for all kinds of oil is limited to 1.9 million barrels per day, and few of its refineries are equipped to process tar sands-style heavy crude. This leaves the producers with one strategic option: exporting the stuff.

And that’s where the problems really begin. Alberta is an interior province and so cannot export its crude by sea. Given the geography, this leaves only three export options: pipelines heading east across Canada to ports on the Atlantic, pipelines heading west across the Rockies to ports in British Columbia, or pipelines heading south to refineries in the United States.

Alberta’s preferred option is to send the preponderance of its tar-sands oil to its biggest natural market, the United States. At present, Canadian pipeline companies do operate a number of conduits that deliver some of this oil to the U.S., notably the original Keystone conduit extending from Hardisty, Alberta, to Illinois and then southward to Cushing, Oklahoma. But these lines can carry less than one million barrels of crude per day, and so will not permit the massive expansion of output the industry is planning for the next decade or so.

In other words, the only pipeline now under development that would significantly expand Albertan tar-sands exports is Keystone XL. It is vitally important to the tar-sands producers because it offers the sole short-term — or possibly even long-term — option for the export and sale of the crude output now coming on line at dozens of projects being developed across northern Alberta. Without it, these projects will languish and Albertan production will have to be sold at a deep discount — at, that is, a per-barrel price that could fall below production costs, making further investment in tar sands unattractive. In January, Canadian tar-sands oil was already selling for $30-$40 less than West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the standard U.S. blend.

The Pipelines That Weren’t

 

Like an army bottled up geographically and increasingly at the mercy of enemy forces, the tar-sands producers see the completion of Keystone XL as their sole realistic escape route to survival. “Our biggest problem is that Alberta is landlocked,” the province’s finance minister Doug Horner said in January. “In fact, of the world’s major oil-producing jurisdictions, Alberta is the only one with no direct access to the ocean. And until we solve this problem… the [price] differential will remain large.”

Logistics, geography, and finally timing. A presidential stamp of approval on the building of Keystone XL will save the tar-sands industry, ensuring them enough return to justify their massive investments. It would also undoubtedly prompt additional investments in tar-sands projects and further production increases by an industry that assumed opposition to future pipelines had been weakened by this victory.

A presidential thumbs-down and resulting failure to build Keystone XL, however, could have lasting and severe consequences for tar-sands production. After all, no other export link is likely to be completed in the near-term. The other three most widely discussed options — the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, British Columbia, an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver, British Columbia, and a plan to use existing, conventional-oil conduits to carry tar-sands oil across Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine — already face intense opposition, with initial construction at best still years in the future.

The Northern Gateway project, proposed by Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, would stretch from Bruderheim in northern Alberta to Kitimat, a port on Charlotte Sound and the Pacific. If completed, it would allow the export of tar-sands oil to Asia, where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sees a significant future market (even though few Asian refineries could now process the stuff). But unlike oil-friendly Alberta, British Columbia has a strong pro-environmental bias and many senior provincial officials have expressed fierce opposition to the project. Moreover, under the country’s constitution, native peoples over whose land the pipeline would have to travel must be consulted on the project — and most tribal communities are adamantly opposed to its construction.

Another proposed conduit — an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver — presents the same set of obstacles and, like the Northern Gateway project, has aroused strong opposition in Vancouver.

This leaves the third option, a plan to pump tar-sands oil to Ontario and Quebec and then employ an existing pipeline now used for oil imports. It connects to a terminal in Casco Bay, near Portland, Maine, where the Albertan crude would begin the long trip by ship to those refineries on the Gulf Coast. Although no official action has yet been taken to allow the use of the U.S. conduit for this purpose, anti-pipeline protests have already erupted in Portland, including one on January 26th that attracted more than 1,400 people.

With no other pipelines in the offing, tar sands producers are increasing their reliance on deliveries by rail. This is producing boom times for some long-haul freight carriiers, but will never prove sufficient to move the millions of barrels in added daily output expected from projects now coming on line.

The conclusion is obvious: without Keystone XL, the price of tar-sands oil will remain substantially lower than conventional oil (as well as unconventional oil extracted from shale formations in the United States), discouraging future investment and dimming the prospects for increased output. In other words, as Bill McKibben hopes, much of it will stay in the ground.

Industry officials are painfully aware of their predicament. In an Annual Information Form released at the end of 2011, Canadian Oil Sands Limited, owner of the largest share of Syncrude Canada (one of the leading producers of tar-sands oil) noted:

“A prolonged period of low crude oil prices could affect the value of our crude oil properties and the level of spending on growth projects and could result in curtailment of production… Any substantial and extended decline in the price of oil or an extended negative differential for SCO compared to either WTI or European Brent Crude would have an adverse effect on the revenues, profitability, and cash flow of Canadian Oil Sands and likely affect the ability of Canadian Oil Sands to pay dividends and repay its debt obligations.”

The stakes in this battle could not be higher. If Keystone XL fails to win the president’s approval, the industry will certainly grow at a far slower pace than forecast and possibly witness the failure of costly ventures, resulting in an industry-wide contraction. If approved, however, production will soar and global warming will occur at an even faster rate than previously projected. In this way, a presidential decision will have an unexpectedly decisive and lasting impact on all our lives.

Michael Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College, a TomDispatch regular and the author, most recently, of The Race for What’s Left, just published in paperback. A documentary movie based on his book Blood and Oil can be previewed and ordered at www.bloodandoilmovie.com. You can follow Klare on Facebook by clicking here.

By Adil E. Shamoo

09 February, 2013

@ Warscapes.com

All indicators are pointing to a looming sectarian civil war on Iraq’s horizon. It is possible to avoid this civil war, but so far, the country’s leaders are not willing to compromise, and outside parties show little interest in stopping it. They should care more than they do: if not resolved, a bloody civil war in Iraq will fuel the rising conflict among Sunni-Shia across the Middle East — now in Lebanon and Syria — with the potential of spreading into other countries and inviting extremists to take advantage of the conflagration.

Of course the United States’ nine-year occupation of Iraq unleashed this friction between Sunni and Shia, the underlying inferno that keeps Iraqis killing each other. According to Iraq Body Count, 4,505 Iraqis died from violence in 2012-409 in the month of Ramadan alone. Many will say this is civil war already, with numerous groups carrying out suicide attacks, bombings and outright assassinations on a daily basis. No one knows for sure who is responsible most of the time, but invariably it is Al-Qaeda, Sunni militants, lingering Baathists, sectarian fighters, and insurgent nationalists who are to blame.

Politically, it’s a mess. Iraq’s President Jalal Talabani is in failing health, suffering from the effects of a stroke and convalescing in Germany. Talabani is a moderate and a Kurd and has been a unifying figure on the issue of the Kurdish relationship with the central authority in Iraq. Many political factions are gearing up for a fight to replace him, amid serious tensions between the semi-autonomous north and Baghdad.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki is hunting down his opponents, including his own vice president, Tariq Al-Hashimi. The Sunni politician was charged with terrorism in 2011 when three of his bodyguards were accused of murder and committing acts of torture, supposedly under al-Hashimi’s orders. Al-Hashimi escaped first to Kurdistan, and in September 2012 was sentenced to death in absentia by an Iraqi court. He is now residing in Turkey where he is reportedly safe from extradition. Furthermore in December, al-Maliki’s security forces raided the home and offices of the Sunni finance minister, Rafie al-Issawi, and arrested ten of his bodyguards on charges of terrorism. Mr. Issawi was accused in the past with links to terror, but no proof has ever been offered.

Since coming to power, al-Maliki has taken complete control of the country’s security forces through executive orders. This control was Maliki’s ticket to his own survival and that of the government, but since then his regime has been accused of torturing prisoners and other abuses once consigned to his predecessor, Saddam Hussein. This has generated an opposition that is now willing to do anything to topple him, including terrorism, fomenting further sectarian violence and unrest.

Many of the seeds of this conflict were sewn in the US-written constitution and new Iraqi laws under which al-Maliki now operates. For example, the constitution institutionalized the separation of Kurds, Shia and Sunni by regionalization and the division of oil revenues (an ongoing source of tension that has yet to be resolved). Furthermore, the United States helped to form the National Intelligence Service (NIS), which under the occupation was reporting directly to the CIA. At present, NIS officially reports to al-Maliki.

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is AIyad Allawi, the head of the Iraqiyya coalition and darling of the CIA. He seeks to form his own government, as Iraqiyya has wide support as the largest winning bloc in the 2010 parliamentary elections. The Kurds too, are taking advantage of the weak and unstable government to ratchet up their own demands for autonomy — including clear access and control of all oil revenues in Kurdish territories.

In recent weeks, large and frequent demonstrations across the Sunni areas of Baghdad and in the cities of Ramadi, Mosul, Samara and Tikrit, have demanded improved living conditions, an end to government discrimination against former Baathists, and a nullification of the de-Baathification laws. Saleh al-Mutlaq, a Sunni deputy prime minister echoing others, has demanded the resignation of the Nuri al-Maliki’s government. And the Sunni speaker of parliament, Osama al-Nujaifi, in January called for an amnesty law to free Sunnis detained on what Sunnis say are discriminatory charges of terrorism.

The prime minister, while releasing some female prisoners, has called for the demonstrations to cease in the interest of national security. He is bolstered by counter-demonstrations demanding the maintenance of the status quo, and rightfully expressed fears of any Baathist return to power.

Mr. al-Maliki has had an historic opportunity to unify Iraq and move it forward economically. He may still have time, but he must start by ending the violence and changing his own policies, including the use of authoritarian and undemocratic methods to govern. Iraqis have suffered too much.

But one man alone cannot transform the entire landscape. First, Mr. Allawi needs to suspend his burning desire to become a prime minister. Others – from the Kurds, and Sunni and Shia leaders such as Muqtada al-Sadr – need to cooperate in earnest with the government for the sake of national unity. It will take such herculean efforts to stop Iraq from sliding into a civil war.

Adil E. Shamoo is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, a senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, and the author of Equal Worth: When Humanity Will Have Peace. His blog is www.forwarorpeace.com. He can be reached at ashamoo@som.umaryland.edu

By Countercurrents.org

09 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Hard-line Egyptian clerics have called for the assassination of opposition leaders and claimed sexual assaults against women protesters were justified [1].

On Friday, February 8, 2013, opposition leader Hamdeen Sabahy said that death threats against him or other members of the opposition umbrella group, the National Salvation Front (NSF), would not deter him or his supporters from peaceful protests. “Our faith in the revolution kills any threats,” Sabahy said on his official Twitter account.

Last week, hard-line Salafi Muslim cleric Mahmoud Shaaban, issued a de facto fatwa saying leaders of the main opposition coalition, the National Salvation Front, would be condemned to death under Islamic law.

The NSF leadership also includes Mohamed ElBaradei and former presidential contender Amr Mouss. Shaaban named both Sabahy and ElBaradei in the video, which was posted online.

Another cleric, Wagdi Ghoneim, mirrored Shaaban’s sentiments by calling on supporters to “kill the thugs, criminals, and thieves who burn the country.”

“Strike with an iron fist. Otherwise, the country will be lost at your hand and they’ll say it is your fault,” he said. Ghoneim warned that if Morsi’s government does not act, citizens will.

Death, Crucifixion or the amputation of limbs, were all cited by the clerics as punishments under Sharia law for those who attempted to overthrow their ruler.

Islamist president Morsi condemned the religious edicts on Thursday, saying “Practicing religious violence or threatening to do so has become one of the gravest challenges facing the Arab Spring,” Ahram Online cites a presidential statement as saying.

On Thursday, the country’s chief prosecutor Talaat Ibrahim ordered an investigation into Shaaban for his fatwa.

Egypt’s interior ministry moved to provide extra security for Sabahy and ElBaradei following the threat, but Sabahy refused, saying he “lives and will continue to live as a private citizen.”

Their edicts took on considerably more weight following the assassination of Tunisian opposition leader Chokri Belaid. Belaid, a secularist who was highly critical of Tunisia’s Islamist-led government, was gunned down outside his home on Wednesday, sparking violent demonstrations across the country.

Belaid’s murder “sounds danger alarms from Tunisia to Cairo, and warns of the cancerous growth of terrorist groups cloaked by religion and carrying out a plot to liquidate the opposition morally and physically,” The NSF said in a statement.

‘They are going to get raped’

A third cleric justified rampant, mob fueled sexual assaults against women protesters in Tahrir Square.

“They are going there to get raped,” cleric Ahmed Mohammed Abdullah said, characterizing the woman as “devils” who “speak with no femininity, no morals, no fear…”

He further cast aspersion on opposition calls to make sexual assault against women a “red line” that must not be crossed.

“Does that apply to these naked women?” he said. “Nine out of 10 of them are Crusaders (Christians) and the rest are … widows with no one to rein them in.”

He further implored them to “Learn from Muslim women, be Muslims.”

Violent mobs often consisting of hundreds of men have been responsible for a series of increasingly frequent and brutal sexual assaults against women. The highest-ever number of such assaults was reported on the January 25 protest to mark the two-year-anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.

At least 19 women were attacked, with one having to undergo surgery after her genitals were sliced with a knife, Global Post cites health officials as saying.

Women of all ages, veiled and unveiled, have been attacked on the square, the paper cites activists who compile reports on sexual violence as saying. The say the attackers are using the women as a political tool.

“These people are not revolutionaries. They are part of the counterrevolution, trying to stop us from succeeding,” 52-year-old Nadia Refaat, a self-described leftist and feminist protester in Tahrir, told the Global Post. “They are trying to scare women. But we will not be afraid.”

AFP carried a photo of the cleric Ahmed Abdullah

RT, Feb 9, 2013, “Rape, death threats and fatwas: Egypt opposition in crosshairs”,

http://rt.com/news/egypt-women-opposition-rape-770/

By N. Jayaram

09 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

It was bad enough that Ajmal Kasab, the only Pakistani captured after the 2008 attacks in Bombay, was stealthily hanged without a public debate last November. It is far worse that the Kashmiri Afzal Guru was hanged on the morning of 9 February 2013 following his highly questionable conviction over the 2001 attack on the Indian parliament.

Many eminent lawyers, scholars and journalists have written extensively, pointing out gaping holes in the entire trial and appeal process as well as the rejection of petitions to the president of India on Afzal Guru’s behalf. They include senior lawyers Nandita Haksar and Indira Jaisingh, writers Arundhati Roy, Praful Bidwai and Nirmalangshu Mukherji and the late K.G. Kannabiran, a former president of the People’s Union for Civil Liberties.

Journals such as the Economic and Political Weekly and this website have periodically shed light on the case and established that the way Afzal Guru has been treated is a complete travesty of justice. Not only articles in journals and newspapers but books too have been written on the subject, including December 13: Terror Over Democracy by Nirmalangshu Mukherji (2005) and 13 December, a Reader: The Strange Case of the Attack on the Indian Parliament by Arundhati Roy (2006) detailing the role played by Delhi police officer Rajbir Singh in putting together the case, the acquittals that followed in the Delhi High Court (including that of S.A.R. Geelani, lecturer in Arabic at a Delhi college), the challenges in the Supreme Court and its confirmation of the death sentence for Afzal Guru despite the questionable nature of the evidence produced in the case. A website dedicated to the case has collected some of the pertinent writings: http://www.justiceforafzalguru.org/

The Supreme Court said: “The collective conscience of the society will be satisfied only if the death penalty is awarded to Afzal Guru.” It was, to say the least, unfortunate that a court of law decided to pander to its assumed notion of “collective conscience” rather than abide by points of law.

The ignominious role played by the national media in the wake of the 13 December 2001 parliament attack has also been well documented by Nirmalangshu Mukherji and others. The media seems to have eaten out of police officials’ hands instead of asking tough questions. As Sukumar Muralidharan of the International Federation of Journalists has pointed out, members of the profession failed to do what they ought to have at least after the High Court verdict – investigate the claims of the police and revisit the case they had not yet examined.

Afzal Guru’s execution is the second time after Ajmal Kasab’s on 21 November 2012 that the government has carried it out stealthily, ignoring the need to share the appeal process with the public, the lawyers for those convicted and their families. The execution of Dhananjoy Chatterjee on 14 August, 2004 following his conviction over the rape and murder of a 14-year-old girl in 1990 followed a public discussion.

In many of the now steadily shrinking number of countries that retain the death penalty, long delays such as in the cases of Afzal Guru and Chatterjee would automatically have led to commutations. Nearly 150 countries are abolitionist in law or in practice, meaning that they have not carried out execution for many years or observe a moratorium.

Rather than moving in that direction, the Indian government has been riding roughshod over people’s aspirations. Following the massive nation-wide upsurge in the aftermath of a gang-rape (and eventually murder) in New Delhi on 16 December 2012, the government set up a committee headed by former Chief Justice of India, J.S. Verma, with Justice Leila Seth and former Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam assisting. But when the committee offered a detailed set of recommendations within a record time of a few weeks, recommendations which were widely praised by women’s organisations and lawyers’ collectives, the government stealthily put out an ordinance, circumventing the need to face parliament and draft a detailed bill.

Then when Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi came calling at the Sri Ram College of Commerce on 6 February 2006, Delhi Police sided with Hindutva elements and rough-handled those protesting against his visit. And hours after Afzal Guru’s execution, the same police again sided with the Saffron elements, arresting several peaceful protestors.

Meanwhile, the same day as the execution, in another part of India, namely Bangalore, hundreds of peaceful demonstrators against the evictions of 1,500 families from a shantytown were met by a few hundred policemen, who proceeded to make arrests. The police are siding with a company owned by the son of a former senior-most police official of Karnataka.

A respected reporter in Mangalore, Naveen Soorinje, who exposed a Hindutva attack on young people enjoying a birthday party last year, continues to be in prison even after the state cabinet withdrew the charges framed against him. There again, there are persisting allegations of police collusion with Hindutva elements.

Indian politicians have to realise that if they ride roughshod over democratic norms and ignore the rule of law today it can backfire on them when their opponents come to power and imitate their cynical actions.

Moreover if they think hanging Ajmal Kasab and Afzal Guru is easy, they need to figure out how to respond to those who ask why not Balwant Singh Rajoana (for the 1995 assassination of Punjab chief minister Beant Singh) and Murugan, Santhan and Perarivalan (for the 1991 assassination of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi). The Akali Dal, an ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party, has appealed against any move to hang Rajoana. The fury of Sikhs worldwide would certainly be too great for the Indian state to bear. The Tamil Nadu state assembly has gone on record in demanding that the three Tamils be spared.

With obvious electoral gains in mind, the Congress government has gone after soft Muslim targets. And the BJP is happy to make vociferous demands for the hanging of Muslims accused of terrorist acts while calibrating its stance in other instances.

How long will the people of India turn a blind eye to such cynicism? Instead of whipping up and pandering to mob demands, the Indian state ought to be pursuing peaceful development by fostering coexistence. But that would need a modicum of wisdom currently sadly lacking in the rulers in New Delhi.

N. Jayaram is a journalist now based in Bangalore after more than 23 years in East Asia (mainly Hong Kong and Beijing) and 11 years in New Delhi. He was with the Press Trust of India news agency for 15 years and Agence France-Presse for 11 years and is currently engaged in editing and translating for NGOs and academic institutions. He writes a blog: http://walkerjay.wordpress.com/

By Franklin Lamb

09 February, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

 

Tehran — Azadeh, a graduate law student from Tehran University, on the sidelines of Iran’s Third Annual Hollywoodis (www.hollywoodism.org) reminded her interlocutors, of the obvious damming admissions last week by two US politicians:

“It would be a defense lawyer’s worst nightmare wouldn’t it? I mean to have one’s clients, in this case the Vice-President of the United States and the outgoing Secretary of state confess so publicly to serial international crimes against a civilian population?”

The confessions and the crimes, she correctly enumerated to her audience, were those admitted to by US Vice-President Joe Biden and outgoing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this past week.

Both of the US officials, in discussing US relations with the Islamic Republic, openly admitted that the US-led sanctions against Iran (and Syria) are politically motivated and constitute a “soft-war” against the nearly 80 million people of Iran (23 million people in Syria) in order to achieve regime change.

Mrs. Clinton, was the first of the dynamic duo to be heard from. She acknowledged that the harsh US sanctions were intended to target and send the people of Iran a message. “So we hope that the Iranian people will make known their concerns… so my message to Iranians is do something about this.”

Some listening concluded she meant food riots and inflation riots to overthrow the Iranian government. An Australian Broadcasting Company interviewer asked Clinton on January 31 of last year: “If you have issues with the government of Iran, why destroy the Iranian people with the current sanctions in place? It’s very difficult to find certain medicines in Iran. Where is your sense of humanity?”

What the Clinton interrogator had in mind, she explained later, were the US-led sanctions reducing Iran’s GDP growth (-1.1% GDP) resulting in an inflation of 21.0% that is being felt mostly by the civilian population. As well as periodic food shortages in the supermarkets of such staples such as rice, there are price rises on everything. For example, per page printing for students is up as much as 400% and the cost of a used car up 300%. In general, supermarket items have risen 100 to 300 percent or higher over the past twenty-four months and, devastating for many, certain lifesaving medicines are no longer available.

Clinton: “Well, first, let me say on the medicine and on food and other necessities, there are no sanctions.” This statement is utter nonsense and Mrs. Clinton knows it.

The targeting process by the US Treasury Department is well entrenched in Washington. When dear reader is next in Washington, DC, perhaps on a tour bus riding down NW Pennsylvania Avenue following a visit to the US Capitol, consider getting off the bus at 15th and Pennsylvania at the US Department of the Treasury. Walk around the main building and you will see an Annex building. This building, as Clinton knows well, and like Biden, has visited more than once, houses the Office of Financial Assets Control (OFAC).

The well-funded agency’s work includes precisely targeting “food and medicines and other necessities” in order to force the civilian population of Iran to achieve regime change.

For more than two hundred years, since the War of 1812, when OFAC was founded to sanction the British, the office has become expert at imposing sanctions and it has done so more than 2000 times. OFAC currently uses a large team of specialists and computers to think-up, design, test, and send to AIPAC and certain pro-Zionist officials and members of congress their work-product topped off by recommendations.

OFAC and its Treasury Department associates have had a hand in virtually every US sanction applied to Iran since President Jimmy Carter issued Executive Order 12170 in November 1979 freezing about $12 billion in Iranian assets, including bank deposits, gold and other properties. From the State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act in 1979 to the Syria Accountability Act of 2004, more than a dozen Presidential Executive Orders including the 2011-2012 Executive orders which froze the US property of high-rankling Syrian and Iranian officials and more broadly E.O. 13582 which froze all governmental assets of the Syrian government and prohibited Americans from doing business with the Syrian government and banned all US import of Syrian petroleum products.

What OFAC does with its data base is science not art. It can calculate quite precisely the economic effect on the civilian population of a single action designating one company, bank, government entity or infrastructure system of a country. OFAC, on behalf of its government, electronically wages a cold war against its civilian targets.

This week OFAC and the Treasury Department blacklisted Iran’s state broadcasting authority, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, responsible for broadcast policy in Iran and overseas production at Iranian television and radio channels, potentially limiting viewing and listening opportunities for Iran’s civilian population. Its director, Ezzatollah Zarghami, was included in the action. Additionally sanctioned are Iran’s Internet-policing agencies and a major electronics producer. David S. Cohen, the pro-Zionist Treasury undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, who oversees the OFAC sanctions effort, reportedly following meetings with Israeli officials, said last week’s actions were meant to “tighten the screws and intensify the economic pressure against the Iranian regime.”

In reality, the sanctions target the civilian population and the “Iranian regime” won’t be much affected. The same applies to Syria. Despite the public relations language that “food and medicine are exempted form the brutal US-led sancitons, as OFAC well knows, the reality is something else. They know well the chilling effects of the sanctions on international suppliers of medicines and food stuffs with respect to a targeted country. The US Treasury department has thousands of gigabytes of data confirming that the boards of directors of international business do not, and will not allow their companies to risk millions of dollars in profits by technically violating any of the thousands of details in the sanctions — many of which are subject to interpretation — for the sake of doing business with Iran or Syria. This is why there are severe shortages of medicines and certain foodstuffs in these sanctioned countries and to state otherwise is Orwellian News-Speak.

OFAC does not operate in a vacuum. It works closely with other US agencies including the 16 intelligence agencies that together make up the UN Intelligence Community. Together they have applied sanctions of great breadth and severity against the civilian populations of Syria and Iran. These sanctions have been bolstered on occasion by several direct and/or green-lighted Israeli assassinations and cyber-assaults, hoping to foment civil unrest to achieve regime change and other political goals.

A few days after Mrs. Clinton’s somewhat inadvertent confession that the US government intentionally targets the civilian population of Iran, Vice President Joe Biden chimed in on the 4th of February that the US was ready to hold direct negotiations with Iran but added the caveat, “We have also made clear that Iran’s leaders need not sentence their people to economic deprivation,” acknowledging as did Hillary that the US sanctions are intended to target and harm the Iranian and Syrian people. A senior Obama administration official described the latest step as “a significant turning of the screw,” meaning that the people of Iran face a “stark choice” between bowing to US demands and reviving their oil revenue, the country’s economic lifeblood or more and more sanctions will follow until they do.

This targeting of Iran’s and Syria’s civilian population by US-led sanctions is a massive violation of the principles, standards and rules of international law and their most fundamental underpinnings which is the protection of civilians.

Some examples:

The 1977 Additional Protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions prohibit any measure that has the effect of depriving a civilian population of objects indispensable to its survival. Article 70 of Protocol I mandates relief operations to aid a civilian population that is “not adequately provided” with supplies and Article 18 of Protocol II requires relief operations for a civilian population that suffers “undue hardship owing to a lack of supplies essential for its survival, such as foodstuffs and medical supplies.”

Prohibition on Starvation as a Method of Warfare

• Under international humanitarian law, civilians enjoy a right to humanitarian assistance during armed conflicts.

• Art. 23 of the Fourth Geneva Convention obligates states to facilitate the free passage and distribution of relief goods including medicines, foodstuffs, clothing and tonics intended for children under 15, expectant mothers, and maternity cases.

• Art. 70 of Additional Protocol I prohibits interfering with delivery of relief goods to all members of the civilian population.

 

• US-led sanctions are prohibited by the principle of proportionality found in Arts. 51 and 57 of Additional Protocol I.

• Under the terms of Art. 3 common to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, humanitarian and relief actions must be taken. Pursuant to Art. 18(2) of Additional Protocol II, relief societies must be allowed to offer their services to provide humanitarian relief

• The US-led sanctions violate the Rule of Distinction between civilians and combatants

The Right to life

The US-led sanctions violate the right to life incorporated in numerous international human rights instruments including Art. 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966; Art. 2 of the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, 1950; and Art. 4 of the African Charter of Human Rights, 1981.

The Rights of the Child

One of the groups most vulnerable to US-led sanctions in Syria and Iran are children. The rights of children are laid down in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989, which currently stands as the most widely ratified international agreement. Most relevant in the context of the US-led sanctions are Arts. 6 and 24 of the Convention, according to which every child has the inherent right to life and the right to the highest attainable standard of health and access to medical services.

If “terrorism” means, as the United States government defines it as the targeting of civilians in order to induce political change from their government, what is it called when the American government itself applies intense economic suffering on a civilian population, causing malnutrition, illnesses, starvation and death in order to induce regime change?

The US-led sanctions against Iran and Syria are illegal, inhumane, ineffective, immoral and outrageous. They must be resisted every day by every person of good will, everywhere, until they are withdrawn.

Franklin Lamb is doing research in the Islamic Republic of Iran and is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com

By Joseph Camilleri

8 February 2013

@ theconversation.edu.au

The new year is scarcely a month old. Yet we have seen enough to know that the fires raging in different parts of the Middle East and North Africa will not easily abate – and that the firefighting efforts of Western governments may prove no more successful than in the past.

From Algeria to Afghanistan, we see governments whose survival depends on authoritarian rule or the continued support of external powers, or some mixture of the two. In a few places, in particular in Tunisia and Egypt, there has been talk of a transition to democratic institutions, but the path is strewn with obstacles. In many more places, Libya, Algeria, Syria, Iraq and Yemen to name a few, terrorist cells operating under different guises and names are fanning the flames, moving elusively from one flash point to another.

Attacks by Islamist insurgents on US outposts in Benghazi, Libya, at a gas plant in Algeria, and in Mali over the past 12 months may at first sight appear to be unconnected. A closer look suggests they are the interconnected symptoms of a deeper ailment.

In Algeria, on January 16, a group linked with al Qaeda took more than 800 people hostage at the Tigantourine gas facility near In Aménas. The raid mounted by the Algerian special forces managed to free nearly 700 Algerian workers and more than 100 foreigners, but at a high cost: 39 hostages were killed along with an Algerian security guard and 29 militants.

In Mali, the steady collapse of state control over the north of the country was followed by an inconclusive military coup in March 2012, which did little to stem the steady advance of the Saharan branch of al Qaeda. The insurgents were soon in control of the Tuareg north, effectively seceding from the rest of Mali and establishing a harsh form of Islamic law. This is the backdrop to French military intervention which has, for the time being, driven Islamists from the major cities they had occupied across northern Mali.

There is reason to think that in each case the terrorists received both weapons and training from militia camps in Libya.

During her testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on January 23, Hilary Clinton acknowledged as much. She said:

There is no doubt that the Algerian terrorists had weapons from Libya. There is no doubt that the Malian remnants of al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb have weapons from Libya.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov put it more forcefully, saying, “Those whom the French and Africans are fighting now in Mali are the (same) people who overthrew the Gaddafi regime, those that our Western partners armed.”

A French soldier rides an armoured vehicle through the Malian town Timbuktu. AAP/Arnaud Roine

He may well have added that the Taliban, which the United States has been fighting in Afghanistan for more than 11 years, is in part “the monster” the US helped to create when it decided to support and arm Islamist groups during the 1980s.

We are also seeing the revolving door of Islamist violence and Western intervention at work in Syria’s tragic devastation. In recent months, well armed Jihadist groups appear to be gaining the upper hand among the rebel groups fighting the Assad regime.

In this confused picture, one thing is becoming clearer by the day. US military interventions in Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003 have turned out to be costly operations, greatly sapping the strength of the American state, and if anything widening the spread of terror. The Western intervention in Libya suggests more of the same.

Despite hundreds of US drone strikes, the death of Osama bin Laden and the fracturing of al Qaeda, the jihadist movement is organisationally more flexible and geographically more widespread than ever. With US and allied forces to end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year, the Taliban threat remains potent. Some 1100 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed in the past six months, while army personnel have been deserting in growing numbers. The number of al Qaeda fighters may have fallen in Afghanistan, but many have regrouped in Pakistan or shifted their focus to Syria, Libya, Iraq or Mali, Somalia and Yemen.

French President Francois Hollande shakes hands with a French soldier in Timbuktu, Mali. AAP/STR

France’s intervention in Mali may have temporarily disrupted the plans of Islamist groups, but for how long? François Hollande may have received a hero’s welcome in Timbuktu and Bamako, but French forces can’t remain forever. And, once they leave, will Malian forces, even with the support of neighbouring African states, succeed where they have failed in the past?

The political reality is that relations between the north and south of the country have been historically fraught. The Tuareg nomadic communities of the north have launched major rebellions over the years against what they see as exploitative southern rule. This perception is repeatedly reinforced by stories of massacres, the poisoning of wells and score-settling by pro-government militias against Tuareg civilians. Reports of mob lynchings and other reprisal killings of Tuaregs and Arabs by the Malian army as it retakes control of the north of the country can only fan the flames of grievance and mistrust.

The question, then, is not should international forces intervene to protect communities in need of protection? The “responsibility to protect” has rightly become a universally accepted principle.

Instead, the questions are: what form should protection take? Who should do the protecting? What can be done to prevent, rather than simply react to, mass atrocity crimes? What are appropriate strategies for dealing with rampant corruption and deep-seated ethnic, religious and economic divisions? And importantly, who may decide on these questions?

Military intervention conducted or orchestrated by the United States and its allies, however well intentioned, seems increasingly the wrong answer.

By Geoff Dyer in Washington

8 February, 2013

@ www.ft.com

Divisions within the Obama administration over how to respond to the civil war in Syria spilled into the open on Thursday when the Pentagon said it had supported a plan to arm the rebels which the White House later rejected.

Leon Panetta, the outgoing defence secretary, told Congress that he had backed a plan developed by David Petraeus, then director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and was also supported by Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state.

The CIA plan would have attempted to supply arms to those groups in the Syrian opposition who are viewed as not being hostile to US interests.

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, said he had also supported the plan. Neither he nor Mr Panetta said why the White House vetoed the idea.

Obviously there were a number of factors that ultimately led to the president’s decision to make it nonlethal, Mr Panetta said. “I supported his decision in the end.”

The Obama administration has been extremely cautious about intervening in the Syrian conflict, with the Pentagon consistently ruling out any direct involvement by US troops or the implementation of a no-fly zone.

However, officials started working on a plan to train and arm selected groups of rebels from last summer after the failure of the former UN envoy Kofi Annan’ s efforts to broker a political solution to the conflict.

Mr Panetta’ s comments brought into the open a dispute that has been raging within the administration for months. With regional allies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar already arming rebel groups, some US officials have argued that the US should at least try to promote elements of the opposition that might be favourable to the US.

However, other US officials argued that it would be difficult to control where the weapons eventually would end up and feared a repeat of Afghanistan in the 1980s when the US armed jihadi groups that later turned against the west.

By Lester R. Brown

8 February, 2013

@ Inter Press Service

The world is in transition from an era of food abundance to one of scarcity. Over the last decade, world grain reserves have fallen by one third. World food prices have more than doubled, triggering a worldwide land rush and ushering in a new geopolitics of food. Food is the new oil. Land is the new gold.

This new era is one of rising food prices and spreading hunger. On the demand side of the food equation, population growth, rising affluence, and the conversion of food into fuel for cars are combining to raise consumption by record amounts.

On the supply side, extreme soil erosion, growing water shortages, and the earth’s rising temperature are making it more difficult to expand production. Unless we can reverse such trends, food prices will continue to rise and hunger will continue to spread, eventually bringing down our social system.

Can we reverse these trends in time? Or is food the weak link in our early twenty-first-century civilization, much as it was in so many of the earlier civilizations whose archeological sites we now study?

This tightening of world food supplies contrasts sharply with the last half of the twentieth century, when the dominant issues in agriculture were overproduction, huge grain surpluses, and access to markets by grain exporters. During that time, the world in effect had two reserves: large carryover stocks of grain (the amount in the bin when the new harvest begins) and a large area of cropland idled under US farm programs to avoid overproduction.

When the world harvest was good, the United States would idle more land. When the harvest was subpar, it would return land to production. The excess production capacity was used to maintain stability in world grain markets. The large stocks of grain cushioned world crop shortfalls.

When India’s monsoon failed in 1965, for example, the United States shipped a fifth of its wheat harvest to India to avert a potentially massive famine. And because of abundant stocks, this had little effect on the world grain price.

When this period of food abundance began, the world had 2.5 billion people. Today it has seven billion.

From 1950 to 2000 there were occasional grain price spikes as a result of weather-induced events, such as a severe drought in Russia or an intense heat wave in the US Midwest. But their effects on price were short-lived. Within a year or so things were back to normal. The combination of abundant stocks and idled cropland made this period one of the most food-secure in world history.

But it was not to last. By 1986, steadily rising world demand for grain and unacceptably high budgetary costs led to a phasing out of the U.S. cropland set-aside program.

Today the United States has some land idled in its Conservation Reserve Program, but it targets land that is highly susceptible to erosion. The days of productive land ready to be quickly brought into production when needed are over.

Ever since agriculture began, carryover stocks of grain have been the most basic indicator of food security. The goal of farmers everywhere is to produce enough grain not just to make it to the next harvest but to do so with a comfortable margin. From 1986, when we lost the idled cropland buffer, through 2001, the annual world carryover stocks of grain averaged a comfortable 107 days of consumption.

This safety cushion was not to last either. After 2001, the carryover stocks of grain dropped sharply as world consumption exceeded production. From 2002 through 2011, they averaged only 74 days of consumption, a drop of one third. An unprecedented period of world food security has come to an end. Within two decades, the world had lost both of its safety cushions.

In recent years, world carryover stocks of grain have been only slightly above the 70 days that was considered a desirable minimum during the late twentieth century. Now stock levels must take into account the effect on harvests of higher temperatures, more extensive drought, and more intense heat waves.

Although there is no easy way to precisely quantify the harvest effects of any of these climate-related threats, it is clear that any of them can shrink harvests, potentially creating chaos in the world grain market. To mitigate this risk, a stock reserve equal to 110 days of consumption would produce a much safer level of food security.

The world is now living from one year to the next, hoping always to produce enough to cover the growth in demand. Farmers everywhere are making an all-out effort to keep pace with the accelerated growth in demand, but they are having difficulty doing so.

Food shortages undermined earlier civilizations. The Sumerians and Mayans are just two of the many early civilizations that declined apparently because they moved onto an agricultural path that was environmentally unsustainable.

For the Sumerians, rising salt levels in the soil as a result of a defect in their otherwise well-engineered irrigation system eventually brought down their food system and thus their civilization. For the Mayans, soil erosion was one of the keys to their downfall, as it was for so many other early civilizations.

We, too, are on such a path. While the Sumerians suffered from rising salt levels in the soil, our modern-day agriculture is suffering from rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. And like the Mayans, we too are mismanaging our land and generating record losses of soil from erosion.

While the decline of early civilizations can be traced to one or possibly two environmental trends such as deforestation and soil erosion that undermined their food supply, we are now dealing with several. In addition to some of the most severe soil erosion in human history, we are also facing newer trends such as the depletion of aquifers, the plateauing of grain yields in the more agriculturally advanced countries, and rising temperature.

Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that the United Nations reports that food prices are now double what they were in 2002-04. For most U.S. citizens, who spend on average nine percent of their income on food, this is not a big deal. But for consumers who spend 50-70 percent of their income on food, a doubling of food prices is a serious matter. There is little latitude for them to offset the price rise simply by spending more.

Closely associated with the decline in stocks of grain and the rise in food prices is the spread of hunger. During the closing decades of the last century, the number of hungry people in the world was falling, dropping to a low of 792 million in 1997. After that it began to rise, climbing toward one billion. Unfortunately, if we continue with business as usual, the ranks of the hungry will continue to expand.

The bottom line is that it is becoming much more difficult for the world’s farmers to keep up with the world’s rapidly growing demand for grain. World grain stocks were drawn down a decade ago and we have not been able to rebuild them. If we cannot do so, we can expect that with the next poor harvest, food prices will soar, hunger will intensify, and food unrest will spread.

We are entering a time of chronic food scarcity, one that is leading to intense competition for control of land and water resources – in short, a new geopolitics of food.

Lester Brown is the president of Earth Policy Institute. For further reading on the global food situation, see Full Planet, Empty Plates: The New Geopolitics of Food Scarcity, by Lester R. Brown (W.W. Norton: October 2012).

New Era of Food Scarcity Echoes Collapsed Civilisations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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