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The upheaval in Syria is an enormously difficult subject for Western outsiders to get a handle on. One of the reasons for this is the sheer number of different interests jostling for position and power, from both within and outside the country. Let us start with the regime itself. Can you give us a brief history of where the Al-Assad family came from and the direction they have taken the country since they came to power in 1970?

Following the magnificent peoples’ uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt, toppling two entrenched dictators, there developed a tendency not to closely examine the nature of the various forces competing for political power both within the opposition movements and the Arab regimes. Events in Libya and NATO’s intervention there have alerted most people to the dangers of hijacking the peoples’ struggle for freedom by reactionary forces. A brief look at the nature of the Syrian regime and its changing role in the region is crucial in trying to understand the current conflict and the reactionary forces’ success in hijacking the people’s struggle for radical change.

Syria has been run by a ruthless, corrupt regime. Syrian left activists have been on the receiving end of severe repression since Hafiz Assad’s coup in 1970. It was after that coup that Henry Kissinger described Syria as “a factor for stability,” despite Soviet military backing for the regime. Hafiz Assad’s regime, funded by the Saudi medieval dictators, played a leading role in the 1970’s and early 80’s in weakening the Palestinian resistance.  During the 1975-6 civil war in Lebanon Syrian troops sided with pro-Israeli Phalange and other extreme right wing forces. The regime, in return for US promises over the Israeli-occupied Syrian Golan Heights and Saudi petro-dollars, also backed the 1991 US-led war over Kuwait.

The Syrian forces’ presence in Lebanon had the full support of the US and Saudi rulers and the tacit support of Israel. It was only after Syria’s gradual foreign policy shift and reversal of roles from enemies to allies of the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements that the US and Saudi rulers shifted their stance. They pursued an aggressive campaign to force a Syrian withdrawal (1985) from Lebanon, particularly after the 2003 occupation of Iraq. US forces even killed some Syrian soldiers on the Iraqi-Syrian borders.

In relation to the media coverage today, it is important to note that, before Syria’s shift the media were silent about the repressive nature of the regime. This is similar to the their silence towards repression by a variety of ruthless dictatorial allies. Today they talk of Sunni Saudi rulers opposed to Alawite-Shia in Syria, but back then, the media did not bother highlighting the fact that the Wahabi-Sunni Saudi rulers were bankrolling the Syrian regime nor did they push their sectarian poison. A similar sectarian coverage unfolded in relation to Saudi-Iranian relations after the 1979 Iranian revolution and the overthrow of the Shah, a favourite US ally.

The opposition to the Syrian regime was not confined to the left, but included the Moslem Brotherhood, who led a popular revolt in 1982 in their stronghold of Hama. The regime crushed the uprising by bombarding the City and killing thousands of people. Nevertheless, Arab nationalism has for a century or more been Syria’s main ideological current, developed in the struggle against Ottoman rule and, much more deeply, against French colonial rule. Syria won its independence from France in 1946.

The Brotherhood today are backed by the Qatari and Saudi dictators, but the media rarely dwell on the irony of these dictators championing democracy in Syria while crushing any opposition to their rule and sending their troops to help crush the people’s uprising in Bahrain.

In 1967 Syria was invaded and a strategic part of its territory, the Golan Heights, was occupied by Israel. Since then, successive regimes legitimised their rule partly by working for or at least appearing to be actively trying to liberate Syria from occupation. However, US promises of rewarding Syria by forcing Israel to pull out of the occupied lands came to nothing despite Syria’s compliant policies.

Concurrently with the failure of the US to deliver on its promises, a number of factors changed Syria’s role. These include the rise of Iran as a formidable anti-US anti–Israeli power, the Palestinian uprisings, the unstoppable rise of the Lebanese resistance, led by Hizbullah, leading to the liberation of southern Lebanon from occupation and defeat of Israeli-Saudi-US backed forces, the arrival of hostile US forces along Syria’s borders with Iraq, and the rise of Iraqi resistance and defeat of US forces in Iraq.

The Syrian armed forces and security apparatus, with its multi-layer pyramids of informers, form the backbone of the regime’s control over Syrian society. Much is made of the sectarian nature of the Syrian regime and its reliance on the Alawite communities. I think this is highly exaggerated and ignores the much wider circles of support that the regime has acquired, whether this support is active, passive or of the ‘better devil you know’ type.

The powerful, mostly Sunni, merchant classes of Syria, particularly in Damascus and Aleppo, have close links with the regime. Indeed, the US-led economic sanctions are partly directed at this merchant class to force it to shift its stance. Sections of the middle and upper middle classes also tacitly support the regime. Syria’s religious minorities, including Christians who form 10% of the population, are fearful of the Moslem Brotherhood’s social and cultural agenda for Syria. They too would rather have the secular regime than a state dominated by a Saud-Qatari backed Brotherhood. Importantly, the Kurdish minority are also fearful of the influence of Turkey on the Muslim Brotherhood and the fact that the Syrian Free Army is headquartered in Turkey, which has a horrific record of killing over 20,000 Kurdish people in Turkey. Millions of women also fear the social programme of the Brotherhood.

In the context of the current conflict, the poor, the unemployed and students who were supportive of the initial, largely spontaneous protest movement are now much more reticent, partly due to regime repression but primarily because of their opposition to the NATO-Saudi-Qatari meddling and the militarisation of the sections of the opposition, particularly the Syrian National Council (SNC) and the Free Syrian Army which are dominated by the Brotherhood.

You describe the recent protest movement as ‘largely spontaneous’. This doesn’t mean obviously that grievances weren’t building up over a long period of time, however it does suggest a lack of strong long term organisations of resistance—as was the case in countries like Egypt and Tunisia for example.

Left and progressive opposition to the Syrian regime has been going on for decades, particularly after the 1970 Hafiz Assad coup, which ousted the ‘left’ faction led by Salah Jedid. That faction backed the Palestinian resistance movements based in Jordan against the military onslaught launched by King Hussein’s armed forces in September 1970. Hafiz Assad, who was minister of Defence before the coup, instantly appeased the US and Saudi rulers by siding with King Hussein and starting a crack-down on all left forces in the country.

The left in Syria was for much of the 20th century mostly organised by the Syrian Communist Party. Founded in 1924, the party was subjected to varying degrees of state repression. Since the 1970’s the more militant factions within the party and other left organisations and figures have suffered imprisonment, torture and exile. However, the party leadership’s docile stance towards more militant forms of struggle within Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, and servile support for the Soviet Union’s Middle East policies gradually turned it into a party of sections of the intelligentsia rather than a genuine working class party. Perhaps the latter would have appealed to wider society with a socialist programme that also reflected Syria’s neo-colonial status and being part of the wider struggle in the area against imperialism and Zionism. As it happened the political vacuum was filled by the Islamic and nationalist movements, including the Baath party, who champion the Syrian, Palestinian and wider Arab nationalist causes. A similar process happened in Algeria where Marxists initially advocated the line of the French CP declaring that Algeria would be free once France became socialist!

In the context of the current conflict, all the left forces in Syria supported the initial protest marches that followed the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. The marches, which started in Deraa on the border with Jordan, were also supported by the Moslem Brotherhood. The demands of the protest marches were focused on issues relating to corruption, unemployment and democratic rights. Though large scale marches were held across many cities it was significant that no such marches took place in Syria’s largest two cities, Damascus and Aleppo, where more than half of Syria’s population reside.

It was also noticeable that the more NATO intervened and militarised the protest movement in Libya the smaller mass peaceful protests became in Syria. The marchers shrunk from hundreds to tens of thousands and to thousands and less. Obviously, regime brutality was a factor, but I don’t think that fear played the biggest role. I think the main reason is that most of the democratic opposition in Syria is also staunchly anti-imperialist and naturally fearful of NATO and Israeli plans for Syria. Events in Libya and, above all, the bloodbaths in and destruction of neighbouring Iraq by the US-led forces and the terrorist gangs, played the leading role in making most of the Syrian democratic secular opposition fearful of the consequences of the escalating conflict. They could not fail to notice that while Iraq burned Syria itself became home to a million Iraqi refugees.

On the other hand, the leadership of the Moslem Brotherhood and opposition leaders based in Istanbul, Paris and London have effectively utilised the publicity they enjoyed on all Arab state-controlled media, particularly the Qatari-owned Al-Jazeera. Events have also shown that years of planning had gone into the funding and arming of parts of the Syrian opposition.

Having lost Bin Ali and Mubarak in quick succession, US, Saudi, Qatari and Turkish attention turned to Syria. The massive uprising in Bahrain, headquarters of the US fifth fleet, also sharpened their sense of danger and fear of the people’s uprisings. Saudi and other Gulf sheikdoms sent in their forces to help King Hamad crush the uprising, which is still active.

Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and areas in Iraq became the centres of the counterrevolution in Syria. Arms were smuggled into Syria and the US-created Iraqi militia al-Sahwa backed the armed ‘rebels’ and Libyan fighters were smuggled into the battle zones. Terrorists operating in Iraq also joined the “jihad” against the Syrian regime.

On the other hand, years of repression rendered the Syrian democratic opposition too weak to lead the struggle in the country. As organised forces, they are no match for the counterrevolution’s vast resources. Their only hope was to keep the protests peaceful and sustained. Like in Libya, counter-revolution had other plans.

The left here has to also recognise that the regime does have the support of most of the affluent middle classes, particularly in Damascus and Allepo. The numerous ethnic and religious minorities and large sectors of the female population are also fearful of the socially reactionary nature of the Moslem Brotherhood and the type of regime that they might impose on Syria. Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahir’s call for armed Jihad to overthrow Assad’s regime has also further frightened the population of a sectarian conflict.

This puts us in a difficult situation. As left wing activists we support the rights of people to freedom, equality and self-determination. As activists based in the imperial centres we are opposed to the actions of our governments to deny people these rights. So our support for freedom and equality and our opposition to imperialism tend to go hand in hand. However the picture you are depicting in Syria is tied to the implication that we cannot do both these. Is it possible to support Syria’s democratic struggle AND oppose foreign intervention? Or is this a luxury we cannot afford?

You raise a very important question. Let me make it crystal clear: it is vital for the left to always oppose both imperialism and regimes that repress the masses. This is a matter of principle that should never be abandoned. Movements that abandoned one or other of these inseparable objectives have committed serious and sometimes fatal errors.

The Iraqi Communist Party (ICP) is a good example in this context. Within three decades, it shrunk from being a formidable party of the working class, enjoying the support of the overwhelming majority of the Iraqi people in 1958-9, to a pathetic grouping that probably received funds from Saudi Arabia in 1991 in return for siding with US-led 1991 Gulf war, and protection-at-a-price from Barzani’s KDP from 1978-9 onwards. In practice, it betrayed brave chapters of struggle against imperialism and domestic reaction with a chapter of shame by serving the US-led occupation authority in 2003. It abandoned the struggle for democratic socialism in 1959 in the name of opposing imperialism and abandoned the fight against imperialism from 1990 onwards in the name of fighting for democracy.

Which of the twin objectives becomes the main focus of the struggle is always in a state of flux. However, within the context of an era of accelerated imperialist aggression and wars, exposing imperialism and its exploitation of the peoples of the world is always at the heart of the work of the left. Imperialism is a manifestation of monopoly capitalism that exploits the masses at home and abroad. The left in the “imperial centres” has the added internationalist duty of firmly upholding this task: to always side with the oppressed peoples’ struggle against imperialism and for self-determination. However, siding with the oppressed masses also means backing them when they rise up against domestic oppressors. These uprisings and struggle for democracy are part and parcel of the struggle against imperialism.

For me the complexity of the problem resolves itself in determining whether the people’s struggle for civil rights and social emancipation are clearly directed against both domestic reaction/repression and imperialism. In Iraq and Libya yesterday and Syria today, imperialism has succeeded in exploiting the struggle for democracy and eclipsing the progressive opposition forces. The left has to face the facts and not sweep inconvenient developments under the carpet. Syria today has NATO-backed armed groups, led by Saudi/Qatari-funded reactionaries. Syria is a major target of US-led imperialism to install a client regime or, failing that objective, to plunge the country into a sectarian blood bath. The duty of the left in Britain is to firmly uphold and raise the banners high: “Hands off Syria”, “Don’t Iraq Syria”, “Don’t Iraq Iran”, “It is for the Syrian people to determine their future”…

Al-Jazeera is a news station that has developed a reputation on the left for covering the Middle East (some would say the news in general) with more sophistication and seriousness than the mainstream media in this country. And yet you say that in relation to Syria and Libya their role has been very insidious. Can you explain how? Can you append to this your impression of the British media’s coverage of Syria?

With very few and notable exceptions, it really doesn’t take much to provide a more serious and reliable coverage of the Middle East than the mainstream media here. With significant exceptions, the media here echo the line adopted by the Foreign Office on any particular event or country. A complex array of ideological, political, social, economic and commercial factors are at play in the way the media reports on the Middle East and world affairs in general. “British national interests” are perceived by media owners and editors as being expressed by the Foreign Office, which is seen as the neutral depository and slide-rule of the “national interest”. No distinction is made between the genuine interests of the British people and those of the arms manufacturers and oil companies.

Coverage of Israeli policies, Palestinian people’s rights, Mussadaq’s Iran (1953), Nasser’s Egypt (1952-1970), Qassem’s Iraq (1958-1963), the murderous sanctions policies on Iraq, the Iraq War, NATO bombing of Libya and the current covert NATO intervention in Syria are examples of how the mainstream media towed the line advocated by the government of the day. Similarly, the ruthless and socially repressive nature of the Saudi regime is glossed over, because the Saudi medieval rulers are seen as important allies.

As it happens, Al-Jazeera had its own historical link with the media here! The satellite broadcaster was launched in 1996 following the sudden collapse of the BBC Arabic station, which was a joint venture with a leading Saudi prince. The collapse followed Saudi insistence on monitoring all broadcast material, forcing the BBC to pull out. The Qatari rulers seized the moment and launched Al-Jazeera, with scores of the BBC Arabic service staff on board, and with the Qatari ruling family as the owners and political custodians.

The dead hand of the assorted dictatorships in the Arab world made all Arab TV stations be perceived, to varying degrees, as purveyors of state lies, half-truths and, at best, safe-reporting. The advent of satellite stations and the Internet opened the doors for the Al-Jazeera to project itself as the antidote to state censorship.

The more cosmopolitan and less vulnerable Qatari rulers, who were at odds with the Saudi rulers, saw in Al-Jazeera a vehicle for spreading their political influence. They gave Al-Jazeera a free hand to report on the Arab and Muslim world, while maintaining tight control on the Qatari state TV station. But it was of course not allowed to report negatively on the Qatari dictators or to investigate how the current Qatari ruler deposed his father with US blessing. Qatar became the headquarters of US military operations throughout the Middle East, including Afghanistan and Iraq.

One aspect of Al-Jazeera that does not attract much scrutiny is the station’s tendency to negatively report on the Saudi royal family and Saudi princes’ widespread financial and property interests, which are hindering Qatari investments and influence in the Middle East. The friction between the Qatari and Saudi royal families became much more intense after the Qatari rulers started showing keen interest in widening their influence in the Middle East. Occasionally, however, Al-Jazeera’s intrepid reporters on the ground upset US military planners in Afghanistan and Iraq.

In response to Al-Jazeera, the Saudi rulers funded al-Arabiya and other satellite stations.

The uprisings in the Arab world, especially in neighbouring Bahrain, however, threatened all the ruling families of the Gulf region. This prompted the Qatari and Saudi rulers to make common cause in suppressing the uprisings in Bahrain and Yemen while backing NATO intervention in Libya and bankrolling sections of the Syrian opposition and working for militarising the conflict in Syria. For they are aware that militarising the conflict will not only facilitate covert and possibly overt NATO intervention but will thwart the progressive anti-imperialist forces’ efforts to lead the people’s struggle for democracy and radical social and economic change.

Al-Jazeera English targets a different audience but still has to compete with other stations, particularly Iranian and Russian satellite stations. But both Al-Jazeera Arabic and English, along with nearly all Arab TV stations, target Iran in a barrage of negative reporting, with a racist and sectarian undertones against “Persian” and “Shia influence” in the region. This aspect of Al-Jazeera’s reporting is becoming increasingly important in the context of possible Israeli or US attacks on Iran.

Permit me here to quote from an article I wrote last year in which I referred to the role of Al-Jazeera within the Arab uprisings:

“Though Al-Jazeera has now become the most influential political tool of counter-revolution in the Arab world, its role in Libya and the impact of the sectarian nature of its coverage of the Bahrain uprising would have been much less lethal had it not been for the massive prestige and authority it had gained at the height of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. […] This [has given it] a unique position to influence events and perceptions, particularly in relation to Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. […]Although Al-Jazeera has always had a sectarian undertone at an editorial level, a marked shift in direction came when the Qatari ruling family […] buried their longstanding conflict with the Saudi ruling family in the wake of the revolutionary tidal wave reaching Bahrain […]
The channel’s silence towards the violent suppression of the protesters in Bahrain, headquarters of the US fifth fleet, was backed up by live interviews with Sheikh Qaradhawi, a very influential Egyptian cleric and a guest of the Qatari ruling family.”

Doing serious damage to the democratic forces in Syria, Al-Jazeera has been trumpeting the Qatari and Saudi rulers’ calls for the militarisation of the conflict. It has given voice to the pro-NATO intervention forces in the Syrian National Council and the Free Syrian Army, who do not represent a majority of the Syrian people and are dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Perhaps more damagingly is the way they suppressed the anti-intervention democratic opposition voices in Syria.

How do you see this conflict playing out? Do you see a victory for the reactionary forces as moving us closer to a war with Iran? Is there still a potential for revolutionary change in Syria?

Yes, I think that a victory for the Saudi and Qatari ruling classes, backed by the US, will be a major setback for the people in Syria, Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq and the entire region. It will plunge Syria and the entire region into a sectarian bloodbath, and will strengthen plans to attack Iran.

In an alarming move pointing to future developments, a major US-led military exercise is taking place in Jordan. 12,000 multinational forces from 20 NATO members and Arab states are taking part in Operation Eager Lion 2012, the first of its type in the region. US military sources do not hide the fact that the simulation of amphibious landings and other war manoeuvres were intended to be “noticed” by Syria and Iran.

Syria is of pivotal importance not only due to its historic role and strategic location but also because it is Iran’s only ally in the region. Installing a pro US regime in Damascus, or crippling Syria through severe sanctions, terrorist attacks and sectarian civil war will apply further pressure on Iran to either concede to US demands or be attacked.

I think that Iran’s nuclear energy programme is not the major US concern, especially given that the CIA itself has admitted that there was no evidence that Iran was working on producing nuclear weapons. Iran is a formidable regional power, and one of the world’s largest oil producers, which happens to be implacably opposed to US and Israeli policies. Its policies run counter to US plans and have created problems for the US in Afghanistan and Iraq and for Israeli policies in Palestine and Lebanon.

Following the uprisings, the Saudi and Qatari rulers are being encouraged by Washington to strengthen their influence in the Middle East by restoring their lost influence in Syria and Lebanon. In the latter, defeating Hizbullah (and its Christian and left and nationalist allies) is the main objective. They are trying to drag Hizbullah into another Lebanese civil war. Al-Jazeera and Arab states’ media have been conducting a prolonged and intense racist and sectarian campaign against Iran, portraying it as the main enemy and accusing Syria and Hizbullah of being stooges of Iran.

This is not to argue that the counterrevolutionary onslaught will be successful. The people of Syria are overwhelmingly opposed to political and social change in their country that is funded and backed by the dictatorships of Riyadh and Doha. Women, most of whom enjoy vast social rights compared to Saudi women, ethnic and religious minorities and the democratic left in Syria are a formidable force against Saudi-Qatari-funded forces and are opposed to calls for NATO intervention. Militarisation of the conflict and resorting to terrorist attacks are signs of failure of the reactionary forces to gain mass support for their line. However, the struggle of the anti-imperialist left and other democratic forces in Syria, as in Iraq, remain difficult and very complex, due to the brutality of and corruption-ridden regime on the one hand and the intervention of NATO and Saudi-Qatari rulers on the other.

Years of repression by the dictatorships, backed by colonial and imperialist powers for so many decades, has organisationally weakened the left and other democratic forces. It is obvious that with Saudi-Qatari backing, the leaderships of the Brotherhood and Salafi forces are, in the short term, reaping the fruits of the uprisings. These forces have always played a dual role amongst the poorest sections of the population, giving voice for their demands while acting as a lid on the more politically and socially radical demands of the people. At critical times, as in Egypt, Iraq and Syria today, they have played a counter-revolutionary role and were accommodated by imperialist powers.

However, the uprisings in the region have unleashed massive popular energies that bode well for the future.

In the short term I am quite pessimistic about radical democratic transformation in Syria. I think that is no longer possible in the current phase of the struggle, because of the weakness of the left organisations and the foothold gained by the reactionary forces in the country. But longer term the uprisings across the Arab world are laying new foundations for the left to organise and prepare for the protracted battles to come. The masses have flexed their muscles in an unprecedented way. I think their triumphs and setbacks are massive schools for the new generations to develop more effective means and organisations to lead the struggle forward.

By Sami Ramadani, Samuel Grove

12 June 2012

@ New Left Project

Samuel Grove is an independent researcher and journalist.

The campaign—which is being led by New York-based United Against Nuclear Iran, or UANI—could threaten Beirut’s financial sector, traditionally among the Middle East’s most important and vibrant. Lebanon’s banking sector historically accounts for around 35% of the country’s total economic output. The U.S. Treasury also has intensified its scrutiny of Lebanon’s banks in recent months, concerned that Hezbollah is using them to move illicit funds derived from narcotics trafficking.

UANI has sent letters to private-equity firm Blackstone Group LP, mutual-fund firm Fidelity Investments, international bank HSBC Holdings PLC, and Germany’s DekaBank Group in recent months to lobby them to unload their Lebanese holdings.

“UANI calls on you…to divest all such securities…to ensure that you don’t unwittingly support Lebanon’s role as a sovereign money launderer,” UANI’s Chief Executive Mark Wallace wrote.

Three financial firms, Ameriprise Financial Inc., Finland’s Aktia Bank, and Vienna-based Erste-Sparinvest KAG, confirmed that they have divested themselves of their holdings in Lebanese securities in recent months, though they didn’t cite the amounts of their investments.

Ameriprise said its decision was made before receiving correspondence from UANI.

Sparinvest, however, wrote to Mr. Wallace on June 27 to confirm it was pulling its investments because of the concerns raised by the group. “We came to the conclusion to divest our holdings in Lebanese bonds, and, therefore, we will follow your recommendation,” Sparinvest Chief Executive Heinz Bednar wrote.

HSBC and DekaBank both contacted UANI and said they also were investigating the charges raised against Lebanon. Fidelity said it would comply with all U.S. regulations concerning investments in Lebanon. Blackstone said it is reviewing the matter and will respond later.

The effort to target Lebanon’s banking system is just the latest effort in a broader campaign against Iran and its allies by UANI, a group formed in 2008 by former U.S. and international security and foreign-policy officials. In recent months, the organization also has successfully lobbied South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co., Italy’s Fiat SpA, and the U.K.’s Standard Chartered PLC to end their Iran businesses.

In another initiative, UANI teamed this year with U.S. lawmakers to pressure Belgium’s Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which facilitates financial transfers world-wide, to expel Iran from its network.

UANI also is pushing for the Treasury to designate Lebanon’s financial system as a “money-laundering concern” under a statute of the Patriot Act. Such an action could eventually bar Lebanese financial institutions from participating in the U.S. financial system.

To be sure, Lebanon poses a policy dilemma for the Obama administration. While the Treasury is focused on weakening the finances of Hezbollah, Iran and Syria, there also is a concern that Washington’s allies in Lebanon could be harmed if Beirut’s financial position deteriorates. Last year, Hezbollah formed the government in Beirut after ousting pro-Western Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri.

Last week, Treasury officials sanctioned five men for allegedly laundering drug money into Beirut on behalf of an international narcotics network run by a Lebanese national named Ayman Joumaa. The Treasury alleged that some of the funds were sent directly to Hezbollah, via a joint Lebanese-Colombian national, Ali Mohamad Saleh.

“The Joumaa network is a sophisticated multinational money laundering ring, which launders the proceeds of drug trafficking for the benefit of criminals and the terrorist group Hezbollah,” said David Cohen, the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.

Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has denied any role in narcotics smuggling.

The Treasury last year blacklisted Lebanon’s then-eighth-largest bank, the Lebanese Canadian Bank, over charges that it was facilitating the movement of Joumaa drug money and holding accounts for Hezbollah. U.S. officials involved in the investigation said they were alarmed by the sharp increase of U.S. dollar-denominated accounts in Lebanon, which grew by as much as 500% since Hezbollah’s 2006 war with Israel. These officials said the increases raised suspicions due to the political risk associated with Lebanon and the Beirut government’s high debt load.

UANI wrote Lebanon’s Central Bank governor Riad Salameh in late May and alleged that the large cash infusions mainly were a result of Hezbollah’s smuggling. Mr. Wallace also charged that these funds were being used to artificially prop up Lebanon’s sovereign debt and securities.

“In your role as governor…under the political control of Hezbollah, it may very well be impossible for you to effectively perform your role,” Mr. Wallace wrote.

Mr. Salameh couldn’t be reached for comment. The Lebanese banker repeatedly has said that Beirut’s central bank scrutinizes all Lebanese banks to guard against any illicit funds in coming from Iran or Syria. He also said his government is cooperating closely with the U.S. in investigating the Lebanese Canadian Bank and the charges of Hezbollah’s drug trafficking.

“The central bank of Lebanon does not have any financial relationship with the central bank of Iran,” Mr. Salameh wrote to UANI. “Furthermore, none of the Lebanese banks and financial institutions has financial relationships with Iranian financial institutions.”

By JAY SOLOMON

@ The Wall Street Journal

A version of this article appeared July 3, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Banks Get Pressed on Beirut.

Why should the question be asked in the first place? Hasn’t the Arab link to the Palestinian struggle been consistently strong, regardless of the prevalent form of government in any single Arab country? Rhetorically, at least, the Arab bond to Palestine remained incessantly strong at every significant historical turn.

True, disparity between rhetoric and reality are as old as the Arab-Israeli conflict. But the relatively small divide between words and actions widened enormously following the Arab defeat in the 1967 war, which cemented US-Israeli ties like never before.

The war brought an end to the dilemma of independent Palestinian action. It shifted the focus to the West Bank and Gaza, and allowed the still dominant Fatah party to fortify its position in light of Arab defeat and subsequent division.

The division was highlighted most starkly in the August 1967 Khartoum summit in Sudan, where Arab leaders clashed over priorities and definitions. Should Israel’s territorial gains redefine the status quo? Should Arabs focus on returning to a pre-1948 or pre-1967 situation?

The PLO insisted that the 1967 defeat should not compromise the integrity of the struggle. It also stressed that Palestine – all of Palestine – was still the pressing issue. Then-Egyptian President Jamal Abdel Nasser’s messages seemed, for once, befuddled, although he continued to advocate conventional military confrontation with Israel. Syria, on the other hand, didn’t attend the summit.

International response to the war was not promising either. The United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 242 on Nov. 22, 1967, reflecting the US’ wish to capitalize on the new status quo (Israeli withdrawal “from occupied territories” in exchange for normalization with Israel). The new language of the immediate post-1967 period alarmed Palestinians, who realized that any future political settlement was likely to ignore the situation that had existed prior to the war, and would only attempt to remedy current grievances. Then, the boundaries of the conflict permanently changed. For some, Palestine and its conflict became more of a burden than a shared responsibility. Official Arab solidarity with Palestinians become a form of everyday politics – essential to claim relevance to greater Arab causes, but extraneous in terms of substance and application.

Present-day Palestinian leaderships – since there are several bodies that claim to represent Palestinians “everywhere” – also learned how to stage-manage official Arab manipulation of Palestine. They often did so out of desperation, as they urgently needed a physical base and sources of financial support.

Over time, it became clear that official Arab solidarity with Palestine was mostly – although not entirely – a farce. The solidarity they speak of is either entirely nonexistent, or grossly misrepresented. Palestinian communities in various Arab countries are treated with suspicion at best. Those who never tired of publicly calling for freedom for Jerusalem failed to treat Palestinian refugees with respect. They refused entry to stateless Palestinians and denied Palestinians work and permanent residence. Many Palestinians surely concluded that one must learn to differentiate between Arab peoples and Arab governments. Since the latter mostly dominate the former without legitimate mandate, it was foolish to expect official Arab institutions to lead any substantive action to end the subjugation of Palestinians.

That is, until several Arab nations revolted. The more genuine and inclusive the revolt, the more representative the outcome has been. A sudden surge in popular solidarity with Palestine in Tunisia replaced bashful but real attempts by the former Tunisian regime to normalize relations with Israel.

Per Israeli calculations, Arab peoples are dismissible. They are a non-entity. But now Israel is forced to revisit that old calculation. Its fears that Egypt’s new president, Muhammad Mursi will shun, or at least revisit the Camp David peace treaty – signed between Egypt and Israel in 1979, with the ultimate aim of sidelining Egypt from a conflict that remains essentially “Arab” – are well-founded. But Mursi is not the one that is truly feared, and nor is his Muslim Brotherhood. The trepidation stems from the fact that a truly democratic Egypt is unlikely to work in tandem with US-Israel to further pressure and isolate Palestinians – or sideline Egypt from its Arab context. Israel and its allies fear genuine Egyptian democracy.

With the notable shifts that may redefine Palestine’s position within Arab priorities, one cannot ignore the fact that several Arab countries continue to normalize with Israel, oblivious to any seasonable political changes in the region. They do so as if there are hidden hands that wish to balance the possible losses in Tunisia and Egypt, with gains elsewhere. Palestinians in Gaza, as elsewhere, still speak of Arab solidarity with passion, but also with obvious bitterness. They still pray for their brethren to come to the rescue. The older generation speaks of the bravery and sacrifices of many Arabs who fought alongside Palestinians. But the generational expectations have also been altered. Palestinians simply want real solidarity. They want to see Palestinian communities treated with respect and a complete end to Arab normalization with Israel.

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

By Ramzy Baroud

04 July, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Statement of Congressman Ron Paul – United States House of Representatives

 Statement on Motion to Instruct Conferees on HR 2194, Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act – April 22, 2010

 Mr. Speaker I rise in opposition to this motion to instruct House conferees on HR 2194, the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability and Divestment Act, and I rise in strong opposition again to the underlying bill and to its Senate version as well. I object to this entire push for war on Iran, however it is disguised. Listening to the debate on the Floor on this motion and the underlying bill it feels as if we are back in 2002 all over again: the same falsehoods and distortions used to push the United States into a disastrous and unnecessary one trillion dollar war on Iraq are being trotted out again to lead us to what will likely be an even more disastrous and costly war on Iran. The parallels are astonishing.

 We hear war advocates today on the Floor scare-mongering about reports that in one year Iran will have missiles that can hit the United States. Where have we heard this bombast before? Anyone remember the claims that Iraqi drones were going to fly over the United States and attack us? These “drones” ended up being pure propaganda – the UN chief weapons inspector concluded in 2004 that there was no evidence that Saddam Hussein had ever developed unpiloted drones for use on enemy targets. Of course by then the propagandists had gotten their war so the truth did not matter much.

 We hear war advocates on the floor today arguing that we cannot afford to sit around and wait for Iran to detonate a nuclear weapon. Where have we heard this before? Anyone remember then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice’s oft-repeated quip about Iraq: that we cannot wait for the smoking gun to appear as a mushroom cloud.

 We need to see all this for what it is: Propaganda to speed us to war against Iran for the benefit of special interests.

 Let us remember a few important things. Iran, a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been found in violation of that treaty. Iran is not capable of enriching uranium to the necessary level to manufacture nuclear weapons. According to the entire US Intelligence Community, Iran is not currently working on a nuclear weapons program. These are facts, and to point them out does not make one a supporter or fan of the Iranian regime. Those pushing war on Iran will ignore or distort these facts to serve their agenda, though, so it is important and necessary to point them out.

 Some of my well-intentioned colleagues may be tempted to vote for sanctions on Iran because they view this as a way to avoid war on Iran. I will ask them whether the sanctions on Iraq satisfied those pushing for war at that time. Or whether the application of ever-stronger sanctions in fact helped war advocates make their case for war on Iraq: as each round of new sanctions failed to “work” – to change the regime – war became the only remaining regime-change option.

 This legislation, whether the House or Senate version, will lead us to war on Iran. The sanctions in this bill, and the blockade of Iran necessary to fully enforce them, are in themselves acts of war according to international law. A vote for sanctions on Iran is a vote for war against Iran. I urge my colleagues in the strongest terms to turn back from this unnecessary and counterproductive march to war.

By Congressman Ron Paul

24 April, 2010

Countercurrents.org

The latest in a growing number of non-violent protesters shot by well-armed Israeli soldiers, three unarmed demonstrators –two Palestinians and one international–were injured this afternoon by Israeli soldiers’ firing with live ammunition at a protest east of El Meghazi, central Gaza Strip. One week prior, Mahmoud Shawa, 19, was shot just below his knee by an Israeli soldier while demonstrating near the Nahal Oz crossing, eastern Gaza. March 30, four Palestinians were shot by armed Israeli soldiers while participating in non-violent demonstrations against the Israeli-imposed “buffer zone”. Three of the four were injured by bullets or bullet shrapnel to their legs, while the fourth was shot in the head.

Bianca Zammit, 28, from Malta was one of three injured by the Israeli soldiers’ shooting today. Zammit, an International Solidarity Movement (ISM) colleague was standing roughly 3 metres to my left, both of us roughly 50 metres from the Green Line border fence separating Gaza and Israel. At the time that Zammit was shot, she was filming the Israeli soldiers’ assault with live ammunition on the unarmed Palestinian protesters, mainly youths, in front of us, who had run up to post flags on the border fence and re-claim the land Palestinians have been run off of by the unilateral Israeli declaration of a no-go zone.

In theory, this “buffer zone” is 300 metres, running from south to north on the Palestinian side of Gaza’s border. In reality, the off-limits area annexes far more than the 300 metre band of land the Israeli authorities state are off-limits: Palestinian civilians have been killed and injured by Israeli shooting and shelling up to 2 km from the border. As well, workers gathering stones and steel for re-sale for construction purposes are routinely abducted by Israeli soldiers and taken into Israeli detention. These people have been driven by siege-induced poverty and desperation to this low-paying work in the border regions.

Shortly before Zammit was shot, a young Palestinian woman –Hind al Akra, 22– participating in the protest was hit by shrapnel from an Israeli-fired bullet which struck nearby her. The shrapnel lodged in her stomach. At the time of treatment in Deir al Balah’s Al Aqsa hospital, it was deemed that Akra would likely need surgery to remove the shrapnel from her abdomen.

The first to be shot today was 18 year old Nidal al Naql, a teen among those nearest the fence. He was targeted in his right thigh. Thankfully, the bullet missed any artery–the terrain of the area is rolling, rough ground, making the evacuations of the injured more time-consuming and difficult.

Like those youths shot and injured on Land Day, and the youth of last week, Zammit says when she is healed and able to walk, she will return to the demos, as will the Palestinians, every week, raising their voices against the annexation of their land and targeting of civilians.

“What threat did I pose the Israeli soldiers? What threat did any of us pose them?”

By Eva Bartlett

25 April, 2010

In Gaza

What can possibly justify the relentless U.S. diplomatic (and mainstream media) assault on Iran ?

It cannot be argued that Iran is an aggressive state that is dangerous to its neighbors, as facts do not support this claim. It cannot be relevant that Iran adheres to Islamic fundamentalism, has a flawed democracy and denies women full western-style civil rights, as Saudi Arabia is more fundamentalist, far less democratic and more oppressive of women, yet it is a U.S. ally. It cannot be relevant that Iran has, over the years, had a nuclear research program, and is most likely pursuing the capacity to develop nuclear weapons, as Pakistan, India, Israel and other states are nuclear powers yet remain U.S. allies—indeed, Israel deceived the U.S. while developing its nuclear program.

The answer to the above-posed question is fairly obvious: Iran must be punished for leaving the orbit of U.S. control. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when the Shah was removed, Iran, unlike, say, Saudi Arabia, acts independently and thus compromises U.S. power in two ways: i) Defiance of U.S. dictates affects the U.S.’s attainment of goals linked to Iran; and, ii) Defiance of U.S. dictates establishes a “bad” example for other countries that may wish to pursue an independent course. The Shah could commit any number of abuses—widespread torture, for example—yet his loyalty to the U.S. exempted him from American condemnation—yet not from the condemnation of the bulk of Iranians who brought him down.

The following quiz is an attempt to introduce more balance into the mainstream discussion of Iran.

Iran Quiz Questions :

1. Is Iran an Arab country?

2. Has Iran launched an aggressive war of conquest against another country since 1900?

3. How many known cases of an Iranian suicide-bomber have there been from 1989 to 2007?

4. What was Iran ‘s defense spending in 2008?

5. What was the U.S. ‘s defense spending in 2008?

6. What is the Jewish population of Iran ?

7. Which Iranian leader said the following? “This [ Israel ‘s] Occupation regime over Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

8. True of False: Iranian television presented a serial sympathetic to Jews during the Holocaust that coincided with President Ahmadinejad’s first term.

9. What percentage of students entering university in Iran is female?

10. What percentage of the Iranian population attends Friday prayers?

11. True or False: Iran has formally consented to the Arab League’s 2002 peace initiative with Israel.

12. Which two countries were responsible for orchestrating the 1953 overthrow of Iran’s populist government of democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mossadegh, primarily because he introduced legislation that led to the nationalization of Iranian oil?

13. Who made the following address on March 17, 2000? “In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran’s popular prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. The Eisenhower administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons. But the coup was clearly a setback for Iran’s political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs.”

14. Which countries trained the Shah’s brutal internal security service, SAVAK?

15. Does Iran have nuclear weapons?

16. Is Iran a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT)?

17. Is Israel a signatory of the NPT?

18. Does the NPT permit a signatory to pursue a nuclear program?

19. Who wrote the following in 2004? “Wherever U.S forces go, nuclear weapons go with them or can be made to follow in short order. The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy. Though Iran is ruled by Islamic fundamentalists, most commentators who are familiar with the country do not regard its government as irrational. …  [I]t was Saddam Hussein who attacked Iran, not the other way around; since then Iran has been no more aggressive than most countries are. For all their talk of opposition to Israel , Iran ‘s rulers are very unlikely to mount a nuclear attack on a country that is widely believed to have what it takes to wipe them off the map. Chemical or other attacks are also unlikely, given the meager results that may be expected and the retaliation that would almost certainly follow.”

20. What percentage of Iranians in 2008 said they had an unfavorable view of the American people?

21. What percentage of Iranians in 2008 expressed negative sentiments toward the Bush administration?

22. What were the main elements of Iran’s 2003 Proposal to the U.S., communicated during the build-up to the Iraq invasion, and how did the U.S. respond to Iran’s Proposal?

23. True or False: Iran and the U.S. both considered the Taleban to be an enemy after the 9/11 attacks.

24. Did the U.S. work with the Tehran-based Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq both before and after the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq?

25. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, who said the following? “The Iranians had real contacts with important players in Afghanistan and were prepared to use their influence in constructive ways in coordination with the United States .”

26. Who wrote the following in 2004? “It is in the interests of the United States to engage selectively with Iran to promote regional stability, dissuade Iran from pursuing nuclear weapons, preserve reliable energy supplies, reduce the threat of terror, and address the ‘democracy deficit’ that pervades the Middle East …”

Iran Quiz Answers :

1. No. Alone among the Middle Eastern peoples conquered by the Arabs, the Iranians did not lose their language or their identity. Ethnic Persians make up 60 percent of modern Iran, modern Persian (not Arabic) is the official language, Iran is not a member of the Arab League, and the majority of Iranians are Shiite Muslims while most Arabs are Sunni Muslims. Accordingly, based on language, ancestry and religion, Iran is not an Arab country. ( http://www.slate.com/id/1008394/ )

2. No.

-According to Juan Cole, the Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan, Iran has not launched such a war for at least 150 years. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p.199.)

-It should be appreciated that Iran did not start the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s: “ The war began when Iraq invaded Iran, launching a simultaneous invasion by air and land into Iranian territory on 22 September 1980 following a long history of border disputes, and fears of Shia insurgency among Iraq’s long-suppressed Shia majority influenced by the Iranian Revolution. Iraq was also aiming to replace Iran as the dominant Persian Gulf state.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%E2%80%93Iraq_War)

3. Zero. There is not a single known instance of an Iranian suicide-bomber since the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988. ( Robert Baer; The Devil We Know: Dealing with the New Iranian Superpower; Crown Publishers; New York: 2008.)

-According to Baer, an American author and a former CIA field officer assigned to the Middle East, it is i mportant to understand that Iran has used suicide bombers as the ultimate “smart bomb.” In fact there is little difference between a suicide-bomber and a marine who rushes a machine-gun nest to meet his certain death. Therefore, while Iran had used suicide bombers for tactical military purposes, Sunni extremists use suicide bombing for vague objectives such as to weaken the enemy or purify the state.

4. $9.6 billion. ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25279.htm )

5. $692 billion. ( http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article25279.htm )

-There is also little doubt that Israel could defeat Iran in a conventional war in mere hours. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009; p p.206-7.)

6. 25,000. It is one of the many paradoxes of the Islamic Republic of Iran that this anti-Israeli country supports by far the largest Jewish population of any Muslim country. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, thousands of Jews left for Israel, Western Europe or the U.S., fearing persecution. But Ayatollah Khomeini, Iran’s first post-revolutionary supreme leader, issued a fatwa, upon his return from exile in Paris, decreeing that the Jews and other religious minorities were to be protected, thus reducing the outflow of Iran’s Jews to a trickle. ( http://www.sephardicstudies.org/iran.html )

7. Ruhollah Khomeini. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York : 2009; p.201.)

-This wasn’t a surprising statement to come from the leader of the 1979 Revolution as Israel had been a firm ally of both the U.S. and the Shah.

-According to Cole, Ahmadinejad quoted this statement in 2005 yet wire service translators rendered Khomeini’s statement into English as “Israel must be wiped off the face of the map.” Yet, Khomeini had referred to the occupation regime not Israel , and while he expressed a wish for the regime to go away he didn’t threaten to go after Israel . In fact, a regime can vanish without any outside attacks, as happened to the Shah’s regime in Iran and to the USSR. It is notable that when Khomeini made the statement in the 1980s, there was no international outcry. In fact, in the early 1980s, Khomeini supplied Israel with petroleum in return for American spare parts for the American-supplied Iranian arsenal. As both Israel and Iran considered Saddam’s Iraq a serious enemy, they had a tacit alliance against Iraq during the first phase of the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s. It should also be noted that Ahmadinejad subsequently stated he didn’t want to kill any Jews but rather he wants a one-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. While Ahmadinejad’s preferred solution is a non-starter, Israel ‘s refusal to pursue a comprehensive peace creates space for Arab hardliners whose agendas do not include a realistic peace with Israel .

8. True. Iranian television ran a widely watched serial on the Holocaust, Zero Degree Turn , based on true accounts of the role Iranian diplomats in Europe played in rescuing thousands of Jews in WWII.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJljqWQAqCI&feature=related )

9. Over 60%. ( M. Axworthy; A History of Iran : Empire of the Mind; Basic Books; New York : 2008.)

-In fact, many women—even married women—have professional jobs.

10. 1.4%. ( M. Axworthy; A History of Iran : Empire of the Mind; Basic Books; New York : 2008.)

11. True. In March 2002, the Arab League summit in Beirut unanimously put forth a peace initiative that commits it not just to recognize Israel but also to establish normal relations once Israel implements the international consensus for a comprehensive peace—which includes Israel withdrawing from the occupied territories and a just settlement of the Palestinian refugee crisis. (This peace initiative has been subsequently reaffirmed including at the March 2009 Arab League summit at Doha.) All 57 members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, including Iran , “adopted the Arab peace initiative to resolve the issue of Palestine and the Middle East … and decided to use all possible means in order to explain and clarify the full implications of this initiative and win international support for its implementation.” ( Norman G. Finkelstein; This Time We Went Too Far: Truth and Consequences of the Gaza Invasion; OR Books; New York : 2010; p. 42.)

12. The U.S. and Britain . ( Stephen Kinzer; All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; New Jersey: 2008.)

-According to Kinzer, Iranians had been complaining that the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) had not been sharing profits on Iranian petroleum with Iran fairly; and Iran’s parliament (Majles) had tried to renegotiate with the AIOC. When the AIOC rejected renegotiation, Mossadegh introduced the nationalization act in 1951. In response, Britain and the U.S. organized a global boycott of Iran which sent the Iranian economy into a tailspin. Later, the military coup was orchestrated that reinstalled the shah. (One irony is that Britain itself had nationalized several industries in the 1940s and 1950s.)

13. Madeleine Albright: U.S. Secretary of State , 1997 -2001. ( Stephen Kinzer; All The Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror; John Wiley & Sons, Inc.; New Jersey : 2008; p.212.)

14. According to William Blum, a highly respected author and journalist, “The notorious Iranian security service, SAVAK, which employed torture routinely, was created under the guidance of the CIA and Israel in the 1950s. According to a former CIA analyst on Iran, Jesse J. Leaf, SAVAK was instructed in torture techniques by the Agency. After the 1979 revolution, the Iranians found CIA film made for SAVAK on how to torture women.” (http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Blum/Torture_RS.html)

-According to Reed College Professor Darius Rejali, one of the world’s leading writers on the subject of torture and the consequences of its use for modern society, “[T]he Iranian revolution of 1978-1979 was the revolution against torture. When the Shah criticized Khomayni as a blackrobed Islamic medieval throwback, Khomayni replied, look who is talking, the man who tortures. This was powerful rhetoric for recruiting people, then as it is now. People joined the revolutionary opposition because of the Shah’s brutality, and they remembered who installed him. If anyone wants to know why Iranians hated the U.S. so, all they have to do is ask what America ‘s role was in promoting torture in Iran . Torture not only shaped the revolution, it was the factor that has deeply poisoned the relationship of Iran with the West. So why trust the West again? And the Iranian leadership doesn’t.” ( http://www.harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002387 )

15. No.

http://www.dni.gov/press_releases/20071203_release.pdf )

-According to U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency Chief Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess, “The bottom line assessments of the [National Intelligence Estimate] still hold true, ” … We have not seen indication that the government has made the decision to move ahead with the [nuclear weapons] program.” (http://www.globalsecuritynewswire.org/gsn/nw_20100115_1438.php)

16. Yes. ( http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/18/world/AP-ML-Iran.html )

17. No. ( http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/04/18/world/AP-ML-Iran.html )

18. Yes.

-According to Juan Cole, The NPT specifies that “Nothing in this Treaty shall be interpreted as affecting the inalienable right of all the Parties to the Treaty to develop research, production and use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes without discrimination.” Therefore, as long as Iran meets its responsibilities under the NPT and continues to allow inspections by the IAEA, it is acting within its rights. The sorts of research facilities maintained by Iran are common in industrialized countries. The real issue is trust and transparency rather than purely one of technology. Yet, Iran has not always been forthcoming in fulfilling its obligations under the NPT.

The Ford administration of the mid-1970s produced a memo saying that the shah’s regime must “prepare against the time … when Iranian oil production is expected to decline sharply.” Iran ‘s energy reserves are extensive, so that fear was misplaced. But Iran already uses domestically 2 million of the 4 million barrels a day it produces, and it could well cease being an exporter and even become a net importer in the relatively near future. (This helps explain Iran’s focus on nuclear energy. Yet, the desire for nuclear weapons isn’t irrational either.) Ford authorized a plutonium reprocessing plant for Iran , which could have allowed it to close the fuel cycle, a step toward producing a bomb.

In the 1970s, GE and Westinghouse won contracts to build eight nuclear reactors in Iran . The shah intimated that Iran would seek nuclear weapons, without facing any adverse consequences beyond some reprimands from the U.S. or Western Europe . In contrast, Khomeini was horrified by the idea of using weapons of mass destruction, and he declined to deploy chemical weapons at the front in the Iran-Iraq War, even though Saddam had no such compunctions and extensively used mustard gas and sarin on Iranian troops. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York: 2009)

20. 20%. ( Juan Cole; Engaging The Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; New York : 2009; p.197.)

21. 75%. ( Juan Cole; Engaging the Muslim World; Palgrave Macmillan; ( New York : 2009); p.197.)

-One wonders what the percentage of Canadians—or Americans—held the same view?

22. According to the Washington Post, “Just after the lightning takeover of Baghdad by U.S. forces … an unusual two-page document spewed out of a fax machine at the Near East bureau of the State Department. It was a proposal from Iran for a broad dialogue with the United States , and the fax suggested everything was on the table — including full cooperation on nuclear programs, acceptance of Israel and the termination of Iranian support for Palestinian militant groups. But top Bush administration officials, convinced the Iranian government was on the verge of collapse, belittled the initiative. Instead, they formally complained to the Swiss ambassador who had sent the fax with a cover letter certifying it as a genuine proposal supported by key power centers in Iran …” ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/17/AR2006061700727_pf.html )

23. True. According to Ali M. Ansari, Professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews, “[K]hatami, moved quickly to offer his condolences to the US President [after the 9/11 attacks]. … [T]he Iranians soon recognized the opportunity that now confronted them. The United States was determined to dismantle Al Qaeda, and in the face of Taleban obstinacy decided on the removal of the Taleban. Nothing could be more amenable to the Iranians, who had been waging a proxy war against the Taleban for the better part of five years. … The collaboration which took place both during and after the war against the Taleban seemed to inaugurate a period of détente between Iran and the United States … It came as something of a shock therefore to discover that President Bush had decided to label Iran part of the ‘Axis of Evil’ … Now it appeared that the [Iranian] hardliners within the regime had been correct after all; the United States could not be trusted …” ( Ali M. Ansari; Modern Iran: The Pahlavis and After Second Edition; Pearson Education; Great Britain: 2007; pp. 331-332.)

24. Yes. ( http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/how_bush_created_a_theocracy_in_iraq )

-One wonders what the Bush administration thought the party name entailed? Would it have been unreasonable to assume it had good relations with Iran and might support an Islamic Revolution?

-In 2007, the party, showing good public relations, changed its name to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq .

25. Flynt Leverett: Senior director for Middle East affairs in the U.S. National Security Council from March 2002 to March 2003. He left the George W. Bush Administration and government service in 2003 because of disagreements about Middle East policy and the conduct of the war on terror. ( http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8590 )

26. A task force sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations and chaired by two prominent members of the American foreign policy establishment, former CIA director Robert Gates and former national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, recommended “a revised strategic approach to Iran.” Their report included the above statement. (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2005/mar/24/clouds-over-iran/?pagination=false )

By Jeffrey Rudolph

Jeffrey Rudolph, a college professor in Montreal, was the Quebec representative of the East Timor Alert Network, and presented a paper on its behalf at the United Nations. He prepared the widely-distributed, “Can You Pass the Israel-Palestine Quiz,” which can be found at,

http://www.countercurrents.org/rudolph180608.htm (Comments or questions concerning these quizzes should be emailed to: Israel-Palestine-Quiz@live.com.)

Subject: Beware of local university’s African students…! !

Please pass the news and warn the parents, government, students and society.

 This is true and all happened within these two years!

I have a friend’s daughter who is studying in Limkokwing University , and she was kidnapped by a Botswana student studying there as well.  The African is 37 years old!

The daughter was kidnapped and managed to escape from that African. However, she had been raped, beaten, tied up and punched by the man.  That bastard even got his African friends ( Botswana students too) to rape the daughter.  Now the daughter is in trauma.

Because of this case, I have investigated amongst the Limkokwing students, and there are more serious cases that had been happening within these two years.  Please read and spread the news to your friends, it’s not rumours. Trust me, or you may ask any of the Limkokwing students!

 I am sad as it is all covered up by the Limkokwing’s president – Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing.

 The covered issues about Botswana students (African black):

 (1) They take drugs in the University toilet and had been caught by security guard. However the president warned the guard not to spread the news.

 (2) They take drugs in the university’s event, especially in the Orientation night organized by the students’ society and faculty.  The lecturers saw the incident and they tried to stop, but they like to use the same sentence too against the lecturers: ‘who the f*ck you are, we paid to Tan Sri and Tan Sri paid you, just shut up!’

 (3) They get drunk and many accidents happened in Cyberjaya (too many accidents, you can check with the police station)

 (4) They keep drugs in their apartments, i.e. Desa Ria, and even bring drugs to class.  In the University party in Desa Ria, they took drugs and alcohol (Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing’s daughter was there too).

 (5) They disturb the female students, especially the Malay and Chinese students.  They just take away and use their handphones without asking for permission (means they just grab!).  The girls always feel scared and just keep silent as they do not know what the Botswana students (Africans) will do to them..

(6) There are classes in which of the students’ population is 70% Botswana students.  They do not pay attention and cannot keep quiet in the class and the local students are disturbed by them.  They even argue in the classes (not only once) when the male local students asked them to shut up, end up they fight.  Lecturers tried to stop the Botswana students, again, they showed the same respond ‘who the f*ck you are, we paid to Tan Sri and Tan Sri paid you, just shut up!’

(7) They love to sexually harass the female students.  This statement needs no further explanation!  Ask the students!

(8) They do not submit assignments and are late in submitting assignments, but still pass!  The concern is they still pass!  What kind of quality I wonder?  They deserve to repeat and fail.  Is it the University policy? Their (African) government paid more to Limkokwing University , so they can pass easily?  They don’t even follow the lecturers’ guideline, how they can pass?

(9) They even act rude to the lecturers..  The lecturers just keep quiet.

 (10) They scratched the lecturers’ cars..

 (11) They insulted the students’ counsellor in front of the crowd when they not managed to cut queue.

 (12) They forced the female students to give their contact numbers.

 (13) They gather at their hostel every night and get drunk.

 (14) They kidnapped my friend’s daughter!

 (15) They used Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing’s and the vice president’s names to cover their ugliness, of which Tan Sri Lim Kok Wing and the vice president knows!  They allowed this to happen.

I hope you help to spread the news and I hope there will be a petition to ask the Higher Ministry of Education to look into the African students’ recruitment in Malaysia , especially Limkokwing University .  It is already the hell of crime in Cyberjaya..  I am sure the African students bring harm.

If you do not believe, you can ask anyone of the Limkokwing students, and ask them how is the African students’ attitude!  The dark side of Limkokwing University is all covered up..  Please take serious action and discipline the Africans ( Botswana students). Just lodge the police report and do not feel fear!  At least we stop them bring harm to our children!

 PS: This email is also to tell the management of Limkokwing to take action now.  I need the students to spread the email and tell them that it is serious now, and no more covered!  Soon we will record the videos and put in

YouTube.  It is so easy to capture their bad behaviour!  STOP GIVING THEM TOO MUCH POWER!  STOP COVERING UP FOR THEM!!

Lim Teng Seng

If you’ve ever wondered why the public tolerates politicians who lie to them it’s likely that they “don’t have a high expectation that they’ll tell the truth” in the first place, a noted ethicist says. As a result,  explains Michael Josephson, “when they lie we are generally less offended in principle. That doesn’t make their lying acceptable; it just explains why there is a high tolerance level for it.”

Josephson is one man who should know. He is founder of the nonprofit Josephson Institute of Los Angeles, Calif., and is a well-known radio commentator on the subject. In an interview that appeared in “The Long Term View” magazine published by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, Josephson noted that former Boston Mayor James Michael Curley was re-elected from prison in part because “People’s self-interest sometimes is to keep a liar in office if he lies for you as well as against you.”  Josephson said, “So, I think it’s very complex as to whether, even if we hate lying, we’re going to tolerate it.”

“If it is perfectly acceptable for politicians to lie, and they can do so without fear of recrimination, then why should they tell the truth?” he asks.

Josephson pointed out that in a democracy it is as if “each citizen were in effect a public official,” one who requires accurate information otherwise they cannot govern. This is even more true of Congress so that “Democracy is being undermined because people do not know if they can trust the information they’re getting.”

He gave as an example the Patriot missile system which the public initially was led to believe had a superb on-target average in the first Gulf War but whose percentage of hits was actually much less than advertised. “Now, how can we as a democracy make critical decisions about what defense systems to use and how much money to spend if we can’t believe the figures?” Josephson asked.

“Going to the next level, even the military doesn’t know what to believe as we find out that defense contractors are lying on their testing data, which is apparently true as well,” the ethicist continued. When this happens, “we are in an extraordinarily precarious situation” and “The level of mistrust is extremely high; it is at the point where it is truly dangerous.”

Josephson says that “every lie is a kind of land mine” and the majority of lies are not discovered but when they are “the land mine explodes and destroys trust.”

He noted that among high school students 70 to 80 percent admit that they cheat, yet less than two percent get caught and of those, only half are punished. “People must decide to treat honesty as such an important value that being dishonest will result in punishment.” He also stressed, “We have to reward people for telling the truth.”

“In performance reviews, we must evaluate whether or not a person is trusted by his co-workers, customers, clients, etc., as well as whether the person produced good results,” Josephson said.

He noted that up to one of every four resumes contain misrepresentations yet only one in five of those workers were fired “and that was only because their bosses weren’t satisfied with their work. So who said cheaters never prosper or that honesty is the best policy?” Josephson asked. One reason lying is so potent, he says, is “because it works.”

Americans need to create a society where losing is acceptable, otherwise people will do anything, including lying, in order to win, the noted ethicist says. And he warns, “If we get to a point where no one is trusted, it will be very hard, if not impossible, for democracy to succeed.” #

The Massachusetts School of Law, publisher of “The Long Term View,” was founded in 1988 to provide a quality, affordable legal education to students from minority, immigrant, and low-income backgrounds who would otherwise not be able to obtain a legal education

By Sherwood Ross

(Sherwood Ross is a media consultant to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

The human race stands on the verge of nuclear self-extinction as a species, and with it will die most, if not all, forms of intelligent life on the planet earth. Any attempt to dispel the ideology of nuclearism and its attendant myth propounding the legality of nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence must directly come to grips with the fact that the nuclear age was conceived in the original sins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted crimes against humanity and war crimes as defined by the Nuremberg Charter of August 8, 1945, and violated several basic provisions of the Regulations annexed to Hague Convention No. 4 Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land (1907), the rules of customary international law set forth in the Draft Hague Rules of Air Warfare (1923), and the United States War Department Field Manual 27-10, Rules of Land Warfare (1940). According to this Field Manual and the Nuremberg Principles, all civilian government officials and military officers who ordered or knowingly participated in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been lawfully punished as war criminals. The start of any progress toward resolving humankind’s nuclear predicament must come from the realization that nuclear weapons have never been legitimate instruments of state policy, but rather have always constituted illegitimate instrumentalities of internationally lawless and criminal behavior.

 THE USE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS

The use of nuclear weapons in combat was, and still is, absolutely prohibited under all circumstances by both conventional and customary international law: e.g., the Nuremberg Principles, the Hague Regulations of 1907, the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol I of 1977, etc. In addition, the use of nuclear weapons would also specifically violate several fundamental resolutions of the United Nations General Assembly that have repeatedly condemned the use of nuclear weapons as an international crime.

Consequently, according to the Nuremberg Judgment, soldiers would be obliged to disobey egregiously illegal orders with respect to launching and waging a nuclear war. Second, all government officials and military officers who might nevertheless launch or wage a nuclear war would be personally responsible for the commission of Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and Protocol 1, and genocide, among other international crimes. Third, such individuals would not be entitled to the defenses of superior orders, act of state, tu quoque, self-defense, presidential authority, etc. Fourth, such individuals could thus be quite legitimately and most severely punished as war criminals, up to and including the imposition of the death penalty, without limitation of time.

 THE THREAT TO USE NUCLEAR WEAPONS

Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter of 1945 prohibits both the threat and the use of force except in cases of legitimate self-defense as recognized by article 51 thereof. But although the requirement of legitimate self-defense is a necessary precondition for the legality of any threat or use of force, it is certainly not sufficient. For the legality of any threat or use of force must also take into account the customary and conventional international laws of humanitarian armed conflict.

Thereunder, the threat to use nuclear weapons (i.e., nuclear deterrence/terrorism) constitutes ongoing international criminal activity: namely, planning, preparation, solicitation and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide, as well as grave breaches of the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, Additional Protocol I of 1977, the Hague Regulations of 1907, and the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948, inter alia. These are the so-called inchoate crimes that under the Nuremberg Principles constitute international crimes in their own right.

The conclusion is inexorable that the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, maintenance, storing, stockpiling, sale, and purchase as well as the threat to use nuclear weapons together with all their essential accouterments are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law. Thus, those government decision-makers in all the nuclear weapons states with command responsibility for their nuclear weapons establishments are today subject to personal criminal responsibility under the Nuremberg Principles for this criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism that they have daily inflicted upon all states and peoples of the international community. Here I wish to single out four components of the threat to use nuclear weapons that are especially reprehensible from an international law perspective: counter-ethnic targeting; counter-city targeting; first-strike weapons and contingency plans; and the first-use of nuclear weapons even to repel a conventional attack.

 THE CRIMINALITY OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS AND NUCLEAR DETERRENCE

As can be determined in part from the preceding analysis, today’s nuclear weapons establishments as well as the entire system of nuclear deterrence/terrorism currently practiced by all the nuclear weapon states are criminal — not simply illegal, not simply immoral, but criminal under well established principles of international law. This simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons can be utilized to pierce through the ideology of nuclearism to which many citizens in the nuclear weapons states have succumbed. It is with this simple idea of the criminality of nuclear weapons that concerned citizens can proceed to comprehend the inherent illegitimacy and fundamental lawlessness of the policies that their governments pursue in their names with respect to the maintenance and further development of nuclear weapons systems.

 THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE/TERRORISM

Humankind must abolish nuclear weapons before nuclear weapons abolish humankind. Nonetheless, a small number of governments in the world community continue to maintain nuclear weapons systems despite the rules of international criminal law to the contrary. This has led some international lawyers to argue quite tautologically and disingenuously that since there exist a few nuclear weapons states in the world community, therefore nuclear weapons must somehow not be criminal because otherwise these few states would not possess nuclear weapons systems. In other words, to use lawyers’ parlance, this minority state practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism practiced by the great powers somehow negates the existence of a world opinio juris (i.e., sense of legal obligation) as to the criminality of nuclear weapons.

There is a very simple response to that specious argument: Since when has a small gang of criminals — in this case, the nuclear weapons states — been able to determine what is legal or illegal for the rest of the community by means of their own criminal behavior? What right do these nuclear weapons states have to argue that by means of their own criminal behavior they have ipso facto made criminal acts legitimate? No civilized nation state would permit a small gang of criminal conspirators to pervert its domestic legal order in this manner. Moreover, both the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Tokyo Tribunal made it quite clear that a conspiratorial band of criminal states likewise has no right to opt out of the international legal order by means of invoking their own criminal behavior as the least common denominator of international deportment.  Ex iniuria ius non oritur is a peremptory norm of customary international law.  Right cannot grow out of injustice!

To the contrary, the entire human race has been victimized by an international conspiracy of ongoing criminal activity carried out by the nuclear weapons states under the doctrine known as “nuclear deterrence,” which is really a euphemism for “nuclear terrorism.” This international criminal conspiracy of nuclear deterrence/terrorism currently practiced by the nuclear weapons states is no different from any other conspiracy by a criminal gang or band. They are the outlaws. So it is up to the rest of the international community to repress and dissolve this international criminal conspiracy as soon as possible.

 THE HUMAN RIGHT TO ANTI-NUCLEAR CIVIL RESISTANCE

In light of the fact that nuclear weapons systems are prohibited, illegal, and criminal under all circumstances and for any reason, every person around the world possesses a basic human right to be free from this criminal practice of nuclear deterrence/terrorism and its concomitant specter of nuclear extinction. Thus, all human beings possess the basic right under international law to engage in non-violent civil resistance activities for the purpose of preventing, impeding, or terminating the ongoing commission of these international crimes. Every citizen of the world community has both the right and the duty to oppose the existence of nuclear weapons systems by whatever non-violent means are at his or her disposal.  Otherwise, the human race will suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs, and the planet earth will become a radioactive wasteland.  The time for preventive action is now!

by Francis A. Boyle

VJ Day, 2009

Threats of right-wing violence have doubled in the past year. What is behind the latest upsurge in the movement to create a Christian theocratic state?

When Scott Roeder, the murderer of Wichita Kansas abortion clinic provider Dr. George Tiller, had his day in court, he spent much of his rambling self-defense quoting the words of another abortion clinic assassin, Reverend Paul Hill. In the 1990s my own research had brought me into conversation with others in the inner circle in which Hill and Roeder were at that time involved. So it was a chilling experience for me to realize that this awful mood of American Christian terrorism—culminating in the catastrophic attack on the Oklahoma City Federal Builiding—has now returned.

Christian terrorism has returned to America with a vengeance. And it is not just Roeder. When members of the Hutaree militia in Michigan and Ohio recently were arrested with plans to kill a random policeman and then plant Improvised Explosive Devices in the area where the funeral would be held to kill hundreds more, this was a terrorist plot of the sort that would impress Shi’ite militia and al Qaeda activists in Iraq. The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by Morris Dees, which has closely watched the rise of right-wing extremism in this country for many decades, declares that threats and incidents of right-wing violence have risen 200% in this past year—unfortunately coinciding with the tenure of the first African-American president in US history. When Chip Berlet, one of this country’s best monitors of right-wing extremism, warned in a perceptive essay last week on RD that the hostile right-wing political climate in this country has created the groundwork for a demonic new form of violence and terrorism, I fear that he is correct.

Christian Warrior, Sacred Battle

Though these new forms of violence are undoubtedly political and probably racist, they also have a religious dimension. And this brings me back to what I know about Rev. Paul Hill, the assassin who the similarly misguided assassin, Scott Roeder, quoted at length in that Wichita court room last week. In 1994, Hill, a Presbyterian pastor at the extreme fringe of the anti-abortion activist movement, came armed to a clinic in Pensacola, Florida. He aimed at Dr. John Britton, who was entering the clinic along with his bodyguard, James Barrett. The shots killed both men and wounded Barrett’s wife, Joan. Hill immediately put down his weapon and was arrested; presenting an image of someone who knew that he would be arrested, convicted, and executed by the State of Florida for his actions, which he was in 2003. This would make Hill something of a Christian suicide attacker.

What is interesting about Hill and his supporters is not just his political views, but also his religious ones. As I reported in my book, Terror in the Mind of God, and in an essay for RD several months ago, Hill framed his actions as those of a Christian warrior engaged in sacred battle. “My eyes were opened to the enormous impact” such an event would have, he wrote, adding that “the effect would be incalculable.” Hill said that he opened his Bible and found sustenance in Psalms 91: “You will not be afraid of the terror by night, or of the arrow that flies by day.” Hill interpreted this as an affirmation that his act was biblically approved.

One of the supporters that Paul Hill had written these words to was Rev. Michael Bray, a Lutheran pastor in Bowie, Maryland, who had served prison time for his conviction of fire-bombing abortion-related clinics on the Eastern seaboard. Bray published a newsletter and then a Web site for his Christian anti-abortion movement, and published a book theologically justifying violence against abortion service providers, A Time to Kill. He is also alleged to be the author of the Army of God manual that provides details on how to conduct terrorist acts against abortion-related clinics.

Recently Bray has publicly defended Paul Roeder, the Wichita assassin, saying that he acted with “righteousness and mercy.” Several years earlier, another member of Bray’s network of associates, Rachelle (“Shelly”) Shannon, a housewife from rural Oregon, had also attacked Dr. George Tiller as he drove away from his clinic in Wichita. She was arrested for attempted murder.

When I interviewed Bray on several occasions in the 1990s, he provided a theological defense of this kind of violence from two different Christian perspectives. In the remainder of this essay, I’ll summarize from Terror in the Mind of God some of my observations about these theological strands behind their terrorism in the 1990s—and which, amazingly, are surfacing again today.

Theological Illogic

The more traditional Christian justification that Bray used for his violence was just-war theory. He was fond of quoting two of my own heroes, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Reinhold Niebuhr, in what I regard as perverse ways. Bray thought that their justification of military action against the Nazis (and an attempted assassination plot on Hitler’s life Bonhoeffer was involved in) was an appropriate parallel to his terrorism against the US government’s sanctioning of legal abortions. It seemed highly unlikely to me that Bray’s positions would have been accepted by these or any other theologian within mainstream Protestant thought. Bonhoeffer and Niebuhr, like most modern theologians, supported the principle of the separation of church and state, and were wary of what Niebuhr called “moralism”—the intrusion of religious or other ideological values into the political calculations of statecraft. Moreover, Bray did not rely on mainstream theologians for his most earnest theological justification.

The more significant Christian position that Bray and Hill advanced is related to the End-Time theology of the Rapture as thought to be envisaged by the New Testament book of Revelation. These are ideas related, in turn, to Dominion Theology, the position that Christianity must reassert the dominion of God over all things, including secular politics and society. This point of view, articulated by such right-wing Protestant spokespersons as Rev. Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, have been part of the ideology of the Christian Right since at least the 1980s and 1990s.

At its hardest edge, the movement requires the creation of a kind of Christian politics to set the stage for America’s acceptance of the second coming of Christ. In this context, it is significant today that in some parts of the United States, over one-third of the opponents of the policies of President Barack Obama believe he is the Antichrist as characterized in the End-Times Rapture scenario.

The Christian anti-abortion movement is permeated with ideas from Dominion Theology. Randall Terry (founder of the militant anti-abortion organization Operation Rescue and a writer for the Dominion magazine Crosswinds) signed the magazine’s “Manifesto for the Christian Church,” which asserted that America should “function as a Christian nation.” The Manifesto said that America should therefore oppose “social moral evils” of secular society such as “abortion on demand, fornication, homosexuality, sexual entertainment, state usurpation of parental rights and God-given liberties, statist-collectivist theft from citizens through devaluation of their money and redistribution of their wealth, and evolutionism taught as a monopoly viewpoint in the public schools.”

At the extreme right wing of Dominion Theology is a relatively obscure theological movement that Mike Bray found particularly appealing: Reconstruction Theology, whose exponents long to create a Christian theocratic state. Bray had studied their writings extensively and possessed a shelf of books written by Reconstruction authors. The convicted anti-abortion killer Paul Hill cited Reconstruction theologians in his own writings and once studied with a founder of the movement, Greg Bahnsen, at Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, Mississippi.

Leaders of the Reconstruction movement trace their ideas, which they sometimes called “theonomy,” to Cornelius Van Til, a twentieth-century Presbyterian professor of theology at Princeton Seminary who took seriously the sixteenth-century ideas of the Reformation theologian John Calvin regarding the necessity for presupposing the authority of God in all worldly matters. Followers of Van Til (including his former students Bahnsen and Rousas John Rushdoony, and Rushdoony’s son-in-law, Gary North) adopted this “presuppositionalism” as a doctrine, with all its implications for the role of religion in political life.

Recapturing Institutions for Jesus

Reconstruction writers regard the history of Protestant politics since the early years of the Reformation as having taken a bad turn, and they are especially unhappy with the Enlightenment formulation of church-state separation. They feel it necessary to “reconstruct” Christian society by turning to the Bible as the basis for a nation’s law and social order. To propagate these views, the Reconstructionists established the Institute for Christian Economics in Tyler, Texas, and the Chalcedon Foundation in Vallecito, California. They have published a journal and a steady stream of books and booklets on the theological justification for interjecting Christian ideas into economic, legal, and political life.

According to the most prolific Reconstruction writer, Gary North, it is “the moral obligation of Christians to recapture every institution for Jesus Christ.” He feels this to be especially so in the United States, where secular law as construed by the Supreme Court and defended by liberal politicians is moving in what Rushdoony and others regard as a decidedly un-Christian direction; particularly in matters regarding abortion and homosexuality. What the Reconstructionists ultimately want, however, is more than the rejection of secularism. Like other theologians who utilize the biblical concept of “dominion,” they reason that Christians, as the new chosen people of God, are destined to dominate the world.

The Reconstructionists possess a “postmillennial” view of history. That is, they believe that Christ will return to earth only after the thousand years of religious rule that characterizes the Christian idea of the millennium, and therefore Christians have an obligation to provide the political and social conditions that will make Christ’s return possible. “Premillennialists,” on the other hand, hold the view that the thousand years of Christendom will come only after Christ returns, an event that will occur in a cataclysmic moment of world history. Therefore they tend to be much less active politically.

Rev. Paul Hill, Rev. Michael Bray, and other Reconstructionists—along with Dominion theologians such as the American politician and television host Pat Robertson and many other right-wing Christian activists today—are postmillenialists. Hence they believe that a Christian kingdom must be established on Earth before Christ’s return. They take seriously the idea of a Christian society and a form of religious politics that will make biblical code the law of the United States.

These activists are quite serious about bringing Christian politics into power. Bray said that it is possible, under the right conditions, for a Christian revolution to sweep across the United States and bring in its wake Constitutional changes that would allow for biblical law to be the basis of social legislation. Failing that, Bray envisaged a new federalism that would allow individual states to experiment with religious politics on their own. When I asked Bray what state might be ready for such an experiment, he hesitated and then suggested Louisiana and Mississippi, or, he added, “maybe one of the Dakotas.”

Not all Reconstruction thinkers have endorsed the use of violence, especially the kind that Bray and Hill have justified. As Reconstruction author Gary North admitted, “there is a division in the theonomic camp” over violence, especially with regard to anti-abortion activities. Some months before Paul Hill killed Dr. Britton and his escort, Hill (apparently hoping for Gary North’s approval in advance) sent a letter to North along with a draft of an essay he had written justifying the possibility of such killings in part on theonomic grounds. North ultimately responded, but only after the murders had been committed.

North regretted that he was too late to deter Hill from his “terrible direction” and chastised Hill in an open letter, published as a booklet, denouncing Hill’s views as “vigilante theology.” According to North, biblical law provides exceptions to the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” (Ex 20:13), but in terms similar to just-war doctrine: when one is authorized to do so by “a covenantal agent” in wartime, to defend one’s household, to execute a convicted criminal, to avenge the death of one’s kin, to save an entire nation, or to stop moral transgressors from bringing bloodguilt on an entire community.

Hill, joined by Bray, responded to North’s letter. They argued that many of those conditions applied to the abortion situation in the United States. Writing from his prison cell in Starke, Florida, Paul Hill said that the biblical commandment against murder also “requires using the means necessary to defend against murder—including lethal force.” He went on to say that he regarded “the cutting edge of Satan’s current attack” to be “the abortionist’s knife,” and therefore his actions had ultimate theological significance.

Bray, in his book, A Time to Kill, spoke to North’s concern about the authorization of violence by a legitimate authority or “a covenental agent,” as North put it. Bray raised the possibility of a “righteous rebellion.” Just as liberation theologians justify the use of unauthorized force for the sake of their vision of a moral order, Bray saw the legitimacy of using violence not only to resist what he regarded as murder—abortion—but also to help bring about the Christian political order envisioned by the radical dominion theology thinkers. In Bray’s mind, a little violence was a small price to pay for the possibility of fulfilling God’s law and establishing His kingdom on earth.

For most of the rest of us, even a little violence is a price too high to pay for these fantastic visions of Christian politics and for America’s recent return to Christian terrorism.

Mark Juergensmeyer is Professor of Sociology and Director of Global and International Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the winner of the Grawemeyer Award for his book Terror in the Mind of God (UC Press). He is the editor of Global Religions: An Introduction and is also the author of The New Cold War? Religious Nationalism Confronts the Secular State and Gandhi’s Way: A Handbook of Conflict Resolution, both from UC Press.

By Mark Jurgensmeyer

19 April, 2010

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