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Israel continues to threaten Iran, despite the new dawn in Iranian diplomacy spearheaded by President Rouhani.

By Akbar Ganji

22 Oct 2013

@ Al Jazeera

During his eight-year presidency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad repeatedly used inhumane and absurd language to speak about the existence of Israel and cast doubt on the catastrophic events of the Holocaust, and by doing so he served extremists such as Israel’s Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu well, to the extent that he was favoured by many Israeli officials in the presidential elections of 2009.

Netanyahu, who is the biggest loser in the outcome of Iran’s last presidential elections, called President Hassan Rouhani a “wolf in sheep’s clothing”, alleging that he smiles while building a nuclear bomb.

In my recent article, Iran’s olive branch, I demonstrate the fallacy of Netanyahu’s arguments. The fact is that Netanyahu and his government have tried to bring the Iran “nuclear threat” to the foreground in order to sideline other major issues, including the continued occupation of Palestinian lands and denying citizenship rights to its inhabitants. The fact that has been neglected is that Israel has been building hundreds of nuclear warheads and it threatens Iran with military attacks.

Iran’s nuclear bomb is a product of Israel’s propaganda. Since 1992, Netanyahu and current Israeli President Shimon Peres have repeatedly claimed that Iran will build a nuclear weapon over the next few years. Here are  two out of many examples:

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is three to five years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the US”.

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. “Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East,” Peres warned, “because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militancy.”

After 21 years, Netanyahu is now declaring that if Iran possesses 250kg of uranium enriched at 20 percent, Israel will bomb its nuclear sites. This is while Israel possesses up to 200 nuclear warheads and is not a signatory of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). According to newly-released documents, 50 years ago,  Israel secretly received thousands of kilograms of “yellow cake”, an essential product for fueling nuclear weapons, from Argentina. Israel continues to build nuclear weapons without any monitoring or inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

On the other hand, Iran is a signatory to the NPT, and is under close monitoring and inspection by the IAEA.  Further, according to the NPT, member states are entitled to the peaceful use of nuclear technology, including uranium enrichment.

A history of military threats against Iran

Israel has repeatedly tried to provoke the US into attacking Iran. In an interview with the Times of London on November 5, 2002, former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon tried to persuade the US to attack Iran. Calling Iran a “centre of world terror” that is pursuing nuclear weapons, Sharon insisted that the US put pressure on Tehran, the “day after action against Baghdad ends”.

In April 2003, Daniel Ayalon, then Israeli ambassador to the US, called for regime change in Iran and Syria, claiming in a conference that “it [the US] has to follow through.” In the same year, other Israeli officials spoke repeatedly about the possibility of Israeli unilateral attacks on Iran’s nuclear sites. Then Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz warned that “under no circumstances would Israel be able to tolerate nuclear weapons in Iranian possession.”

In January 2005, Seymour Hersh reported, “The Defence Department civilians, under the leadership of [Under-secretary of Defence for Policy] Douglas Feith, have been working with Israeli planners and consultants to develop and refine potential nuclear, chemical-weapons, and missile targets inside Iran.”

In April 2005, Sharon said, “Israel – and not only Israel – cannot accept a nuclear Iran. We have the ability to deal with this and we’re making all the necessary preparations to be ready for such a situation.”Sharon had reportedly ordered the IDF to develop plans for attacking Iran by March 2006. In the same month, when the IDF chief Dan Halutz was asked, how far Israel was willing to go to stop Iran’s nuclear program, he responded, “two thousand kilometres,” meaning Tehran. In response to Ahmadinejad’s infamous and incorrectly translated statement that “Israel must be wiped off the map,” Peres said, “Iran can also be wiped off the map.”

After a meeting in July 2009 with then US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, Ehud Barak, Israel’s Defence Minister, said that attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities is an option, adding, “We clearly believe that no option should be removed from the table. This is our policy; we mean it. We recommend to others to take the same position ….”

Barak and Netanyahu were determined to attack Iran in 2010, but were thwarted by the military and intelligence establishments within Israel. In November 2012, Netanyahu again threatened Iran with military attacks, even if the US does not go along.

On June 19 Moshe Ya’alon, Netanyahu’s new Defense Minister called for “significant increase in pressure by Western countries to lead Iran to the dilemma of either having a bomb or surviving.”

In the latest of such provocations, in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on August 9, Barak emphasised again that attacking Iran is a serious option for Israel. He added that Iran must be made to understand, either behind closed doors or publicly, that the military option is serious, and if they cross the red line [set by Netanyahu], military attacks will prevent them from building nuclear weapons.

Israel is the real threat

Even if Iran wanted to, it lacks the capability to attack Israel. The Jerusalem Post reported on April 28 that in a meeting in New York, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert talked about Netanyahu’s claims about Iran’s nuclear capability and said, “I think that we have exaggerated, for a long time, the potential threat of Iran possessing nuclear power.”

In a research paper released by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, military analyst Anthony Cordesman stated that “Israel now poses a more serious existential threat to Iran than Iran can pose to Israel in the near term.” Adding, “Israel long ago extended the range of its nuclear-armed, land-based missiles, probably now targets Iran with thermonuclear weapons, and is examining options for sea launched cruise missiles.”  And according to the CSIS report, “A mix of several air and ground bursts in an Israeli thermonuclear or high fission yield attack on five key cities – Tehran (capital) 7.19 million; Mashhad 2.592 million; Esfahan 1.704 million; Karaj 1.531 million; Tabriz 1.459 million – would probably destroy Iran as a nation in anything like its current form.”

Through its powerful lobby, Israel has succeeded in convincing the US Senate to unanimously pass a resolution that stated that if Israel attacked Iran, the US must help it. Senate Resolution 65 declared that:

“If the Government of Israel is compelled to take military action in legitimate self defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program, the United States Government should stand with Israel and provide, in accordance with United States law and the constitutional responsibility of Congress to authorize the use of military force, diplomatic, military, and economic support to the Government of Israel in its defense of its territory, people, and existence.”

Before the recent diplomatic opening at the United Nations General Assembly meetings, there was even speculation about a secret agreement between the US and Israel whereby, in return for renewed negotiations with the Palestinians, the US will not oppose Israel’s attacks on Iran as strongly as in the past. John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations, told Fox Business Network on July 29, that Netanyahu agreed to release 104 Palestinian prisoners because he wants to be able to tell Obama, “I have done everything you asked me on the Israel-Palestinian question, despite the political cost, now I want you to stand with me against Iran.”

The facts on the ground

Israel has hundreds of nuclear warheads, but Netanyahu does not recognise Iran’s right to enrich uranium within the NPT framework. The IDF chief, Lt Gen Benny Gantz, has said that he does not believe Iran will build a nuclear weapon. He was quoted as saying, “I don’t think [Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] will want to go the extra mile. I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people.”

In fact Khamenei’s suggestion for resolving the problem between Israel and the Palestinians is to hold a referendum on the future of all of the Palestinian territories in which Israelis and Palestinians, including those that are refugees, can vote. Regardless of how one thinks about the plausibility of such a proposal, he believes that because Palestinians will be in the majority, they will liberate their nation – akin to what happened in South Africa – in which the Jewish people can also live in peace.

Netanyahu staged the last episode of this two-decade-old campaign of constructing an image of Iran as the most imminent global threat on October 1, during his UNGA speech. He devoted 214 words – less than seven percent of his speech – to the main issue, the Israel-Palestine conflict, and in those words he set two conditions for the Palestinians: Recognise Israel as a “Jewish state”, and thus formally accept second-class citizenship for those 25 percent of the population of Israel who are not Jews; and accept a “demilitarised” Palestinian state. He did not mention anything about the illegal settlements in the occupied territories, status of the borders or the refugees. That is the kind of “painful compromise” he intends to make on the Palestinian issue.

The speech was meant to portray the conflict as a four-thousand-year-old story of wars among prophets, kings, ancient empires and catastrophic events. Elevating a conflict over land and water and other resources to the realm of God and prophets is the best way of mystifying the political reality of a 46-year-old occupation of land and collective punishment of its people, and, in the same act, making the resolution of the conflict impossible. That is the rationale behind the magnification of the “Iranian menace”.

In the same speech Netanyahu again threatened Iran with military attacks. In his numerous speeches and interviews while in New York, Netanyahu claimed that Iran is after the destruction of Israel by creating another Holocaust.

To justify military aggression against Iran – who unlike Israel, has not attacked another country for almost 300 years – Netanyahu constantly likens Iran to Nazi Germany – see here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Iranians are deeply worried about a possible Israeli military attack. Even if such an attack is restricted to Iran’s nuclear facilities, the resulting radiation and contamination will kill a large number of people. An extensive study by Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman of CSIS, shows that attacking Iran’s nuclear sites will kill and injure hundreds of thousands of people. It will also release radioactive nuclear materials in the air, farms, and groundwater resources. Another study by Dan Plesch and Martin Butcher of Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London concluded that attacking Iran’s nuclear and chemical sites could kill over 2 million people.

The Middle East needs peace, not instability, war, enmity, inequality, and double standards. Without security and peace, democracy and respect for human rights will be marginalised.

Akbar Ganji is one of Iran’s leading political dissidents and has received over a dozen human rights awards for his efforts. Imprisoned in Iran until 2006, he is author of one book in English, The Road to Democracy in Iran, which lays out a strategy for a nonviolent transition to democracy in Iran.

By William J. Astore

21 September, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Disaster Capitalism on the Battlefield and in the Boardroom

There is a new normal in America: our government may shut down, but our wars continue. Congress may not be able to pass a budget, but the U.S. military can still launch commando raids in Libya and Somalia, the Afghan War can still be prosecuted, Italy can be garrisoned by American troops (putting the “empire” back in Rome), Africa can be used as an imperial playground (as in the late nineteenth century “scramble for Africa,” but with the U.S. and China doing the scrambling this time around), and the military-industrial complex can still dominate the world’s arms trade.

In the halls of Congress and the Pentagon, it’s business as usual, if your definition of “business” is the power and profits you get from constantly preparing for and prosecuting wars around the world. “War is a racket,” General Smedley Butler famously declared in 1935, and even now it’s hard to disagree with a man who had two Congressional Medals of Honor to his credit and was intimately familiar with American imperialism.

War Is Politics, Right?

Once upon a time, as a serving officer in the U.S. Air Force, I was taught that Carl von Clausewitz had defined war as a continuation of politics by other means. This definition is, in fact, a simplification of his classic and complex book, On War, written after his experiences fighting Napoleon in the early nineteenth century.

The idea of war as a continuation of politics is both moderately interesting and dangerously misleading: interesting because it connects war to political processes and suggests that they should be fought for political goals; misleading because it suggests that war is essentially rational and so controllable. The fault here is not Clausewitz’s, but the American military’s for misreading and oversimplifying him.

Perhaps another “Carl” might lend a hand when it comes to helping Americans understand what war is really all about. I’m referring to Karl Marx, who admired Clausewitz, notably for his idea that combat is to war what a cash payment is to commerce. However seldom combat (or such payments) may happen, they are the culmination and so the ultimate arbiters of the process.

War, in other words, is settled by killing, a bloody transaction that echoes the exploitative exchanges of capitalism. Marx found this idea to be both suggestive and pregnant with meaning. So should we all.

Following Marx, Americans ought to think about war not just as an extreme exercise of politics, but also as a continuation of exploitative commerce by other means. Combat as commerce: there’s more in that than simple alliteration.

In the history of war, such commercial transactions took many forms, whether as territory conquered, spoils carted away, raw materials appropriated, or market share gained. Consider American wars. The War of 1812 is sometimes portrayed as a minor dust-up with Britain, involving the temporary occupation and burning of our capital, but it really was about crushing Indians on the frontier and grabbing their land. The Mexican-American War was another land grab, this time for the benefit of slaveholders. The Spanish-American War was a land grab for those seeking an American empire overseas, while World War I was for making the world “safe for democracy” — and for American business interests globally.

Even World War II, a war necessary to stop Hitler and Imperial Japan, witnessed the emergence of the U.S. as the arsenal of democracy, the world’s dominant power, and the new imperial stand-in for a bankrupt British Empire.

Korea? Vietnam? Lots of profit for the military-industrial complex and plenty of power for the Pentagon establishment. Iraq, the Middle East, current adventures in Africa? Oil, markets, natural resources, global dominance.

In societal calamities like war, there will always be winners and losers. But the clearest winners are often companies like Boeing and Dow Chemical, which provided B-52 bombers and Agent Orange, respectively, to the U.S. military in Vietnam. Such “arms merchants” — an older, more honest term than today’s “defense contractor” — don’t have to pursue the hard sell, not when war and preparations for it have become so permanently, inseparably intertwined with the American economy, foreign policy, and our nation’s identity as a rugged land of “warriors” and “heroes” (more on that in a moment).

War as Disaster Capitalism

Consider one more definition of war: not as politics or even as commerce, but as societal catastrophe. Thinking this way, we can apply Naomi Klein’s concepts of the “shock doctrine” and “disaster capitalism” to it. When such disasters occur, there are always those who seek to turn a profit.

Most Americans are, however, discouraged from thinking about war this way thanks to the power of what we call “patriotism” or, at an extreme, “superpatriotism” when it applies to us, and the significantly more negative “nationalism” or “ultra-nationalism” when it appears in other countries. During wars, we’re told to “support our troops,” to wave the flag, to put country first, to respect the patriotic ideal of selfless service and redemptive sacrifice (even if all but 1% of us are never expected to serve or sacrifice).

We’re discouraged from reflecting on the uncomfortable fact that, as “our” troops sacrifice and suffer, others in society are profiting big time. Such thoughts are considered unseemly and unpatriotic. Pay no attention to the war profiteers, who pass as perfectly respectable companies. After all, any price is worth paying (or profits worth offering up) to contain the enemy — not so long ago, the red menace, but in the twenty-first century, the murderous terrorist.

Forever war is forever profitable. Think of the Lockheed Martins of the world. In their commerce with the Pentagon, as well as the militaries of other nations, they ultimately seek cash payment for their weapons and a world in which such weaponry will be eternally needed. In the pursuit of security or victory, political leaders willingly pay their price.

Call it a Clausewitzian/Marxian feedback loop or the dialectic of Carl and Karl. It also represents the eternal marriage of combat and commerce. If it doesn’t catch all of what war is about, it should at least remind us of the degree to which war as disaster capitalism is driven by profit and power.

For a synthesis, we need only turn from Carl or Karl to Cal — President Calvin Coolidge, that is. “The business of America is business,” he declared in the Roaring Twenties. Almost a century later, the business of America is war, even if today’s presidents are too polite to mention that the business is booming.

America’s War Heroes as Commodities

Many young people today are, in fact, looking for a release from consumerism. In seeking new identities, quite a few turn to the military. And it provides. Recruits are hailed as warriors and warfighters, as heroes, and not just within the military either, but by society at large.

Yet in joining the military and being celebrated for that act, our troops paradoxically become yet another commodity, another consumable of the state. Indeed, they become consumed by war and its violence. Their compensation? To be packaged and marketed as the heroes of our militarized moment. Steven Gardiner, a cultural anthropologist and U.S. Army veteran, has written eloquently about what he calls the “heroic masochism” of militarized settings and their allure for America’s youth. Put succinctly, in seeking to escape a consumerism that has lost its meaning and find a release from dead-end jobs, many volunteers are transformed into celebrants of violence, seekers and givers of pain, a harsh reality Americans ignore as long as that violence is acted out overseas against our enemies and local populations.

Such “heroic” identities, tied so closely to violence in war, often prove poorly suited to peacetime settings. Frustration and demoralization devolve into domestic violence and suicide. In an American society with ever fewer meaningful peacetime jobs, exhibiting greater and greater polarization of wealth and opportunity, the decisions of some veterans to turn to or return to mind-numbing drugs of various sorts and soul-stirring violence is tragically predictable. That it stems from their exploitative commodification as so many heroic inflictors of violence in our name is a reality most Americans are content to forget.

You May Not Be Interested in War, but War Is Interested in You

As Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky pithily observed, “You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” If war is combat and commerce, calamity and commodity, it cannot be left to our political leaders alone — and certainly not to our generals. When it comes to war, however far from it we may seem to be, we’re all in our own ways customers and consumers. Some pay a high price. Many pay a little. A few gain a lot. Keep an eye on those few and you’ll end up with a keener appreciation of what war is actually all about.

No wonder our leaders tell us not to worry our little heads about our wars — just support those troops, go shopping, and keep waving that flag. If patriotism is famously the last refuge of the scoundrel, it’s also the first recourse of those seeking to mobilize customers for the latest bloodletting exercise in combat as commerce.

Just remember: in the grand bargain that is war, it’s their product and their profit. And that’s no bargain for America, or for that matter for the world.

William Astore, a TomDispatch regular, is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF). He edits the blog contraryperspective.com and may be reached at wjastore@gmail.com

Copyright 2013 William J. Astore

By Jean Shaoul

21 October, 2013

@ WSWS.org

The Lancet, one of the world’s leading medical journals, has published a report supporting the thesis that Yasser Arafat was poisoned with polonium-210.

The president of the Palestinian Authority died in a French military hospital in November 2004 after falling ill at his headquarters in Ramallah.

The study did not address the question of whether Arafat had been assassinated or how he had come into contact with polonium, but the presence of the radioactive isotope points irrefutably to Arafat’s murder. Given the difficulty of obtaining the isotope by anyone other than the nuclear powers and asking cui bono (who benefits?), the murder could only have been planned—if not carried out—by Israel or the United States.

The office of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed the report, saying he had “nothing new to say” on the death of Arafat.

The study, Improving Forensic Investigation for Polonium Poisoning was published on October 12. It described an examination by Swiss scientists of 38 items belonging to Arafat, including his underwear and a toothbrush, and their comparison with a control group of 37 items of his that had been in storage for some time before his death. The toxicologists found traces of the substance that “support the possibility of Arafat’s poisoning with polonium-210.”

The scientists added, “Although the absence of myelosuppression [bone marrow deficiency] and hair loss does not favour acute radiation syndrome, symptoms of nausea, vomiting, fatigue, diarrhoea, and anorexia, followed by hepatic and renal failures, might suggest radioactive poisoning.”

The length of time that had elapsed since Arafat’s death made the detection of polonium, which decays relatively rapidly, more difficult. Nevertheless, “… on the basis of [the] forensic investigation, there was sufficient doubt to recommend the exhumation of his body in 2012.”

The report was written by scientists from the Institute for Radiation Physics in Lausanne and the University Centre of Legal Medicine, Lausanne-Geneva, some of whom had carried out the tests published in an Al-Jazeera broadcast last year.

The news channel’s nine-month investigation into Arafat’s death revealed that the Swiss examination of his medical records and some of his belongings provided by his widow Suha Arafat, including his toothbrush, clothes and his kaffiyeh, contained traces of polonium.

Suha Arafat first voiced her suspicions about the cause of Arafat’s illness when he was in hospital in France in 2004. Arafat had been flown to a French military hospital suffering from severe nausea and stomach pain after vomiting during a meeting. His symptoms worsened despite medical treatment, with his liver and kidneys failing. He died a few weeks later after lapsing into a coma.

Arafat’s remains lie in a mausoleum in the Mukatta in Ramallah, which is guarded by troops.

Rumours mounted that Arafat had been poisoned, particularly as the doctors were unable to identify what had led to a cerebral haemorrhage that caused his death.

Following the Al-Jazeera broadcast last year, Suha Arafat pressed the Palestinian Authority to exhume his body to enable an autopsy to establish the cause of death.

Her request embarrassed Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, Washington’s choice to succeed Arafat in the elections held shortly after his death. The PA never undertook any serious investigation into Arafat’s death. Abbas was forced to accede to her request when Mufti Mohammed Hussein, the West Bank’s top Muslim cleric, said he had no objection to the autopsy.

Samples from Arafat’s corpse were sent to forensic teams in Switzerland, France and Russia in November 2012 to determine whether he was indeed murdered with polonium-210, the same substance that caused the death in London in 2006 of the former Russian KGB agent-turned-Kremlin-critic Alexander Litvinenko. The investigations by three teams of toxicologists into Arafat’s remains, the shrine and earth samples continue. It is not known when the results will be published because of legal procedures.

Responsibility for Arafat’s death has long been attributed to Israel’s Mossad secret service, which has a record of carrying out kidnappings and assassinations of Palestinian leaders and more recently Iranian nuclear scientists. In 1997 it carried out a botched attempt to poison Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal in Amman, Jordan by spraying a poison into his ear. Two of the agents were arrested almost immediately. The Jordanian authorities were furious and insisted that Israel provide an antidote to save Meshaal’s life.

In 2002 and 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, and in 2003 Deputy Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, were on record as having threatened to assassinate Arafat, and there are believed to have been numerous attempts on his life.

Just weeks before Arafat’s final illness, Sharon reiterated the threat, telling the Ma’ariv newspaper that Israel would “operate the same way” against Arafat as it had against Hamas leaders Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi—both were assassinated by Israel. Sharon had repeatedly stated that he regretted not killing the Palestinian leader during the siege of Beirut in 1982.

Uri Avnery, a former Israeli legislator and peace activist, reported that just before Uri Dan, a close confidante of Sharon, died, he published a book in France. The book reports that Sharon told Dan about a conversation Sharon had with President George W. Bush. Sharon asked for permission to kill Arafat and Bush gave it to him, with the proviso that it must be done undetectably. When Dan asked Sharon whether it had been carried out, Sharon answered, “It’s better not to talk about that.”

Israel’s hatred of Arafat stemmed from his relentless support for Palestinian statehood and his refusal to suppress the militant opposition to Israel from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, Islamic Jihad and Hamas, which would have entailed launching a civil war against his own people. His successor, Mahmoud Abbas, had no such scruples. He used the PA and its security officials, such as Mohammed Dahlan, who dealt regularly with the CIA and Israeli intelligence officials, to carry out the dictates of Israel and the US.

According to the magazine Vanity Fair, the US supplied Dahlan with arms and cash, trained his men and ordered him to carry out a military coup against Hamas, which had won the PA elections in January 2006 in the Gaza Strip. However, the elected Hamas government was forewarned and carried out a pre-emptive counter-coup, routing his forces.

The PA was later to fall out with Dahlan, expel him from Fatah and accuse him of building a private armed militia in the West Bank aimed at supplanting Abbas. A report by the PA in 2011 even accused him of involvement in Arafat’s death. Dahlan is Israel’s preferred candidate to succeed the ailing Abbas.

October 11th, 2013

@ Larouchepac.com

The Russian weekly Zavtra of October 10 published a Q&A with Japanese economist Daisuke Kotegawa in its front-page “Off the Cuff” column. The question was, “What is your evaluation of the current global financial situation?” Kotegawa’s reply, as published in Zavtra: “My experience and research indicate that a financial catastrophe, accompanied by a global collapse, could happen in the immediate weeks ahead, unless the leaders of the major economic powers adopt certain specific, tough measures. The crisis is linked with the situation in the United States, where political disputes have led to a freeze-up of the budget process and a rejection of attempts to raise the debt ceiling. Because of this, my view of the overall situation is extremely skeptical.”

Zavtra identified Kotegawa as former Executive Director for Japan at the IMF (2007-2009) and current Research Director at the Canon Institute for Global Studies. The newspaper has a print circulation of 100,000 copies and is read throughout the Russian political establishment.

In recent public presentations during a visit to Europe and the United States, Kotegawa elaborated on his assessment that the economic collapse could come at any moment. In addition to the government shutdown/debt ceiling fiasco in the United States, he warned that Greece is facing a third bailout and the Spanish banks are in big trouble, holding vastly over-valued real estate portfolios and lacking sufficient reserves to deal with a further crash of the housing and commercial property bubble. He warned that the ECB is facing a major crisis, and that he believes that the reckoning could come as soon as a new German cabinet is formed. Because of the new crises on both sides of the Atlantic, the financial markets are panicked. He also pointed to serious short-term debt problems in South Korea that add to the overall global instability. He warned that the investment banks must be dumped if there is any hope of avoiding a new systemic crash.

By Chris Hedges

14 October, 2013

@ http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_folly_of_empire_20131014/

The final days of empire give ample employment and power to the feckless, the insane and the idiotic. These politicians and court propagandists, hired to be the public faces on the sinking ship, mask the real work of the crew, which is systematically robbing the passengers as the vessel goes down. The mandarins of power stand in the wheelhouse barking ridiculous orders and seeing how fast they can gun the engines. They fight like children over the ship’s wheel as the vessel heads full speed into a giant ice field. They wander the decks giving pompous speeches. They shout that the SS America is the greatest ship ever built. They insist that it has the most advanced technology and embodies the highest virtues. And then, with abrupt and unexpected fury, down we will go into the frigid waters.

The last days of empire are carnivals of folly. We are in the midst of our own, plunging forward as our leaders court willful economic and environmental self-destruction. Sumer and Rome went down like this. So did the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires. Men and women of stunning mediocrity and depravity led the monarchies of Europe and Russia on the eve of World War I. And America has, in its own decline, offered up its share of weaklings, dolts and morons to steer it to destruction. A nation that was still rooted in reality would never glorify charlatans such as Sen. Ted Cruz, House Speaker John Boehner and former Speaker Newt Gingrich as they pollute the airwaves. If we had any idea what was really happening to us we would have turned in fury against Barack Obama, whose signature legacy will be utter capitulation to the demands of Wall Street, the fossil fuel industry, the military-industrial complex and the security and surveillance state. We would have rallied behind those few, such as Ralph Nader, who denounced a monetary system based on gambling and the endless printing of money and condemned the willful wrecking of the ecosystem. We would have mutinied. We would have turned the ship back.

The populations of dying empires are passive because they are lotus-eaters. There is a narcotic-like reverie among those barreling toward oblivion. They retreat into the sexual, the tawdry and the inane, retreats that are momentarily pleasurable but ensure self-destruction. They naively trust it will all work out. As a species, Margaret Atwood observes in her dystopian novel “Oryx and Crake,” “we’re doomed by hope.” And absurd promises of hope and glory are endlessly served up by the entertainment industry, the political and economic elite, the class of courtiers who pose as journalists, self-help gurus like Oprah and religious belief systems that assure followers that God will always protect them. It is collective self-delusion, a retreat into magical thinking.

“The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than the original,” Daniel J. Boorstin wrote in his book “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America.” “We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories in the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”

Culture and literacy, in the final stage of decline, are replaced with noisy diversions and empty clichés. The Roman statesman Cicero inveighed against their ancient equivalent—the arena. Cicero, for his honesty, was hunted down and murdered and his hands and head were cut off. His severed head and his right hand, which had written the Philippics, were nailed onto the speaker’s platform in the Forum. The roaring crowds, while the Roman elite spat on the head, were gleefully told he would never speak or write again. In the modern age this toxic, mindless cacophony, our own version of spectacle and gladiator fights, of bread and circus, is pumped into the airwaves in 24-hour cycles. Political life has fused into celebrity worship. Education is primarily vocational. Intellectuals are cast out and despised. Artists cannot make a living. Few people read books. Thought has been banished, especially at universities and colleges, where timid pedants and careerists churn out academic drivel. “Although tyranny, because it needs no consent, may successfully rule over foreign peoples,” Hannah Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” “it can stay in power only if it destroys first of all the national institutions of its own people.” And ours have been destroyed.

Sensual pleasure and eternal youth are our overriding obsessions. The Roman emperor Tiberius, at the end, fled to the island of Capri and turned his seaside palace into a house of unbridled lust and violence. “Bevies of girls and young men, whom he had collected from all over the Empire as adepts in unnatural practices, and known as spintriae, would copulate before him in groups of three, to excite his waning passions,” Suetonius wrote in “The Twelve Caesars.” Tiberius trained small boys, whom he called his minnows, to frolic with him in the water and perform oral sex. And after watching prolonged torture, he would have captives thrown into the sea from a cliff near his palace. Tiberius would be followed by Caligula and Nero.

“At times when the page is turning,” Louis-Ferdinand Céline wrote in “Castle to Castle,” “when History brings all the nuts together, opens its Epic Dance Halls! hats and heads in the whirlwind! Panties overboard!”

The anthropologist Joseph Tainter in his book “The Collapse of Complex Societies” looked at the collapse of civilizations from the Roman to the Mayan. He concluded that they disintegrated because they finally could not sustain the bureaucratic complexities they had created. Layers of bureaucracy demand more and more exploitation, not only of the environment but the laboring classes. They become calcified by systems that are unable to respond to the changing reality around them. They, like our elite universities and business schools, churn out systems managers, people who are taught not to think but to blindly service the system. These systems managers know only how to perpetuate themselves and the system they serve, although serving that system means disemboweling the nation and the planet. Our elites and bureaucrats exhaust the earth to hold up a system that worked in the past, failing to see that it no longer works. Elites, rather than contemplate reform, which would jeopardize their privilege and power, retreat in the twilight of empire into walled compounds like the Forbidden City or Versailles. They invent their own reality. Those on Wall Street and in corporate boardrooms have replicated this behavior. They insist that continued reliance on fossil fuel and speculations will sustain the empire. State resources, as Tainter notes, are at the end increasingly squandered on extravagant and senseless projects and imperial adventures. And then it all collapses.

Our collapse will take the whole planet with it.

It is more pleasant, I admit, to stand mesmerized in front of our electronic hallucinations. It is easier to check out intellectually. It is more gratifying to imbibe the hedonism and the sickness of the worship of the self and money. It is more comforting to chatter about celebrity gossip and ignore or dismiss what is reality.

Thomas Mann in “The Magic Mountain” and Joseph Roth in “Hotel Savoy” brilliantly chronicled this peculiar state of mind. In Roth’s hotel the first three floors house in luxury the bloated rich, the amoral politicians, the bankers and the business owners. The upper floors are crammed with people who struggle to pay their bills and who are steadily divested of their possessions until they are destitute and cast out. There is no political ideology among decayed ruling elites, despite choreographed debates and elaborate political theater. It is, as it always is at the end, one vast kleptocracy.

Just before World War II, a friend asked Roth, a Jewish intellectual who had fled Nazi Germany for Paris, “Why are you drinking so much?” Roth answered: “Do you think you are going to escape? You too are going to be wiped out.”

U.S. Air Force/Yasuo Osakabe

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion   Publisher, Zuade Kaufman   Editor, Robert Scheer

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By Jose Luis Vivero Pol

16 October, 2013

@ Shareable.net

Food is treated as a private good in today’s industrial food system, but it must be re-conceived as a common good in the transition toward a more sustainable food system that is fairer to food producers and consumers. If we were to treat food as a commons, it could be better produced and distributed by hybrid tri-centric governance systems implemented at the local level and compounded by market rules, public regulations, and collective actions. This change would have enormous ethical, legal, economic, and nutritional implications for the global food system.

A common resource versus a commodity

Food, a limited yet renewable resource that comes in both wild and cultivated forms, is essential for human existence. Over time, it has evolved from a local resource held in common into a private, transnational commodity. This process of commodification has involved the development of certain traits within food to fit the mechanized processes and regulations put in practice by the industrial food system, and it is also the latest stage in the objectification of food—a social phenomenon that has deprived food of all its non-economic attributes. As a result, the value of food is no longer based on the many dimensions that bring us security and health, including the fact that food is a:

>> Basic human need and should be available to all

>> Fundamental human right that should be guaranteed to every citizen

>> Pillar of our culture for producers and consumers alike

>> Natural, renewable resource that can be controlled by humans

>> Marketable product subject to fair trade and sustainable production

>> Global common good that should be enjoyed by all

This multidimensional view of food diverges from the mainstream industrial food system’s approach to food as a one-dimensional commodity. Even so, the industrial food system has yet to enclose, or to convert into private property, all aspects of our food commons, including:

>> Traditional knowledge of agriculture that has been accumulated over thousands of years

>> Modern, science-based agricultural knowledge accumulated within national institutions

>> Cuisine, recipes, and national gastronomy

>> Edible plants and animals created in the natural world (e.g., fish stocks and wild fruits)

>> Genetic resources for food and agriculture

>> Food safety considerations (e.g., Codex Alimentarius)

>> Public nutrition, including hunger and obesity imbalances

>> Extreme food price fluctuations in global and national markets

Our most basic human need, privatized

The industrial food system’s enclosure of food through the privatization of seeds and land, legislation, excessive pricing, and patents, has played a large role in limiting our access to food as a public good. The system now feeds the majority of people living on the planet and has created a market of mass consumption where eaters become mere consumers. As such, the industrial food system’s goal is to accumulate under-priced food resources while maximizing the profit of food enterprises, instead of ensuring food’s most important non-economic qualities, such as nutrition. Many believe this has resulted in the failure of the global food system.

We can’t rely on the market

Within the mainstream “no money no food” worldview, hunger still prevails in a world of abundance. Globally speaking, the industrial food system is increasingly failing to fulfill its basic goals of producing food in a sustainable manner, feeding people adequately, and avoiding hunger. The irony is that half of those who grow 70% of the world’s food go hungry today. Most believed that a market-led food system would finally lead to a healthier global population, yet none of the recent analyses of the connection between our global food system and hunger have questioned the privatization of food. As a result, most people believe food access to be the main problem of global hunger.

But reality proves otherwise. Unregulated markets simply cannot provide the necessary quantity of food for everyone—even if low-income groups were given the means to procure it. An industrial food system that views food as a commodity to be distributed according to market rules will never achieve food security for all. There won’t be a market-driven panacea for our unsustainable and unjust food system; rather the solution will require experimentation at all levels—personal, local, national, and international—and diverse approaches to governance—market-led, state-led, and collective action-led. We need to bring unconventional and radical perspectives into the food transition debate to develop a different narrative for our food system.

Practical implications of a common food system

A “re-commonification” of food—or, in other words, a transition where we work toward considering food as a commons—is an essential paradigm shift in light of our broken global food system. However, there would of course be practical consequences of this paradigm shift. Food would need to be dealt with outside of trade agreements made for pure private goods, and, as a result, we would need to establish a particular system of governance for the production, distribution, and access to food at a global level. That system might involve binding legal frameworks to fight hunger and guarantee everyone the right to food, cosmopolitan global policies, ethical and legal frameworks, universal Basic Food Entitlements or Food Security Floors guaranteed by the state, minimum salaries matched to food prices, bans on the financial speculation of food, or limits on alternative uses of food, such as biofuels.

Agricultural research and locally adapted, evidence-based technologies would highly benefit from crowdsourcing and creative-commons licensing systems to improve the sustainability and fairness of the global food system as well. When millions of people innovate, we have a far greater capacity to find adaptive and appropriate solutions than when a few thousand scientists innovate in private labs. There is more and more evidence today that the copyrighted agricultural sector is actually deterring food security innovations from scaling up, and that the freedom to copy actually promotes creativity and innovation, such as with open-source software.

What it might take to “re-commonify” of our food system

Collective civic actions, or alternative food networks, are key in the transition toward a more sustainable and fairer food system because they are built on the socio-ecological practices of civic engagement, community, and the celebration of local food. Based on Elinor Ostrom’s polycentric governance, food can be produced, consumed, and distributed by tri-centric governance schemes comprised of collective actions initially implemented at the local level; governments whose main goal is to maximize the well-being of their citizens and to provide a framework enabling people to enjoy their right to food; and a private sector that can prosper under state regulations and incentives. Today, in different parts of the world, there are many initiatives that demonstrate how such a combination yields good results for food producers, consumers, the environment, and society in general. The challenge now is to scale up those local initiatives. Self-governing collective actions cannot create the transition by themselves, thus there will be space for local governments, entrepreneurs, and self-organized communities to coexist, giving the state a leading role in the initial stage of the transition period to guarantee food for all.

We are just starting to reconsider the food narrative to guide the transition from the industrial food system toward an attainable and desirable utopia. It may take us several generations to achieve, but, as Mario Benedetti rightly pointed out, utopias keep us moving forward.

Jose Luis Vivero Pol is an anti-hunger and social rights activist with fourteen years of experience on food security policies and programs, Right to Food advocacy, nutrition interventions, and food sovereignty in Latin America, Africa, and the Caucasus. Additionally, he has experience in biodiversity conservation and plant genetic resources. An agricultural engineer by profession, he is a PhD research fellow at the Catholic University of Louvain, and his current interests include the ethical, legal, and political dimensions of the transition toward fairer and more sustainable food systems, the governance of global commons, and the motivations for biodiversity conservation and anti-hunger actions.

By Adfer Rashid Shah

15 October, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

Now a country where even a Prime Minister in office is kidnapped that too in the capital of the country. Imagine the security apparatus of the post-Gaddafi Libya.

Prelude

The head of the transitional government, Ali Zeidan was kidnapped by ex-rebels on October 10, from a hotel amid the tight security and then freed. Imagine the security scenario of post-Gaddafi Libya today. Has Libya gained anything from the bloody uprising?

The fallouts of Arab Spring have hardly been constructive and mass friendly in almost all the regime toppled States. The Arab Spring like a massive flash flood collapsed everything that came its way, even the basic institutions of law and order, centralized State regulation, security apparatus, people’s feel secure psyche, basic human rights, etc, were not spared. As for Libya, the unceasing chaos and violence grabbed the whole oil rich state and lead to serious ramifications/fallouts be that the unaccounted and unregulated mass proliferation of weapons, continuing unrests, unceasing bloodshed, emergence of a plethora of self styled and tribal militias and their fiefdoms shaping up the prolonged chaos and uncertainty throughout. Libya today undoubtedly has proved the worst victim of Arab Spring that has lost almost everything to the 2011 uprising that proved nothing but a shapeless/mindless revolution

Introduction

This goes without saying that the post-Moammar Gaddafi Libya is purely a failed state (state governed by militia) despite the fairy tales of optimism and growth by a few Middle East and Libyan political analysts. Actually the security vacuum is such that even the former US Ambassador, Christopher Stevens was murdered in office (on September 11, 2012 in Benghazi) solely due to security crisis and issues. More than his murder, even more disturbing was that the Ambassador himself was aware about his being unsafe and of the acute security situations and uncontrolled chaos in the country. If the Ambassador of the world’s powerful country cannot feel safe and ultimately loses his life in the post-Gaddafi Libya, one can well imagine the terror/fear among the common Libyans and it also reflects the nasty fallouts of the so called Libyan revolution. The so called civilized big powers, who took pride in attacking Libya (NATO assaults) and helped/encouraged the rebels/thugs to sabotage the entire country to topple the Gaddafi regime, could not even save the credible Ambassador. If the allies could not control the post-regime situation then what was the fun of attacking Libya and execute Gaddafi- the man who changed the picture of Libya from poorest in Africa to the richest zone. Is it now merely the craze for manufacturing hegemony or maintaining/creating supremacy or the love for adventurism of the west to demolish the less powerful states one after another and then instead of rebuilding leaving these in ruins, purely to witness and enjoy the chaos, public suffering, civil wars, economic decline, emergence of uncontrolled militias, proliferation of weapons and spread of terrorism, radicalism, sectarianism and widespread bloodshed and above all the terror and the consistent feeling of insecurity among the common innocent masses.

Gaddafi’s Murder: The Beginning of an Endless Chaos

While the Gaddafi era of history ended by his inhuman murder in Sirte in October 2011, leaving the entire oil rich state in tatters for many decades to come, the pressing question remains, whether Libya in true sense has headed towards the democracy or better governance and if at all it has, at what cost? If not, then why do the world powers encourage/fund/stir up rebellions/uprisings or topple the régimes? Was destabilizing Libya or other states merely for fun or simply the west’s hunger for neo-colonialism? Why was the Gaddafi regime toppled with so much of the violence that still continues without an apparent end? Was it merely to create another Iraq or Afghanistan or impoverish the country of its rich oil resources simply to transform it to the horn of Africa? Also it is now clear to see whether Gaddafi’s execution really proved heavenly to Libyans or merely fulfilled the western interests and hijacked the entire State into the everlasting chaos, instability and uncertainty. The question remains who will reconstruct Libya now when everything has been deconstructed with the foreign might/aid by rebels? Who is safe when a plethora of uncontrolled militias are wreaking havoc day in and day out with their religion of assassinating even government officials off and on, amidst the collapsed institutions, poor security apparatus and lack of a powerful national army? Who will care of the common man who was happily leading his life in the pre-uprising era? Is the present regime virtually capable of constructing a new Libya or is simply paving the way for yet another devastated state like Iraq or Afghanistan or Mali or Somalia.

The Misuse of Power and the Costly Fallout

Noteworthy to mention that after murdering Gaddafi without caring for any trial or justice system, Libya’s self proclaimed NTC (the so called “sole representative of all Libya”) had claimed high of rebuilding and working for a united and democratic Libya but all that proved a farce because the very first blunder that they committed was killing Col. Gaddafi even after capturing him alive and when the dictator had already surrendered. Though they received a good patting by the western powers/their sponsors by then but killing a captive/a world renowned leader reflected the NTC’s political maturity, their concept of governance ahead, justice and futuristic vision. Even after Gaddafi’s murder, the tyranny or oppression has hardly gone because the new self claimed leaders/war lords and the democratic tyrants have simply replaced the slain dictator to crush the common masses a step further and put Libya to the acute political chaos. It will be apt to argue that today’s Libya can be anything but safe and growing.

The biggest challenge today is the deteriorated law and order situation along with the appalling activities by the emergence of uncontrolled militia/erstwhile fighters of the (incomplete & mishandled) revolution. The continuing bloodshed accompanied by the loss of country’s huge wealth and more importantly the collective feel secure psyche has resulted in the public dismay and panic instead of jubilation after the collapse of the Gaddafi’s tyrant regime. This entire chaotic state of affairs raises certain questions to ponder over for Libya’s future that seems too dark in the absence of the credible leaders and powerful institutions.

On one hand , Seeing the current political uncertainty and unbridled militia might now spreading in other countries to create more fuss like their role in Syria and alarming proliferation of arms, resulting in the terrified and bemused state of the common Libyans, While on the other hand, the criminal exclusion of the slain dictator’s loyalists (like Tuaregs, Sirte public & loyal belts, Gadafi’s army, etc,.) in all respects and the emergence of a new power class or rise of a new power structure is leading to nothing but mass alienation, social exclusion of particular sections of the society, unequal treatment and political rights, considerable social rupture, pathology and broken social fiber. Now even the former Gaddafi regime officials are likely to be barred from contesting elections despite of the fact that they contributed in Gaddafi’s overthrow. This is happening as even General National Congress (GNC) led by Mohmed Magarief has almost bowed down before arrogant armed militiamen that analysts describe virtually as a legal coup. Further tribal/group feuds, ethnic clashes, bloody and continuous power struggle, increasing discrimination, institutional breakdown, etc, has actually impoverished the growth and peace of the country and thus alienated the common man rather than emancipation, empowerment or democracy as being anticipated earlier and the continuing bloodshed as witnessed in post-Saddam Iraq or post Mubarak Egypt.

Libya’s Shapeless Revolution

It was rightly apprehended earlier that Libyan pro-democracy revolution may too end up in a shapeless revolution and that has proved right. Also it is a matter of concern for analysts that will NATO’s bombing, breaking role end in any of the rehabilitative measures in the post-Gaddafi era or will the devastated state sustain like Afghanistan and Iraq and turmoil will be kept deliberately alive for military adventurism and west’s neo-colonialist colony extension craze. Seeing the current growing western military adventurism under the NATO garb and their replay of Iraq drama of 2003 in Libya, Egypt, Syria, etc, Libya cannot avoid a similar fate and cannot rebuild the broken institutional mechanism back in the present crisis ridden atmosphere. In order to bring the country on a new democratic basis and to create and maintain the integrity among the institutions of power and social justice, the key issue and the major challenge before the new establishment (a bigger curiosity in fact for political analysts and social scientists round the globe right now) is to devise a workable strategy to maintain a stringent control simultaneously deliver for public welfare by the government in the centre. Seeing the situation, the fact remains that on the ground the current Libyan situation appears hardly in a settling mode.

At such a critical juncture, it is also worth pondering to assess the state of affairs in the economy of the post- Gaddafi era of the oil rich nation (worth $32 billion, 2010 estimates) though frozen assets have been released but practical appearance of normalcy is still not visible. Has it shaped Libya like the post-Taliban era way, or post war Iraq way or post sanctions Iran way and how long the clashes and massacres shall keep cuddling it. Also can the new Libyan administration fairly recover oil payments lying pending with many states and if not what will be its impact on the country’s economy and the subsequent repercussions on the 6.5 million Libyan people and safeguard their multiple ethnicity and tribal identity. Also the new challenges by Islamists at the political front remains to be seen though they (Brotherhood tributaries) are not too strong in Libya as compared to Egypt, though now their influence has started from Misrata now. Despite Islamists were defeated and National forces Alliance (NFA) secured majority party sets in last July elections. However Gaddafi’s inference about the proliferating of Jihadist agencies and their strengthening and mushrooming in north Africa is proving right after his death be it Libya itself or Mali, Algeria, Somalia, Yemen, etc,.

The public opinion which had turned decisively against the regime though had been demanding freedom from the past and expected a giant leap forward be it public security, human rights upholding, quality education, gender justice and egalitarian treatment and tribal welfare besides economic well being and proper social security. But currently the establishment is even not coming out of its own crisis, not to talk of delivery for the public welfare. Moreover, the prime focus on more efficient and enhancement in the oil production along with the gainful marketing and above all efficient accountability system which can only be realized and expected once Libyan government stabilizes politically and comes out of the contemporary fuss.

Is Post ‘Revolution Libya A Failed State?

The present Libyan social structure is in utter disorder and its populace stands a soul crushed chunk; the apprehension is whether the post uprising or post-Gaddafi times may be beleaguered with radicalism or pan-Islamism and NATO, US-Britain intervention may continue in the region. The fact is that this devastated North African oil-producing state has been shabbily exploited by all. The gimmicks like, West’s claims of working closely with the new Libya (where is that new Libya?) or Libyans have defied violence to cast ballots for a 200-member assembly (violence never ceased actually), ex-interim Prime Minister, Jibril’s political “road map”, NATO’s mission, NTC’s plan of a transitional process for constitutional declaration, Libya’s constitutional reforms, presidential elections, general elections (July 2012) and turnout of 62%,series of prime ministers coming and going seem all cruel jokes at the moment. Libya currently is worse than anything where militias, Salafi-Sufi tussle and continuing political uncertainty like terror on the streets, unceasing PM Ali Zindan Vs Magarief tussle, persistent security paralysis, collapsed institutional apparatus, the tussle between the centre and periphery, and the wide gulf between tribes and the rest, ethnic fissures, dichotomy between Gaddafians and anti-Gaddafians, etc, have endangered the lives of common the common Libyans. The west though defeating Gaddafi, has ideologically also lost its game in the country for its weapons (arms shipments given to rebels to topple Gaddafi) are now smuggled and proliferated to other vulnerable States like Syria and other terrorist safe heavens.

The Way forward: Understanding the Policy Issues being to be tacked

Undeniably, the Arab Spring has more sabotaged peace and common man’s life than proved constructive. Just regime changes for never ending instability and chaos cannot be a revolution. The most crucial and important was to stabilize the uprising states in the post uprising era, which proved a brutal failure. Arab spring’s hallow success is quite manifested in Egypt’s continuing bloodshed , saga of strifes and civil wars, the formation of new incapable and west’s puppet establishments, exclusion of women and minority voices, emergence of vulgar militias with territory politics and proliferation of terror through widespread weapons with arms smuggling, etc,. Thus everything is being witnessed as worst than the pre-spring scenario. Libya today is far weaker and insecure even than the Gaddafi era, where actualizing a centralized control mechanism and curbing arrogant tribal militias seems a project of decades and formation of a powerful national army a very difficult challenge.

The Libyan citizens are fed up with the proliferation of vulgar militias and have been demanding the departure of militias that they call the “illegitimate brigades”. Fox News (Published July 07, 2013 AFP), quotes Libyan PM, who maintains,

“We want a regular army and police force!” and “No to arms!” and “Yes to legitimacy!” cried the demonstrators amid a heavy presence of militiamen who currently enforce the law. Prime Minister Ali Zeidan, meanwhile, spoke to reporters of the necessity “to dissolve the brigades and other formations (of ex-rebels who battled the late Moamer Kadhafi) and integrate them individually into the army and police”[i].

Therefore, it can be assumed that the Libyan Government as a policy stunt seems powerless before the militias and is ready to integrate them into a national force. Can the national force comprise of such militias really safeguard the vulnerable nation is a curious question.

Strategy to be Followed

Though the efforts are on but the effective, practical and action oriented policy and planning needs to focus upon Libya’s oil and natural gas industry that makes up more than 70 percent of Libya’s economy and generates almost all the state’s revenue[ii]. Moreover it was the Libya’s oil industry that became the target of violent attacks and civil protests. The latest challenge is a lack of electricity[iii] that is an example of a worsening energy crisis in the energy rich State. Also Libya has to improve and redevelop its friendly international relations that too are not praiseworthy at the moment. Though measures are being taken to revive the oil exports, maintaining of healthy trade and international relations however roadblocks to development and reconstruction can only be tackled by improving the security situation round the country. Another issue that needs to be tackled efficiently is the issue of refugees and the provisions of their safe and secure return that government must ensure at the earliest. This goes without saying that the Post-Gaddafi Libya is in desperate need of foreign investment to reconstruct its ruined infrastructure[iv], so the policy to be tacked immediately is to seek foreign assistance and funding the rebuild the nation in tatters. Therefore efforts must be to make Libya economically stable and more importantly secure from the violence and ethnic clashes. Also the the foreign military interventions/adventures need not to be encouraged in order to build peace. Lastly, a comprehensive political, economic and technical assistance for achieving the internal stability is important and must be taken as a preferred policy initiative.

Last Word

Military in Africa has no good record as far as human rights are concerned. Libya’s transition to true democracy can prove developmental and positive however it needs patience and time. Rebuilding a new democratic Libya, improving its international relations and diplomatic skills cannot be done over night. The horrors of the so called revolution will keep haunting the state for decades even. Assessing the current situation seems too disappointing. Today’s Libya despite having Dr Ali Zendan at the PM’s Position lies nowhere in peace building and security, that he must address on priority. The functional administration has virtually gone to dogs, because of the power with everybody (that needs to be curbed immediately) and with no immediate progress or control on the holistic state as a whole.

This goes without saying that in the post-Spring and regime changed states almost everything needs reconstruction especially in Libya where even the force/army for the protection is non-existent because the army in command during the unrest has been abandoned under the pretext of being pro-Gaddafi, hence unreliable. Though we must acknowledge that devastation created by the massive uprising cannot be done away with over night, however the quest remains that will Libya really recover from such a massive and total demolition ever. The unrest initially supported by NATO’s assaults has resulted in the lifelong rupture of Libya’s social and political structure. Moammar Gaddafi’s execution has proved a historic blunder and the craze of regime toppling in the drama of Arab Spring has hardly proved functional to Libya that is still grappling with violence and unceasing bloodshed. Peace has vanished for decades and feel secure psyche among common masses has gone forever. The ripple effect of the turmoil hit Libya is visible in Mali violence or other neighboring states as well. The country has lost all its credible institutions and is currently in acute political instability.

Seeing the stolen Libyan revolution and arbitrary power with militias in the State, One can safely conclude that Libya though has moved from Colonialism to monarchy to dictatorship but not to democracy even after Gaddafi but to the democratic tyranny, uncertainty and perhaps chaos forever.

The fact remains that whosoever will try to curb unbridled militias will not be safe in Libya and the country that is currently the hub of arms smuggling is in no ways different from the tyrant Gaddafi regime. The Arab spring helped in one way-Sabotaged it completely.

Someone has rightly said,

Sooraj Hamein Har Shaam Ye Dars Deta Hai,

Maghrib Ki Taraf Jao Gay, to Doob Jao Gay…!

Notes

[i] http://www.foxnews.com/world/2013/07/07/libya-militias-out-demand-tripoli-residents-afp/

[ii] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-07-08/libya-oil-output-slumps-as-power-cuts-mix-with-protests-energy.html

[iii] Ibid

[iv] http://rt.com/op-edge/libya-conflict-foreign-funds-826/

Adfer Rashid Shah (Adfar Shah) is a New Delhi based Kashmiri Sociologist and belongs to SNCWS AT Jamia Millia Islamia, Central University, New Delhi. Author is a guest columnist & Contributor at Eurasia Review, Analyst World, Kashmir Monitor,South Asian idea and also contributes in other reputed international Publications. Mail at adfer.syed@gmail.com

By Robert Stevens

15 October, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Rescuers have ended their search for the bodies of the migrants who died in the October 3 Lampedusa boat sinking. Only 155 of the 545 people, including Eritrean, Somalis, and Syrians aboard the vessel which sank in the Mediterranean survived the tragedy. Just 359 bodies have been recovered.

These deaths were followed by another boat sinking in Maltese waters, south of the island of Lampedusa, on October 11. Of the more than 200 Syrians and Palestinian men, women and children on board, at least 34 died. The boat was apparently fired upon by a military vessel carrying a Libyan flag.

Speaking to “Channel 4 News”, a survivor said, “They followed us for an hour. Then they asked the captain to stop and then started to shoot in the air. They were trying to turn the boat upside down. Then they started to shoot at the boat. They shot at the engine. They managed to hit four people as well.”

The United Nations refugee agency’s Maurizio Molina said, “Because of the hole caused by the shooting… the water started entering into the boat, causing a lot of tension among the Syrians that were on board. At a certain point the ones that were (below), around 100 people, were obliged to go upstairs, creating this unbalancing and then at the end finally causing the capsize.”

At least 500 more migrants had to be rescued Saturday in separate incidents near the Italian island of Sicily. In another incident, on Friday, 12 migrants drowned in a shipwreck off Alexandria’s coast. Egyptian state media reported that 116 survived the sinking.

The toll of deaths in the Mediterranean since October 3 will be added to the staggering figure of 25,000 who have died trying to enter “Fortress Europe” in the last two decades.

By the beginning of October, some 30,000 people had attempted to cross over the Mediterranean into Italy this year alone. Many are attempting to flee war and persecution in countries like Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and Syria.

The vast majority of refugees, upwards of 95 percent, never get anywhere in Europe. Officially 1.6 million Syrians are now refugees, far beyond the one million predicted by the United Nations by the middle of 2013.

The UN’s Syria Regional Response Plan of December 2012 calculated that 515,061 Syrian refugees had arrived in surrounding Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Turkey, and Egypt. The refugee crisis has escalated this year, with the UN confirming in June that an additional one million refugees had arrived in these countries.

In January 5,000 per day were fleeing Syria, and by March this had reached an average of 10,000. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees stated, “Based on arrival trends since the beginning of the year, it is estimated that the number of Syrian refugees in need of assistance across the region may reach 3.45 million by the end of 2013, hosted in camps and, for the most part, in local communities.”

According to the latest figures, a further five million people have been displaced inside Syria. All told, more than seven million Syrians have been displaced from their homes—around a third of the country’s 22 million people. That figure is expected to reach 50 percent in short order.

António Guterres, the UN’s high commissioner responsible for refugees, stated, “Syria has become the great tragedy of this century—a disgraceful humanitarian calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history.”

What Guterres will not and cannot acknowledge is that the tragedy befalling millions of Syrians is the result of a civil war engineered by the United States, Britain, and France with the assistance and funding of Turkey and the Gulf monarchies.

Even prior to the outbreak of the imperialist proxy war in Syria, sanctions against the country had wrought a devastating impact. In 1979 the US designated Syria a “state sponsor of terror” and began imposing numerous economic sanctions. In August 2011, the Obama administration imposed additional sanctions on Syria’s energy sector and froze all Syrian government assets in the US.

Last month Britain’s Independent noted that sanctions had hit Syria’s “once excellent under-fives vaccination program and brought to a standstill the MDG [UN Millennium Development Goals] targets on maternal and infant mortality, which Syria was well on the road to meeting by 2015. They have collapsed the production of essential medicines for which the country was near to self-sufficiency. Medicines for the treatment of cancer, diabetes and heart disease not produced locally are not available except at huge cost in neighbouring countries. The cost of essential food, cooking, and heating oil has increased several-fold, putting it out of reach for the majority whilst gangster-led smuggling and profiteering thrives. All this alongside the raging horrors of a war.”

Masses of Syrians are now being held in refugee camps, denied basic freedoms and citizenship. Some 520,000 Syrians are now in Jordan, increasing its population by eight 8 percent in two years. One camp, Zaatari, houses 130,000 people in appalling, overcrowded conditions. When it was established in July 2012, it contained just 100 families. It is now growing at a rate of 2,000 residents each day. Another camp, Azraq, is under construction and will also have the capacity to host up to 130,000 people.

Turkey only allows Syrian refugees to enter when there are spaces in refugee camps.

The Lebanese government allows Syrians entry, but only on the basis of recognising them as “visitors” not refugees. Around 1.3 million Syrians are now in Lebanon, with 780,000 registered as refugees by the UN.

Further tens of thousands remain in perilous conditions camped on the Syrian-Jordan border, waiting to cross over.

Many of the ships containing refugees seeking to enter Europe via Lampedusa are forced to begin a hazardous journey via Libyan ports. After the 2011 overthrow of the regime of Muammar Gaddafi, in another imperialist-inspired “humanitarian” civil war, Libya was hailed as a model for regime change and the “democracy” that Syrians could expect. What has emerged is a criminal regime, fractured by rival armed militias, under which thousands remain imprisoned without charges and subjected to systematic torture.

In order to clampdown on this means of entry, the European Union is working with the Libyan regime via a €30 million-a-year deal operation named Eubam Libya. Central will be the creation of a “border management strategy” to “improve the legal and institutional framework of border management.”

Last year Amnesty International reported that Italy signed an April 2012 secret agreement with the then Libyan National Transitional Council to “curtail the flow of migrants”. Commenting on the agreement, Amnesty’s Nicolas Beger said, “For the EU, reinforcing Europe’s borders clearly trumps saving lives.”

The 34 refugees killed on October 11 as a result of being fired on by a Libyan ship will not be the last to die as a result of EU collusion.

By Jonathan Capehart,

15 October 13

@ The Washington Post

If you want to curdle the blood of an African American and send a message of menace without resorting to burning a cross on the lawn or marching around in white sheets all one need do is wave the Confederate flag. So imagine my revulsion at the sight of one outside the front gates of the White House.

Michael Ashmore of Hooks, Tex., was among the many who converged on Washington for the “Million Vet March on the Memorials” to protest the government shutdown. This was the event where former half-term governor reality television star and best-selling author turned conservative gadfly Sarah Palin said, “Our vets have proven that they have not been timid, so we will not be timid in calling out any who would use our military, our vets, as pawns in a political game.” Applauding her self-awareness would be the height of irony – and sarcasm.

The protest and some of the barricades placed at the World War II Memorial then moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And it was there that Ashmore waved his Confederate flag. A symbol of Southern resistance and white supremacy unfurled in front of the home of the first black president of the United States. As Jeffrey Goldberg of Bloomberg View and the Atlantic correctly said on Twitter yesterday, “In many parts of America, waving a Confederate flag outside the home of a black family would be considered a very hostile act.”

Ashmore’s reprehensible rebel yell wasn’t the only offensive thing to happen yesterday. In front of the World War II Memorial, Freedom Watch founder Larry Klayman said, “I call upon all of you to wage a second American nonviolent revolution, to use civil disobedience, and to demand that this president leave town, to get up, to put the Quran down, to get up off his knees, and to figuratively come out with his hands up.”

Ashmore’s actions and Klayman’s words are just the latest in a series of displays of disrespect directed at President Obama. For more than four years, the president’s detractors have said they “want our country back.” But they never say from whom. They continue to say he should be impeached. But they never say what his “crimes” or, if they do, said “crimes” are not grounded in any kind of reality.

For those of you who would push back by saying we’re overreacting, that the Confederate flag is nothing more than a symbol of regional pride, save it. That flag you revere so much is no better than a Swastika, a threatening symbol of hate that has no place in American political discourse.

Ex-UN, WHO officials reveal political interference to suppress scientific evidence of postwar environmental health catastrophe

By Dr. Nafeez Ahmad

13 October, 2013

@ The Guardian

Last month, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a long awaited document summarising the findings of an in-depth investigation into the prevalence of congenital birth defects (CBD) in Iraq, which many experts believe is linked to the use of depleted uranium (DU) munitions by Allied forces. According to the ‘summary report’:

“The rates for spontaneous abortion, stillbirths and congenital birth defects found in the study are consistent with or even lower than international estimates. The study provides no clear evidence to suggest an unusually high rate of congenital birth defects in Iraq.”

Jaffar Hussain, WHO’s Head of Mission in Iraq, said that the report is based on survey techniques that are “renowned worldwide” and that the study was peer reviewed “extensively” by international experts.

Backtrack

But the conclusions contrasted dramatically from previous statements about the research findings from Iraqi Ministry of Health (MOH) officials involved in the study. Earlier this year, BBC News spoke to MOH researchers who confirmed the joint report would furnish “damning evidence” that rates of birth defects are higher in areas experiencing heavy fighting in the 2003 war. In an early press release, WHO similarly acknowledged “existing MOH statistics showing high number of CBD cases” in the “high risk” areas selected for study.

The publication of this ‘summary document’ on the World Health Organisation’s website has raised questions from independent experts and former United Nations and WHO officials, who question the validity of its findings and its anonymous authorship. They highlight the existence of abundant research demonstrating not only significant rates of congenital birth defects in many areas of Iraq, but also a plausible link to the impact of depleted uranium.

For years, medical doctors in Iraq have reported “a high level of birth defects.” Other peer-reviewed studies have documented a dramatic increase in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia in the aftermath of US military bombardment. In Fallujah, doctors are witnessing a “massive unprecedented number” of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects. Analysis of pre-2003 data compared to now showed that “the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times the rate found in Europe.”

The purpose of the WHO study was to probe the data further, but some say the project is deeply flawed.

Politicised science

Dr. Keith Bavistock of the Department of Environmental Science, University of Eastern Finland, is a retired 13-year WHO expert on radiation and health. He told me that the new ‘summary document’ was at best “disappointing.” He condemned the decision from “the very outset to preclude the possibility of looking at the extent to which the increase of birth defects is linked to the use of depleted uranium”, and further slammed the document’s lack of scientific credibility.

“This document is not of scientific quality. It wouldn’t pass peer review in one of the worst journals. One of the biggest methodological problems, among many, is that the document does not even attempt to look at existing medical records in Iraqi hospitals – these are proper clinical records which document the diagnoses of the relevant cases being actually discovered by Iraqi doctors. These medics collecting clinical records are reporting higher birth defects than the study acknowledges. Instead, the document focuses on interviews with mothers as a basis for diagnosis, many of whom are traumatised in this environment, their memories unreliable, and are not qualified to make diagnosis.”

I asked Dr. Baverstock if, given the document’s avoidance of analysing the key evidence – clinical records compiled by Iraqi medics – there was reason to believe the research findings were compromised under political pressure. He said:

“The way this document has been produced is extremely suspicious. There are question marks about the role of the US and UK, who have a conflict of interest in this sort of study due to compensation issues that might arise from findings determining a link between higher birth defects and DU. I can say that the US and UK have been very reluctant to disclose the locations of DU deployment, which might throw further light on this correlation.”

If so, it would not be the first time the WHO had reportedly quashed research on DU potentially embarrassing for the Allies. In 2001, Baverstock was on the editorial board for a WHO research project clearing the US and UK of responsibility for environmental health hazards involved in DU deployment. His detailed editorial recommendations accounting for new research proving uranium’s nature as as a genotoxin (capable of changing DNA) were ignored and overruled:

“My editorial changes were suppressed, even though some of the research was from Department of Defense studies looking at subjects who had ingested DU from friendly fire, clearly proving that DU was genutoxic.”

Baverstock then co-authored his own scientific paper on the subject arguing for plausibility of the link between DU and high rates of birth defects in Iraq, but said that WHO blocked publication of the study “because they didn’t like its conclusions.”

“The extent to which scientific principles are being bent to fit politically convenient conclusions is alarming”, said Baverstock.

Environmental contamination from the Iraq War

Other independent experts have also weighed in criticising the WHO study. The British medical journal, The Lancet, reports that despite the study’s claims, a “scientific standard of peer review… may not have been fully achieved.”

One scientist named as a peer-reviewer for the project, Simon Cousens, professor of epidemiology and statistics at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), told The Lancet that he “attended a relatively brief meeting of around one and a half hours, so just gave some comments on an early presentation of the results. I wouldn’t classify that as thorough peer review.”

Just how distant the new WHO-sponsored study is from the last decade’s scientific literature is clear from a new report released earlier this year by a Tokyo-based NGO, Human Rights Now (HRN), which conducted a review of the existing literature as well as a fact-finding mission to Fallujah.

The HRN report investigated recorded birth defects at a major hospital in Fallujah for the year 2012, confirmed first hand birth defect incidences over a one-month period in 2013, and interviewed doctors and parents of children born with birth defects. The report concluded there was:

“… an extraordinary situation of congenital birth defects in both nature and quantity. The investigation demonstrated a significant rise of these health consequences in the period following the war… An overview of scientific literature relating to the effects of uranium and heavy metals associated with munitions used in the 2003 Iraq War and occupation, together with potential exposure pathways, strongly suggest that environmental contamination resulting from combat during the Iraq War may be playing a significant role in the observed rate of birth defects.”

The report criticised both the UN and the WHO for approaches that are “insufficient to meet the needs of the issues within their mandate.”

Definitive evidence

According to Hans von Sponeck, former UN assistant secretary general and UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, the gap between previous claims made by MOH researchers about the study, and the new ‘summary document’, justified public scepticism.

“The brevity of this report is unacceptable”, he told me:

“Everybody was expecting a proper, professional scientific paper, with properly scrutinised and checkable empirical data. Although I would be guarded about jumping to conclusions, WHO cannot be surprised if people ask questions about whether the body is giving into bilateral political pressures.”

Von Sponeck said that US political pressure on WHO had scuppered previous investigations into the impact of DU on Iraq:

“I served in Baghdad and was confronted with the reality of the environmental impact of DU. In 2001, I saw in Geneva how a WHO mission to conduct on-spot assessments in Basra and southern Iraq, where depleted uranium had led to devastating environmental health problems, was aborted under US political pressure.”

I asked him if such political pressure on the UN body could explain the unscientific nature of the latest report. “It would not be surprising if such US pressure has continued”, he said:

“There is definitive evidence of an alarming rise in birth defects, leukaemia, cancer and other carcinogenic diseases in Iraq after the war. Looking at the stark difference between previous descriptions of the WHO study’s findings and this new report, it seems that someone, somewhere clumsily decided that they would not release these damning findings, but instead obscure them.”

The International Coalition to Ban Depleted Uranium (ICBUW) has called for WHO to release the project’s data-set so that it can be subjected to independent, transparent analysis. The UN body continues to ignore these calls and defend the integrity of the research.

Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development and author of A User’s Guide to the Crisis of Civilisation: And How to Save It among other books. Follow him on Twitter @nafeezahmed