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Greed leaves no place for singing birds and murmuring rivers. Maximizing accumulation is the force that drives greed. Appropriating nature and labor is the cheapest way greed finds for maximization of accumulation.

But birds sustain a living ecology. Rivers flow to the same destination: sustain life.

Birds and rivers are required also for cruel appropriators as the greedy group loves only their sustenance, and a living ecology is needed for sustenance, and birds and rivers are part of ecological system that help sustain life. But turning inconsiderate to life and ecology, to birds, rivers, air and soil is the irony of appropriation. Thus appropriators are directly in conflict with ecology.

Facts from almost all lands, from the North and the South Hemispheres reveal the trend: onslaught on ecology.

In Europe, according to a Pan-European Common Bird Monitoring Scheme survey, 36 species of farmland birds including the skylark and the meadow pipit have declined in their number: from 600 million to 300 million between 1980 and 2009. Britain is one of the worst suffering countries by losses to its farmland birds. The EU enforced farming policies are the catalysts for this catastrophe. Destroying hedgerows, wetlands and meadows has “contributed” to this bird-massacre.

What’s the “holy” reason for the destruction? It’s more and more; more profit.

Ittefaq , a leading Bangla Dhaka daily, reported on May 24, 2012: Industrial wastes, including effluent and smoke from 16 re-rolling mills, 49 brick kilns and other industrial units including paper pulp, fertilizer, textile, dyeing, battery, rubber, plastic factories, more than hundred in numbers, are threatening life and occupation of around three hundred-thousand dwellers in Roopganj, an almost industrial area near the Bangladesh capital city Dhaka. The residents are not feeling safe with air and water. There is noise pollution. Wastes are being drained into the Sitalakkhaa and Baaloo, two rivers running through the area.

These two incidents, part of a process, one from an advanced capitalist country and another from a peripheral country, are not isolated facts. Now-a-days media around the world carry thousands of similar news and facts that unravel relations between the type of economy and defacing of the ecology and environment. Now-a-days ecological crisis threatening all forms of life in this earth need no explanation. Even masters of this on-going ecocide – the owners of capital – don’t dare to publicly deny the crisis, their sin.

About two years ago, WWF, the international organization involved in the area of ecology, said in its Living Planet report: A second planet will be required by 2030 to meet our needs as over-use of Earth’s natural resources and carbon pollution have become critical. If all human being in this world used resources at the same per capita rate as the US or the UAE, four and a half planets would be needed. More than 70 countries were exhausting their freshwater sources at an alarming, unsustainable rate. About two-thirds of these countries experience water scarcity ranging from moderate to severe. In 2007, the world’s 6.8 billion humans were living 50% beyond the planet’s threshold of sustainability. The report highlighted the rich-poor ecological gap. In 1970-2007, an index of biodiversity showed a world decline of almost 30%. In the tropics, it was alarming: 60%.

No brain with logic will claim that the acts are isolated from the world economic system: capitalism. “From the outset,” Joe Bageant, author of the book about working class in America Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War , writes, “capitalism was always about the theft of the people’s sustenance. It was bound to lead to the ultimate theft – the final looting of the source of their sustenance – nature.” (“Our Plunder of Nature will End up Killing Capitalism and Our Obscene Lifestyles”, Countercurrents , July 13, 2010 )

“The main feature of capitalism is the seductive assertion that you can get something for nothing in this world.” (ibid.) Owners of this system, the capitalists, Joe continues, “hate any sort of cost.” They, he describes, “remain unimpressed by global warming, or melting polar ice caps, or Southwestern desert armadillos showing up in Canada , or hurricanes getting bigger and more numerous every year.”

These are the elites in control of the world environment in continents and countries. “Just before the economy blew out,” according to Joe, “these elites held slightly less than $80 trillion. After the blowout/bailout, their combined investment wealth was estimated at a little over $83 trillion. To give some idea, this is four years of the gross output of all the human beings on earth.”

This massive money power takes hold of political power. Owning this unimaginably monstrous money-political power system they put their footprint on ecology that is changing the planet’s environment irreversibly.

This system, the masters of the system in the center, in the periphery, in between the center and the periphery, try their best to maximize profit by minimizing cost, by appropriating labor, robbing nature, grabbing everything within their reach, putting costs on public. Pollution, destruction of ecology and ruination of nature thus creep into public domain – a human concern.

Acts of the masters are turning into crime, crime against the planet, against posterity, against humanity.

The World Future Council leaders said: “These are crimes against the future … These are crimes that will not only injure future generations, but destroy any future at all for millions of people.”

The Council has called for appointing “ombudspersons for future generations”, “guardians appointed at global, national and local levels whose job would be to help safeguard environmental and social conditions by speaking up authoritatively for future generations in all areas of policy-making. This could take the shape of a parliamentary commissioner, a guardian, a trustee or an auditor, depending on how it best fits into a nation’s governance structure.”

But questions are there: How far the ombudspersons can act where power structure, economy and political power is of, by and for polluters, grabbers, eco-murderers? If they can act, then, why do environment law/court/ministry/inspectors, depending on arrangement in countries, can’t act? What will happen if polluters grab that proposed holy post as have happened in countries by different lobbies/interests/gangs? What’s the guarantee that the proposed holy persons’ observations/edicts/verdicts will be implemented? Are not there instances of trampling/violation of all basic, fundamental, moral, ethical, human, natural, principled rights/practices/conventions/laws/rules around the world, in countries?

Out of their sense of urgency the WFC leaders’ suggestion sounds nice, but not functional. It’s detached from reality, the socio-economic-environmental -political reality.

What’s the reality?

An answer is provided by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster in their seminal analysis What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism: A Citizen’s Guide to Capitalism and the Environment (2011): Capitalism is a system that must continually expand, a system that, by its very nature, will eventually come up against the reality of finite natural resources, a system geared to expansionist growth in the search for profits that will inevitably transgress planetary boundaries.

By its very nature the system stands against ecology and environment as its only concern is profit, nothing else. Standing for environment will lead to questioning the ever hungry system.

Pushing 1 billion persons down to extreme poverty, and enriching a few, whose consumption is threatening the planet is one of the major “contributions” of the system. Other than the hungry and starved, there are energy poor, electricity poor, water poor, information poor, basic rights poor, safety poor, they are the poor masses deprived of honor and dignity, and there are the food rich, energy rich, electricity rich, water rich, information rich, luxury rich, power and privilege rich, resource rich, consumption rich, the rich few controlling everything.

Imbalance and inequity at this level can’t sustain environment and ecology. The first one, imbalance and inequity, is linear, ever expanding while the later one, environment and ecology, demands diversity, tolerance, consideration, accommodation. Observance related to environment turns hollow and chattering if this aspect of political economy is ignored.

By Farooque Chowdhury

5 June 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

One of the books edited by Farooque Chowdhury from Dhaka is the recently published The Great Financial Crisis, What Next, interviews with John Bellamy Foster .

Here in Kabul, Voices co-coordinator Buddy Bell and I are guests at the home of the Afghan Peace Volunteers, (APV), where we’ve gotten to know four young boys who are being tutored by the Volunteers in the afternoons, having “retired” from their former work as street vendors in exchange for a chance to enter a public school.  Five afternoons a week, Murtaza, Rahim, Hamid and Sajad wheel their antiquated bicycles into the APV “yard.” They quickly shake the hand of each person present and then wash their feet outside the back door before settling into a classroom to study language, math and art, tutored in each subject by a different Volunteer. They’ve cycled here from school through heavy traffic, which worries their mothers, but the families cannot afford for the boys to take a public bus.

Today, their mothers were here to observe the class, quietly sipping tea as they watched the two youngest boys practice writing the Dari alphabet, (Dari is an official Afghan language), while the older boys, age 12 and 13, took turns reading, in Dari, a chapter about the respiratory system from an elementary school science book. The APVs hope to help the mothers learn tailoring, so they can become tailors  in the community  and earn a modest income.

Later, the boys played volleyball, and when the ball went over the wall as it often does, the three of them switched to a makeshift game of ping-pong using their plastic sandals as paddles, while Rahim climbed to the top of a tree, walked confidently on the ledge of the wall and then jumped about fifteen feet to the ground below to retrieve the volleyball.

The mothers, Fatima, Nuria and Nekbat, are overjoyed to see their children getting an education, and smiled as they expressed their thanks for a few hours of quiet, in their homes each morning, with the young and sometimes mischievous boys away at school.

 Nuria, the youngest, is mother of Rahim and Hamid.  She hopes they can escape the tragedy that has befallen her husband who has become addicted to opium. By washing clothes, she earns a small income to support the family.

Murtaza’s mother, Fatima, takes care of Murtaza’s father at home – an earlier illness left her husband paralyzed from the waist down. Most of her right hand is scarred from where she scalded it while baking bread in a tandoor oven.

Sajad’s mother, Nekbat, appears to be in her late forties.  Recalling her own years growing up in Kabul during earlier Afghan wars, she spoke about family members being without work.  There was little food and children couldn’t go to school.  Eventually, her parents, displaced by war, would take the family and seek refuge in Iran. Nuria remembers fleeing as a child from one area of Kabul to another, running from killings and attacks waged by Massoud, Gulbuddin and others

The women still hear stories of people who are fleeing attacks in the Hazarajat area, where Kuchi and Hazara groups are fighting, and they know many people who have recently arrived in Kabul as refugees from areas gripped by war. The fighting has increased in the past few years.  Previously, borders were more porous and people could flee.  Now the borders appear to be closing down.

The mothers teach their children that war is always wrong, that it brings sorrow, and that the children should find productive work rather than enlist, as so many do on all sides of this conflict, often because they want to help feed their families.

In Afghanistan, “women have a bad situation,” said Fatima.  “We are illiterate, and we can’t find work that will help us meet expenses.”

They pay one- to two-thousand Afghanis a month for rent.  Their homes are compounds where several families share one kitchen. Bread, potatoes, and tea without sugar constitute their normal daily meals.

Fatima recalls the past winter which was particularly harsh.  They couldn’t afford fuel and had to find other ways to keep warm.  But Nuria adds that all the seasons present constant problems, and it is always difficult for the family to make ends meet. Asked whether they could recall ever getting a day off from work, the women answered in unison, – “No.”

Asked about the notion that the U.S. is protecting Afghan women, Nekbat said that whatever officials claim in this regard, they are bringing no help.  These women have seen no improvement in Afghanistan, and neither, they claim, has anyone they know.  They don’t travel in the circles of those most likely to meet and speak with Western journalists, and poverty and the uncertainties of war seem to dictate their lives more surely than any government. They tell me all foreign money is lost to corruption – no one in their communities sees it going to the people.

Although no government official or journalist ever asks them about the conditions they are facing, they know the West is curious;  the mothers are aware of the drone aircraft – planes without pilots, some of them armed with missiles, with cameras trained on their neighborhoods.

The drone cameras miss a lot.   Nekbat adds that even when people come through to witness firsthand the suffering of common Afghans, she is sure this news never reaches the ears of Karzai and his government.  “They don’t care,” she said. “You may perish from lack of food, and still they don’t care. No one hears the poor.”

One hospital in Kabul, the Emergency Surgical Center for Civilian War Victims , serves people free of charge. Emanuele Nannini, the chief logistician for the hospital, reminded us, the previous day, that the U.S. spends one million dollars, per year, for each soldier it deploys in Afghanistan. “Just let six of them go home,” he said, “and with that six million we could meet our total annual operating budget for the 33 existing clinics and hospitals we have in Afghanistan.  With 60 less soldiers, the money saved could mean running 330 clinics.”

Just before leaving Chicago, while the NATO summit was convening, Amnesty International announced its intention to campaign for NATO to protect the rights of Afghan women and children.  Amnesty International should talk with the Afghan Peace Volunteers and the Emergency hospital network about caring, practically and wisely, for women and children in Afghanistan.

Surrounded by fierce warlords, cunning war profiteers, and foreign armies with menacing arsenals and wild spending habits, it’s hard for the mothers who visited us today to imagine that the situation can ever change.  And yet, before leaving us, they smiled broadly. “For us,” said Nuria, “the possibility of a bright future is over, but at least for our children there is a chance.”

By Kathy Kelly

29 May 2012

@ Warisacrime.org

( Kathy@vcnv.org ) co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence ( www.vcnv.org ) which works closely with the Afghan Peace Volunteers ( ourjourneytosmile.com )

As prospects for a preemptive strike on Iran remain ever present, the recent round of talks between the P5+1 and Iran in Baghdad on May 23rd, 2012 have resulted in a familiar stalemate. As a precondition for any deal to stop higher-grade uranium enrichment, Tehran requested immediate relief from economic sanctions as a show of reciprocity [1].

Iranian chief negotiator Saeed Jalili emphasized Tehran’s right to develop peaceful nuclear energy as a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, while the P5+1 refused to scale back economic sanctions, insisting Iran suspend its 20% uranium enrichment program [2].

As leaders in Tel Aviv assert that Israel may conduct military strikes against Iran before the US Presidential elections in November [2], Major General Hassan Firouzabadi of the Iranian Armed Forces reiterated Iran’s commitment to the full annihilation of the Zionist regime and the continual support of Palestinian autonomy [3]. Even if Tehran reaches an agreement with the IAEA, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak refused to rule out a military strike against Iranian facilities, demanding that Iran dismantle its uranium enrichment sites and use only imported fuel [4].

Although the recent conference in Baghdad failed to meet the expectations of its participants, Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany have agreed to hold another round of talks in Moscow on June 18th [5]. As a further indication of division between P5+1 participants, Germany has pledged to work toward a political and diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear energy issues by providing Tehran with technical assistance in developing a peaceful nuclear program [6], while the US Senate recently approved a new round of sanctions against Iran aimed at any country or company that provides technology or resources to develop Tehran’s oil and uranium resources [7]. The new legislation targets Iran’s national oil and tanker firms and widens sanctions on Iran’s energy sector to any international joint venture where Tehran is a substantial partner or investor. As the US continually pressures Beijing to join its oil embargo, the Chinese Foreign Ministry remains vocally opposed to the new package of economic sanctions against Iran [8].

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich blasted the US for imposing new unilateral sanctions against Iran, describing the move as an irrational measure intended to the harm pace of negotiations [9]. India has remained adamant against expanding sanctions on Iran [10], as New Delhi and Tehran agree to increase annual bilateral trade two thirds to $25 billion by 2015, confirming their intent to bypass US sanctions by making payments for a significant portion of its oil purchases from Iran in rupees [11]. As further cooperation between the US and the Persian Gulf monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) remains evident through their unanimous support of Syria’s armed opposition, Saudi Arabia remains a major beneficiary under the continued imposition of sanctions on Tehran from Washington. Japan and South Korea once accounted for 26% of Iran’s oil exports [12], now both Seoul [13] and Tokyo [14] have sought stable supplies of crude oil from Saudi Arabia. As South Africa turns to Saudi Arabia after halting business with Iran [15], the kingdom’s crude output is at a thirty-year high [16], as shipments to the United States quietly rise to 25% [17].

As a result of sanctions on Iran, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund predicts that oil prices could spike as much as 30% and hover around $160 per barrel if Iran’s crude oil exports fell sharply [18]. As Iranian production hits a ten-year low as of March 2012, industry-wide fears of a recession-fueled fall in demand have prompted the reduction of total world oil production through the imposition of embargoes on Iranian oil; higher prices triggered by a supply squeeze from the sanctions work to further benefit international oil companies and producers like Saudi Arabia [19]. In March 2012, the US granted Japan and 10 EU nations a six-month reprieve to gradually cut their imports of Iranian oil, lest they be subjected to their own financial sanctions and cut off from the US financial system [20]. Under the 2012 US National Defense Authorization Act, Barack Obama can impose financial sanctions on foreign banks that carry out financial transactions with Iran’s central bank “for the purchase of petroleum or petroleum products from Iran” [21].

Given the fragile state of the European economy, the further implementation of financial sanctions on nations who fail to comply with the oil embargo on Iran is thoroughly unreasonable, with entirely negative implications for the European Union. Any further escalation of tensions with Iran would likely trigger inflated oil prices, which could further cripple the unstable economies of Greece and Portugal and potentially lead to those nations leaving the European Union. Despite Iranian Oil Minister Rostam Qassemi downplaying the negative effects of sanctions [22], inflation is soaring within Iran as the cost of food increases between 25% to 125%, with 60% of the population relying on cash subsidies handed out by Tehran [23]. Iran’s budget deficit for the 2011/2012 fiscal year is expected to be between $30 to $50 billion, as the Iranian rial continues to plunge after the imposition of the oil embargo, causing widespread panic buying of gold among the Iranian public [24].

As commodity prices in Iran continue to skyrocket, former Mossad director Efraim Halevy remarked, “The rial is going down, it’s gone down by over 50 percent. It’s almost impossible to describe the damage done,” while former Israeli foreign minister Shlomo Ben-Ami forewarns, “When a national currency loses 50% of its value in a matter of weeks, economic collapse is at hand.” [25][26]. As Iran struggled to replace it’s client base following the imposition of US-led economic sanctions, Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz spoke before the Israeli cabinet predicting the collapse of the Iranian economy [27]. Haaretz reports the remarks of an unnamed senior official in the Israeli Foreign Ministry, “These aren’t sanctions against Iran. Instead, they are sanctions imposed by the West to curb Israel’s attack plans, had Israel not spoken out about its intention to attack, none of this would be happening. The Iranians are frightened. You have to understand what’s going on there in stores; citizens grab food off the shelves because they are worried about an impending attack. Inflation is soaring and the currency has lost half its value. All this attests to fear.” [28]

As the black market in Iran expands amid an increasing lack of public confidence in the rial, the role of the state is indirectly strengthened because smuggling imports requires strong connections within the regime, leaving the poor and lower middle class susceptible to poverty while the officials being targeted by sanctions themselves benefit from the embargo [29]. The fact that Obama administration chose to preemptively impose sanctions on Iran before the P5+1 meeting in Baghdad even took place indicates that the objective of US-Israeli policy toward Iran seeks not mutual agreement and reconciliation, but the further perpetuation of conflict to ensure that the question of Iran’s nuclear energy issue remains unsolved. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the scope for sanctions over Iran’s nuclear program had been exhausted and any additional measures were intended to provoke discontent in the Iranian population [30].

As the United States and its allies offer unflinching support to armed opposition groups under cover of “democratic activism” in non-acquiescent countries in the region, any popular revolution in Iran would unquestionably be supported and used to pressure the government from within, even using the opportunity to launch an armed opposition insurrection. An articled published in The New Yorker by Seymour M. Hersh entitled, “Our Men in Iran?,” documents how members of Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian dissident group and US State Department-listed terrorist organization, were trained in communications, cryptography, small-unit tactics and weaponry by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at a base in Nevada starting in 2005 [31]. JSOC instructed MEK operatives on how to penetrate major Iranian communications systems, allowing the group to intercept telephone calls and text messages inside Iran for the purpose of sharing them with American intelligence. The group has been implicated in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists [32] and the planting of the Stuxnet malware that sabotaged Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz [33].

MEK was founded in 1965 as a Marxist Islamic mass political movement aimed at agitating the monarchy of the US-backed Iranian Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The group initially sided with revolutionary clerics led by Ayatollah Khomeini following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, but eventually turned away from the regime during a power struggle that resulted in the group waging urban guerilla warfare against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in 1981. The organization was later given refuge by Saddam Hussein and mounted attacks on Iran from within Iraqi territory, killing an estimated 17,000 Iranian nationals in the process [34]. MEK exists as the main component of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), a “coalition of democratic Iranian organizations, groups and personalities,” calling itself a “parliament-in-exile” seeking to “establish a democratic, secular and coalition government” in Iran [35]. Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein, UN special representative in Iraq Martin Kobler organized efforts to relocate MEK insurgents to a former US military base near the Baghdad airport, with the full support of the US Embassy in Iraq and the State Department to avoid violent clashes between the MEK and the Shiite-led Iraqi government [36].

MEK has long received material assistance from Israel, who assisted the organization with broadcasting into Iran from their political base in Paris, while the MEK and NCRI have reportedly provided the United States with intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. Despite the documented cases of atrocities committed by MEK forces, elder statesmen such as former NATO Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley K. Clark, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, former 9/11 Commission Chairman Lee Hamilton were paid $20,000 to $30,000 per engagement to endorse the removal of the Mujahideen-e Khalq from the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations [37]. NBC News reports that Israel provided financing, training and arms to Mujahideen-e Khalq, who are responsible for killing five Iranian nuclear scientists since 2007 using motorcycle-borne assailants often attaching small magnetic bombs to the exterior of the victims’ cars [38]. A recent investigation by the US Treasury Department has indicated that Mujahedin-e Khalq Organization is financially sponsored by the Israeli regime and Saudi Arabia [39].

Upon launching a war against Iran, aggressor nations would likely utilize MEK forces as opposition insurgents and could even recognize the touted “parliament-in-exile”, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, as Iran’s legitimate representative, much like how the Friends of Syria group has recognized the opposition Syrian National Council [40]. From her political base in Paris, exiled NCRI leader Maryam Rajavi is a strong candidate for Western support in contrast to internal opposition figures such as Mir-Hossein Mousavi, former Iranian Prime Minister turned political reformist and figurehead of the Green Movement demonstrations in 2009 following the victory of incumbent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in elections widely perceived as a fraudulent [41]. Although Mousavi has advocated greater personal freedoms in Iran and the disbanding of religious police enforcers, he is a strong advocate of Iran’s nuclear energy program and would likely never yield the kind of acquiescence to Western policy that exiled figures such as Maryam Rajavi would uphold in exchange for political support and material assistance [42]. It is widely believed that Mousavi is currently held under house arrest without an arrest warrant, charge or trial [43].

While figures such as Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi publically renounce nuclear weapons [44], Iranian scientists claim to be enriching uranium to 20% to develop radiopharmaceuticals and industrial isotopes under the supervision of the IAEA inspectors [45]. On October 1, 2010, the IAEA proposed a deal according to which Iran would send 3.5% enriched uranium abroad and receive 20% enriched uranium from potential suppliers in return, namely France and the United States, who Tehran accused of stalling negotiations from the start [46]. Tehran was offered a deal at a time when its supplies of 20% enriched uranium were nearly depleted, however Iranian lawmakers rejected the deal after technical studies showed that it would only take two to three months for any country to further enrich the nuclear stockpile and turn it into metal nuclear plates for the Tehran Research Reactor, while suppliers had announced that they would not return fuel to Iran in any time less than seven months [47].

Iran has made efforts to ensure the transparency of its nuclear program by allowing IAEA probes to inspect Iranian sites such as the Parchin military complex where the agency has reported suspicious activities in the past [48]. The IAEA’s recent discovery of traces of uranium enriched up to 27% at Iran’s Fordo enrichment plant sparked controversy, although the enrichment figure is still substantially below the 90% level needed to make the fissile core required in nuclear arms; officials conceded that the likely explanation for the increased level of enrichment was attributed to centrifuges initially over-enriching at the start as technicians adjusted their output [49]. It should be noted that former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Hans Blix has challenged the IAEA’s own reports on Iran’s nuclear activities, accusing the agency of relying on unverified intelligence from the US and Israel [50]; the IAEA’s most recent report cited Tehran’s progress toward enrichment technology with complete cooperation with the agency and confirms the non-weaponized status of Iranian nuclear activities [51].

Clinton Bastin, former director of US nuclear weapons production programs, has sent an open letter to President Obama regarding the status of Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear weapons [52]. Bastin reiterates, “The ultimate product of Iran’s gas centrifuge facilities would be highly enriched uranium hexafluoride, a gas that cannot be used to make a weapon. Converting the gas to metal, fabricating components and assembling them with high explosives using dangerous and difficult technology that has never been used in Iran would take many years after a diversion of three tons of low enriched uranium gas from fully safeguarded inventories. The resulting weapon, if intended for delivery by missile, would have a yield equivalent to that of a kiloton of conventional high explosives” [53]. The US-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has recently released claims that Iran’s total production of enriched uranium over the past five years would be enough for at least five nuclear weapons stating, “This total amount of 3.5 percent low enriched uranium hexafluoride, if further enriched to weapon grade, is enough to make over five nuclear weapons.” [54]

Bastin’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program further emphasizes the impracticality of weaponizing the hexafluoride product of Tehran’s gas-centrifuges, as the resulting deterrent would yield the equivalent explosive capacity equal to a kiloton of conventional explosives, producing a highly inefficient nuclear weapon. If Iran chose to produce nuclear weapons in this way, it would take several years to reach the 90% enrichment levels needed for a nuclear deterrent; Iran has complied with the IAEA and the United Nations on this issue and there is no substantial evidence indicating that Tehran has any intention of enriching uranium to 90% for the purpose of creating nuclear weapons. On March 23rd, 2012, Reuters released a special report entitled, “Intel shows Iran nuclear threat not imminent”, concluding that the United States, its European allies and even Israel agree that Tehran does not have a bomb, it has not decided to build one, and it is years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead [55]. As the West continually implements an unyielding regime of sanctions against Iran when they themselves acknowledge the civilian nature of the Iranian nuclear program, the overwhelming motive behind their actions to pressure Iran into full-scale war on an unprecedented scale is self-evident.

The United States has produced more than 70,000 nuclear weapons between 1951 and 1998 [56], while Israel possess a nuclear weapons stockpile ranging from 75 to 400 warheads [57]. While the hazardous ramifications of Iran’s nuclear development pervade public consciousness, the fact that US legal doctrine has worked to further blur the line between conventional and nuclear warfare remains rarely acknowledged. The March 2005 Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations released by the Joint Chiefs of Staff envisages “contingency plans” for an offensive first strike use of nuclear weapons against both Iran and North Korea, providing the legal mandate to carry out pre-emptive nuclear war, both in terms of military planning as well as defense procurement and production [58] The 2002 adoption of the Pentagon’s 2001 Nuclear Posture Review by the US Congress marked the cease of prohibition on low yield nuclear weapons and provided funding allocations to pursue the development of tactical nuclear weapons, such as bunker buster (earth penetrator) mini-nukes [59].

The revised Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations (March 2005) envisaged five scenarios where “the use of nuclear weapons might be requested,” namely, “to attack adversary installations including weapons of mass destruction, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons, or the command and control infrastructure required for the adversary to execute a WMD attack against the United States or its friends and allies” and “to counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces”. The doctrine further cites, “Responsible security planning requires preparation for threats that are possible, though perhaps unlikely today. The lessons of military history remain clear: unpredictable, irrational conflicts occur. Military forces must prepare to counter weapons and capabilities that exist in the near term even if no immediate likely scenarios for war are at hand. To maximize deterrence of WMD use, it is essential US forces prepare to use nuclear weapons effectively and that US forces are determined to employ nuclear weapons if necessary to prevent or retaliate against WMD use” [60].

The possibility of nuclear strikes against Iran pose staggeringly frightening implications for the human family, as the very nations crying foul about the danger of nuclear weapons have prepared the legal infrastructure to use them against others, preemptively. While trust towards the Iranian regime remains questionable among segments of the Iranian population and the international community, Tehran has complied with the IAEA and no evidence exists to implicate Iran with constructing a nuclear weapon. While the fiery rhetoric of Iranian and Israeli officials remains entirely counterproductive, Tel Aviv has shown the least initiative to constructively partake in diplomacy with Iran, as top Israeli officials refuse to even meet with US envoy to the P5+1, Wendy Sherman, who reportedly was sent to Tel Aviv to “reaffirm our unshakable commitment to Israel’s security” [61]. As Israel aggressively employs an apartheid policy domestically, nuclear-armed Tel Aviv boasts its right to strike Iran without consent from any other nation [62]. As our species approaches the increasingly dangerous crossroads of the 21st Century, nations such as Germany, Russia, India and China must utilize their collective influence and technology to mediate this impending security crisis in the Middle East.

Although Iran has asserted its right to develop peaceful nuclear technology as a signatory to the nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, its uranium-based fuel has wrought negative and inaccurate accusations regarding Tehran’s intentions to weaponize. To ensure the further deflection of erroneous accusations, Iran can truly make an example of itself by phasing out uranium-based nuclear technology and shifting to a liquid fuel based on molten-fluoride salts used in Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) nuclear technology powered by thorium, an obscure, mildly radioactive metal produced as a waste product from the mining of rare earth minerals. Thorium is plentiful, easily accessible and energy dense, a metric ton produces as much energy as 200 tons of uranium, or 3,500,000 ton of coal [63]. Thorium-based reactors consume their own hazardous waste and would serve Iran’s internal needs far more effectively than its current technology. As a nuclear fuel, thorium is both cleaner and safer than uranium and produces benign alpha radiation, unable to even penetrate skin [64].

The governments of China [65] and India [66] have expressed great interest in further developing thorium molten-salt reactor technology. Iran holds 9% of the world’s oil reserves and 17% of its natural gas reserves; the abundant supply of fossil fuel resources has indirectly discouraged the pursuit of alternative renewable energy sources [67]. Iran has enormous potential as a producer of geothermal energy, particularly in the provinces of Azerbaijan and Tehran [68]. There is no shortage of solutions to the current problems faced by the international community in its efforts to oversee peaceful energy technology in Iran. China, Germany and India could share their growing technical expertise with Iran to develop energy solutions that can never be used as a pretext for external military strikes. No credible basis exists to warrant the implementation of economic sanctions against Iran, which are ostensibly in place to coax social unrest and collapse the Iranian economy.

For all the belligerence exuded by the current Iranian regime, the unwavering aggressive it receives from outside forces does nothing to offer the people of Iran any tangible solutions to better themselves and their standard of living. Although the further application of sanctions will inevitably have damaging effects on Tehran, inflated oil price fluctuations have the potential to fracture the fledging austerity-states of the European Union. The failure of emerging markets to adhere to full embargoes on Iran once they come into effect would send a strong message to the architects of such disastrous policy. As nations such as China and Russia acknowledge the imbalanced nature of power in the Security Council and the aggressive stance of the United States and Israel, these nations can best utilize their power by offering technological and diplomatic solutions to avert the detrimental social, economic and spiritual consequences of war.

By Nile Bowie

27 May 2012

@ Global Research

nilebowie.blogspot.ca

Nile Bowie is an independent writer and photojournalist based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Notes

[1] Iran accuses world powers of creating ‘difficult atmosphere’ in nuclear talks, Haaretz, May 24, 2012

[2] Iran claims ‘undeniable right’ to enrich Uranium: new talks, same deadlock, Russia Today, May 25, 2012

[3] Israel takes back promise to Obama not to attack Iran before the election, Russia Today, May 24, 2012

[4] Top Commander Reiterates Iran’s Commitment to Full Annihilation of Israel, FARS, May 20, 2012

[5] Deal or no deal, Iran may be bombed – Israeli minister, Russia Today, May 23, 2012

[6] Germany Ready to Find Diplomatic Solution to Iran’s N. Issue, FARS, May 25, 2012

[7] US Senate approves sanctions against Iran, New Straits Times, May 22, 2012

[8] China slams new US sanctions against Iran, PressTV, May 23, 2012

[9] Moscow Raps US New Sanctions against Iran as Irrational Move, FARS, May 25, 2012

[10] India against more sanctions on Iran, The Hindu, February 11, 2012

[11] India, Iran look at $25 billion trade by 2015, The Economic Times, March 12, 2012

[12] Japan to reduce oil imports, BBC, January 12, 2012

[13] Saudi oil minister pledges Seoul stable crude supply, The Korea Herald, February 3, 2012

[14] Japan to seek stable oil supply from Saudi Arabia, Reuters, May 7, 2012

[15] South Africa Engen buys Saudi crude to replace Iranian supplies, Al Arabiya, May 9, 2012

[16] Saudi Arabia says kingdom pumping 10 million bpd, the most in 5 months, Al Arabiya, May 8, 2012

[17] Exclusive: Iran sanctions seen spurring more Saudi oil sales to U.S. Reuters, March 16, 2012

[18] Iran: Meetings with IAEA Head Paves Way for Negotiations with 5+1, FARS, May 24, 2012

[19] Turkey cuts 20% of oil purchases from Iran, Financial Times, March 30, 2012

[20] U.S. exempts 11 states from Iran sanctions; China, India exposed, Reuters, March 21, 2012

[21] Ibid

[22] Iranian Minister Blames EU Sanctions for Hike in Oil Prices, FARS, March 25, 2012

[23] No One Can Afford Another Round of Iran Sanctions, OilPrice, May 21, 2012

[24] Iran raises interest rate on bank deposits, Financial Times, January 27, 2012

[25] Warning Iran, and lacerating Mitt Romney, a former Mossad chief steps out of the shadows, The Times of Israel, March 28, 2012

[26] Iran’s Nuclear Grass Eaters, Project Syndicate, April 4, 2012

[27] Steinitz: SWIFT sanctions may lead to Iran’s economic collapse, YNET News, March 18, 2012

[28] Israeli threats of attack sparked new wave of Iran sanctions, officials say, Haaretz, March 16, 2012

[29] Iran’s Middle Class on Edge as World Presses In, The New York Times, February 6, 2012

[30] Q&A: Iran sanctions, BBC, February 6, 2012

[31] Our Men in Iran? The New Yorker, April 6, 2012

[32] Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News, MSNBC, February 9, 2012

[33] Stuxnet Loaded by Iran Double Agents, ISSSource, April 11, 2012

[34] Moqtada Sadr Reiterates Iraqis’ Demand for Expulsion of MKO Terrorists, Fars News Agency, September 19, 2011

[35] About the National Council of Resistance of Iran, The National Council of Resistance of Iran, 2010

[36] Are the MEK’s U.S. friends its worst enemies? Foreign Policy, March 8, 2012

[37] Mujahideen-e Khalq: Former U.S. Officials Make Millions Advocating For Terrorist Organization, Huffington Post, August 8, 2011

[38] Israel teams with terror group to kill Iran’s nuclear scientists, U.S. officials tell NBC News, MSNBC, February 9, 2012

[39] Israel funds terrorist MKO: Investigation, PressTV, May 24, 2012

[40] Friends of Syria recognize SNC as ‘legitimate representative’, Russia Today, April 1, 2012

[41] Iran’s supreme leader orders investigation into claims of vote fraud, Xinhua, June 15, 2009

[42] Iran’s presidential candidates, BBC, June 12, 2009

[43] Iran: Further information: Opposition leaders arbitrarily held, Amnesty International, 2011

[44] Iran: We do not want nuclear weapons, The Washington Post, April 13, 2012

[45] Iranian Experts Place Fuel Plates into Heart of Tehran Research Reactor, FARS, May 23, 2012

[46] Ibid

[47] Ibid

[48] UN nuclear chief: Deal reached on Iran probe, Russia Today, May 22, 2012

[49] Traces of uranium enriched to higher than previous levels found at Iran site, Haaretz, May 25, 2012

[50] Blix: US, Israel source most of IAEA allegations, PressTV, March 25, 2012

[51] Envoy: UN Atomic Report Endorses Peaceful Nature of Iran’s N. Activities, FARS, May 26, 2012

[52] Iran has a Nuclear Power, Not a Weapons Program, 21st Century & Technology, December 2, 2011

[53] Top US Nuclear Expert Tells Obama: There Is No Weapons Threat From Iran, LaRouche Pac, February 25, 2012

[54] ‘Iran has enough enriched uranium for 5 nuclear bombs’ The Times of India, May 26, 2012

[55] SPECIAL REPORT-Intel shows Iran nuclear threat not imminent, Reuters, March 23, 2012

[56] 50 Facts About U.S. Nuclear Weapons, Brookings Institute, August 1998

[57] Nuclear Weapons – Israel, Federation of American Scientists, January 8, 2007

[58] Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations, Joint Chiefs of Staff, March 2005

[59] Ibid

[60] Ibid

[61] U.S. sends senior envoy to Israel to brief government on Iran nuclear talks, Haaretz, May 25, 2012

[62] Bad news unwelcome: Israel refuses to listen to US envoy’s report on Iran, Russia Today, May 26, 2012

[63] How Iran can have nuclear power and the world can have peace, Russia Today, May 07, 2012

[64] Thorium: How to save Europe’s nuclear revival, Centre for European Reform, June 2011

[65] India plans ‘safer’ nuclear plant powered by thorium, The Guardian, November 1, 2011

[67] Renewable energy in Iran: Challenges and opportunities for sustainable development, International Journal of Environmental Science & Technology, Spring 2004

[68] Status of Geothermal Energy in Iran, 19th World Energy Congress, September 2004

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While Iran and the world six powers wrapped up their talks on Thursday in an atmosphere apparently meant to resolve the nuclear issue, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs and top negotiator on Iran Wendy Sherman rushed to Tel Aviv to brief the Israeli officials on the new nuclear developments and “reaffirm our [US] unshakeable commitment to Israel’s security.”

The report she delivered to Israeli National Security Adviser Yaakov Amidror and Foreign Ministry Director-General Rafi Barak however turned out to be much to the discontent of the Israelis. According to her report, no progress had been achieved in Baghdad on account of Iran’s refusal to nudge on its inalienable “right” to enrich uranium at low (3.5-5 percent) or high (20 percent) levels or shut down the Fordow site near the city of Qom.

So overpowering and biting was the feeling of anger in the Zionist officials that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak declined to receive the top negotiator on Iran for reasons clearly discernible to the mortified US negotiator and to Washington as well.

There is no doubt that the US government is divided over Iran case: some US officials are in favor of resolving the nuclear dispute over Iran with the full knowledge that there is no diversion towards military use in the country’s nuclear program on the strength of the reports provided by the intelligence agencies in the US: this group is held in extreme Zionist contempt. Yet, a second group constitutes those who are at the becks and calls of the Zionists, politicize Iran nuclear energy program and make every financial, political and security effort to safeguard the interests of the Zionist regime i.e. downgrading or even violating Iran’s inalienable right to the civilian use of nuclear energy.

Although European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton looked at the bright side of the Baghdad talks, said the two sides found “some common ground” and the two sides even agreed to more talks in Moscow on June 18 and 19, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton downplayed the nuclear talks and said “significant differences” still remain over Iran’s nuclear program:

“As we lay the groundwork for these talks, we will keep up the pressure as part of our dual-track approach. All of our sanctions will remain in place and will continue to move forward during this period. Iran now has the choice to make: will it meet its international obligations and give the world confidence in its intentions or not?”

Apart from the threatening tone of Mrs. Clinton’s remarks that “All of our sanctions will remain in place,” one can clearly see that Washington’s policies are but shrouded in a thick veil of ambiguities and double standards regarding Iran.

Also, in these very words lie some ingratiating suggestions to the Zionists that Washington will not give up its leverage of pressure on Iran as an effective measure and that it will constantly adhere to its unshakeable commitment to Israel under all circumstances and no matter how hard Tehran tries to cast aside the US-manufactured doubts and fears concerning Iran nuclear energy program, Washington will never relinquish its Zionist-friendly anti-Iran policies.

On the other hand, these words convey the impression that Washington is under the diabolical spell of the Zionists and that every step they take is in fact weighed and decided by the Zionist lobby within the US ruling system and as the Persian saying goes, they are not even allowed to drink water without their [Zionists] permission.

The new report released by the UN atomic energy agency on Iran nuclear activities indicates that Iran is following a civilian nuclear program.

However, a new glitch happened in one of the Fordow centrifuges which accidently over-enriched the uranium being processed to the level of 27 percent. The glitch was later clarified on Saturday by Ali Asghar Soltanieh, Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, who said, “As mentioned in the IAEA report, the issue is a normal technical glitch which is being investigated by experts.” He also said “minor technical glitches” of this nature are also found in the nuclear facilities of other countries.

Even intelligence agencies have recently testified that Iran is not pursuing to build a nuclear bomb. According to an article carried by the Los Angeles Times on February 23, 2012, a most recent report, representing the consensus of 16 US intelligence agencies, indicates that “Iran is pursuing research that could put it in a position to build a weapon, but that it has not sought to do so.”

Echoing the “highly classified” assessment by 16 US intelligence agencies, Israel’s Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Benny Gantz said he does not believe Iran will pursue nuclear weapons after years of efforts made by Tel Aviv and its allies to convince the world otherwise. Gantz described Iran’s leadership as “very rational” who would not do make such a decision. His remarks, which greatly angered the Israeli officials, were later repeated by intelligence and military officials in Israel, indicating a marked rift between the government and the military.

Despite all evidence pointing with full force to the peaceful nature of Iran nuclear program, there are desperate efforts by the Zionists to reflect the reality in a distorting mirror, depict Iran as a nuclear threat, and make its lapdog Washington to slap more sanctions on the country.

As long as Israel breathes down Washington’s neck, there is little hope the nuclear dispute will be resolved once and for all; and the future talks will eventually enter into infinite loop conditions.

By Ismail Salami

27 May, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

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

A politically incorrect wave of labyrinthine madness is casting its heavy shadow over Syria as the country is being surrounded left and right by Zionist plots thickening beyond control.

The complicated situation in Syria is ever more obfuscated by myriad forces at work to destroy the friend of Iran and the foe of Israel.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad warned on Sunday that Syria has become the target of imperialist foreign conspiracy and that the country is facing a real war waged from the outside.

In an address to the new parliament in Damascus, Assad said, “We are not facing a political problem because if we were this party would put forth a political program. What we are facing is (an attempt) to sow sectarian strife and the tool of this is terrorism.”

The Syrian leader also slammed the perpetrators of the Houla massacre as “monsters”. The carnage claimed the lives of 108 people, including 49 children and 34 women.

“What happened in Houla and elsewhere (in Syria) are brutal massacres which even monsters would not have carried out,” Assad said.

As an act of character assassination and in order to portray Assad as an illogical person, the media only broadcast a select part of his speech, cutting his speech only to those parts which could be easily misinterpreted or interpreted out of context instead of giving every listener or viewer the chance to judge everything in its proper context.

In his speech, Assad defended Syria’s right to fight the terrorists who “dominate the scene” and “decapitate the Syrians”, a right seen by the international community as violence against protesters.

“Much has been said about the political solution since the beginning of the crisis and there are those who talk of a political solution and other points or details related to it but until now, not one of them has suggested what is the relationship between a political solution and the terrorism which has dominated [the scene] since the beginning of the crisis…Will dialogue and a political solution stop the terrorist from doing what he has been doing until now? And did this terrorist decapitate heads and commit all kinds of heinous terror because there are two sides in Syria who are in a disagreement with each other? And does this mean that once we engage dialogue and agree on a political solution, the terrorist will say the reasons [for the terrorism] are now gone and I will abandon my terrorism?…this is illogical” (Select parts of Assad’s speech translated by Amal Saad-Ghorayeb http://resistance-episteme.tumblr.com/post/24355919856/my-translation-of-select-parts-of-assads-speech-today).

To a world contaminated by the lies and deception the media help promote, Assad seems to be seen the main culprit in the massacre although unspeakable reports from eyewitnesses at the scene of the crime testify to realities, which could be painful to the ears and the hearts.

A witness to the May 25 carnage in Houla says armed groups raped women before killing them and the children.

“They (armed groups) burned houses and killed people by the families because they were loyal to the (Syrian) government. [They] raped the women and killed the children” (Global Research, June 1, 2012).

Another witness said the armed groups “used the women and children as human shields and continued firing” at Syrian forces.

In a statement issued on May 29, Rupert Colville, spokesman for the UN high commissioner for human rights, said a “substantial part” of the Houla killings was “summary executions of civilians, women and children.”

Unfortunately, Arab puppet regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are fanning the flames of crisis in Syria and playing in the hands of Washington to serve the interests of Israel. For instance, Saudi Arabia is brutally critical of Syria and ironically talks of democracy and popular uprising in Syria while at the same time, the regime supports the Bahraini dictatorship and even sends men to crush the popular uprising there. Qatar’s prime minister, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, called on the international community in Oslo, the Norwegian capital, to provide arms to Syrian rebels. These two countries and some other Persian Gulf nations also made a promise of millions of dollars in aid and equipment to the rebels in order to step up the fight against the regime of Bashar Assad (The National, April 2, 2012).

In the intricate grand scheme taking shape in Syria, Israel certainly plays a furtively guileful role. Influential Zionist parties are instrumental in steering the unrest into a direction most debilitating to the government of Bashar Assad. Prominent among these Zionists is Haim Saban, an Egyptian born Israeli-American media mogul who serves as a political power broker. Saban, who is self-described as “a one-issue man” with Israel being “his issue”, plays a pivotal role in the Syrian unrest. At a conference in Israel, he said, “Three ways to be influential in American politics are to make donations to political parties, establish think tanks, and control media outlets.” In 2002, he contributed thirteen million dollars for the construction of a new building for the Democratic National Committee. The same year, he founded the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, in Washington, D.C. which is affiliated to the powerful Zionist lobby in America notoriously known as AIPAC.

The current director of the institute is the pro-Israel lobbyist Martin Indyk, who had earlier founded the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, an AIPAC spinoff, to counter the Brooking Institution which was criticized for not being pro-Israel enough.

A former US ambassador to Israel, Australian-born Jew, Martin Indyk used to be an assistant secretary of state. In an interview with ABC, he clearly enunciated that Washington was working closely with Turkey and Saudi Arabia against Syria, “The leverage really comes from the sanctions that we are imposing, the isolation that we’re organizing and the coordination with Turkey and Saudi Arabia” (abc.net.au October 25, 2011).

The operations of the Saban Center were extended to Doha in Qatar, a regime which vehemently supports the removal of Assad and has offered generous military and financial support to that effect. Known as the Brookings Doha Center, the Qatar-based center was established by the pro-Zionist Martin Indyk who is emphatically financed by the Qatari regime.

The Zionist labyrinthine corridors are so numerous that their footprints and their agents are scattered everywhere. The continuation of this Zionist influence is Shadi Hamid who currently serves as the director of research at the Brookings Doha Center and Fellow at the Zionist Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. In fact, these centers are secretly tasked with formulating strategies and exploring effective ways to destabilize any regime in the Middle East which proves hostile or detrimental to the interests of Israel.

To sum up, Israel is following a tripartite plot in order to topple Bashar Assad and destroy Syria under the guidance of Haim Saban: 1. make donations to political parties (e.g. funding and arming rebels and Wahhabi terrorists in Syria) 2. establish think tanks (e.g. setting up centers such as the Zionist Saban centers in Washington and Doha and formulating effective strategies to bring down the Assad government) and 3. control media (blacking out Arab and Western media from delivering honest and unbiased reports on the Syrian situation).

That there will be an all-out war in Syria, one cannot say with surety.

However, it is evident that the Zionist plot has been craftily devised to involve a military intervention in Syria and turn the country into chaos and ruins.

By Ismail Salami

6 June 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

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

The story of the world power’s treatment with Iran in the contemporary era is a sad and heartbreaking one. The colonial powers have been all the time after imposing disgraceful covenants and agreements on Iran to separate parts of the country’s soil and annex to that of theirs, attacking the country and killing its innocent citizens or depriving its people from their intrinsic rights and privileges.

Over the course past 100 years, Iran hasn’t invaded nor attacked any country. In such a turbulent and chaotic region as the Middle East, Iran has constantly been at the center of peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts and has regularly contributed to any genuine and legitimate peace initiative which the other countries in the region or other parts of the world have taken up.

Although it was attacked by the Ba’athist regime of the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who was unreservedly supported and financed by tens of European countries and the United States in 1980s, Iran has never resorted to violent and aggressive options to defend its territory and security. The Iranians who remember the unforgettable days of the 8-year “Holy Defense” know well that how pure and uncontaminated the defense of the young Iranians against the Saddam’s regime was. Saddam had used all kinds of illegal and forbidden war tactics against the defenseless nation of Iran, including illicit chemical weapons provided to him by the U.S., UK and other Western states which cost the lives of more than 100,000 Iranians, but in response, Iranians never turned to such inhumane, appalling and unconventional alternatives.

Robin Wright once revealed in his 2008 book “Dreams and Shadows: the Future of the Middle East” that the CIA estimated in 1991 that Iran had suffered more than 50,000 casualties from Iraq’s use of several chemical weapons, while today, the actual number of victims is estimated to more than 100,000, since the long term effects still cause casualties to this day.

It’s said that after the United States, the UK, Soviet Union, France and Italy were the most prominent procurers of weaponry, military training and financial assistance to Saddam Hussein in the years leading up to the Iran-Iraq war and during the years of war itself. In the same tough and intolerable years, there was nobody to assist Iran and they were simply the empty-handed Iranian youths who rushed up to the frontlines to defend the invaded soil of their country.

However, that war is ended now, and what remains in the memory of Iranians is the brutality of Saddam who massacred tens of thousands of innocent citizens with the complicity and connivance of the West.

Now, the United States and its client state, Israel, persistently accuse Iran of sponsoring terrorism, deliberately overlooking the fact that Iran has been continually at the forefront of fighting and countering terrorism and at the same time, a silent victim of the West’s state-sponsored terrorism.

The bloodthirsty terrorist gang, MKO, which has enjoyed the backing and patronage of the United States and its European cronies since the victory of Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979 is now seeking international support for finding a permanent residence after being sent away from the Camp Ashraf in Iraqi province of Diyala. The group is responsible for the lives of hundreds of Iranian citizens and tens of governmental officials and has proclaimed as its primary goal a regime change in Tehran with the support of Tel Aviv and Washington. The Western officials, for their part, have not hesitated to express support for the terrorist cult and in an effort which was an all-out declaration of war against Iran the European Union removed the name of MKO from its list of terrorist organizations in January 2009. Now, the U.S. officials are petitioning to persuade their government to do the same and give more room to MKO to carry out its anti-Iranian plans without being prosecuted as a terrorist organization.

And today, after the terrible years of war with Iraq and experiencing different plots and plans of the Westerners who seek to destabilize Iran at the expense of the life and security of Iranian nation, Tehran has come under escalating pressure over its nuclear program, being targeted with innumerable economic sanctions and war threats for simply trying to nationalize nuclear energy to be used for civilian purposes.

The United States and her allies, prompted by Israel are pressuring Tehran to give up its nuclear program or be penalized and even face graver consequences such as a military strike. And ironically, all of those who call on Iran to surrender its nuclear rights are owners of nuclear weapons who have used their atomic warheads on other nations or otherwise have threatened them that they’ll be doing so.

So, what’s the crime of Iranian nation who should be subject to all kinds of harassment and discrimination by the world powers and their allies? The answer is quite simple, while at the same time, thoroughly complicated and problematical.

Iran is a country whose history has been interwoven with peaceful coexistence with the other nations. Up to this day that you’re reading these lines, Iranians haven’t ever been considered a colonial power while in some junctures of the history they possessed the capabilities of becoming a colonial power. No country in the contemporary age can claim or testify that Iranians have plotted to undermine their security and stability. Iran hasn’t ever threatened any country with military expeditions to expand its ideology. The revolution of Iranians in 1979 was that of a kind of culture and religion. Iranians have always longed for living in peace and tranquility. It’s Iran’s independence and its non-alignment with the world’s superpowers that troubles them.

Today’s controversy over Iran’s nuclear program is an artificial and superfluous conflict on a dossier all aspects of which are clear and unambiguous. Iranians want to indigenize and nationalize nuclear technology, as they’re doing the same in other scientific fields such as astronomy and space, nano-technology, biotechnology, etc. That’s why the United States, Britain and Israel have mobilized all of their forces, including terrorist gangs such as MKO, to deliver a blow to Iran and bring the nation to its knees by derailing its economy, science, culture and history.

Iranians want to live in peace and this is what they have always called for. But, let’s judge fairly and equitably. How many enemies does Iran have, and what’s the reason behind these blind enmities? Isn’t it that Iran is becoming a peace-loving, peace-making superpower that’s challenging and rattling the bases of the Western powers’ supremacy and domination in the Persian Gulf and Middle East? Isn’t it that a nation with such a rich culture, civilization and history as that of Iran, threatens the pedestals and pillars of Western hegemony in the region and in the world?

By Kourosh Ziabari

30 May 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Kourosh Ziabari is an Iranian journalist

Within the first few months of 2011, the United States and its allies lost three loyal “friends”: Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, Zine el-Abbidine Ben Ali in Tunisia and Saad Hariri in Lebanon. While Mubarak and Ali were driven out of power by widespread popular uprisings, Hariri was ousted by the parliament.

Inspired by these liberating developments, pro-democracy rebellions against autocratic rulers (and their Western backers) soon spread to other countries such as Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.

As these revolutionary developments tended to politically benefit the “axis of resistance” (consisting of Iran, Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas) in the Middle East, the US-Israeli “axis of aggression” and their client states in the region mounted an all-out counterrevolutionary offensive.

Caught off-guard by the initial wave of the Arab Spring in Egypt and Tunisia, the US and its allies struck back with a vengeance. They employed a number of simultaneous tactics to sabotage the Arab Spring. These included: (1) instigating fake instances of the Arab Spring in countries that were/are headed by insubordinate regimes such as those ruling Iran, Syria and Libya; (2) co-opting revolutionary movements in countries such as Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen; (3) crushing pro-democracy movements against “friendly” regimes ruling countries such as Bahrain, Jordan and Saudi Arabia “before they get out of hand,” as they did in Egypt and Tunisia; and (4) using the age-old divide and rule trick by playing the sectarian trump card of Sunnis vs. Shi’ites, or Iranians vs. Arabs.

1. Fake springs, post-modern coup d’etats

Soon after being caught by surprise by the glorious uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, the counterrevolutionary forces headed by the United States embarked on damage control. A major strategy in pursuit of this objective has been to foment civil war and regime change in “unfriendly” places, and then portray them as part of the Arab Spring.

The scheme works like this: arm and train opposition groups within the “unfriendly” country, instigate violent rebellion with the help of covert mercenary forces under the guise of fighting for democracy; and when government forces attempt to quell the thus-nurtured armed insurrection, accuse them of human rights violations, and begin to embark openly and self-righteously on the path of regime change in the name of “responsibility to protect” the human rights.

As the “weakest link” in the chain of governments thus slated to be changed, Gaddafi’s regime became the first target. It is now altogether common knowledge that contrary to the spontaneous, unarmed and peaceful protest demonstrations in Egypt, Tunisia and Bahrain, the rebellion in Libya was nurtured, armed and orchestrated largely from abroad. Indeed, evidence shows that plans of regime change in Libya were drawn long before the overt onset of the actual civil war. [1]

It is likewise common knowledge that, like the rebellion in Libya, the insurgency in Syria has been neither spontaneous nor peaceful. From the outset it has been armed, trained and organized by the US and its allies. Similar to the attack on Libya, the Arab League and Turkey have been at the forefront of the onslaught on Syria. Also like the Libyan case, there is evidence that preparations for war on Syria had been actively planned long before the actual start of the armed rebellion, which is branded as a case of the Arab Spring. [2]

Dr Christof Lehmann, a keen observer of geopolitical developments in the Middle East, has coined the term “post-modern coup d’etats” to describe the recent North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-Zionist agenda of regime change in the region. The term refers to an elaborate combination of covert operations, overt military interventions, and “soft-power” tactics a la Gene Sharp:

“A network of think tanks, endowments, funds and foundations, which are behind the overt destabilization of targeted sovereign nations. Their narratives in public policy and for public consumption are deceptive and persuasive. Often they specifically target and co-opt progressive thinkers, media and activists. The product is almost invariably a post-modern coup d’ tat. Depending on the chosen hybridization and the resilience of government, social structures and populations perceived need for reform, the product can be more or less overtly violent. The tactics can be so subtle, involving human rights organizations and the United Nations that they are difficult to comprehend. However subtle they are, the message to the targeted government is invariably ‘go or be gone'”. [3]

It is no secret that the ultimate goal of the policy of regime change in the Middle East is to replace the Iranian government with a “client regime” similar to most other regime in the region. Whether the policy will succeed in overthrowing the Syrian government and embarking on a military strike against Iran remains to be seen. One thing is clear, however: the ominous consequences of a military adventure against Iran would be incalculable. It is bound to create a regional (and even very likely global) war.

2. Revolts co-opted

When the Arab Spring broke out in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen, the US and its allies initially tried to keep their proxy rulers Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali and Abdullah Saleh in power as long as possible. Once the massive and persistent uprisings made the continued rule of these loyal autocrats untenable, however, the US and its allies changed tactics: reluctantly letting go of Mubarak, Ali and Saleh while trying to preserve the socioeconomic structures and the military regimes they had fostered during the long periods of their dictatorial rule.

Thus, while losing three client dictators, the US and its allies have succeeded (so far) in preserving the three respective client states. With the exception of a number of formalistic elections that are designed to co-opt opposition groups (like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt) and give legitimacy to military rulers, not much else has changed in these countries. In Egypt, for example, the NATO/Israel-backed military junta of the Mubarak era, which now rules Egypt in collaboration with Muslim Brotherhood, has become increasingly as repressive toward the reform movement that gave birth to the Arab Spring as it was under Mubarak.

Economic, military and geopolitical policies of the new regimes in these countries are crafted as much in consultation with the United States and its allies as they were under the three autocratic rulers that were forced to leave the political scene. The new regimes are also collaborating with the US and its allies in bringing about “regime change” in Syria and Iran, just as they helped overthrow the regime of Gaddafi in Libya.

3. Nipping the buds

A third tactic to contain the Arab Spring has been the withering repression of peaceful pro-democracy movements in countries headed by US proxy regimes in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and other kingdoms in the Persian Gulf area before those movements grow “out of hand,” as they did in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. Thus, in collaboration with its Western patrons, Saudi Arabia has over the past year cracked down viciously against peaceful protesters not only within its own borders but also in the neighboring country of Bahrain. Leading the invasion militaries of the Persian Gulf kingdoms into Bahrain last spring, the armed forces of Saudi Arabia continue with the support of Western powers to brutalize peaceful pro-democracy protesters there.

While the Saudi, Qatari and other Persian Gulf regimes have been playing the vanguard role in the US-Israeli axis of aggression against “unfriendly” regimes, NATO forces headed by the Pentagon have been busy behind the scene to train their “security” forces, to broker weapons sale to their repressive regimes, and to build ever more military basses in their territories.

“As state security forces across the region cracked down on democratic dissent, the Pentagon also repeatedly dispatched American troops on training missions to allied militaries there. During more than 40 such operations with names like Eager Lion and Friendship Two that sometimes lasted for weeks or months at a time, they taught Middle Eastern security forces the finer points of counterinsurgency, small unit tactics, intelligence gathering, and information operations – skills crucial to defeating popular uprisings.

…

These recurrent joint-training exercises, seldom reported in the media and rarely mentioned outside the military, constitute the core of an elaborate, longstanding system that binds the Pentagon to the militaries of repressive regimes across the Middle East”. [4]

These truly imperialistic policies and practices show, once again, that the claims of the United States and its allies that their self-righteous adventures of “regime change” in the Greater Middle East are designed to defend human rights and foster democracy are simply laughable.

4. Divide and conquer: Sunni versus Shi’ite

One of the tactics to crush the peaceful pro-democracy movements in the Arab-Muslim countries ruled by the US client regimes is to portray these movements as “sectarian” Shi’ite insurgencies. This age-old divide-and-rule tactic is most vigorously pursued in Bahrain, where the destruction of the Shi’ite mosques is rightly viewed as part of the regime’s cynical policy of “humiliating the Shi’ite” in order “to make them take revenge on Sunnis,” thereby hoping to prove that the uprising is a sectarian one.[5]

Quoting Nabeel Rajab, who describes himself as secular with both Sunni and Shi’ite family relatives, reporter Finian Cunningham writes: “The government is attempting to incite divisive sectarian tensions, to intimidate Sunni people into not supporting the pro-democracy movement because it is being presented as a Shia [Shi’ite] movement.”

Cunningham further writes: “The targeting of the Shia is a tactic by the regime to distort the pro-democracy movement from a nationalist one into a sectarian one. It is also a way of undermining international support for the pro-democracy movement by trying to present it as an internal problem of the state dealing with ‘troublesome Shia’. In this way, the Bahraini uprising is being made to appear as something different from the uprisings for democracy that have swept the region” [5].

In brief, the magnificent Arab Spring that started in Egypt and Tunisia in the early 2011 has been brutally derailed, distorted and contained by an all-out counter-offensive orchestrated by Western powers and their allies in the Greater Middle East, especially Israel, Turkey and the Arab League. How long this containment of democratic and national liberation aspirations of the Arab/Muslim masses will continue, no one can tell. One thing is clear, however: the success of the Arab (or any other) Spring in the less-developed, semi-colonial world is integrally intertwined with the success of the so-called 99% in the more-developed, imperialist world in achieving the goal of defeating the austerity policies of the 1%, reallocating significant portions of the colossal military spending to social spending, and enjoying a standard of living worthy of human dignity.

In subtle and roundabout ways, imperialist wars of choice and military adventures abroad are reflections, or proxies, of domestic fights over allocation of national resources: only by inventing new (and never ending) enemies and engaging in permanent wars abroad can the powerful beneficiaries of war and militarism fend off the “peace dividends” and enjoy the substantial “war dividends” at home.

In the fight for peace and economic justice, perhaps the global 99% can take a cue from the global 1%: just as the ruling 1% coordinate their policies of military aggression and economic austerity on an international level, so can (and should) the worldwide 99% coordinate their response to those brutal policies internationally. Only through a coordinated cross-border struggle for peace and economic justice can the workers and other popular masses bring the worldwide production of goods and provision of services to a standstill, and restructure the status quo for a better world – a world in which the products of human labor and the bounties of Nature could benefit all.

By Ismael Hossein-zadeh

19 April 2012

@ Asia Times Online

Notes

1. Michel Chossudovsky, When War Games Go Live. 2. See, for example, Dr Christof Lehmann, The Manufacturing of the War on Syria.

3. Dr Christof Lehmann, The National Counsel of Syria and US Unconventional Warfare.

4. Nick Turse, Did the Pentagon Help Strangle the Arab Spring?

5. Finian Cunningham, Bahraini Rulers Play sectarian card in Bid to Trump Pro-democracy Movement.

Ismael Hossein-zadeh is Professor Emeritus of Economics, Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. He is the author of The Political Economy of US Militarism (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2007) and Soviet Non-capitalist Development: The Case of Nasser’s Egypt (Praeger Publishers 1989). He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press.

Humankind is facing an imminent threat of extinction, according to new research released on Wednesday by the science journal Nature. The report Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere reveals that our planet’s biosphere is steadily approaching a ‘tipping point’, meaning all ecosystems are nearing sudden and irreversible change that will not be conducive to human life.

The authors describe what they see as a fast paced ‘state shift’ once the tipping point is reached, which contrasts with the mainstream view that environmental change will take centuries. “It’s a question of whether it is going to be manageable change or abrupt change. And we have reason to believe the change may be abrupt and surprising,” said co-researcher Arne Mooers, a professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University in Canada’s British Columbia.

“The data suggests that there will be a reduction in biodiversity and severe impacts on much of what we depend on to sustain our quality of life, including, for example, fisheries, agriculture, forest products and clean water. This could happen within just a few generations,” stated lead author Anthony Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California in Berkeley.

“My colleagues who study climate-induced changes through the Earth’s history are more than pretty worried,” he said in a press release. “In fact, some are terrified,” said co-researcher Arne Mooers, a professor of biodiversity at Simon Fraser University in Canada’s British Columbia.

The report, written by 22 scientists from three continents ahead of this year’s Rio+20 summit, claims that the ‘state shift’ is likely; however, humans may have a small window to curb over-consumption, over-population growth and environmental destruction, with drastic efforts to change the way we live on planet earth through international cooperation.

Agence France-Presse: Environmental collapse now a serious threat: scientists

Climate change, population growth and environmental destruction could cause a collapse of the ecosystem just a few generations from now, scientists warned on Wednesday in the journal Nature.

The paper by 22 top researchers said a “tipping point” by which the biosphere goes into swift and irreversible change, with potentially cataclysmic impacts for humans, could occur as early as this century. […]

The Nature paper, written by biologists, ecologists, geologists and palaeontologists from three continents, compared the biological impact of past episodes of global change with what is happening today.

The factors in today’s equation include a world population that is set to rise from seven billion to around 9.3 billion by mid-century and global warming that will outstrip the UN target of two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The team determined that once 50-90 percent of small-scale ecosystems become altered, the entire eco-web tips over into a new state, characterised especially by species extinctions.

Once the shift happens, it cannot be reversed.

To support today’s population, about 43 percent of Earth’s ice-free land surface is being used for farming or habitation, according to the study.

On current trends, the 50 percent mark will be reached by 2025, a point the scientists said is worryingly close to the tipping point.

If that happened, collapse would entail a shocking disruption for the world’s food supply, with bread-basket regions curtailed in their ability to grow corn, wheat, rice, fodder and other essential crops.

“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” said lead author Anthony Barnosky, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California in Berkeley.

Montreal Gazette: Earth reaching an environmental ‘state shift’: Report

Or, as Canadian co-author Arne Mooers, at Simon Fraser Univeristy in British Columbia, puts it: “Once the shift occurs, they’ll be no going back.”

A shift or tipping point is “speculation at this point,” Mooers told Postmedia News.

“But it’s one of those things where you say: ‘Hey, maybe we better find out,’ because if it’s true, it’s pretty serious.” […]

The climate is warming so fast that the “mean global temperature by 2070 (or possibly a few decades earlier) will be higher than it has been since the human species evolved,” they say.

And to support the current population of seven billion people, about 43 per cent of Earth’s land surface has been converted to agricultural or urban use. The population is expected to hit nine billion by 2045 and they say current trends suggest that half Earth’s land surface will be altered by humans by 2025.

That’s “disturbingly close” to a potential global tipping point, Barnosky says in a release issued with the report. The study says tipping points tend to occur when 50 to 90 per cent of smaller ecosystems have been disrupted.

“I think that if we want to avoid the most unpleasant surprises, we want to stay away from that 50 per cent mark,” Barnosky says.

The “ultimate effects” of a state shift are unknown, but the researchers suggest it could have severe impact on the world’s fisheries, agriculture, forests and water resources. And they warn that “widespread social unrest, economic instability and loss of human life could result.”

Live Science: Tipping Point? Earth Headed for Catastrophic Collapse, Researchers Warn

Barnosky and his colleagues reviewed research on climate change, ecology and Earth’s tipping points that break the camel’s back, so to speak. At certain thresholds, putting more pressure on the environment leads to a point of no return, Barnosky said. Suddenly, the planet responds in unpredictable ways, triggering major global transitions.

The most recent example of one of these transitions is the end of the last glacial period. Within not much more than 3,000 years, the Earth went from being 30 percent covered in ice to its present, nearly ice-free condition. Most extinctions and ecological changes (goodbye, woolly mammoths) occurred in just 1,600 years. Earth’s biodiversity still has not recovered to what it was.

Today, Barnosky said, humans are causing changes even faster than the natural ones that pushed back.

By Common Dreams Staff

8 June, 2012

@ CommonDreams

Fresh revelations about US involvement in the “Stuxnet” computer virus which damaged an Iranian nuclear facility are likely to complicate the already tense negotiations over Iran’s nuclear programme.

According to a report in the New York Times based on a forthcoming book, President Barack Obama personally ordered the cyberattack on the Iranian nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz in a joint operation with Israel.

Although it has long been widely believed that the US and Israel were behind the 2010 Stuxnet virus, the new details about the Obama administration’s role are likely to add to Iranian mistrust of the US ahead of the next round of negotiations with leading nations over its nuclear programme in three weeks’ time in Moscow.

“The major barrier to any breakthrough in the talks has been the profound lack of trust between the US and Iran,” said Cliff Kupchan, an analyst at Eurasia Group in Washington. “This description is not a game-changer, but it adds to the existing serious obstacles.”

According to Friday’s article, Mr Obama stepped up a project called “Olympic Games” which was started in 2006 under the Bush administration. A spring 2010 virus targeted the Natanz facility and appeared to damage one-fifth of the centrifuges operating there, but after a few months it leaked out into the internet where it became known as Stuxnet.

The report underlines the complicated politics and ethics for the Obama administration of launching such an attack at a time when the US is increasingly worrying about the abilities of other countries to use the techniques of cyberwar against it.

“This is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyberattack was used to effect physical destruction,” Michael Hayden, the former Central Intelligence Agency head, is quoted as saying. “Somebody crossed the Rubicon.”

The revelations come in the same week that security experts have discovered a new virus which has infected computers in Iran and other parts of the Middle East. Known as “Flame”, it is designed to collect information rather than destroy equipment.

Tehran did not react to the New York Times story on Friday. However, the report of US and Israeli involvement in the cyberattack could give more credibility to Iranian claims that the two countries were also behind the assassination of at least four nuclear scientists.

It could also strengthen the Islamic regime’s suspicions that the US and Israel are in much closer agreement than is often thought about the possibility of an Israeli strike on Iran. “It is a lie that the US is against an attack on Iran and Israel may do it on its own,” said one former Iranian official this week. “If Israel attacks the nuclear sites, Iran’s retaliation would be first against the US because Israel is in no place to act without the US permission.”

While former president Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani said last week for the second time in recent months that Tehran could not be hostile to the US for ever, Iranian analysts believe Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, still believes Washington is using the nuclear issue to push the broader goal of regime change. He has urged politicians not to be fooled by “smiles” – a clear reference to Mr Obama.

However, Iranian anger over the attack has been tempered by the fact that Stuxnet largely failed in its efforts and the Iranian nuclear programme has quickly made up lost ground.

Although the new revelations come at a delicate time for the nuclear talks with Iran, which the Obama administration is keen to continue and would not want to see collapse in the middle of an election campaign, they could offer some domestic political upside. The fact that Mr Obama stepped up the Bush-era cyberwar programme will help counter Republican attacks that his administration has been too soft on Iran.

However, they complicate US efforts to criticise the cyber activities of other governments. In an unusually blunt report issued last year by US intelligence agencies, the Obama administration said that massive cyberespionage operations by China and Russia posed a “significant and growing threat” to US national security, yet other countries often view US complaints as hypocritical given its own cyber activities.

By Geoff Dyer iand James Blitz

@ The Financial Times

One of the by-products of regional uncertainty and the Arab Spring has been the steady rise in oil prices. And this added revenue has helped rapidly fill state coffers. Today, some of the GCC countries are putting that revenue to task in mega-billion projects across the land.

In Saudi Arabia alone, it is estimated that over $77 billion have been allocated for major projects which include the setting up of industrial cities and massive infrastructure development across the country. With that kind of money floating around, it has become very tempting to be seduced into the arms of corrupt business practices.

It should be noted that corruption has been one of the elements that served as a springboard to the Arab Spring. And we have not been immune to it. Perhaps, the most public example was brought up following the Jeddah rains in 2009 which caused the deaths of over 130 people by the resulting floods. It was determined that bribery played a major part with city officials granting housing permits illegally on city land not zoned as residential areas.

According to a published report at the time, the flood disaster exposed bribery and other corruption practices in government departments, which also suffered from the absence of clear policies. “What happened in Jeddah clearly illustrated the poor performance of government departments because of bribery and widespread corruption. These institutions are also suffering from the lack of clear policies and action plans besides bureaucratic complications in decision-making.”

Three years on, and the trial of that tragic incident is still in progress with charges and counter-charges. Most of the defendants occupied key positions in the Jeddah Mayoralty but are currently under suspension pending the outcome of the trial. Many of the defendants who had previously admitted their complicity in taking bribes and looking the other way are today retracting their confessions, stating that such admissions were made under duress. Those following the case wonder if it would eventually be swept under dismissed or reduced charges as the web of deceit could entangle a wide spectrum of public sector officials.

They may be justified in their reasoning by the recent acquittal of six former soccer club officials accused of bribery and illegal appropriation of public land. According to published reports, the six defendants ‘retracted their earlier testimonies alleging that they were extracted under duress, which the board’s representative denied. After the hearing, the court took a 30-minute recess for consultation with the panel members. They were fined SR10, 000 each. All six defendants expressed their satisfaction with the verdict while the prosecution said it will contest the ruling.’ Such verdicts do not inspire confidence in a judicial system that has become suspect as of late, with charges of malpractices and corruption among those dispensing justice!

In another instance, in a major charitable organization with funding in the millions, the directors of the charity started first with charitable acts towards themselves. Trusted with dispersing much needed relief by the needy, some went so far as to pad up their per diems by falsifying the number of days on their trips or on their flight expenses! And since audit and accountability were sketchy at best, they got away with it.

A new anti-corruption body was formed at the behest of the King himself to stem the rising tide of corruption and report on the offenders. King Abdullah issued a royal decree in March 2011 for the formation of the commission. This body is set up to deal with all forms of financial and administrative graft, and also promote the principle of transparency.

Earlier this year, the chairman of the National Authority for Combating Corruption (NACC) affirmed its intent to spare no one in its campaign to stamp out mismanagement and other malpractices at public establishments, adding that there would be no exception.

“We will not hesitate to strike at corruption wherever it is. Our crackdown will target small and big heads…no one, whoever he is, will be excluded in line with instruction by King Abdullah.” Mohammed bin Abdullah Al Sharif was quoted as saying.

He also added that the public should also play an active part in alerting the appropriate authorities. “Every one has a role to play in this respect whether he is an official, a businessman, a citizen, a journalist or a scholar…the Kingdom’s anti-corruption strategy also stresses that school curricula must include lessons advocating sincerity and protection of public funds.”

There are calls for more social transparency and economic reforms. Declaration of assets by public servants can be one tool of checking and arresting illegal gotten gains. Public institutions will need to set up ‘fair and sustainable compliance management systems.’ This will help to determine areas vulnerable to corruption. They should also launch anti-corruption training for all employees. Whistle-blowing should be encouraged. And finally, public service organizations should promote the message to the business sector that the contract with best bid and not the biggest bribe will be the winner.

It may take a while, and perhaps more than a few jail sentences, but we all must set our course on the road to arresting the rampant spread of bribery and corruption if not stopping it altogether. The alternative would be nothing short of eroding the moral fiber that binds society.

By Tariq A. Al-Maeena

5 June, 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Tariq A. Al-Maeena is a Saudi socio/political commentator. He lives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com.