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By Dr. Elias Akleh

15 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

The state of Israel was established and is sustained on the continuous perpetration of genocides, destruction of whole towns, land theft, home demolition, ethnic cleansing, and terror against Palestinians. The massacre of the Palestinian small town of Deir Yassin in 9 th of April 1948 is one such massacre which the Palestinians will never forget.

Palestine at the time was under the British occupation (Mandate) that ended on 15 th of May 1948. Until that time there was no Israeli government or Israeli army, rather Zionist Jewish militia groups financed and armed by World Zionist Organization and the Jewish Agency. The largest was the Haganah; a secret Jewish terrorist group armed and trained by officers from the British army. The Haganah, later, formed the backbone of the present Israeli army. Within the Haganah there was an elite striking force called the Palmach, who specialized in assassination, terror and demolition. There were also two other smaller underground terrorist groups; Itzel or Irgun founded by Se’ev Jabotinsky the head of the Jewish Zionist Organization, and Lehi or Stern founded by the Zionist terrorist Abraham Stern.

Before the end of the British Mandate the Zionist leaders launched on April 4 th 1948 their general expansionist colonial plan dubbed as “Plan Dalet”; a Zionist master offensive military plan with many sub-operations such as Nachshon, Harel, and Maccabi, whose aim was the systematic ethnic cleansing of as many Palestinians as possible and the theft of as much Palestinian land as possible before the end of the British Mandate. The Haganah had committed many massacres against the Palestinian population and had totally razed as many as 400 Palestinian towns. The Haganah thus gained popularity among the Zionist Jews.

There developed a competition between the Haganah on one side and the Irgun and Lehi on the other for popularity among Jews and for political leadership in the perceived future Israeli state. Such gain was achieved by one side in uprooting and transferring Palestinians and in the destruction of their towns and villages more than the other side.

During the first week of April 1948 the Haganah launched Operation Nachshon to carve out and hold a highway passage for their forces from Tel Aviv on the Mediterranean coast in the west all the way to Jerusalem in the interior of the country committing on their way many massacres of Palestinian civilians and demolishing their towns. The Haganah, at the time, was held up still by Palestinian fighters at Al-Qastal; west of Jerusalem and a few miles away from the village of Deir Yassin .

On the other side Irgun and Lehi terrorist groups wanted to gain popularity over the held-up Haganah through a military victory. They chose an easy virtually unarmed defenseless village of Deir Yassin as their target. Deir Yassin was a small Palestinian village located west of Jerusalem with about 750 inhabitants, who lived peacefully with their neighboring Zionist Jewish colony of Giv’at Shaul despite all the political and military conflicts of that time. The two communities had signed a non-aggression agreement between them. Yet, typical of Zionist Jews, who throughout their long history had never honored any agreement they signed with non-Jews, Zionist Jewish terrorist groups of Irgun and Lehi came out of Giv’at Shaul, attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin on Friday 9 th of April 1948 and savagely murdered scores of them; men, women and children, blew up their homes and wiped the village off the map.

Irgun was headed by Menachim Begin, who became the 6 th Israeli prime minister, while Lehi was headed by Yitzhak Shamir, who became the 7 th Israeli prime minister. Israel is the only country where terrorist leaders such as Menachim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir (also Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon) are rewarded with the position of prime ministers.

In a joint operation coded “Operation Unity” the two Zionist Jewish terrorist groups attacked Deir Yassin in the morning of April 9 th , 1948 with the aim of killing as many Palestinians as possible and of forcing the rest out of their homes and land. Driving through the only street leading to the village the attackers were held up by Palestinian snipers using old one-shot hunting rifles. When four attackers were killed the terrorist groups called the commander of the Haganah, David Shaltiel, for help. He sent some of his troops among them a Palmach unit commanded by Mordechai Weg. With an armored vehicle and a two-inch mortar they were able to silence the resistance and occupy the village in a matter of two hours.

A process of cleaning up the village was, then, conducted by the terrorist groups which included the rape of some women, the cold murder of many Palestinians, and the blowing up of homes. Men and women were lined up against the walls in the main street and executed in cold blood. Members of whole families were murdered in their homes even after surrendering. Girls and women were raped and then murdered. The Zionist terrorists had bayoneted the wombs of Pregnant women and crushed the heads and bodies of dozens of children and babies. This cleanup process continued through the next two days, Saturday and Sunday, and demonstrated the savagery of the Zionist Jewish terrorists.

Members of the Zionist terror groups, themselves, had reported such atrocities. Among the many of them was Yehoshua Gorodenchik, an Irgun physician, reported that they had to withdraw at one time and had decided to murder all prisoners. “ We had prisoners and before the retreat we decided to liquidate them, we also liquidated the wounded… we eliminated every Arab we came across up to that point.”

Eliyahu Arbel, a Haganah operations officer, inspected the village and reported: “ I have seen a great deal of war, but I never saw a sight like Deir Yassin … largely comprised of the bodies of women and children, who were murdered in cold blood.”

Israeli colonel Meir Pa’el admitted that “The Irgun and Lehi men came out of hiding and began to ‘clean’ the houses. They shot whoever they saw, women and children included, the commanders did not try to stop the massacre …”

Zvi Ankori, who commanded one of the terrorist units at Deir Yassin stated: “I went into 6 to 7 houses. I saw cut off genitalia and women’s crushed stomachs. According to the shooting signs on the bodies, it was direct murder.” (New York Jewish Newsletter in October 1960)

Alfred Engel, a Jewish physician, who was on site, saw that “It was clear that the attackers had gone from house to house and shot the people at close range.”

The most damning graphic description of the massacre of Deir Yassin came from Jacques de Reynier, the then representative of the International Red Cross, who was the first to reach the site. His statement indicated that “there were people rushing everywhere, in and out of houses, carrying Sten guns, rifles, pistols and long ornate knives. They seemed half mad. I saw a beautiful girl carrying a dagger still covered with blood. I heard screams … everything had been ripped apart. There were bodies strewn around… cleaning up was done with guns and grenades, the work finished with knives.” Reynier estimated seeing some 200 bodies, one of a woman, probably eight months pregnant, shot in the stomach. There were also butchered infants. Schoolgirls and elderly women have been raped and then murdered. Ears had been severed to remove ear rings, bracelets had been torn from arms and rings from fingers.

Journalists Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre had obtained a dossier of 1948 British Mandate criminal investigation into Deir Yassin. According to the dossier, one woman among others described being sexually assaulted while “other women around me were being raped, too.” (Statement of Safiyeh Attiyeh, dossier 179/110/17 GS, “Secret,” quoted in Collins and Lapierre, O Jerusalem! 275,276). According to Collins and Lapierre, the British investigation was corroborated by physical evidence obtained through medical examination of the survivors.

On hearing of the atrocities committed at Deir Yassin the Haganah commander, David Shaltiel, insisted that Irgun and Lehi terrorists never leave the village before burying all the dead. The Zionist terrorist groups refused the order and left the village, so a burial crew was sent to do the job. They hauled about 70 bodies to a quarry, piled them in a heap, poured gasoline and set them ablaze. But when the fire did not do a thorough job, they used bulldozers to fill the quarry with dirt to bury the bodies. (Milstein, Out of Crisis Comes Decision, p. 273; Milstein, “Deir Yassin”)

In an attempt to boost their popularity the members of the Zionist Jewish terrorist groups of Irgun and Lehi loaded about twenty five Palestinian men, women and children into trucks, stripped them naked, and paraded them victoriously through the Jewish Zakhron Yosef quarter in Jerusalem, then they drov back into a stone quarry in Deir Yassin and executed them in cold blood. Harry Levin, a Haganah broadcaster and future Israeli diplomat, recorded seeing “three trucks driving slowly up and down King George V Avenue bearing men, women and children, their hands above their heads, guarded by Jews armed with sten-guns and rifles.” (Levin, Jerusalem Embattled, 57)

Fifty five children, who survived the massacre, were dumped at the Mendelbaum Gate in Jerusalem . Some of them knocked on the door of Palestinian Jerusalemite Hind Al-Husseini seeking shelter. After hearing about the massacre Al-Husseini rushed to find the rest of the children deciding to care for all of them. She turned her grandfather’s mansion into an orphanage and school calling it Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi (Home of the Arab Child). Al-Husseini dedicated her whole life to the orphans of Deir Yassin and to other Palestinian children.

The number of massacred Palestinians was disputed. Most sources, including The New York Times of April 13, put the number of the victims at 254, including 25 pregnant women and 52 children. Many sources had quoted Irgun’s commander, Raanan, who in a press conference, described the massacre as a successful battle and exaggerated the numbers of dead in order the boost the Jewish moral and to frighten other Palestinians into flight. He later explained “I told the reporters that 254 were killed so that a big figure would be published and so that Arabs would panic … across the country.” (Milstein). A 1987 study undertaken by Birzeit University ‘s Center for Research and Documentation of Palestinian Society ( CRDPS ) found the numbers of those murdered does not exceed 120.

The massacre of Deir Yassin has a significant importance in the history of the Arab/Israeli conflict although it was not the first or the last massacre the Israelis committed against Palestinians. Unlike previous massacres of Palestinians and the wiping off of their towns, the massacre of Deir Yassin was the first to be known by the outside world due to its vicinity to the capital of Jerusalem . This allowed the Red Cross to investigate and to report the massacre.

Also, the commanders of Irgun and Lehi had called for a press conference, during which they announced their victory in occupying the first Palestinian town in cooperation with the Haganah’s Palmach forces. Their exaggeration of the number of victims was echoed through press into the Arab and Western capitals resulting in strong international condemnations. Such condemnation embarrassed the Jewish Agency, prompting its leader at the time David Ben-Gurion, to send a telegram of apology to Jordanian King, Abdullah, condemning the “rogue” Zionist organizations of Irgun and Lehi.

Although the Haganah had tried to distance itself from the Irgun and Lehi and to deny its role in the massacre, its full participation is very well known to everybody. The leader of Irgun, Menachim Begin, had admitted on December 28, 1950 in a press interview in New York that the Deir Yassin “incident” had been carried out in accordance with an agreement between the Irgun and the Jewish Agency and the Haganah. In October 1960 the New York Jewish Newsletter reported that Menachim Begin had bragged that “The massacre was not only justified, but there would not have been a state of Israel without the victory at Deir Yassin.”

Mordechai Nisan of the Truman Research Centre of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem wrote an article for “The American Zionist Journal” in which he expressed his concern about the failure to understand the major significance of terrorism in the struggle for Jewish sovereignty. He wrote: “Without terror it is unlikely that Jewish independence would have been achieved when it was.”

Nisan’s statement describes a fundamental fact throughout the three thousand years of Jewish history. Jewish independence and statehood could have never achieved except through terrorism and genocide as prescribed in their religion. Their Talmud commands them to perpetrate genocides against all non-Jews, including women, children and old, even their animals, and to destroy their towns. Check Isaih 13:16-18, Samuel I 15:2-3, Numbers 31:16-18, Deuteronomy 2:34, Deuteronomy 3:6-7, Ezekiel 9:5-6, and Joshua 6:21 for just very few examples of their genocidal religious teachings.

Unfortunately, western countries such as UK, France, Germany, Canada and particularly the US, who claim themselves to be the champions of democracy, freedom, protectors of human rights, and the fighters of terrorism, are providing blind and unconditional financial, military and political support to Israeli state terrorism. I can understand Zionist Israeli Jewish genocidal and terrorist tendencies in lieu of their religion, but I cannot understand western support to such terrorism. I wonder what religion are they, really, prescribed to?

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent, born in the town of Beit-Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the “Nakba” of 1948 war during the first Zionist occupation of part of Palestine, then from Beitj-Jala after the “Nakseh” of 1967 war when Zionist Israeli military expansion occupied the rest of all Palestine. He is living now in exile in the US and publish articles on the web.

By Judy Bello

11 April, 2013

@ Countercurrents.org

A woman finds herself alone on the street in an unfamiliar neighborhood of an unfamiliar city.   The people around her don’t speak her native language, and in fact, she doesn’t understand their language.  She is accompanied by a 12 year old boy, Ali.  She doesn’t recognize him, but she has a great affection for children, and he is in her care. He will later be identified as her son, Ahmed whom she has not seen in the 5 years since they were abducted from a taxi in Karachi not far from their home.  She doesn’t know  how she got there, and she isn’t entirely sure why she is there.  Small and slender, no more than 110 lbs, he seems fragile, a little disoriented, out of place.  She will later say that she was looking for her husband, or another time,  that she was looking for a particular woman.   It’s possible she really doesn’t know why she is there.  She hears the Muezzin’s call and begins to move towards the mosque. Perhaps she will find a refuge there.

The Afghan police in Ghazni notice a woman on the street.  Something draws their attention to her.  She doesn’t appear to belong to the place.  Perhaps she isn’t dressed in the local style.   She is on the street in the early afternoon on a Friday when most men are at the Mosque and women are in their homes. The Police say she seemed out of place, lost.   The police would later say that she was loitering after dark, but among the court documents, there is an interview with the shopkeeper in front of whose store she was detained.   He says that he wasn’t in the store because it was Friday, he was attending the prayer service at the Mosque.  It would have been between 1 pm and 3:30 pm.   He swears the woman is a stranger and he has never seen her before.  Though they will later say that they only approached her because she seemed out of place, they check his shop and even his phone to make sure.  There is nothing on his phone except some pornographic images of white girls.  He is innocent. [3]

So what did attract their attention?  Most likely we will never know for sure. Maybe its her ap parent disorientation as they will later state, or perhaps it is just that they don’t recognize her.  Maybe they have been tipped off to look for her.  When they confront her,  she is startled and defensive.    She screams at them not to touch her.  She accuses them of being Americans or American operatives.  [3]  It is clear that neither she nor the boy speaks the local language, so a translator is called.  A WikiLeaked document identifies a shopkeeper who was enlisted as translator.   He says that she shouts at the police  and curses them in Urdu.  She calls on Allah and demands that they not touch her.  Of course the same document says that she was picked up after dark.  [1]   If they are just asking what she is doing, why is she so distressed?  Have they physically detained her, or is she just panicked by their uniforms?  They take her in for questioning.

They have found a number of incriminating objects in her handbag.  According to a document later published through Wikileaks, her purse contains “numerous documents on how to build explosives, chemical weapon use, targeting US military assets, excerpts from the Anarchist’s Arsenal and a 1 GB (gigabyte) thumb drive with additional related material”  along with “unknown chemical materials sealed in containers”.  [1]  During the course of the interrogation she is severely beaten.     She admits that she is a suicide bomber whose target is the local governor.  Apparently his home is nearby the place she was detained.   She has a passport, which apparently has her true identity because they recognize her name as being on the FBI Most Wanted List .  (Pretty good reckoning for local Afghan National Police who don’t speak English).   Perhaps it just confirms that she is definitely the one they were looking for.  They call Afghan President Hamid Karzai and the Americans at Bagram, as well as the Governor she was supposedly targeting, who immediately takes advantage of the opportunity for publicity and calls a press conference.  [2]

Soon the Americans arrived,  FBI agents with soldiers and translators in tow, to collect their prey.   She is sitting on a bed behind a curtain in a rather small room. She is bruised and exhausted.    Perhaps she has dozed and is awakened by the entrance of as many as 10 men into the small room where she is being held.   Now she is alert.  It is interesting that the interrogators have brought along translators, but perhaps they need them to communicate with the Afghan police. The woman speaks good enough English to get a Masters Degree from MIT and PhD from Brandeis University.   She was a dynamo then, busy with her studies and her charities and her family.  Now she is exhausted, beaten, frightened, alone in a room full of heavily armed men.

One of the soldiers seats himself near the curtain and sets his automatic rifle on the floor near his chair.   He will later say that it hadn’t occurred to him that the prisoner was in the room. [1]  I suppose that is understandable.  In the world these Americans normally inhabit, prisoners are regularly shackled and hooded.  They are brought into a room when everyone else is in place like chained animals being brought into the ring at a circus.  Even so, it is a pretty serious breach of responsibility for the Sergeant in charge of the security team to lay his rifle on the floor next to a closed curtain.

This prisoner is curious about the commotion and anxious.  She wants to know what is happening.   She rises and steps forward.  She peeks through the curtain . . .   Snatches the gun . . . . and Fires the gun .  . . according to the Americans .   Someone yells out “The prisoner is free.”  Shots ring out.  She  falls to the ground, wounded,  with a bullet in her belly and one in her side.  When her attackers come to rescue her, she curses them in English and screams at them not to touch her, even as they wrestle her to the ground.  Later, in court, the Americans will swear that she took the gun and fired it.   They will say they had no choice but to defend themselves.  The Afghans will state that they didn’t see what happened but they heard shots fired.   The woman says that she came to the curtain to see what was going on.

The prisoner is brought to Bagram Hospital for surgery, where a portion of her intestines is removed, along with a kidney.   She is in shock and near death on arrival.  Numerous transfusions are required to bring her back and stabilize her prior to and during the emergency surgery.   Afterwards, she is shackled, hand and foot, to her bed.   Imagine, if you will, a surgery where the patient is cut from breastbone to pubis, and then shackled to a bed on her back, bound hand and foot like a crucifixion.  A pair of watchful FBI Agents stay by her side, encouraging her to talk about herself, about her life.  [3]  She will later refer to him as her only friends.   She is heavily sedated with pain killers, and one can imagine they might be very helpful, given her restraints, and comforting, given her state of utter dependence and aloneness.  A week later, she is flown to New York and arraigned before the Southern Court of New York in a wheelchair on separate charges obtaining a lethal weapon and of attempting to kill each person in the room.

This terrible story is like something out of a nightmare, or a bad novel.  But it is a true story, in so far as you can find the truth of events that are disputed and cloaked in the secrecy of multiple ‘security operations’.   At least it is part of the story of the ordeal of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman, born into an upper middle class family with conservative religious values, who placed a high value on education and on service.   It is a part of the story of a young woman who came to the US, initially to Texas, later to Massachusetts to attend various colleges, eventually achieving a degree in ‘Neuroscience’, though she was did not enjoy biology and chemistry but preferred the study of psychology and education.  In fact she had prepared for a career teaching developmentally disabled children. [3]

Aafia Siddiqui had lived in the US for more than 10 years, married here and borne her children here.  She carried the family standard as she engaged in teaching and preaching Islam as the clearest and brightest truth and supporting Muslim Charities in war zones like Croatia and later, Afghanistan; sending Qur’ans to prisoners and teaching children at an impoverished inner city mosque.  But something has gone terribly wrong to bring our heroine her to this terrible pass.  And it will only get worse.

Returning to the present story, common sense would indicate it would have been very difficult for this small battered woman to have lifted and fired a powerful automatic rifle.  The least amount of compassion would indicate that even if she did take the gun, even if she managed to fire the high power automatic rifle without being knocked to the ground, the action would have been in the service of escape rather than a murderous rampage.   However, there is no forensic evidence whatsoever that she held the gun or fired it.  No one was shot except the prisoner herself.  There were no bullet holes in the walls or ceiling of the small room, and no shell casings recovered from the floor.   There were no fingerprints on the gun, and there was no gunpowder on the prisoner’s hands or the curtain in front of her. [Court Documents] Yet a year later, Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani national who never should have been extradited from Afghanistan to the US in the first place, a bright, well educated person with a PhD from Brandeis University,  now incapable if a consistent description of where she had been for the past 5 years, incapable of recognizing her own son,  was convicted of separate counts of attempted murder and assault for every American in the room, sentenced to 86 years in prison and incarcerated in Carswell Medical Center in Texas.

According to Cornell University Legal Information Institute , under Federal law: the maximum sentence for manslaughter

Sources:

The Express Tribune: Wikileaks Aafia’s Incriminating Purse

Court Document, USA vs. Aafia Siddiqui, Document #256 ( Aafia Siddiqui’s testimony to FBI agents at her bedside while in Bagram hospital after her surgery )

Sentencing, USA vs. Aafia Siddiqui, Document #314

Case Summary, 1:08-cr-00826-RMB USA v. Siddiqui, “Count 1: Conspiracy ( with whom? ) to Kill A US Citizen [] Count 4: Violent Crime/Drugs/ Machine Gun (!) (Use of a firearm during crime of violence (?) “  — Emphasis and red comments interjected are mine.

Definitions from Findlaw.com

Attempt to Commit Murder or Manslaughter

Protection of Officers and Employees of the United States

Assaulting Resisting or Impeding Certain Officers or Employees

*** Armed Career Criminal Act (Terrorism Enhancement)

Other crimes in 18 U.S.C.

Cornell LII: Trafficking with respect to peonage, slavery, involuntary servitude, or forced labor

Cornell LII: Violence at International Airports

Cornell LII: Manslaughter

Cornell LII: Threatening the President

Cornell LII: Assaulting a Supreme Court Officer

Cornell LII: Helping Al Qaeda develop a nuclear weapon

Judy Bello is currently a full time activist thanks to the harsh and unforgiving work environment in the Software Development Industry. Finally free to focus on her own interests in her home office, she is active with The Upstate Coalition to Ground the Drones and End the Wars, and with Fellowship of Reconciliation Middle East Task Force and often posts on their blog at http://forusa.org . She has been to Iran twice with FOR Peace Delegations, and spent a month in the Kurdish city of Suleimaniya in 2009. Her personal blog, Towards a Global Perspective, is at http://blog.papillonweb.net and she is administers the Upstate anti-Drone Coalition website at http://upstatedroneaction.org . She can be reached at: jb.papillonweb@gmail.com

 

 

The Conservatives Democracy Problem

by YVES ENGLER

April 11, 2013

@ counterpunch.org

The current Canadian government has a thing for monarchy. In fact the Conservatives seem to like it better than democracy.

First it seemed quirky and quaint when they ordered portraits of Queen Elizabeth II to be put up in Canada’s overseas missions and promoted British royal visits. Then it got a little embarrassing when they reinstated “Royal” to the Canadian Air Force and the Navy’s official name.

But since the “Arab Spring” democracy struggles that began in 2011 Stephen Harper’s government has gotten down right scary, apparently supporting the divine right of kings over rule by the people.

Since 2011 the Tories have publicly backed ruling royal families from Morocco to Saudi Arabia. They’ve signed (or are negotiating) ‘free’ trade agreements and foreign investment protection agreements with Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait and Morocco — all ruled by kings.

During a trip to the Middle East last week Foreign Minister John Baird met royal officials in Jordan, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates. In praising the leadership of these countries, the minister failed to mention human rights or the suppression of democratic struggles in these monarchies.

Baird’s comments about Bahrain, a small island nation sandwiched between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, were particularly odious. He blamed opposition to the 218-year monarchy on Iran and criticized the pro-democracy protesters.

“We should be very clear that Iran’s interference in some of its neighbors’ internal political affairs is something that’s distinctly unhelpful, and it’s never motivated by good,” Baird told reporters inquiring about Bahrain.

“The regime in Iran should refrain from interfering in other countries’ affairs,” he added at a press conference in the capital of Manama.

The kingdom’s press gleefully reported Baird`s comments but there’s little evidence that Iran is responsible for the political upheaval that’s gripped the country for the past two years. Even the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry, set up by King Hamad ibn Isa Al Khalifah to investigate the country’s political conflict, found no evidence of such a link.

Baird also attacked Bahrain’s pro-democracy movement, mocking the idea that the activists were “peace-loving protesters.” “There is violence, where police officers have been targeted,” Canada’s foreign minister declared. “There’s been Molotov cocktails. Even potential use of or planned actions of improvised explosives. There have been other connections to nefarious tactics, including terrorists trying to blow up the causeway. A plot was foiled there.”

This is a highly partisan distortion of the last two years of political struggle that has left at least 87 pro-democracy activists dead. At the start of the “Arab Spring” major protests broke out against the monarchy in Bahrain. Protesters initially focused on greater political freedom and equality for the majority Shia Muslim population, but after security forces killed four and injured dozens on February 17, 2011, calls for the king to go grew more common.

Over the next month, protests against the monarchy gained in strength with 200,000, a quarter of the country’s adult population, marching on February 22, 2011. The regime looked to foreign security forces for protection. They brought in Sunni Muslims from Pakistan and after a month of growing protests 1,500 troops from the monarchies of Saudi Arabia and the UAE were sent to shore up the Al Khalifa regime. A day after these well-armed foreign soldiers arrived, the Bahraini king declared martial law and a three-month state of emergency. That same day, March 15, Bahraini security forces killed two more demonstrators and within days protesters camped out in central Manama’s Pearl Roundabout were violently dispersed, leaving five dead and hundreds wounded. The regime also began late night raids in Shia neighborhoods. They’ve arrested thousands, including bloggers, internationally recognized human rights activists and doctors accused of caring for injured protesters.

In the early days of the regime’s crackdown Foreign Affairs released two (mildly) critical statements. But with the international media paying less attention, Ottawa has not made any further comment about the repression even though the regime continues to brutally repress protesters.

While Baird claims covert Iranian meddling, the Conservatives avoided directly criticizing Saudi Arabia’s high-profile military intervention to prop up the monarchy. Rather than challenge Saudi policy, the Tories have deepened military, business and diplomatic ties with the House of Saud. At least seven Conservative ministers have visited the country, including four in the past year. As a result of one of the visits, the RCMP will train Saudi Arabia’s police in “investigative techniques”. Most ominously, in 2011 the Conservatives approved arms export licenses worth a whopping $4 billion to Saudi Arabia.

A General Dynamics factory in London, Ontario, has produced more than 1,000 Light Armoured Vehicles (LAVs) for the Saudi military, who used these vehicles when they rolled into Bahrain. “The LAV-3 and other similar vehicles that Canada has supplied to the Saudi Arabian National Guard,” noted Project Ploughshare’s Ken Epps, “are exactly the kind of equipment that would be used to put down demonstrations [in Bahrain] and used against civilian populations.”

Already equipped with hundreds of Canadian-built LAVs, the Saudis contracted General Dynamics Land Systems for another 724 LAVs in 2009. (These sales are facilitated by the Canadian Commercial Corporation and Canadian colonel Mark E.K. Campbell oversees General Dynamics Land Systems LAV support program in Saudi Arabia.)

Since the vehicles were scheduled to be delivered weeks after the invasion of Bahrain, the Ottawa-based Rideau Institute called for a suspension of further arms shipments to the Saudis. The Conservatives ignored the call and instead, as mentioned above, they approved $4 billion worth of arms exports in 2011.

Saudi Arabia is ruled by a monarchy that’s been in power for more than seven decades. The Saudi royal family is a savagely conservative force in the region, as well as being extremely misogynistic and repressive domestically. Religious law prevails.

One is left to speculate how deep a commitment the Conservatives have to democracy, even here in Canada.

Yves Engler’s latest book is The Ugly Canadian: Stephen Harper’s foreign policy. For more information visit yvesengler.com

Why the earthquake near Iran’s dated and unproven nuclear reactor at Bushehr

should scare you.

BY ALI VAEZ

10 APRIL, 2013

@ Foreign Policy

A 6.3-magnitude earthquake shook Iran’s southern shores on Tuesday, April 9, on the afternoon that the country was celebrating its National Nuclear Technology Day. Nearly 800 homes were destroyed, killing 37 people and injuring more than 900. Iran’s sole nuclear reactor, located in Bushehr, almost 100 miles from the quake’s epicenter, was, according to Iranian and Russian officials, unaffected. But there’s no way of knowing until the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report comes out in May. Either way, they got lucky.

The Bushehr reactor, which was completed in 2011, sits at the intersection of three tectonic plates and is designed to endure earthquakes up to a magnitude of 6.7 on the Richter scale. So this was a very close call for the hybrid German-Russian reactor — a virtual petri dish of amalgamated equipment and antiquated technology. The sui generis nature of the reactor means that Iran cannot benefit from other countries’ safety experiences.

It also means regular mechanical breakdowns. During tests conducted in February 2011, all four of the reactor’s emergency cooling pumps (holdovers from the 1970s) were damaged, sending tiny metal shavings into the cooling water. The plant’s engineers were forced to thoroughly clean the reactor’s core, an operation that further delayed its long-overdue launch. Again, in October 2012, the reactor was shut down and fuel rods were unloaded after stray bolts were found beneath the fuel cells.

The Bushehr reactor is under IAEA supervision, and its technology is deemed not prone to proliferation. As such, it has been exempted from the U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran. But there is still some international confusion as to the point of the facility: Iran is rich in oil, and power generated by the Bushehr plant accounts for less than 2 percent of Iran’s electricity production. Meanwhile, despite the enormous sums spent to bring the facility online, approximately 15 percent of the country’s generated electricity gets lost through old and ill-maintained transmission lines.

But more worrisome is the perilous state of the new — and yet old — reactor. Any nuclear disaster at Bushehr would have regional implications. Given that the prevailing wind in Bushehr heads south-southwest, the release of radioactive material could threaten civilians in other Persian Gulf countries. Bushehr is closer to the capitals of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province than it is to Tehran. That’s why the emir of Kuwait recently urged Iran to enhance its safety cooperation with the IAEA. The cost of cleanup, medical care, energy loss, and population relocation could approach hundreds of billions of dollars over decades, and release of highly radioactive fission products would be highly detrimental to human health and the environment. Yet Iran’s ambassador at the United Nations maintains that Iran’s nuclear facilities are “state-of-the-art” and present no “undue risk to the health and safety of their personnel, public, next generations and the environment.”

In any case, it’s unclear who would be held responsible and shoulder the costs in the case of a nuclear accident. The Russians would likely blame the old German technology; the Germans could be expected to say that they had nothing to do with the plant for more than three decades; and the Iranians could shun responsibility as a nonparty to the Vienna Convention on Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage.

The Iranian government’s poor record of anticipatory governance and crisis management is another source of concern. The scale of destruction, morbidity rates, and number of casualties stemming from Iran’s natural disasters are unusually high. In December 2003, when an earthquake measuring 6.6 on the Richter scale hit the southeastern city of Bam, more than 26,000 Iranians died, nearly 30,000 were injured, 100,000 were displaced, and 85 percent of the buildings and infrastructure in the city were destroyed. In contrast, a 6.5-magnitude quake that struck San Simeon, California, just a few days earlier resulted in only three fatalities and damaged 40 buildings.

The Iranian government has neglected to address basic questions about its preparedness for a nuclear emergency, including the lack of evacuation drills for Bushehr residents. These problems are rooted in the fact that the media are prohibited from examining the issue and the main governing agency, Iran’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority, is not an independent body.

In the absence of a proactively vigilant public and pervasive culture of safety, a rigorous and independent nuclear regulator — as exists in many other countries such as the United States and Germany — is vital for prioritizing safety and security over all other interests. The IAEA has encouraged the Iranian government to provide the country’s national regulatory body with all authority and resources needed to fulfill its functions independently. To date, there is no evidence that Iran has heeded this recommendation, along with other suggestions such as increasing the quantity and the level of expertise of the body’s technical staff members.

As a result of the politicization of Iran’s nuclear program, safety concerns have become secondary issues. The Iranian leadership’s political drive to demonstrate the ineffectiveness of international sanctions and boast about its technological capabilities has repercussions, such as the insistence on the premature takeover of the Bushehr plant’s management by Iranian technicians. Its current Russian operators are slated to run the reactor for only the first two years after its official September 2011 start-up and then are to hand over control to the Iranians. Given that most nuclear accidents around the world have been caused or exacerbated by human error, this lack of training increases the likelihood of a catastrophe. To make matters worse, international sanctions have deprived Iran of international nuclear assistance and have prevented Iranian scientists from participating at safety workshops.

Iran’s refusal to adhere to international conventions that define the norms of safety and security in the field of nuclear technology is also troublesome. With Bushehr becoming operational, Iran is the only nuclear power country that is not a signatory to the Convention on Nuclear Safety, which establishes a system of mutual oversight that sets international benchmarks on the siting, design, construction, and operation of reactors.

Nuclear safety concerns should neither be exaggerated nor neglected. But instead of Iran dismissing the warnings, the reverberations that shook the ground in Bushehr should serve as a wake-up call for Iran to improve its nuclear safety standards.

Ali Vaez is the International Crisis Group’s senior Iran analyst.

 

Dr. Hakim interviews Nao Rozi

April 7, 2013

Below are excerpts of an interview of Nao Rozi, an Afghan National Army veteran, and now a member of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.

 

Nao Rozi : “Veterans commit suicide from a good conscience”

http://youtu.be/UVPLxl3QXxE

Excerpts of Video Transcript

Nao Rozi : I was an Afghan soldier for 2 years and had combat roles.

Hakim : What did you learn from your experience?

Nao Rozi : If I think about the root issues, philosophy since the time of Plato has tried to bring the minds of the public under government control. Sometimes, I thought that soldiers and wars were necessary but when I joined the military as a soldier, I saw the injuring and killing of soldiers and opponents like the Taliban. I thought, “Is my presence necessary? Is it correct to have a weapon?” I held a weapon before people I didn’t know and who didn’t know me… We weren’t enemies because we didn’t even know one another. Even before greetings, we were supposed to kill one another.

I concluded that I should leave the army and after that, I had a crisis.

I had almost changed 180 degrees. I was affected by the war.

I tried committing suicide a few times. I felt alone.

Hakim : Some people who hear your story may think your mind was weak; you wanted to commit suicide…

Nao Rozi : Veterans who commit suicide are not cowardly…they are victims of the war.

Life becomes meaningless. It becomes difficult. You think you’ve done something such that you feel you no longer have the right to live.

Those US veterans who committed suicide had a conscience.

Hakim : What message do you have for friends and for the world?

Nao Rozi : Teacher, how I wish that every human in the world would…just for once, sit down alone and ask, “What are we here for?”

How have we been deceived? How true to self have we been?

I was brought up under the ‘government system’ and things I heard from society and the media. I was captive to these. Now, I am free!

 

Nao Rozi lives and struggles with the Afghan Peace Volunteers,

seeking a better life, seeking a better world.

Afternote by Dr. Hakim

I believe the medical community has made a mistake in considering war-related post-traumatic stress a disorder.

War related post-traumatic stress is a natural order, not a disorder.

I speak as a general medical practitioner, not as a psychiatrist. But more importantly, I speak as a human being whose thinking about war trauma transformed in the few minutes that I was interviewing Faiz Ahmad a few years ago, and then recently in interviewing Nao Rozi, an Afghan National Army veteran.

Anyone who witnesses gruesome violence and death would feel nauseous and repulsed, and these reactions are a natural order of human preservation, not a disorder.

War-related post-traumatic stress prompts us to avoid the blood and gore of mutual killing. Collecting and hearing all the stories of war veterans should prompt us to seriously abolish wars. Albert Einstein had said, “War cannot be humanized, only abolished. War is a terrible thing, and must be abolished at all costs. “

Nao Rozi had painted for me a morbid scene that poets and writers have consistently described in different ways over the centuries, “There were so many dead young bodies, and all of them were strangers to me. I thought, ‘Why did we do this to one another? Who benefited from these deaths? Weren’t their mothers waiting for them at home?’ ”

These questions changed the course of his life.

While making sense out of what he had experienced, he had tried to kill himself a few times.

Today, there is an on-going suicide epidemic among U.S. soldiers and veterans.

A portion of the Guardian article which touched on this suicide epidemic among U.S. soldiers is worth reproducing here.

Libby Busbee is pretty sure that her son William never sat through or read Shakespeare’s Macbeth, even though he behaved as though he had. Soon after he got back from his final tour of Afghanistan, he began rubbing his hands over and over and constantly rinsing them under the tap. “Mom, it won’t wash off,” he said.

“What are you talking about?” she replied.

“The blood. It won’t come off.”

On 20 March 2012, the soldier’s striving for self-cleanliness came to a sudden end. That night he locked himself in his car and, with his mother and two sisters screaming just a few feet away and with Swat officers encircling the vehicle, he shot himself in the head.

At the age of 23, William Busbee had joined a gruesome statistic. In 2012, for the first time in at least a generation, the number of active-duty soldiers who killed themselves, 177, exceeded the 176 who were killed while in the war zone.

Tomas Young, an Iraq veteran who has decided to end his life, wrote a letter to Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney stating “My day of reckoning is upon me. Yours will come. I hope you will be put on trial. But mostly I hope, for your sakes, that you find the moral courage to face what you have done to me and to many, many others who deserved to live. I hope that before your time on earth ends, as mine is now ending, you will find the strength of character to stand before the American public and the world, and in particular the Iraqi people, and beg for forgiveness.”

In the words of Erica Modugno, author of a pledge some veterans are making to dying Tomas Young:

“We see you. We hear you. We will not remain passive. We will not be silent.

Farewell, Tomas, and thank you.”

I’m sad that some of us may still conclude that Nao Rozi, William Busbee and Tomas Young were ‘wimpy soldiers’, not brave enough to unflinchingly continue doing their jobs.

Rather, their post-traumatic stress was a natural order seeking to preserve their good conscience, a kind order that can help us find a better world.

Dr. Teck Young Wee, a Singaporean medical doctor, has been involved in health and development work in Afghanistan since 2004.  The name he uses, Hakim, was given to him by Afghans he served in refugee camps. In the Dari language, “Hakim” means “local healer.” He now lives and works in Kabul establishing small social enterprise and is a friend-mentor of the Afghan Peace Volunteers.   (ourjourneytosmile.com) 

 

 

 

 

By Prof. Rodney Shakespeare

5 April 2013

@ Information Clearing House

April 05, 2013 “Information Clearing House” – Evil creeps up unobserved. Its plans are conceived in secret; the first furtive moves are made, and then it is ready to attack. Unless we turn to spot it approaching we can be quickly overwhelmed.

The latest approach of evil might not seem much – apparently, just some boring trade agreement. But, in reality, it is Evil Incarnate.

It’s called the Trans-Pacific Partnership and if you thought the World Trade Organization (which forced the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act) and the North American Free Trade Agreement are bad then the TPP is awful! The TPP has gone through sixteen rounds of super-surreptitious negotiations. Six hundred lobbyists from the big international corporations have been ‘advising’ and anybody with a brain knows what that means.

The TPP is intended to (finally) undermine democracy by handing power to the global financial elite and the big corporations. The key mechanism will be the transfer of power from sovereign nations to so-called ‘trade tribunals’ whose purpose is to make national laws subservient to corporate interests. These trade tribunals will do what they like: no government or electorate will be able to influence them.

As a result of the TPP big finance will be completely deregulated (heaven help us!); jobs will be destroyed; wages will be slashed; and health care will be only for the rich. There will be no cheap medicines for the poor of the world. In a recent letter, Doctors Without Borders wrote that the TPP will be “the most harmful trade deal ever for access to medicines in developing countries.”

If TPP gets through, environmental issues will be ignored and there will be genetically manipulated Frankenstein organisms. USA dairy farmers are saying that their industry will be devastated.

Moreover, the internet will be censored; and individuals (plus their towns, cities and governments) will be controlled by being put into ever-lasting debt.

On top of that, cunning as ever, the TPP specifically bans any attempt to reform the main cause of our present troubles which is the corrupt banking system. It does this by outlawing public banks and the issuance of interest-free loans for things like public capital projects (such as bridges, roads, hospitals, airports, water and sewage works constructed at one third of the usual cost).

Intent on maintaining the vicious grip of usury, the TPP enshrines the existing model of international finance which has led to the Cyprus crisis, the Italian crisis, the Spanish crisis, the Greek crisis, the Portuguese crisis etc. One aspect of this is the inability of governments to control capital flows until the point when the bankers collapse the economy and there is the Cyprus situation in which money movements are frozen, customers’ money is confiscated, and an economic and social catastrophe is inevitable.

The TPP is determined to do this everywhere it can so that it can buy up assets on the cheap and turn whole populations into impoverished debt-peons who will do anything not to starve. The TPP elite want endless wealth for themselves and, even more so, they want power, power over weakened, humiliated human beings. The TPP elite are scum.

At present, the TPP only consists of the USA (of course), Australia, Brunei, Chile, Canada, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. But the international financial elite are rushing to involve as many other countries as they can.

Inside the USA, President Obama, who is completely controlled by the big corporations and Zionism, is moving, with other countries, to ‘fast-track’ the TPP so that even the USA Congress will have no say. He is doing this at a time when the USA has fifty million people on food stamps (the number increases each week) and 23% unemployed. Those figures will be doubled if the TPP is implemented.

And remember this. The global financial elite are rapidly acquiring the technology by which they can control any individual whom they view as politically independent or obstreperous. That means many of the independently-minded people and activists who read this article. The TPP will do it in a simple way. One day, the activists will suddenly find that the money they thought they had in the bank has become unobtainable. It will be rather like the experience of thousands of Cypriots except that, unannounced, with no warning, it will happen in an instant.

Moreover, unlike the Cypriots who still like to believe that their experience is not permanent, the activists will find themselves without money, or at least without bank money, forever. They will be sacked from their jobs and notice drones circling overhead. (Obama has said that the 30,000 drones coming in the USA will not be armed but if you believe that you will believe anything).

However, all is not yet lost. The danger can be understood and effective action taken. Japan has not yet joined the TPP because at election time the people found out about the TPP and, quite rightly, were furious. Well done, Japan!

But the West and the Middle East are asleep. They had better wake up or it will be too late.

Prof. Rodney Shakespeare is a visiting Professor of Binary Economics at Trisakti University, Jakarta, Indonesia. He is a Cambridge MA, a qualified UK Barrister, a co-founder of the Global Justice Movement www.globaljusticemovement.net , a member of the Christian Council for Monetary Justice. His main website is www.binaryeconomics.net . Shakespeare is also Chair of the Committee Against Torture in Bahrain

By Bill Van Auken

04 April, 2013

@WSWS.org

The US and Jordanian militaries have stepped up a secret program to train thousands of armed fighters to send into Syria with the apparent aim of carving out a buffer zone in the south of the country.

Citing unnamed US and Jordanian officials, the Washington Post reported Wednesday that Washington has ordered the training of some 3,000 officers for the so-called Syrian rebels to be completed sooner than originally planned. The aim is to finish the training program by the end of this month to exploit advances made by anti-government militias along Syria’s 230-mile border with Jordan.

Last October it was revealed that the Pentagon had dispatched a 150-strong special operations task force to Jordan. At the time, the New York Times reported that “the idea of establishing a buffer zone between Syria and Jordan—which would be enforced by Jordanian forces on the Syrian side of the border—had been discussed in conjunction with the setting up of the US military outpost, located near the Syrian border.”

On Wednesday, anti-regime forces reportedly captured an air defense base on the outskirts of the southwestern Syrian city of Daraa, just miles from the Jordanian border. Earlier, they seized the main border crossing between the two countries, along with two military outposts and a stretch of highway leading to Damascus.

The Jordanian monarchy backs a buffer zone largely as a matter of self-preservation. It fears the Syrian civil war will spill over the border threatening its own rule. There are already some 470,000 Syrian refugees in the country and concern is growing within the Jordanian regime that the Islamist elements unleashed against the government of Bashir al-Assad will seek to bring about regime change in Jordan as well.

This is part of a wider phenomenon, in which the Western-backed sectarian civil war in Syria is crossing various frontiers. Reports from Lebanon Wednesday indicated that a Syrian attack helicopter fired a missile into an area used as a staging ground for fighters and weapons being sent into the civil war across the border. Sectarian fighting between Sunni and Shia factions has also broken out in Lebanon’s second city, Tripoli.

And in Iraq, a government spokesman reported that the Syrian conflict had turned its border area into “a nest of terrorist cells.” Stepped up fighting by al Qaeda-associated elements in Syria has been accompanied by a wave of terrorist bombings in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

“Creation of a buffer zone would aim to convert areas now in rebel hands into permanent havens or thousands of army defectors and displaced civilians in the area,” the Post reports. In other words, the Jordanian regime would seek to push refugees back across the border into these “havens.”

According to the Post, members of the Jordanian parliament have demanded the sealing of the country’s border with Syria and the creation of the buffer zones. “It’s not one of the potential solutions available—it has become the only realistic solution to avoid a larger crisis in Jordan,” a member of parliament told the newspaper.

The Post cites both American and Jordanian officials to the effect that the principal “stumbling block” to establishing the buffer zones has been the refusal of Washington to provide “air cover.” Such action would require a massive US intervention, including the bombing of Syria’s air defenses, communications facilities and other sites.

There are growing demands in American ruling circles that the Obama administration initiate such attacks. This was the content of an opinion piece by former US senator from Connecticut and Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman, published in the Wall Street Journal Wednesday. Lieberman demanded a “campaign of US-led airstrikes to neutralize Assad’s planes, helicopters and ballistic missiles.”

Lieberman argued that “vital national interests are at stake in Syria” and that intervention was necessary to counter the growing influence of al Qaeda, which he attributed to Syrian anger over Washington’s failure to take direct military action to topple the Assad regime.

The reality, substantiated by multiple reports from Syria, is that the so-called rebels are dominated by Sunni Islamists, including the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, which has been credited with making the bulk of the gains registered in combat with government forces.

These forces have reportedly received the lion’s share of arms and aid flowing from the Persian Gulf Sunni monarchies, coordinated by the CIA, which has established a covert station for that purpose in Turkey.

While the Obama administration has formally categorized the Nusra front as a foreign terrorist organization, its real attitude has been one of tacit support for the Islamist group’s actions, which have included terrorist car bombings and other attacks on civilians.

And, while US officials have voiced concerns about al Qaeda-affiliated forces gaining a foothold on Syria’s border with Israel, Tel Aviv itself appears to be giving tacit backing to these elements. This was made clear by the chief of the Israeli defense ministry’s diplomatic security bureau, Amos Gil’ad, who in an interview with the Israeli media downplayed any danger from al Qaeda. “It is not the same threat as one posed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah,” he declared. The advance of the al Qaeda-linked forces in Syria, he added, “is a blow to Iran and Hezbollah together.”

Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, who enjoys close ties to US intelligence, cites an “order of battle” prepared by the Free Syrian Army for the US State Department. It shows, he said, that “most of the rebel groups have strong Islamic roots.”

As a result, he warns, “the post-Assad situation may be as chaotic and dangerous as the civil war itself. The Muslim rebel groups will try to claim control of Assad’s powerful arsenal, including chemical weapons, posing new dangers.”

He reports that the document received by the State Department describes two almost identically named Islamist fronts, one backed by Saudi Arabia and the other by “wealthy Saudi, Kuwaiti and other Gulf Arab individuals,” as well as a third “rebel group” funded by the monarchical regime in Qatar.

The al Qaeda-linked Nusra front is said to number some 6,000 fighters.

Ignatius suggests that US strategy is to pressure the Saudi regime to push the Islamist front it backs into an alliance with the Turkey-based Free Syrian Army and its US-backed commander, Gen. Salim Idriss.

“That would bring a measure of order and would open the way for Idriss to negotiate a military transition government that would include reconcilable elements of Assad’s army,” Ignatius writes.

This scenario provides a revealing glimpse of Washington’s strategy for the Syrian “revolution.” After using al Qaeda and similar forces as shock troops in a war for regime change, its intent is to fashion a new dictatorial regime based upon the remnants of Assad’s security forces and fully subordinated to US imperialism’s predatory aims in the region.

By Alex Lantier

04 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

Chinese officials appealed for calm in the Korean peninsula yesterday, as the United States deployed missiles and further military forces to East Asia amid a standoff over North Korea’s nuclear program.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Hong Lei said that Chinese Deputy Foreign Minister Zhang Yesui had expressed “serious concern” over the Korean crisis, in meetings with the US and South Korean ambassadors.

Hong added, “In the present situation, China believes all sides must remain calm and exercise restraint and not take actions which are mutually provocative, and must certainly not take actions which will worsen the situation.”

Tensions continued to rise, however, amid fears of a border clash in Korea that could trigger a wider war. Washington continued to deploy overwhelming firepower to the region and pressed China—the key ally of North Korea, a small and impoverished state that depends on it for critical food and fuel supplies—to whip Pyongyang into line.

According to Pentagon press secretary George Little, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned his Chinese counterpart, General Chang Wanquan, of a “growing threat to the US and our allies posed by North Korea’s aggressive pursuit of nuclear weapons.” Hagel demanded “sustained US-China dialogue and cooperation on these issues.”

Washington also continued to ratchet up military tensions, deploying missile batteries to its Pacific island base at Guam. This came after weeks of US-South Korean “Eagle Foal” military exercises, during which the United States repeatedly sent nuclear-capable bombers and high-tech guided-missile ships to the Korean peninsula.

Details continue to emerge about the US military buildup in the region, which is aimed at escalating military tensions.

Washington is in particular arming the South Korean army, amid its “pivot to Asia” designed to contain China and maintain US hegemony in the region. It is upgrading a shipment of 60 F-15 fighter planes to Seoul, as well as sending a large number of Mine-Resistant Ambush-Protected (MRAP) trucks.

USA Today indicated that these trucks, used to guard against roadside bombs in US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, would “offer similar protection in North Korea, should US forces need to travel on its roads”—that is, if US forces invaded and occupied North Korea.

American B-1 bomber pilots at Dyess Air Force Base in Texas have reportedly shifted their training programs, training for trans-Pacific flights towards targets in East Asia, instead of flights to Afghanistan and the Middle East. US ground troops have also already deployed to bases in Australia, while the US recently announced plans to send more warships to Singapore.

In another sign of rising tensions in the region, China yesterday cancelled its participation in a joint summit with South Korea and Japan. It cited tensions with Japan over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands.

The North Korean regime, for its part, released a statement through the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), stating that “The moment of explosion is approaching fast.” It added that US threats would be “smashed” by “cutting-edge smaller, lighter and diversified nuclear strike means.”

Given that Pyongyang is thought to have only a few crude nuclear bombs, and no means to mount them on a missile—let alone miniaturized, subdivided nuclear devices like those fielded by the United States—such threats appear to be a bluff.

Pyongyang closed down the border crossing between South Korea and the industrial export zone at Kaesong, North Korea. The Kaesong zone generates a vital $2 billion a year in trade for impoverished North Korea, including approximately $80 million in wages to 53,000 North Korean workers. Some 1,000 South Koreans are also employed at the complex; if they returned to South Korea, they will no longer be able to return to Kaesong, as a result of the closure of the border crossing.

South Korean Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin provocatively announced that he is preparing contingencies for “military action” to rescue South Koreans at Kaesong, if needed.

Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute think-tank in Seoul told the Guardian that Pyongyang closed the border crossing at Kaesong apparently due to anger at “having been ridiculed for keeping Kaesong open for financial reasons,” while it was threatening war with South Korea.

Together with reports that sections of the North Korean regime are in discussions with German officials to restore full trading and market relations with the imperialist powers, such comments suggest that media presentations of Pyongyang as bent on waging suicidal nuclear war with the US are misleading. A divided, reactionary bureaucracy in Pyongyang is desperately seeking some form of accommodation in the face of overwhelming US pressure on Pyongyang and on Beijing.

Under conditions where no deal is forthcoming from Washington, however, North Korea’s rhetoric simply further inflames the situation.

Behind the US conflict with North Korea stands preparations and planning for a far wider and potentially devastating conflict, with China—America’s largest foreign creditor, who has also helped block US war plans against Middle Eastern countries such as Syria and Iran.

An article titled “War with China” in Survival, the magazine of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, lays out some of the calculations in leading US circles regarding the possibility of war with North Korea or a collapse of the regime in Pyongyang.

The piece was written by James Dobbins, a former US assistant secretary of state who currently holds top positions at the RAND think-tank. He lists “collapse” in North Korea as the most likely cause of a war between China and the United States, followed by conflict over Taiwan, cyber war, conflict over control of the South China Sea, and conflicts with India.

Dobbins makes clear that aggressive military operations by the United States, sending forces into North Korea, is the heart of any response envisaged by Washington. This action, taken with complete contempt for international law, would rapidly raise the possibility of a clash with Chinese forces stationed along the China-North Korea border.

He writes, “The immediate operational concerns for United States Forces—Korea/Combined Forces Command would be to secure ballistic-missile-launch and WMD sites. If any coherent North Korean army remained, it could be necessary to neutralize its long-range artillery, it could be necessary to neutralize its long-range artillery threatening Seoul as well… While South Korea would provide sizable forces and capabilities for these missions, they would be inadequate to deal with the scope and complexity of a complete North Korean collapse. Substantial and extended commitments of US ground forces would be required to rapidly seize and secure numerous locations, some with vast perimeters.”

Dobbins adds, “The likelihood of confrontations, accidental or otherwise, between US and Chinese forces is high in this scenario.”

 

By Alex Lantier

01 April, 2013

@ WSWS.org

American F-22 stealth warplanes arrived in South Korea yesterday, placing East Asia on hair-trigger alert as Washington escalated its confrontation with North Korea, ostensibly over the country’s nuclear program.

Normally stationed at Kadena Air Force Base in Japan, the jets are being deployed to Osan Air Base in South Korea, amid ongoing Foal Eagle US-South Korean military exercises.

The F-22 deployment came after two weeks of intensifying military tensions and demonstrations of US firepower against North Korea. On March 19, the US sent nuclear-capable B-52 bombers to South Korea, and last week the US sent two B-2 stealth bombers to practice dropping dummy bombs on a South Korean bombing range.

The deployment of US heavy bombers was a blunt threat that, in the event of military conflict in East Asia, Washington is prepared to use nuclear weapons. This threat is directed not only at North Korea, but also at China, the main target of US operations in the region, which provides essential supplies of food and fuel to the North Korean regime in Pyongyang.

As for North Korea, a small and poor country of 25 million people, the B-2 flights were a signal that Washington is prepared to annihilate the country. B-2 bombers carry 16 B83 nuclear bombs, each with a yield of 1.2 megatons—75 times the power of the atomic bombs the United States dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. If two B-2 bombers dropped their payloads on North Korea, they would destroy all its large and mid-sized cities.

On Saturday, US military officials told the Wall Street Journal that they were pledged to prepare a series of further demonstrations of force against Pyongyang. They declined to say what these demonstrations would be, citing “operational security concerns.”

The Pentagon has also announced the preparation of a joint “counter-provocation plan” together with South Korea against Pyongyang. This is aimed at ensuring a more aggressive response to any North Korean military action, as in 2010, when North Korea launched artillery bombardments after being accused of sinking the South Korean frigate Cheonan. The current US-South Korean plan poses the risk of a rapid escalation of fighting, were such a clash to occur again.

This risk is heightened by the politics of South Korea’s newly elected conservative president, Park Geun-hye, the daughter of South Korean military dictator Park Chung-hee. With her government collapsing in the polls, she has proposed expanding South Korea’s nuclear program. Were any border fighting to break out, she would be under intense pressure to escalate the clash to prove the toughness of her anti-North Korean position.

In a recent editorial titled “Only Fierce Response Can Deter North Korean Provocations,” South Korea’s conservative Chosun Ilbo denounced the “muddled, ineffectual response” to the 2010 clash. The newspaper also described the “counter-provocation plan,” which involves large-scale fighting led by the United States, with Japanese assistance.

Chosun Ilbo wrote: “The South Korean military will handle the initial response while the US Seventh Fleet, including the aircraft carrier George Washington, will be mobilized along with Japanese F-22 fighter jets, followed by the deployment of US Marines to handle joint missions.”

The tensions provoked by the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia,” aimed at assembling a coalition of US-allied states to contain China, have now exploded into a full-fledged war crisis.

On Friday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned that “we may simply let the situation slip out of our control and it will slide into a spiral of a vicious circle.”

The Western media’s denunciations of North Korea notwithstanding, US imperialism bears central responsibility. Over the last year, Washington has announced plans to build an antiballistic missile shield, aimed at China though justified as a measure against North Korea. It has also encouraged a naval confrontation between Japan and China over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands.

Washington has used North Korea as a means to pressure the regime in Beijing, which has emerged as a major obstacle to US war drives against Syria and Iran, and which is the United States’ largest foreign creditor, to align itself more directly with US foreign policy.

Yesterday, China’s state-run Xinhua news agency published a column titled “Cooler Minds Must Prevail on Korean Peninsula.” It stated: “China, as a strategic stakeholder in the region, has long called for calm on the Korean Peninsula. Now both the DPRK [the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, i.e., North Korea] and the United States should tone down their rhetoric and work with Beijing for an early return to the long-stalled six-party talks.”

While pressing for a return to negotiations, Beijing is also signaling Pyongyang that China may cease to support it against Washington. Earlier this month it voted at the UN Security Council to impose sanctions on Pyongyang over its nuclear program. According to dispatches published by WikiLeaks, sections of the Chinese regime view Pyongyang as a troublesome “spoiled child.”

Over the weekend, Pyongyang issued a statement declaring that a “state of war” exists on the Korean peninsula. The statement followed a mass military rally in Pyongyang on Friday.

Beyond Pyongyang’s bellicose rhetoric, however, available reports indicate a peculiar state of calm inside North Korea. US military officials have said that their intelligence on the North Korean military indicates no unusual activity. As for the situation in Pyongyang, AP journalists reported that beyond the military parade, “elsewhere it was business as usual at restaurants, shops, farms, and factories, where the workers have heard it all before.”

As for Pyongyang’s statement regarding a “state of war” in Korea, this is a legal truth: the armistice that ended fighting in the 1950-1953 Korean War never technically ended the state of war in Korea. Pyongyang has long called for a formal peace treaty, which was opposed in 1953 by the United States and particularly by its fascistic South Korean puppet regime, led by Syngman Rhee. Since then, Washington has rebuffed North Korean requests for a peace treaty.

Pyongyang’s statements suggest that sections of the North Korean bureaucracy are attempting to reach some type of accommodation with Washington.

The Central Committee of the North Korea’s ruling Workers Party met yesterday, after having cryptically announced that it would settle an “important issue,” and released a statement before today’s one-day session of the North Korean parliament. While pledging to continue with its nuclear program, the statement said Pyongyang would “make positive efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation.”

The statement signaled Pyongyang’s readiness to open up North Korea as an export economy dependent on foreign capital to exploit North Korean workers’ cheap labor. It called for a shift to a “knowledge-based economy,” for foreign trade to be made “multilateral and diversified,” and for investment to be “widely introduced.” Pyongyang already operates several export zones, notably with South Korea at Kaesong.

Pyongyang’s attempts to settle differences with Washington and integrate itself into the world capitalist economy have repeatedly foundered on US opposition, however. It is unclear what assurances Washington could give leaders in Pyongyang of their own safety after opening up their economy to US and foreign capital—particularly amid rapidly escalating tensions between the United States and Pyongyang’s main regional ally, China.

North Korea was designated a member of the “Axis of Evil” by the Bush administration in 2001 and remains a target of constant vilification in the Western press.

By Chris Hedges

Mar 31, 2013

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_treason_of_the_intellectuals_20130331/

The rewriting of history by the power elite was painfully evident as the nation marked the 10th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War. Some claimed they had opposed the war when they had not. Others among “Bush’s useful idiots” argued that they had merely acted in good faith on the information available; if they had known then what they know now, they assured us, they would have acted differently. This, of course, is false. The war boosters, especially the “liberal hawks”—who included Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Al Franken and John Kerry, along with academics, writers and journalists such as Bill Keller, Michael Ignatieff, Nicholas Kristof, David Remnick, Fareed Zakaria, Michael Walzer, Paul Berman, Thomas Friedman, George Packer, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Kanan Makiya and the late Christopher Hitchens—did what they always have done: engage in acts of self-preservation. To oppose the war would have been a career killer. And they knew it.

These apologists, however, acted not only as cheerleaders for war; in most cases they ridiculed and attempted to discredit anyone who questioned the call to invade Iraq. Kristof, in The New York Times, attacked the filmmaker Michael Moore as a conspiracy theorist and wrote that anti-war voices were only polarizing what he termed “the political cesspool.” Hitchens said that those who opposed the attack on Iraq “do not think that Saddam Hussein is a bad guy at all.” He called the typical anti-war protester a “blithering ex-flower child or ranting neo-Stalinist.” The halfhearted mea culpas by many of these courtiers a decade later always fail to mention the most pernicious and fundamental role they played in the buildup to the war—shutting down public debate. Those of us who spoke out against the war, faced with the onslaught of right-wing “patriots” and their liberal apologists, became pariahs. In my case it did not matter that I was an Arabic speaker. It did not matter that I had spent seven years in the Middle East, including months in Iraq, as a foreign correspondent. It did not matter that I knew the instrument of war. The critique that I and other opponents of war delivered, no matter how well grounded in fact and experience, turned us into objects of scorn by a liberal elite that cravenly wanted to demonstrate its own “patriotism” and “realism” about national security. The liberal class fueled a rabid, irrational hatred of all war critics. Many of us received death threats and lost our jobs, for me one at The New York Times. These liberal warmongers, 10 years later, remain both clueless about their moral bankruptcy and cloyingly sanctimonious. They have the blood of hundreds of thousands of innocents on their hands.

The power elite, especially the liberal elite, has always been willing to sacrifice integrity and truth for power, personal advancement, foundation grants, awards, tenured professorships, columns, book contracts, television appearances, generous lecture fees and social status. They know what they need to say. They know which ideology they have to serve. They know what lies must be told—the biggest being that they take moral stances on issues that aren’t safe and anodyne. They have been at this game a long time. And they will, should their careers require it, happily sell us out again.

 

Leslie Gelb, in the magazine Foreign Affairs, spelled it out after the invasion of Iraq.

“My initial support for the war was symptomatic of unfortunate tendencies within the foreign policy community, namely the disposition and incentives to support wars to retain political and professional credibility,” he wrote. “We ‘experts’ have a lot to fix about ourselves, even as we ‘perfect’ the media. We must redouble our commitment to independent thought, and embrace, rather than cast aside, opinions and facts that blow the common—often wrong—wisdom apart. Our democracy requires nothing less.”

The moral cowardice of the power elite is especially evident when it comes to the plight of the Palestinians. The liberal class, in fact, is used to marginalize and discredit those, such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein, who have the honesty, integrity and courage to denounce Israeli war crimes. And the liberal class is compensated for its dirty role in squelching debate.

“Nothing in my view is more reprehensible than those habits of mind in the intellectual that induce avoidance, that characteristic turning away from a difficult and principled position, which you know to be the right one, but which you decide not to take,” wrote the late Edward Said. “You do not want to appear too political; you are afraid of seeming controversial; you want to keep a reputation for being balanced, objective, moderate; your hope is to be asked back, to consult, to be on a board or prestigious committee, and so to remain within the responsible mainstream; someday you hope to get an honorary degree, a big prize, perhaps even an ambassadorship.”

“For an intellectual these habits of mind are corrupting par excellence,” Said went on. “If anything can denature, neutralize, and finally kill a passionate intellectual life it is the internalization of such habits. Personally I have encountered them in one of the toughest of all contemporary issues, Palestine, where fear of speaking out about one of the greatest injustices in modern history has hobbled, blinkered, muzzled many who know the truth and are in a position to serve it. For despite the abuse and vilification that any outspoken supporter of Palestinian rights and self-determination earns for him or herself, the truth deserves to be spoken, represented by an unafraid and compassionate intellectual.”

Julien Benda argued in his 1927 book “The Treason of Intellectuals”—“La Trahison des Clercs”—that it is only when we are not in pursuit of practical aims or material advantages that we can serve as a conscience and a corrective. Those who transfer their allegiance to the practical aims of power and material advantage emasculate themselves intellectually and morally. Benda wrote that intellectuals were once supposed to be indifferent to popular passions. They “set an example of attachment to the purely disinterested activity of the mind and created a belief in the supreme value of this form of existence.” They looked “as moralists upon the conflict of human egotisms.” They “preached, in the name of humanity or justice, the adoption of an abstract principle superior to and directly opposed to these passions.” These intellectuals were not, Benda conceded, very often able to prevent the powerful from “filling all history with the noise of their hatred and their slaughters.” But they did, at least, “prevent the laymen from setting up their actions as a religion, they did prevent them from thinking themselves great men as they carried out these activities.” In short, Benda asserted, “humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good. This contradiction was an honor to the human species, and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.” But once the intellectuals began to “play the game of political passions,” those who had “acted as a check on the realism of the people began to act as its stimulators.” And this is why Michael Moore is correct when he blames The New York Times and the liberal establishment, even more than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, for the Iraq War.

“The desire to tell the truth,” wrote Paul Baran, the brilliant Marxist economist and author of “The Political Economy of Growth,” is “only one condition for being an intellectual. The other is courage, readiness to carry on rational inquiry to wherever it may lead … to withstand … comfortable and lucrative conformity.”

Those who doggedly challenge the orthodoxy of belief, who question the reigning political passions, who refuse to sacrifice their integrity to serve the cult of power, are pushed to the margins. They are denounced by the very people who, years later, will often claim these moral battles as their own. It is only the outcasts and the rebels who keep truth and intellectual inquiry alive. They alone name the crimes of the state. They alone give a voice to the victims of oppression. They alone ask the difficult questions. Most important, they expose the powerful, along with their liberal apologists, for what they are.

Illustration by Mr. Fish

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

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