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“I am not interested in picking up crumbs of compassion…

I want the full menu of human rights”

Desmond Tutu, Today, NBC, 9 January 1985.

The disproportionate focus on human rights from a negative perspective has sadly resulted in detraction from understanding the role that human rights can in fact play in post-war settings. The time is ripe for human rights to be approached positively, recognizing its value and ability to contribute to a process of national healing and reconciliation.

CREATING A SENSE OF BELONGING

One of the key advantages that civil and political rights offer is that, when properly implemented, enable citizens to feel involved with the state – and that the state, in some way, belongs to them. This is important in terms of nation-building and securing lasting peace, because if citizens have no connection to the state, then they also have no motivation to avoid conflict. The illustrations below demonstrate how specific rights can help to rebuild the nation and secure lasting peace.

I. THE RIGHT TO LIBERTY AND SECURITY OF PERSON

This right, combined with the right to life and freedom from torture, is important for ensuring that people do not have to fear for their safety whilst going about their daily lives. In terms of what this right can bring to the nation, it can help to maintain peace and security because if citizens are able to feel safe and secure in their environment, conflict is less likely to arise.

It is particularly important that this right is successfully protected because there is likely to be suspicion among citizens and other peoples that the rebuilding of the nation will result in the reinstatement of previous conditions of deprivation and discrimination: these suspicions need to be put to rest once and for all.

Additionally, ensuring that the security of person is protected can improve international relations: if the international community can see that rights such as these are being effectively protected, they are likely to be much more willing to engage with the state. In a globalised world, the ability to engage with other states is essential, both politically and economically.

II. THE RIGHT TO A FAIR TRIAL AND EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW

It is important to ensure that all people, irrespective of ethnicity and religion, are treated fairly in legal proceedings within the country, largely because faith needs to be restored in the ability of the legal system to provide justice. As with the right to liberty and security of person, the implementation of the right to a fair trial and equality before the law is particularly important because it is necessary for those who have been unjustly treated in the past to see that the state is now able to protect them from future injustices: if they are unable to see this, then they are unlikely to be able to feel that they truly belong within the state.

The protection of these rights is also important more generally – a functioning and respected legal system is crucial in securing law and order, being essential if future civil unrest is to be avoided.

III. PUBLIC PARTICIPATION OF MINORITIES

Protection needs to be afforded not only to the majority of the citizens, but also to the minority and other disadvantaged groups within that society. If this cannot be achieved, then it is unlikely that peace will be maintained. For a political system to be truly democratic, it has to allow minorities a voice of their own, to articulate their distinct concerns and seek redress and lay the basis of democracy. Introducing ‘special measures’ for minorities does not place them in a position of privilege in society, but rather puts them on an equal footing with the majority. This allows minority groups to be able to influence public policy and therefore to prevent feeling detached from the nation.

Participation in public affairs by minorities is essential to creating a sense of national identity. It is crucial to feeling part of the state and the wider community. It is essential to the protection of their interests. Further, it will serve to inform decision-makers of the concerns of minorities, and leads to better decision-making and implementation. It is therefore clear that when minority rights are secured, there is a much greater likelihood that peace will be maintained. Practitioners should therefore aim to ensure that minority voices can be heard and feed into national processes.

What must be remembered, however, is that the requirements and needs of different minority groups in the country are different to each other and cannot be generalised, and practitioners too should not attempt to do so.

CREATING OPPORTUNITIES

The aim of protecting and promoting economic, social and cultural rights is to ensure that all people in the country are able to meet their basic human needs. The introduction of socio-economic rights should not be ruled out on the basis of monetary concerns. Instead, it has been seen that the fulfilment of economic, social and cultural rights in fact has the potential to improve the nation’s economy as a whole. The benefits offered by a number of specific economic, social and cultural rights are considered below.

I.THE RIGHT TO HEALTH

The physical and mental wellbeing of the nation can be particularly important for maintaining peace and security. A human rights framework that provides comprehensive protection for the human right to health should include provision of real access to healthcare – such access should include emergency and routine medical treatment, as well as immunization programmes. This will help to maintain lasting peace because, if our society as a whole – or a less affluent proportion of our society – is suffering from ill-health and disease, it is much more likely to be rife with discontent. Additionally, creating a healthy nation is likely to benefit the state’s economy – a sick nation is unable to work, and is therefore unable to generate wealth.

Concerns about the cost of providing human rights protection for the right to health should not be overstated. The right to health is a progressive human right, meaning that citizens should expect the state to provide for ‘the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health.’ This standard depends on the wealth of the nation, so the standard that we could expect to enjoy in Sri Lanka, for example, is not the same as the standard that could be expected either in Germany or Guatemala.

What is important, however, is that access to healthcare is provided to all people equally. If this is not achieved, civil unrest is likely to return. Practitioners should therefore work to encourage the development of healthcare infrastructures that can be easily accessed by even the most marginalised groups in society.

II. THE RIGHT TO EDUCATION

Education provides citizens with opportunities to develop new skills. This, in turn, provides the opportunity to generate a higher income. As citizens are able to earn more, it is clear that the nation’s economy will improve as a whole and the likelihood of satisfaction and prevention of frustration can considerably contribute to building a connection with the post-war state. This is happening at the moment, where India is moving ahead of the Western world in relation to science and technology. It is clear that a world-class system of universities cannot be developed overnight. However, if investment is made in our education system, then the state’s economic outlook can improve in the long-term. Moreover, such investment will prevent unrest in the short to medium-term because if every citizen can see progress being made and are given the opportunity to improve their own standard and quality of life, they are far less likely to agitate and return to conflict.

III. THE RIGHT TO WORK

The right to work carries with it the potential to improve the prosperity of the nation. This is because it is important to have an active workforce in order to grow the nation’s economy: if people are given the ability to work, then they are able to go out and earn more money, some of which can then be created as revenue. Such protection will in turn reduce unrest and improve the economy.

RESTORING DIGNITY

Possibly the most important contribution human rights can make towards reconciliation and securing lasting peace is the protection they can bring to minorities. Practitioners are therefore well advised to work closely with minority groups in order to determine how their needs can be best met. It should be borne in mind, however, that an overly minority-focused approach could arouse the suspicions of the majority. Ultimately, balance and discretion need to be used, ensuring that the social fabric woven leaves no place for discrimination, discontent or misgiving.

By Salma Yusuf

The writer can be contacted at: salmayusuf@gmail.com

For the Iranian people, the 2012 Olympic Games in London which wrapped up earlier on August 12 was thoroughly different from the previous editions of the summer Olympics. This year’s games came on the heels of a set of biting sanctions by the United States and European Union against Iran’s banking, insurance, transportation and oil sector which have dramatically crippled Iran’s economy and severely affected the innocent civilians.

While Israel, Iran’s traditional arch foe, has been intensively lobbying to convince the U.S. Congress to adopt more backbreaking economic sanctions on Iran and further isolate it over its nuclear program, the successful and unprecedented performance of Iranian athletes in London effectively appeased the country’s innumerable excruciating wounds.

Iranian delegation to the 2012 Olympics snatched 12 medals, including 4 golds, in weightlifting, wrestling, taekwondo and athletics and came 17th in the medal table among some 204 participating nations, recording Iran’s best all-time performance in the Olympic Games.

For Iranians, every medal in such an important and defining event like Olympics means a hoisting of the country’s flag before the eyes of millions of international viewers and most importantly, every gold medal means that the people around the world will respectfully listen to your national anthem. In the time that the Western diplomats avoid hosting their Iranian counterparts and shun them in different meetings and spare no efforts to make sure that Iran is an isolated nation, they’re the athletes who bear the burden of promoting the name of their country and making their people proud and cheerful.

Zahra Kazemi Aliabad, a postgraduate student of English literature and a freelance journalist believes that the Iranian athletes performed in the 2012 Olympics brilliantly and brought glory and credit to the country: “I’m really proud that I’m an Iranian citizen. The Iranian sportsmen showed a fantastic performance. If you look at the Olympics medal table, you will find out that we stand above many prosperous and economically progressive nations such as Spain, Brazil, South Africa, Denmark, Turkey, Switzerland and Canada.”

“The U.S. and Israeli politicians are going through fire and water to convince the world leaders to boycott the upcoming Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran. They already succeeded in dissuading Ban Ki Moon from attending. Their sole objective is to bring Iran to isolation. If they had the choice, they would even bar the Iranian athletes from international sports events, but Iranians’ glorious success in Olympics really disappointed them,” she added.

The 22-year-old blogger Mohammad Hossein Nikzad wrote a post on his weblog Aghalliyat (the minority) before the games started and called Olympics a precious opportunity for “cultural diplomacy.”

“Olympic is a platform and a free tribune for introducing Iranian culture [to the world]. More than 10 thousand athletes from different countries take part and the whole world is paying attention to the event. The country that performs in the games better can surely promote its culture more effectively and gain international prestige and credibility,” he wrote.

“Our responsibility is to categorically support our athletes and promote and talk about their successes in the mass media… of course we can not surpass a country like China which is a sports stronghold, but we can at least outperform weaker countries which usually grab numerous medals in the Olympic Games and make their people feel honored,” he added.

Following the conclusion of the games and once the Iranian delegation returned from London, the society was tremendously filled with joy and a communal feeling of delight. The mass media gave extensive coverage to the 12 medalists and invited them for interviews on different radio, TV stations and newspapers. The vivacious Persian blogsphere was also happy with the news that Iranian caravan finished 17th among the 204 participating nations, especially given the huge economic, political pressures which the country has been withstanding for a long time.

Hamid Sourian, Iran’s 55-kg Greco-roman wrestler and five-time world champion who clutched the first gold medal in the games for Iran updated his newly-established blog from London on July 6, expressing his satisfaction with the victory which ended his disappointing Olympics medal drought.

In his blog post titled “semi-declaration,” which received 1165 comments from the visitors, Sourian wrote, “I was flooded by your invaluable kindness. Had it not been your prayers and good wishes, it would have not been possible for me to make the achievement. I should make sure that this medal would not make me arrogant so that I might forget the Almighty God and the people who always stand shoulder by shoulder with me.”

The world wrestling giant wrote that he personally moderates all the comments he receives and even though he cannot personally reply to all of them, he reads them one by one and is always “thankful to the committed people for the compassion they show to him.”

Abolghasem Bayyenat, an Iranian political commentator and Ph.D candidate of political science at Maxwell School of Syracuse University also believes that the 2012 Olympics was an auspicious event for the Iranians: “The recent Olympic games fostered national cohesion in Iran in two important ways. First, international sports events in general have the function of raising national consciousness. The broader the contexts in which individuals find themselves the broader the scope of their in-group identification would be.”

“Sub-national group identifications, such as ethnic, sectarian and partisan identities, become less salient in an international context while national identities gain increased salience. It is in this line that during the recent Olympic Games Iranians, more than any other time in recent months or years, identified themselves along national lines rather than sub-national ones. The people of Iran thought of themselves more as Iranians rather than as Azeris, Kurds, Persians, Turkmans, Baluchs or other ethnicities,” he added.

“Second, people tend to identify more with groups which provide them with higher levels of honor and relative worth, if they have a choice. Iranian athletes performed far better in the recent Olympics games than any other neighboring country which share the same ethnicity with Iranian ethnic groups,” he wrote. “Being Iranian served as a source of pride for the nationals of Iran as, in overall terms, the Iranian team outperformed all Iran’s neighboring countries as well as many developed countries by a wide margin in the recent Olympic games. Thus, regardless of their political, ethnic and sectarian affiliations, Iranians felt proud to be Iranian as their national identity provided them with more honor than their sub-national identities.”

All in all, the 2012 Olympics was a dramatic event for the Iranian people to regain their sense of dignity and honor in view of the increasing pressure on their country over its nuclear program. While the country’s politicians face a daunting job in resisting the mounting economic and political pressures, the Iranian athletes performed fantastically, proving that it’s not too easy to take Iran off the international equations.

By Kourosh Ziabari

21 August, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist

Over the past year, the British government have bombed rebels into power in Libya – and are desperately hoping to do the same in Syria –whilst simultaneously aiding and abetting the crushing of rebel forces in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Some commentators have called this hypocritical. In fact, there is no contradiction: the British government is engaged in a vicious, region-wide attack on all independent, anti-colonial forces in the region, be they states or opposition movements. Client regimes – in many cases monarchies originally imposed by the British Empire – have been propped up, and states outside the orbit of Western control have been targeted for destruction. The policy, in other words, has been entirely consistent: a drive towards the total capitulation of the Arab world; and more specifically the destruction of any potential organised resistance to an attack on Iran. What is more, it has been planned for a long time.

The Arab spring did not come out of the blue; it was both predictable and predicted. All demographic, economic and political trends pointed in the direction of a period of instability and civil unrest across the region, and especially in Egypt. The combination of growing and youthful populations, rising unemployment, corruption and unrepresentative government made some kind of mass manifestation of frustration a virtual certainty – as was recognised by a far-reaching speech by MI6-turned-BP operative Mark Allen in February 2009. In August 2010, Barack Obama issued Presidential Study Directive Number 11, which noted “evidence of growing citizen discontent with the region’s regimes” and warned that “the region is entering a critical period of transition.” Four months later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia, sparking off the unrest that led to the downfall of President Ben-Ali.

For the world’s imperial powers, wracked by their own economic crises – Britain, France and the US – it was clear that this unrest would present both a danger and an opportunity. Whilst it threatened to disrupt the Gulf monarchies imposed by Britain during the colonial period (Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait et al), it could also create the ideal cover for the launching of long-planned proxy wars against old enemies.

Both Libya and Syria have long been considered thorns in the side of Western world domination. It is not only their policies – from Gaddafi’s consistent opposition to US and British military bases in Africa to Assad’s support for Palestinian liberation groups – which riles Western policy makers, but the mere fact that they have independent governments which are able to formulate and implement such policies. In the eyes of the world’s unelected and undeclared ruling elites, for a government of the global South to be either strong or independent might be just about tolerable – but not both.

Secret Anglo-American plans for the overthrow of the Syrian government – using proxy forces directed by Western intelligence, and carried out under the cover of ‘internal disturbances’ – have been in place since at least 1957 . More recently, the US has embarked on a policy of funding sectarian Salafi militias to wage war against the region’s Shi’ites in order to undermine Iran, destroy the Syrian state and cut off Hezbollah’s supply lines. This policy was a direct response to the two major setbacks of the previous year – the massive wave of attacks on Western forces by Sunni militants in Iraq and Israel’s defeat in its war with Hezbollah. In a prophetic piece in 2007, Seymour Hersh shows how the US, Israel and the Saudis hatched a plan to ‘redirect’ Sunni militias away from their fight against the US and towards Syria. As one US government consultant put it, “it’s not that we don’t want the Salafis to throw bombs; it’s who they throw them at—Hezbollah, Moqtada al-Sadr, Iran, and at the Syrians, if they continue to work with Hezbollah and Iran.”

The coming of the ‘Arab spring’ provided the perfect cover for the throwing of these bombs – and for the British and US government plans to be put into effect. They acted quickly; armed attacks began in both countries within days of the ‘protest movement’ erupting, carried out by insurgents with longstanding links to British intelligence and increasingly trained and directed by the SAS and MI6 .

Acting under the cover of the Arab spring also proved a winning formula for Western governments to mobilise support for ‘humanitarian intervention’ – the twenty-first century white man’s burden. Bush and Blair had given Western warmongering in the Middle East a bad name, but by implementing proxy wars – and aerial blitzkrieg – under the guise of ‘support for popular uprisings’, it was possible to ensure that liberals and ‘socialists’ by and large fell in line (albeit with some tactical differences on occasion). Frustrated Western radicals, desperate to vicariously experience the ‘revolution’ they know they would never – and let’s face it, would never want to – actually be involved in, lapped up the imagery of the ‘people versus the dictator’. These ‘useful idiots’ all helpfully provided a veneer of credibility to the new wars that was clearly lacking in the case of Iraq.

The method of ‘proxy war’ – using militias recruited from the local population to fight for imperial interests – has long been the favoured policy of British policy planners – in contrast to the more ‘gung-ho’ boots on the ground methods of the US.

The war against Libya gave the ‘Arabists’ who dominate the British Foreign Office (the FCO) a chance to show the Americans how it is done. They have always preferred to cultivate local allies on the ground to do the fighting and dying – it’s cheaper, less unpopular at home, and so much more subtle than the blunt, blundering and cretinous approach of the Bushblair posse. Indeed, the FCO opposed the Iraq war for precisely this reason – there was no moral, nor even strategic, disagreement – but a tactical one. The perceived failure and cost (in both blood and treasure) of Iraq thus allowed the ‘Arabists’ to gain the upper hand for the next round of colonial war that is now unfolding.

Meanwhile, client regimes – those monarchies established by Britain in the dying days of Ottoman control of the region – were given all the help they needed to drown their own uprisings in blood. Britain sold Saudi Arabia no less than £1.75 billion worth of arms last year – arms that are now being used against protesters in both Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, where the Saudis invaded last autumn to crush the growing democratic revolt, as well as to arm the militias fighting in Syria. Qatar under the absolute rule of the Al-Thani family – chosen by Britain to run the country in the mid-nineteenth century – has also been crucial in fomenting the new imperial wars. The Al- Jazeera TV channel, which plays such an important role in the colonisers’ propaganda war – is run from Qatar and essentially took over the role of the BBC Arabic service when it closed operations in 1996. Qatar has also been at the forefront of the co-ordination, training and arming of the paramilitary proxy forces in Libya and Syria.

To ascertain the British government’s attitude towards an uprising in a state in the Middle East, one simply has to ask: is this a state created by Britain, or one built on an independent support base? Countries in the latter category get attacked, whilst those in the former are aided in consolidating their power and crushing the opposition.

Egypt, however, does not fit so neatly into either category. Egypt under Mubarak was neither a total stooge regime nor fully independent; neither a Libya nor a Qatar. Although the country had freed itself from its’ British-imposed king in 1952, since the Israeli peace accord of 1979, it had been widely viewed as a client state of the US and a key ally of Israel. Mubarak’s standing in the Arab world reached a nadir during the Israeli onslaught against Gaza in 2008-9, which even became known as the ‘Mubarak massacre’ for his refusal to open the border to fleeing Palestinians. Nevertheless, imposing regime change on Libya was going to be difficult for the West with Mubarak in charge next door. He had developed a friendly relationship with Gaddafi over the years, and seemed to be moving closer to Iran . A UN report in 2006 even accused him of training the Islamic Courts Union – the Somali government which the US were working so hard to destroy – and he, along with Gaddafi, had opposed the expansion of AFRICOM – the US military’s ‘Africa Command’ – on the continent. A client who thinks he can conduct his own foreign policy is clearly missing the point. Removing Mubarak whilst keeping intact rule of his country by a military in hoc to the US may have come to be seen as the preferred option in London and Washington – especially if this option were to divide the revolutionary movement and take the wind out of its sails. Recent events in Egypt – such as the Egyptian airforce strike on ‘Islamic militants’ in the Sinai, and the closure of the tunnels to Gaza – a lifeline for Palestinians to which Mubarak had to some extent turned a blind eye – suggest that the new government in Egypt is more than happy to do the bidding of the neo-colonisers.

By Dan Glazebrook

21 August, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and journalist. He writes regularly on international relations and the use of state violence in British domestic and foreign policy.. He can be reached at danglazebrook2000@yahoo.co.uk

“Iran’s leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment…. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…. I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests.”

— Barack Obama at an AIPAK meeting in Washington D.C., March 2012

Iran since the Islamic Revolution (1979) is another unbeatable adversary for America. Nevertheless, America and its allies have not abandoned their regime-change efforts in Iran. After the failure of the “mass movement” for democracy in the wake of the so-called rigged parliamentary elections in mid-2009 in Iran, America was back to square one. It simply under-estimated the “raw power of nationalism” in Iran, that is, the average Iranian was not willing to accept America as a friend. Since then America has been vigorously projecting Iran as an imminent nuclear threat to Israel and other countries in the region. In March 2012, Obama told Netanyahu to wait and see if “crippling sanctions” against Iran worked. In March 2012, Obama also threatened Iran at an AIPAK meeting in Washington: “Iran’s leaders should know that I do not have a policy of containment…. I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon…. I will not hesitate to use force when it is necessary to defend the United States and its interests”. While Israel had been publicly threatening to bomb Iran’s “nuclear facilities” in early 2012, Obama offered to give Israel advanced weaponry — including bunker-busting bombs and refueling planes — in exchange for Israel’s agreement not to attack Iran “until 2013, after US elections”. Meanwhile, Israel is allegedly fabricating a “smoking gun” to justify its attack on Iran; and its spies disguised as Iranian soldiers, have already been working inside Iran. Several incidents of Iranian nuclear scientists being assassinated by unknown assailants for several years may be mentioned in this regard. Iranian and foreign experts are pointing fingers at Israel for these assassinations.

As we know, Western nations – directly or indirectly – controlled Iran up to the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Although the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company by the Government in 1951 signaled the end of British hegemony in Iran, the short-lived freedom of Iran was over with the CIA-sponsored military coup in 1953 that toppled the elected nationalist government of Prime Minister Mossadegh. Interestingly, Iran’s Shiite clerics under the leadership of Ayatollah Kashani (CIA is said to have bribed the Ayatollah) actively supported the anti- Mossadegh coup. The coup was followed by a period of twenty-five years of tyranny under the Shah, while American and British oil companies owned eighty per cent of the oil revenue. Afterwards Iran was practically an American protectorate up to the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Since then – thanks to Iran’s avowedly anti-American and anti-Israeli stand – we have hardly heard anything positive about the country. George W. Bush in 2002 abruptly named Iran, together with Iraq and North Korea, among his “Axis of Evil”. Iranians least expected this from America while relations between the two countries had remarkably improved in the previous five years. In 1998, President Khatami extended an olive branch to America stressing the need for “dialogue among civilizations”. Former senior policy makers like Brzezinski and Scowcroft also favored a rapprochement with Iran.

The series of Western misadventures and support for external aggressors like Saddam Hussein (who invaded Iran in 1980 and got tacit Western support till the end of the Iraq-Iran War in 1988) and internal dissidents like the “Marxist-Islamist” Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MeK) have failed to overthrow the ayatollahs. Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has documented evidences of American troops training Iranian terrorist MeK guerrillas in Nevada desert (during 2005 and 2008). Interestingly, America is backing the MeK, which it formally declared as a terrorist group in 1997. Soon after the Iranian Revolution in 1979, MeK fighters stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took diplomats and staff hostage for 444 days. MeK fighters had fought for Saddam Hussein and were captured by US troops in 2003. In 2004, considering them “protected persons” not POWs, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld decided to release them. In 2007, President Bush set aside part of the $400 million, allocated for overthrowing the Iranian regime, for the MeK.

In the above backdrop, it is evident that US hawks and neocons are adamant to fight the Islamic regime of Iran, which they portray as a “fundamentalist autocracy” and a “totalitarian one-party state” modeled on fascism and communism. “By 2002-2003, the joke making the rounds in Washington was: ‘Everybody wants to go to Baghdad; real men want to go to Tehran’.” As Samir Amin points out, America and Israel, “under the pretext of its [Iran’s] nuclear development”, would like to destroy the country as it “does constitute an obstacle to the deployment of the US military control over the region. This country must, therefore, be destroyed”. Although it is time that Americans realize Iranians hate America more intensely than they hate the ayatollahs, we notice American analysts and policymakers debating what would be the best time to attack Iran. Rejecting skeptics of military action against Iran, hawkish American analysts and policy makers believe that a military strike to destroy “Iran’s nuclear program” could only spare the world from a nuclear-armed Iran. Some even consider Obama foolish for not considering “tiny Iran” a serious threat to America.

However, it is least likely that America will attack Iran in the near future. Israeli human rights activist Uri Avnery believes that: “The United States will not attack [Iran]. Not this year, nor in years to come. For a reason far more important than electoral considerations or military limitations. The United States will not attack, because an attack would spell a national disaster for itself and a sweeping disaster for the whole world.” Avnery believes that Israel is also not likely to attack Iran as the latter’s closing down the Strait of Hormuz in the wake of an attack would spell disaster for the entire world. To close the discussion on American and Israeli hawks’ “Iran Obsession”, we may argue that Iran is not a threat to anybody in the region, let alone America or any NATO power in the foreseeable future. We have reasons to believe that Iran has no reason to build nuclear weapons (unless it is forced to do so). We may agree with Robert Fisk that Iran has already “won almost all its recent wars without firing a shot” as America and NATO destroyed “Iran’s nemesis in Iraq” by defeating Saddam Hussein and killing thousands of Sunni militants. Fisk believes that arming Arab states in the Gulf is counterproductive as armies in these countries “could scarcely operate soup kitchens” let alone fight Iran. Last but not least, unlike Iraq, Iran would not be another cakewalk for America. There are people in the Pentagon who believe that Iran could “spell disaster for the United States and its military” in the Persian Gulf. However, some Americans’ “Iran Obsession” is so intense that some influential American plaintiffs ten years after 9/11 implicated the Iranian government and its top leaders, along with Bin Laden and the Taliban regime of Afghanistan, in the attacks on September 11, 2011.

Meanwhile, in April 2012, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain decided to form a union called the Arabian Gulf Union, in opposition to the Iranian efforts to form a union with Iraq. Meanwhile, America has been arming conservative Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Kuwait and Qatar. America’s double standard in missile proliferation in the Gulf is noteworthy. A State Department official said in early 2012 that the US was “working hard to prevent missile proliferation [in the Gulf].” Vijay Prashad has aptly inferred, “such hypocrisy could be disheartening” as it essentially means that “the Good Guys (the monarchs) can have missiles, but the Bad Guys (the Iranians) cannot”. One may agree with Kenneth Waltz that in view of Israel’s nuclear capability, a nuclear-armed Iran would bring stability in the entire region.

One is not sure if US policymakers pay heed to the Russian interests in Iran and the entire South Caucasus region; and what Russia is likely to do in the event of an US-Israeli invasion of Iran. Iran is vital for controlling (what Brzezinski wrote in his 1998 book, The Grand Chessboard) “about three-quarters of the known energy resources in the world”. Russia is least likely to allow any foreign power control Iran and the oil and gas fields in the region. Russian troops and a missile division have already been stationed in and around Iran, including Armenia and the Caspian Sea. Russian aircraft carrier Kuznetsov frequently visits the Syrian port Tartous following the conflict in that country in late 2011. It is noteworthy that in April 2012 General Leonid Ivashov, President of the Academy of Geopolitical Science wrote that “a war against Iran would be a war against Russia” and he also sought closer ties with China and India for stable Iran and Syria. American use of Azarbaijan airfields against Iran could provoke Russia to interfere, signaling a major war in Southern Caucasus and beyond. Meanwhile, Russia is quite apprehensive of NATO’s missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe. While the then President Medvedev warned the NATO in 2011 that Russia would retaliate militarily if Russia and America could not come to an agreement on the missile defense system, the Russian Chief of Chief of General Staff Nikolai Makarov went even further. On 3rd May 2012 he told senior US and NATO officials at an international conference that Russia would not hesitate using “destructive force preemptively” against NATO if the situation worsens further.

As Russia considers both Syria and Iran vital for its strategic interests in the Middle East, any US-NATO and / or Israeli attack on these countries could drag Russia into the conflict zones. Some analysts believe that America “is more seriously preparing for military action against Iran than is widely realized”. After the failure of the third round of talks between Iran and the P5+1 Group (Five UN Security Council Members plus Germany) in June 2012 over Iran’s nuclear program, America seems to be preparing for an attack on Iran in early 2013. It does not want Israel to do the job as US hawks believe “it is much better that the US ‘does the job properly’ than lets Israel, with its much smaller forces, take the lead”. The Pentagon has already earmarked what types of aircraft, bombs and missiles it should use, and from which bases – Fairford in Gloucestershire, England, and Diego Garcia to be precise – in the invasion of Iran. The US would like to use B-2s (“Stealth Bombers”) and F-22s, F-15E and F-16 strike aircraft and air-to-surface standoff missiles (JASSMS). However, as Paul Rogers observes, “nothing has been learnt [by America] from the experience of two long and bloody wars, and that is the real cause for worry”.

As discussed earlier, America needs a major war every ten years or so for reasons known to those who understand the dynamics of the American Military-Industrial Complex. We also know that a US retired General Wesley Clark has also re-iterated this by revealing the Pentagon’s confidential list of seven Muslim-majority countries that the US had been planning to invade since September 2001. The list includes Iraq, Syria and Iran. American politicians, media and think tanks have been untiringly demonizing Iran since the Islamic Revolution to justify the invasion. Meanwhile, the US administration wholeheartedly supported Saddam Hussein’s eight-year-long war against Iran (1980-1988) to bleed and weaken both the belligerents for its long-term strategic interests in the entire region. Of late we notice an alarming growth in the anti-Iranian campaigns in prestigious American dailies, magazines and think tank reports (along with the vitriol of politicians). Quoting the Associated Press the Washington Post and many other print and electronic media in America in late June and early July 2012 circulated a story about Iran’s alleged terror plan (said to have been unearthed by Kenyan officials who had arrested two Iranian “agents”) to attack the US, Britain, Israel or Saudi Arabian interests in Kenya. We even find the prestigious Time magazine and Foreign Policy publishing sensational items on Iran’s testing long-range missiles, capable of hitting Israel (with no mention of Israel’s capability to nuke countries in the region, including Iran). It is least likely that a country like Iran, which is under constant threat of attacks by Israel and/or America for its alleged nuclear program, would sponsor terrorist attacks on America or Israel to provoke retaliatory attacks by them.

By Taj Hashmi

21 August, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Taj Hashmi teaches at the Austin Peay State University, Clarksville, Tennessee

The Syrian crisis has been dragging on for over 18 months now with no imminently favorable results for the rebels.

There were early sparse peaceful protests here and there in cities but all vestiges of such protests are gone altogether. Instead, we see cities pass from hand to hand and people killed as part of ‘collateral damage’. ‘Collateral damage’ is not my favorite phrase. On the contrary, I find it odious. But who is really to blame for the human loss in Syria?

An absence of popular protests renders it rather far-fetched to relate the crisis to the manifestations of an uprising. For example, there has not been even one instance of self-immolation to reflect the acme of social despair and economic frustration in the country as in Cyprus, Egypt, Israel and elsewhere. This of course does not rule out the idea that there are certainly reforms to be made in Syria as in all parts of the world.

Despite an incredibly massive disinformation campaign waged by western media outlets to depict Bashar Assad as the ‘Bad Guy’ and the effluvium of money to the insurgents from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the USA and the UK to mention only a few, President Bashar Assad does not seem to be willing to step down from power and abandon it to the care of the Saudis or the Americans so they may install a West-friendly puppet regime to cater to a wide range of demands and tastes including those of the Zionists, the West and other Arab puppet regimes as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan.

There are reports that indicate the regime of Qatar has allocated USD 300 million as political incentives for Syrian officials to defect. Defection is indeed a very significant move and can gravely tarnish the image of any government and question the very legitimacy of it. So, the enemies of Syria are capitalizing on this effective ruse. Qatar’s envoy in Mauritania reportedly offered his Syrian counterpart an advance payment of one million US dollars and a monthly salary of $20,000 over 20 years in a bid to convince him to defect and publicly blast ‘the atrocities of Syrian government’. According to a report carried by Lebanese-based Al-Manar TV, Syrian envoy in Mauritania Hamad Seed Albni was also offered a permanent residence in Doha, but he declined the offer.

From a political point of view, the defectors can be shrewdly used to deal a lethal blow to a government by twisting the realities on the ground to the benefit of those who finance and support them and to the loss of the government from which they have defected. Syria’s former Prime Minister Riyad Farid Hijab, who fled to Jordan (a safe haven for defectors) last week, is typical of such a case. He made a public appearance on Tuesday for the first time since his defection and branded the Syrian regime as the ‘enemy of God’. He further said that the government of President Bashar Assad was “crumbling internally under the pressure of relentless fighting against rebels, and from betrayals by loyalists who want only to flee” (The New York Times, August 14, 2012). It is not yet known if he has defected out of his strongly internalized personal beliefs or if he has been lured into Jordan by Qatar-promised generous offers. Syrian rebels have been mobilizing Prime Minister Riyad Hijab and some ministers for the last four months, an opposition official told the Global Times after Hijab fled the country.

In addition to Hijab, some top officials have so far defected including Syrian representatives in the United Arab Emirates and Iraq, Abdel Latif al-Dabbagh and Nawaf al-Fares.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently made a visit to Turkey and discussed with Turkish officials how to support the rebels in Syria in order to “end the violence and begin the transition to a free, democratic Syria without Assad”.

“We are continuing to increase pressure from the outside. Our number-one goal is to hasten the end of the bloodshed and the Assad regime,” she said.

It goes without saying that the only goal the US is seeking to achieve is to put an end once and for all to a government antagonistic to Washington’s interests in the region.

Hillary Clinton said the United States and Turkey are considering imposing no-fly zones and other steps on Syria to help rebel forces.

“It is one thing to talk about all kinds of potential actions, but you cannot make reasoned decisions without doing intense analysis and operational planning,” Clinton said. “Our intelligence services, our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that.”

In fact, Lady Bountiful is making herculean efforts to tailor a western suit to fit the Zionists and the Wahhabis alike.

The naked truth is that any time the US steps in to force changes in a country, it certainly seeks to serves its own long-term interests. Look at Libya, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The interests are not necessarily financial. They might be of intelligence and military interests only to be used later for expanding their colonialist pursuits.

By Ismail Salami

16 August, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

US efforts to bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria focus on collusion with Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Turkey is the only regional power that could successfully front a proxy war with Syria, behind which Washington could call the shots. The AKP is also viewed as the best political force to head a Sunni-based regional alliance movement incorporating Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The US has worked to coordinate the military operation in Syria through the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Free Syrian Army (FSA), which is controlled by Ankara and made up of most of the forces the US would seek to impose as a post-Assad client regime. This includes not just its own long-time assets, drawn from ex-members of the Baathist regime and its nominally liberal bourgeois opponents, but above all the Muslim Brotherhood.

The Brotherhood has already formed regimes that the Obama administration is working with in Tunisia and Egypt to secure US regional interests in the aftermath of the fall of Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak.

Along with these layers, the US also relies on Al Qaeda elements from Iraq, Libya and elsewhere to act as shock troops, funded and armed by the Saudi and Qatari governments.

The FSA, no less than the Al Qaeda-linked groups, operates as a Sunni sectarian force. But a command structure based in Turkey and the presence of a few trusted “liberal” figures in its ranks has been used by Washington in a concerted propaganda effort to conceal the sectarian character of the opposition and its ties to Al Qaeda elements.

However, the growing role of Salafist forces has proven politically embarrassing to the US. Thus, for weeks, US officials have been placing reports in the media stressing that it has CIA operatives working to control the supply of arms to the insurgency—which the New York Times described as being “funnelled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.…”

US secretary of state Hillary Clinton’s visit to Istanbul on Saturday aimed to strengthen US/Turkey cooperation and reinforce US operational control of the insurgency. Clinton made her most significant statement when she raised the possibility of establishing a no-fly zone, but her remarks also referenced “very intensive operational planning” by military and intelligence officials that aims to “get into the real details.”

Washington’s broader regional ambitions were underscored that weekend by coordinated announcements by the Treasury and State Department, accusing Iran and Hezbollah of training Syrian army forces. A Treasury statement cited Hezbollah’s secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, as personally overseeing the operation.

Turkey has made repeated indications that it is ready to mount a military incursion into Syria, citing the threat posed by the control established by Kurdish groups over border areas. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has warned, “We have three brigades along the border currently conducting manoeuvres there…. It is out of question for us to tolerate a structure of the terrorist organisation in the north of Syria….”

On August 7, Erdogan made an incendiary attack on Assad, asking, “Can we even say that he is a Muslim?”

Citing the danger of a Kurdish insurrection is not just a device for justifying a military assault on Syria. Erdogan indeed faces the threat of mounting unrest among Turkey’s 20 million Kurds and the prospect of a separatist movement emerging in Syria’s northeastern border area.

Syrian border regions are under the de-facto control of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and the Kurdish National Council (KNC). The PYD is the more substantial force and is affiliated with Turkey’s Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).

Erdogan has attempted to counter the PKK’s influence by seeking an accommodation with Massoud Barzani, the president of Iraqi Kurdistan. These efforts have been far from successful, with Barzani lending his support for the effort at establishing a Syrian Kurdish enclave. Moreover, the attempt to cultivate Barzani has angered the Sunni-dominated central government in Iraq, particularly a deal to set up a pipeline to carry oil and gas from Kirkuk to Ceyhan and developing trade worth billions of dollars.

Kirkuk is a disputed city that the Kurds want to incorporate into their region. Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, this month made a provocative visit to Kurdistan that included a visit to Kirkuk.

Iraqi prime minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a statement Saturday that Turkey is “dealing with the [Kurdistan] region as an independent state, and this is rejected by us.”

Total of France has also been told it will be required to sell its minority stake in the Halfaya oilfield in Iraq unless it cancels a deal acquiring licences controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government.

Writing in Middle East Online, James M. Dorsey notes that the potential fallout from the proxy war in Syria “ranges from the exodus of many of its 2.1 million Christians from what they fear will be a Sunni-dominated post-Assad Syria, to the emergence of Kurdish areas in Syria as a new flashpoint in Turkey’s intermittent war against Kurdish insurgents. It also risks a greater assertiveness of Turkey’s Alevis, a Shiite sect akin to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawites that account for 20 percent of its population.”

For this reason, Erdogan’s Syrian policy has aroused significant opposition within Turkey. In Milliyet, for example, Metin Munir denounced the government for “seeking to gain points through its pro-Sunni and anti-Jewish policies…. Syria is being divided, which poses an extreme threat to Turkey.”

Erdogan has described Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party as being “just like” the Baath Party in Syria.

The PKK calculates that it will succeed in establishing an autonomous or independent region in Syria and can strike its own deal with the US and other imperialist powers. The August 13 edition of Rudaw, produced in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, interviews a prominent former member of the PKK leadership council, Nizamaddin Taj.

He states that a “Syrian Kurdistan” can be created, just as “the Kurds of Iraq benefited from the American invasion of Iraq,” providing only that Barzani does not compete with the PKK “due to pressure from Turkey or a goal of seizing power quickly in Syrian Kurdistan.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood in Syria is the only party that can seize power after the collapse of Assad, but Israel, the US and Europe are very worried about the Muslim Brotherhood of Syria and believe that they are different than the Muslim Brotherhood groups of Egypt and Tunisia,” he surmises. “The world needs a player in Syria that could rival the Sunnis in Syria. The Alawites cannot play this role. Therefore, the Kurds in Syria will become an important partner in the new Syrian state.”

Under such incendiary conditions, Erdogan’s operations on Syria’s border can become not only the occasion for a direct assault on Damascus and Aleppo, in alliance with Washington, but for a conflict that would also be waged on the soil of Iraq and Turkey itself.

By Chris Marsden

16 August, 2012

@ WSWS.org

A leaked memo that surfaced Wednesday provides a detailed blueprint for an unprovoked Israeli war against Iran. The publication of the memo coincides with multiple Israeli media reports indicating that such an attack may be imminent.

The memo was first published by US blogger and journalist Richard Silverstein and was subsequently picked up by the BBC and other media. Silverstein said that the document had been passed by a member of the Israel Defense Forces to a politician, and then on to him. He said it had been prepared for the eight-member Israeli Security Council as part of a bid by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak to convince other members of the government to support an early and unilateral Israeli strike.

The memo posted on Silverstein’s blog, Tikun Olam, states: “The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime.” The aim is to shut down all communications between the Iranian government and military, leaving the country’s leadership in the dark about what is happening at key installations and bases. Carbon fiber munitions would be employed to shut down the country’s electrical grid.

Meanwhile, “A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran,” the memo states. These would be fired by Israeli submarines from the Persian Gulf region against Iranian nuclear facilities at Arak, Isfahan, Fordo and elsewhere. They would be supplemented by “a barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles” aimed at destroying the regime’s command and control capacity and decapitating Iran’s nuclear and missile development program, targeting the “residences of senior personnel.”

These attacks would be followed up by Israeli Air Force warplanes carrying out air strikes against “targets which require further assault.”

Clearly, such an assault would inflict massive civilian casualties while plunging the entire region into chaos.

The memo is only the latest in a number of reports over the past week indicating that Netanyahu and Barak are making a concerted push for war, having publicly declared that the stalemated international negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program are a failure and that economic sanctions have not swayed Tehran to abandon the program. The Iranian government insists that its nuclear activities are for peaceful purposes.

Matan Vilnai, who is leaving his post as Israel’s “home front” defense minister to become the Zionist state’s ambassador to China, gave an interview published in the Israeli daily Maariv Wednesday in which he spelled out the government’s projections for the domestic impact of a war on Iran.

Vilnai told Maariv that “the home front is ready as never before” for a war with Iran. “There is no room for hysteria” he said, estimating that approximately 500 people within Israel would probably be killed in retaliatory strikes. “There might be fewer dead, or more, perhaps… but this is the scenario for which we are preparing, in accordance with the best expert advice.”

Israelis had no choice but to accept such a death toll, Vilnai suggested. “Just as the citizens of Japan have to realize they can have earthquakes, so the citizens of Israel have to realize that if they live here, they have to be prepared to expect missiles on the home front. It’s not pleasant for the home front, but decisions have to be made and we have to be ready.” Recent polls have indicated continued strong public opposition to a war with Iran.

The war, Vilnai said, “will last 30 days on several fronts,” according to the government’s assessments. The implication is that Israel would be involved in hostilities not only with Iran, but also with the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah as well Palestinian fighters in the Gaza Strip.

Vilnai is being replaced in his “home front” post by Avi Dichter, the former director of Israel’s internal security agency, Shin Bet, Netanyahu announced on Tuesday. The appointment of Dichter, who resigned from the opposition Kadima party to take the post, was widely seen as part of the war preparations as well as a move to bolster support for an attack within the government.

As director of Israel’s General Security Service (GSS) from 2000 to 2005, Dichter was responsible for choosing the targets of Israel’s so-called “targeted assassinations,” the Zionist regime’s response to the second Palestinian intifada. These extra-judicial executions claimed some 724 lives, including those of at least 228 civilian bystanders, of whom 77 were children.

New civil defense measures are being taken in preparation for war, including the rolling out of a text message system for warning the population against incoming missiles, the distribution of more gas masks, and the organization of air raid drills at schools in the north of Israel when they open next month

An indication of the seriousness with which the war threats are being taken internationally is their impact on Israel’s economy. Fears of an Israeli attack have sent the shekel to its lowest level in nearly 15 months, while the Tel Aviv stock market hit a three-week low on August 13. Meanwhile, the cost of insuring Israeli debt has risen steadily—what traders are calling a “saber-rattling” premium.

There have been multiple reports indicating that the stepped-up threats of war against Iran are driven not so much by new intelligence about the Iranian nuclear program as by the US election calendar. Yedioth Ahronoth, Israel’s largest circulation daily, published a report by two of its senior journalists last Friday stating, “Insofar as it depends on Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, an Israeli military strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran will take place in these coming autumn months, before the US elections in November.”

On Tuesday, the daily Ma’ariv reported that Netanyahu and Barak have set a September 25 deadline for US President Barack Obama to make a commitment that the US will take military action against Iran. The date coincides with the opening of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which Netanyahu is scheduled to attend.

Israel’s Channel 10 News reported Tuesday that US and Israeli officials are seeking to set up a meeting between Netanyahu and Obama around that date. At that time, the sources said, Obama will supposedly commit to using military force against Iran by June 2013 if Tehran has not submitted by then to Western demands that it scrap its nuclear program.

Netanyahu’s calculation appears to be that launching a war before the November election in the US would force the Obama administration to join Israel in attacking Iran out of fear of being out-flanked on the right by Republican nominee Mitt Romney, who recently visited Israel and declared that the US should support the Israeli regime if it launches a unilateral war.

According to military analysts, Israel does not have the military capacity to wipe out Iran’s nuclear program, but could set it back at least two years through air strikes. Drawing the US into an attack holds the prospect of inflicting far more extensive damage as well as the potential for an all-out war for regime-change.

Much has been made in the Israeli media of opposition from within the top ranks of Israel’s military and its intelligence apparatus to launching a unilateral attack. A number of former military and spy chiefs have spoken publicly in opposition to Tel Aviv carrying out an imminent war. These divisions, however, are of a tactical character, involving different calculations as to how best to prepare a war that would bring in the US military.

Speaking at a Pentagon press conference Tuesday, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta voiced the view that the Israeli regime had yet to make a decision as to “whether or not they will go in and attack Iran at this time.” He stressed that Israel is an “independent… sovereign country” and would act “based on what they think is in their national security interest.”

Panetta went on to make his own provocative attack on Iran in relation to the unfolding civil war in Syria. Presenting no evidence, he claimed that Iran was “trying to train a militia within Syria to be able to fight on behalf of the regime.” The defense secretary said that Iran’s role was “dangerous” and was “adding to the killing that’s going on.” He added, “The Syrian people ought to determine their future, not Iran.”

These remarks reek of hypocrisy. The reality is that it is Israel, not Iran, that is armed with hundreds of nuclear weapons. Meanwhile, in Syria, the US and its allies, particularly the reactionary monarchies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar as well as the government in Turkey, are deeply involved in organizing, arming and training the sectarian militias that are waging a terror campaign to topple the Assad regime. The unsubstantiated charge against Iran that it is assisting its ally Syria with the training of a pro-government militia is yet another threat against Tehran and one more indication that the intervention in Syria is directed at preparing a far more dangerous war against Iran itself.

Under conditions in which the US military has deployed a massive force in the Persian Gulf, including two aircraft carrier battle groups and extensive air power, bolstered by a squadron of the most advanced F-22 fighter planes, the threats and provocations from both Washington and Tel Aviv have ratcheted up tensions to a level in which the outbreak of a full-scale war is on a hair trigger.

By Bill Van Auken

16 August, 2012

@ WSWS.org

“Naturally, the common people don’t want war, neither in Russia nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country that determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship… All you have to do is to tell them that they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Herman Goering, interviewed in Spandau Prison

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Menken

Owners of night-clubs in modern cities are sometimes visited by gangsters who offer them “protection”, and demand a fee for this service. The owners usually pay up. They know what will happen if they don’t.

One is reminded of the feudal system of the Middle Ages, in which industrious peasants paid for “protection” with a large fraction of their produce. Their gangster-like protectors, the knights and barons, did no useful work. All they did was to fight with each other.

How much is it exactly that we pay today for “protection”? The total world military budgets cost us 1.7 trillion dollars each year ¨C that is to say, 1,700,000,000,000 dollars, an amount of money almost too large to be imagined. What do we get for this? We do not get anything useful. We get war, a universal source of poverty, destruction of infrastructure, and human suffering.

The people of the world do not want war. Even Hermann Goering knew this. The military-industrial complexes throughout the world want war ¨C they live on it ¨C without it they would wither. Governments make war, contrary to the will of their peoples, because they are controlled by a great river of money from the world’s military-industrial complexes. This huge torrent of money drives the war machine ¨C the devil’s dynamo ¨C the protection racket – making slaves of our politicians.

Today the latest means of “alarming the populace” (in Menkin’s words) is “terrorism”. We have to be “protected from terrorism”. This goal has the highest priority, although the total number of people killed by terrorist actions is vanishingly small when compared to the number of children who die of starvation each year, and even vanishingly small compared to the number of people killed in traffic accidents. Nevertheless, we are constantly reminded of terrorism by checks at airports, whose main purpose is undoubtedly to make us conscious of the danger of terrorism.

But must we really be driven like sheep by false threats? Can we not see through the protection racket and free ourselves from it?

By John Scales Avery

21 August, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

John Avery received a B.Sc. in theoretical physics from MIT and an M.Sc. from the University of Chicago. He later studied theoretical chemistry at the University of London, and was awarded a Ph.D. there in 1965. He is now Lektor Emeritus, Associate Professor, at the Department of Chemistry, University of Copenhagen. Fellowships, memberships in societies: Since 1990 he has been the Contact Person in Denmark for Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs. In 1995, this group received the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts. He was the Member of the Danish Peace Commission of 1998. Technical Advisor, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe (1988- 1997). Chairman of the Danish Peace Academy, April 2004. http://www.fredsakademiet.dk/ordbog/aord/a220.htm

The German military and related intelligence agencies are playing a far greater role in supporting anti-Assad forces in Syria than previously reported. On Sunday the Bildzeitung published a report on German army and Federal Intelligence Service (BND) operations on the Syrian border, where they are providing military aid to the Free Syrian Army (FSA).

The paper reported that a German reconnaissance ship was stationed off the coast of Syria, employing the latest BND technology to monitor the country. On the same day a spokesperson for the German Defence Ministry confirmed the report. It is “true that a ship is currently on a several month deployment in the region”, he said.

Although the Ministry declined to designate the ship as a “spy boat”, it admits that the ship in question is the Oker, part of the German navy’s fleet of “early warning, communications and reconnaissance units”.

The spokesperson refused to confirm whether BND technology was on board, saying that no operational details of the current use of the ship would be issued. A member of the parliamentary control committee (PKG), Fritz-Rudolf Körper (Social Democratic Party) confirmed, however, that BND technology was being used.

According to the Bildzeitung, the ship’s instruments can observe troop movements up to 600 kilometers inside Syria. This data is then shared with the United States and Britain, as well as with Syrian rebels.

The newspaper also pointed out that BND agents were stationed at the Turkish NATO post of Adana, monitoring telephone and radio communications in Syria. The German operation also involves maintaining informal contact with sources in the immediate vicinity of the Assad regime. According to an anonymous US intelligence official, “No Western intelligence has such good sources in Syria as the BND”.

Under German law the deployment of the Oker requires a mandate from the German parliament. The ship is part of the ongoing UNIFIL mission in the region, but has no mandate to carry out its mission of military intelligence. So far, however, all measures have been carried out in secret and without a vote in the German parliament.

German military and intelligence assistance to the rebels joins a long list of similar maneuvers that have come to the attention of the German public piecemeal in recent weeks.

In July the weekly newspaper Die Zeit revealed that the German government set up a secret think tank in Berlin at the start of this year. Its aim is to provide support to Syrian rebels for the “day after”—i.e., for the period after the toppling of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad. To this end the organization has flown in up to 50 Syrian “rebels.”

Together with the United Arab Emirates, Germany is also fronting the “Economic Reconstruction and Development” working group as part of the “Group of Friends of the Syrian people”. The working group is tasked with developing plans for the mass privatization of state enterprises and the introduction of a market economy after Assad’s overthrow.

Both projects are supported directly and indirectly with millions of euros from the federal government. In addition German navy vessels are patrolling the coast of Lebanon where large shipments of arms to the Syrian rebels take place. Although the official job of the navy is to prevent arms smuggling, no delivery to the rebels has so far been intercepted.

In early August the German Foreign Office set up a cross-departmental “Task Force Syria” aiming, in the words of Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, to “co-ordinate even more intensively the numerous tasks of the federal government.” This working group will be led by the Middle East representative of the Foreign Ministry, Boris Ruge, who previously claimed that the main problem in the region was the growing influence of Iran and Hezbollah.

The latest revelations on the activities of the German armed forces make it clear that the remit of the Task Force includes working closely with the FSA to impose regime change in Damascus.

Regime change in Syria would be a direct preparation for destabilizing Iran. Regarding Israeli preparations for war against Iran, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Knesset in 2008: “As German chancellor I regard the security of Israel as non-negotiable—and this means that we cannot respond with mere words in the hour of danger.”

This doctrine has been put into action, with the delivery of submarines largely funded by the federal government to Israel. A report in the news magazine Der Spiegel reveals that upon arriving in Israel, the submarines can be equipped with nuclear cruise missiles that could then be used against Iran.

All of these military operations are deeply unpopular with the German population. A recent survey found that only 12 percent of the population agrees with German military intervention in Syria. Just 13 percent favor military and financial support for the anti-Assad forces.

This opposition, however, finds no echo amount in the political establishment. While individual members of the Greens and the Left Party have called for a parliamentary vote on the deployment of the Oker, both parties support the actions of the German government and refuse to organize any opposition.

Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer (Green Party) even advocated setting up a no-fly zone over Syria like that established in Libya, as a pretext for direct military intervention.

“A major humanitarian disaster is looming there,” he argued. “That’s why I’m generally in favor of setting up a no-fly zone.”

The Green Party parliamentary leader in the Bundestag, Jürgen Trittin, also complained that the UN observer mission was unable to prevent massacres in Hula and the mission should therefore be “strengthened”. He did not say what such “strengthening” would entail.

In a few statements, the Left Party expresses its opposition to arms shipments to the rebels as well as to the Assad regime. But at the same time they demand all means be used to support the country’s opposition to bring about regime change.

During the Iraq war and the occupation of Afghanistan, some limited opposition was organized by Germany’s peace movement. Today, however, most of its representatives have shifted completely into the camp of imperialism. Rather than condemning the warmongering of the Western powers, one prominent initiative—Friedenskooperative—is active collecting money for the rebels as part of its “adopt a revolution” campaign.

The standpoint of these groups shifts according to the orientation of German foreign policy, which is assuming an increasingly aggressive form. They are bound with multiple ties to the government and official opposition and share their basic interests.

By Christoph Dreier

21 August, 2012

@ WSWS.org

Ramadan is supposed to be a month of charity. Instead, it has become a month of gluttony and ostentation. The rich compete to show off their fancy buffets and restaurants attract customers with their extravagant menus. Politicians host lavish iftars only to impress potential voters and supporters. The poor, however, are never prominent on the agendas of governments or opposition movements alike.

No one speaks of the poor anymore; not in the West and not in the East. Western socialist parties have been transformed into liberal capitalist parties willing to tear down the welfare state in return for votes from middle class people who have been inculcated with hatred for the poor. Socialist parties in the West are merely (since the successful political example of Bill Clinton) mild versions of the right-wing parties.

In the Arab world, the Left is in a state of decline and leftist parties have often been either hostile to the poor or totally oblivious about their presence. There is no war on poverty in any Arab or Islamic state: and if one was to be declared, the World Bank would intervene to end it, as it did in Brazil when it fought the anti-poverty program of then president Lula.

Islamist parties, like the Muslim Brotherhood, are parties for the middle classes, regardless of all reputation to the contrary in the Western media. Muhammad was mocked by his pagan enemies in Mecca about the poverty of his supporters and he is reputed to have answered: fakhri faqri (my poverty is my pride). There is no such championing of the poor among present-day Islamists of the various kinds. Hezbollah sat and watched as Rafik Hariri pushed through a most aggressive and cruel neo-liberal agenda in Lebanon. The party remains silent on the socio-economic injustices in Lebanon and its former Minister of Electric Power, Mohammad Fneish, supported the privatization of electric power, which won him praise from the Hariri family.

The Arab poor are invisible yet they are everywhere. They are in the streets as beggars and as homeless people, and they are in tent cities and cemeteries. The poor are the obscenity in the age of gulf oil and gas extravagance. The current Saudi King admitted that there are poor in the land of plenty but did nothing about it. The gifts that the Arab royals bestow on Western rulers and royalties would be enough to eradicate Arab poverty. But bowing to the white man is in the genes of Arab royals.

Arab socialist movements used to speak about the poor, but such movements are long gone, and some have reached power (in Syria and Iraq under the Baath) and their socialism turned into a grotesque form of Kleptocracy. The Syrian uprising started as a revolt by the rural poor against the wealthy royal families of the center.

The poor, however, are woefully disorganized and promises of heaven for them – as Nasser famously warned – don’t suffice. Not in the slightest.

By As’ad AbuKhalil

8 August 2012

@ Angry Corner