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31 March, 2011

WSWS.org

The ongoing public debate in Washington and the American media on “arming the rebels” in Libya points to a dramatic escalation of the US-led war.

President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, followed by their British counterparts, Prime Minister David Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague, have spoken in almost identical terms over the past two days, insisting in response to questions about arming the anti-Gaddafi forces that they were “not ruling it out.”

The debate has intensified in the face of a growing debacle for the US-led intervention. Armed anti-Gaddafi forces have carried out a headlong retreat after confronting resistance from both military forces loyal to the government in Tripoli and armed civilians hostile to the US-backed opposition. According to reports from Libya, they have been pushed back to the strategic highway junction town of Ajdabiya, the site of some of the heaviest US-NATO bombing.

The earlier advance of some 200 miles along the Mediterranean coast, which was celebrated by Western governments and media, was due entirely to air strikes carried out by US and NATO warplanes, which effectively acted as the air force of the so-called “rebels.”

Forces supporting the Gaddafi regime beat a tactical retreat rather than be wiped out from the air. After a week of bombing and missile attacks, last weekend the Pentagon sent in low-flying, heavily armed AC-130 gunships and A10 attack planes, aircraft that have been used to deadly effect in close-air support for US troops from the Vietnam War to the Fallujah massacre in Iraq and counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan.

The “rebel” advance essentially amounted to a drive-through, with the US-backed fighters encountering no opposition. “There wasn’t resistance,” Faraj Sheydani, one of the anti-Gaddafi fighters told the New York Times. “There was no one in front of us. There’s no fighting.”

This changed on Tuesday, when the US-backed insurgents approached the town of Sirte, Gaddafi’s birthplace. In the village of Bin Jawad, about 80 miles east of Sirte, according to a report by McClatchy Newspapers reporter Nancy Youssef, women were sent out on buses. “As soon as the women were out of harm’s way,’ the article said, “the men began shooting at the rebels from their houses.”

On Wednesday, the rout continued, with the oil-producing towns of Ras Lanuf and Brega falling back under government control and the US-backed forces fleeing back to Adjdabiya. As Youssef reported, “Most [of the ‘rebels’] it turned out had no intention of fighting when it mattered.”

In an attempt to overcome the severe limitations of this force, Washington has already sent in operatives tasked with organizing the “rebels” into an armed unit capable of waging civil war. As the New York Times reported on Wednesday, the Central Intelligence Agency has deployed “clandestine operatives into Libya to gather intelligence for military airstrikes and make contacts with rebels.”

In addition, the Times reported, citing British officials, “dozens of British special forces and MI6 intelligence officers are working inside Libya.”

ABC News, meanwhile, reported that President Obama Wednesday signed a secret presidential finding “authorizing covert operations to aid the effort in Libya.”

“The presidential finding discusses a number of ways to help the opposition to Muammar Gaddafi, authorizing some assistance now and setting up a legal framework for more robust activities in the future,” the network reports.

It is in this context that the drumbeat for “arming the rebels” has begun. The phrase is meant to conceal the fact that any attempt to provide significant weaponry to the disorganized forces based in the eastern Libyan city of Benghazi would entail the deployment of US “trainers,” “advisors” and special forces units, making a mockery of the pledge made Monday night by Obama that he would “not put ground troops into Libya.”

As the Times reported, citing unnamed administration officials, “supplying arms would further entangle the United States in a drawn-out civil war, because the rebels would need to be trained to use any weapons, even relatively simple rifles and shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons.”

The proposal to provide arms, it adds, “carries echoes of previous American efforts to arm rebels, in Angola, Nicaragua, Afghanistan and elsewhere, many of which backfired.”

All of the examples given by the Times were counterrevolutionary operations mounted by the CIA. In Angola, the agency poured in arms, money, advisors and South African troops to back the UNITA movement of Jonas Savimbi, fueling a civil war that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands.

In Nicaragua, the CIA directed the infamous contra mercenaries in a terror war against the population, killing more than 40,000 people, mostly civilians. And in Afghanistan, the CIA armed and funded the Islamist mujahideen against the Soviet-backed government in Kabul in a war that left more than a million Afghans dead.

It is becoming increasingly evident that the armed conflict in Libya is not a “revolution,” a “pro-democracy movement” or a “humanitarian” intervention, but rather a similar operation run by the CIA and allied intelligence agencies. Its aim is not to liberate the Libyan people, but rather to install a more pliant regime in Tripoli that will guarantee US control of oil production in that country and the wider region.

The discussion on arming the anti-Gaddafi forces is dominated by the same lies and duplicity that have characterized the US intervention from its outset.

 

Officially, NATO is not contemplating such action. NATO’s secretary general, the right-wing Danish politician Anders Fogh Rasmussen, insisted in an interview with CNN: “The UN mandate authorizes the enforcement of an arms embargo. We are not in Libya to arm people, but to protect people.”

Rasmussen’s statement is meant to placate a number of NATO members, including Turkey, Germany and Italy, which have publicly opposed any move to arm the forces in Benghazi and voiced reservations about the extent of the US-led bombing campaign. The Obama administration has formally transferred command of the Libyan operation to NATO, which the US dominates politically and militarily, creating a similar structure to the one that exists in Afghanistan.

US and British officials have taken the opposite position, insisting that the March 17 UN resolution authorizing “all necessary means” to protect civilians somehow abrogates a February 26 resolution barring the introduction of all arms and munitions into Libya.

“It is our interpretation that [UN Security Council Resolution] 1973 amended or overrode the absolute prohibition on arms to anyone in Libya, so that there could be a legitimate transfer of arms if a country should choose to do that,” Clinton said Tuesday.

British Prime Minister Cameron stuck to the same script in parliament Wednesday, declaring, “Our view is that this [UN resolution] would not necessarily rule out the provision of assistance to those protecting civilians in certain circumstances.”

Speaking in a House of Commons debate on March 18—the day after the UN Security Council approved the resolution authorizing a no-fly zone—Cameron took the opposite position, declaring, “The resolution helps to enforce the arms embargo, and our legal understanding is that that arms embargo applies to the whole of Libya.”

Legal experts interviewed by the British Guardian made it clear that any other interpretation of the UN resolutions could be based only on willful deception. They point out that the March 17 resolution calls for the “strict implementation” of the arms embargo approved in February and that the February resolution demands that any breaching of the ban on arms and munitions receive prior approval from a UN committee established to enforce the measure—and not be carried out unilaterally by one or another government.

If the US moves ahead with arming the anti-Gaddafi forces, it will be defying the United Nations in order to conduct an illegal war no less openly than Bush did in invading Iraq.

One of the persistent questions arising in response to the proposals for arming the “rebels” is what precise role is played in their operations by Al Qaeda and other Islamist forces.

US Adm. James Stavridis, NATO’s supreme allied commander for Europe, testifying at a US Senate hearing Tuesday allowed that US intelligence agencies had detected “flickers” of an Al Qaeda presence within the Libyan armed opposition.

“We have seen flickers in the intelligence of potential Al Qaeda, Hezbollah; we’ve seen different things,” said the admiral. “But at this point, I don’t have the detail sufficient to say that there’s a significant Al Qaeda presence or any other terrorist presence in and among these folks.”

Hillary Clinton brushed off a similar question, declaring, “We don’t know as much as we would like to know” about the “rebels.”

The US ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, admitted to the New York Times that he had no way of knowing whether the “rebels” were “100 percent kosher, so to speak.” And former CIA agent Bruce Riedel, now an analyst at the Democratic Party-oriented think tank, the Brookings Institution, allowed that there were bound to be such elements. He said, “The question we can’t answer is: Are they 2 percent of the opposition? Are they 20 percent? Or are they 80 percent?”

US intelligence analysts have acknowledged that members of the Libya Islamic Fighting Group are playing a role in the attempt to oust Gaddafi. The organization was founded by Libyan veterans of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan and was placed on a list of groups affiliated with the Taliban after September 11.

Newsweek’s Afghanistan and Pakistan correspondents Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai reported Wednesday that “some of the 200 or so Libyans operating near the Afghan border may be on their way home to steer the anti-Gaddafi revolution in a more Islamist direction.” Among them, the report said, is Abu Yahya al-Libi, who is Al Qaeda’s “senior Islamist ideologue and bin Laden’s head of operations for Afghanistan.” If Yahya is successful in reaching eastern Libya, it added, “he’ll be able to operate with relative freedom, without worrying about Gaddafi’s secret police.”

If the Libyan intervention has demonstrated anything, it is the fraud of Washington’s so-called global war on terrorism. In its bid to oust Gaddafi and install a US puppet state in Libya, the CIA and the Pentagon are allied with Al Qaeda against a regime which had placed its secret service at the disposal of the CIA for combating the Islamist movement.

Gaddafi has opportunistically attempted to dissuade the US and other Western powers from attacking him by pointing to the role of the Islamists among the rebels, but to no avail.

The CIA’s ties to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda precede those forged with the Libyan dictator. It has long seen the terrorist movement as a useful tool, first for attacking the Soviets, then for providing a pretext for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now as foot soldiers in Washington’s bid to re-colonize an oil-rich North African country.

 

 

 

 

30 March, 2011

WSWS.org

The conference on Libya held Tuesday at London’s Lancaster House was a repulsive exercise in hypocrisy and cynicism. In the name of liberating the Libyan people, the United States and Britain brought together foreign ministers from 40 countries and dignitaries from international organizations such as the United Nations, NATO and the Arab League to sanction an escalation of the air war against the former colony and set the stage for the installation of a stooge regime.

As American, British and French missiles and bombs continued to rain down on Libyan government troops and civilian populations in cities such as Tripoli and Sirte, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and British Prime Minister David Cameron declared that the military assault would continue indefinitely. Clinton spoke of further economic and political sanctions against the regime of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and indicated that Washington was moving toward arming the so-called “rebel” forces.

The conference followed President Barack Obama’s televised speech Monday night, in which he not only justified the aggression in Libya, but argued that the president had a right to launch military attacks and wars anywhere in the world to defend American “values” and “interests” and maintain “the flow of commerce.” This is an open-ended brief for imperialist war that even goes beyond the scope of the Bush administration’s doctrine of preventive war.

It increases the short-term potential for US intervention in a number of countries in the Middle East, including Syria and Iran, and, longer-term, for war against more formidable rivals such as China.

Interviewed on the “NBC Nightly News” program Monday evening, Obama reiterated Clinton’s statements at the London conference opening the door to deeper US involvement in the war, including the arming of the opposition forces led by the Benghazi-based Interim Transitional National Council.

This expansion of US militarism is backed with particular enthusiasm by the liberal and pseudo-left advocates of “humanitarian” imperialism, who cut their teeth by lining up behind American bombs and bullets in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. Expressing the contemptuous attitude of these forces for fundamental democratic principals, the New York Times published an editorial Tuesday praising Obama’s speech on Libya, while chiding him for violating basic democratic and constitutional norms.

After declaring that “the rebels will likely need air support for quite some time,” the newspaper wrote: “The president made the right choice to act, but this is a war of choice, not necessity. Presidents should not commit the country to battle without consulting Congress and explaining their reasons to the American people.”

Having registered its disapproval for the record, the Times immediately brushed aside the illegality of the war, noting, “Fortunately, initial coalition military operations have gone well.”

Opening the London conference, the British Prime Minister Cameron declared, “We are all here in one united purpose, that is to help the Libyan people in their hour of need.” He denounced Gaddafi for continuing to resist militarily against the US-NATO-backed rebel forces, saying the Libyan leader was thereby in “flagrant breach of the UN Security Council resolution” that sanctioned the military intervention. The air war would continue, he said, until the regime was in full compliance with the resolution—something that could be realized only by the fall of Gaddafi from power.

As the Guardian noted, Cameron and Clinton were careful in their remarks at the conference to refrain from directly repeating their demand that Gaddafi step down, because among the governments represented at the conference there are differences over openly making regime-change an aim of the war.

“Cameron did not repeat his demand for Gaddafi to stand down immediately and to face justice at the International Criminal Court,” the Guardian noted. “The conference is attended by Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, who is hoping to broker a ceasefire between Gaddafi and the rebel forces. Franco Frattini, the foreign minister of Libya’s former imperial ruler, Italy, who has raised the prospect of spiriting Gaddafi to exile, is also attending.”

Behind the façade of unity there are bitter conflicts within the war camp. The US no doubt encouraged Britain to hold the conference in order to rein in France, which led the initial drive for war in Libya, and to use the British as a cat’s paw to assert American hegemony in a post-Gaddafi Libya.

Many divisions were evident. The African Union, whose efforts to broker a ceasefire and negotiations between Gaddafi and the rebels were blocked by the launching of military action, boycotted the conference. Likewise Russia, which the previous day had denounced the war coalition for exceeding the “humanitarian” terms of the UN resolution.

Egypt, along with some other Arab countries, also refused to attend. The military rulers of Egypt likely felt it unwise to risk the wrath of a restive population by openly joining in the colonial-style carve-up of neighboring Libya.

There are also differences over relations with the Interim Transitional National Council. To date, only France and Qatar have formally recognized the self-appointed anti-Gaddafi leadership. One of the aims of Washington and London in holding the conference was to legitimize the “democratic” opposition leadership, but differences within the war coalition prevented them from allowing the Transitional National Council delegates in attendance to formally participate in the deliberations.

As a result, a conference advertised as enabling the Libyan people to determine their own future had no Libyan participants. Cameron nevertheless went out of his way to promote the Transitional National Council, meeting with its chairman, Mahmoud Jabril, at 10 Downing Street, naming it as the axis of a new government in his initial remarks, and opening up the Foreign Office’s main briefing room for a press conference by Jabril’s fellow rebel delegates.

Clinton also ostentatiously held a meeting with Jarbil, allowing the two of them to be photographed together in order to underscore American support for the council. US officials announced that Washington was sending a special envoy to deepen its relations with the opposition leadership.

 

The right-wing, pro-imperialist character of the council is embodied in the delegates who represented it in London. Jabril taught for many years in the US after obtaining a PhD at the University of Pittsburgh. From 2007, he headed Gaddafi’s National Economic Development Board, which spearheaded the introduction of capitalist market relations and the opening of Libya to foreign investment.

The two senior opposition figures who gave the press conference were Guma El-Gamaty, the council’s coordinator in Britain, and Mahmoud Shammam, the council’s head of media, who is based in Washington.

Shammam is managing editor of Foreign Policy magazine and has previously served as editor of Arab Newsweek. He is also a member of the advisory board on the Middle East at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. At the press conference, he appealed for the US and its allies to begin arming the opposition forces.

El-Gamaty is a Libyan writer and political commentator. He has been living in the UK for more than 30 years and was active with the Libyan opposition movement abroad in the 1980s. For the past few years, he has worked a researcher at the University of Westminster.

All of these figures have close ties with American and European corporate, political and, it can be safely presumed, intelligence organizations.

Clinton’s press conference following the meeting exposed the fraud of America’s supposed struggle against Al Qaeda and the “war on terror” as a whole. The US Secretary of State made clear that Washington had not ruled out arming the so-called “rebels” and asserted that such action would be permitted under UN Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized the military intervention in Libya.

A Reuters reporter questioned Clinton on possible US arms for the opposition, citing the remarks that day of US Adm. James Stavridis, who told a Senate committee that there were “flickers” of US intelligence on links between the Interim Transitional National Council and Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.

“How great a concern is that?” the reporter asked. “And is that part of the US debate over any potential arms transfers to the transitional council?”

Clinton brushed aside the danger of funneling US arms to Al Qaeda via the Libyan opposition, saying, “We do not have any specific information about specific individuals from any organization who are part of this, but, of course, we’re still getting to know those who are leading the Transitional National Council.”

The next questioner, from the Times of London, called it “quite striking” that “none of the names” of the rebel leaders were public, “apart from three or four of the 30-odd of them.” He continued: “Do you think they should be more transparent in term of declaring who they are, where they’re from, what kind of groupings they come from, and how they’re using the money?”

Clinton merely replied that “we’re picking up information,” adding that “this is a work in progress.”

Just two days before, Clinton had appeared with US Defense Secretary Robert Gates on several Sunday interview programs, during which they insisted that the US had to continue to support Yemeni dictator Ali Abdullah Saleh, despite his deadly attacks on demonstrators, because of the threat represented by the presence of Al Qaeda in Yemen.

The dismissal by the Obama administration—as well as the media—of possible links between the Libyan opposition and Al Qaeda makes fairly clear that the relationship between the United States and Al Qaeda is complex and intimate. After all, the top figures in the terrorist network, including Osma bin Laden, got their start as assets of the CIA in the US-backed mujahedin guerilla war of the 1980s against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

This double standard in relation to the supposed central enemy in the “war on terror” is but one of many contradictions that expose the imperialist and neo-colonial character of the US-led war in Libya

 

 

30 March, 2011

Warisacrime.org

Johan Galtung, sometimes called the father of peace studies, predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union and the refusal of Egyptian soldiers to attack civilians. His prediction of the collapse of the US empire in 2020 appears to be on schedule. So, it was noteworthy when he predicted on Tuesday at the University of Virginia that the war in Libya would last 20 years. If, however, NATO and the opposition were to kill Gadaffi, he said, the fighting could go on for more than 20 years.

This prediction came the day after Obama gave one of those speeches, like his speeches on Gitmo or Iraq, where he persuades you that something is already over without actually making that claim. How can the war (excuse me, humanitarian intervention) in Libya be over and have 20 years left to go?

Galtung argues that predictions of quick success in Libya depend on an ignorance of history and a reduction of broad social forces to the caricature of a single person. There are five forces at work in the Arab Revolution, Galtung argues: opposition to dictatorship (demand for civil rights), opposition to inequality and poverty (demand for economic rights), opposition to the U.S. and Israeli empires, the revolt of the youth, and the revolt of women. When a government is on the wrong side of all five forces, Galtung claims, it is doomed.

Egypt scores a negative 5; its government imposed/imposes dictatorship and inequality, supports the rule of the two empires, and suppresses youth and women. Tunisia, because of advances in women’s rights, scores a negative 4. To explain why Libya only scores a negative 3, Galtung goes back to 1915 when Arabs revolted against the Ottoman Empire with the aid of France, the UK, and Russia. France took over Lebanon and Syria. The UK took over Iraq and Palestine. The next revolt came in the 1950s and 1960s against the French and the British. This revolt was led by Gamal Abdel Nasser and then by Gadaffi. The United States became Israel’s patron and developed the current empire. Gadaffi gained the reputation of an opponent of the U.S. and Israeli, as well as French and British and Italian empires. In Galtung’s analysis, such a reputation lasts forever.

So, Gadaffi’s government gains points for holding an aura of anti-imperialism and for relatively little inequality. Similarly, Galtung gives the governments of Yemen, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia negative fives but suggests that Syria and Iran score better on the basis of past resistance to empire.

The opposition in Libya, according to Galtung, stands for the West. France, Italy, the UK, and the US are likely to invest huge sums in that opposition. On Monday Obama promised to transfer $33 billion in seized Libyan assets to “the people” of Libya; that means the opposition. What’s underway, Galtung says, is a civil war, not a no-fly zone protecting civilians. And killing Gadaffi would make him a martyr.

This analysis fits with some facts that aren’t paid enough attention to, I believe. Nonviolent campaigns against tyranny succeed more often than violent ones. Nonviolent campaigns succeed more often when violence is used against them. Too much violence can destroy them, but it takes more than is commonly imagined. Gadaffi’s military is not primarily foreign mercenaries. Prior to U.S. involvement, military forces were defecting to the rebel side; now one doesn’t hear of that happening. The leader of the rebels is a CIA creation. Going back to the U.S. liberation of Cuba and the Philippines, the U.S. military has stepped in to “help” dozens of countries and overstayed its welcome every single time without exception.

Galtung doesn’t predict that the United States will be at war in Libya for 20 years. He expects Western Europe to take over the poisonous role of empire from the current global power. China, he believes, even if it were powerful enough to step into that role, is not stupid enough to do so.

 

 

 

 

29 March, 2011 Countercurrents.org

Two grandmothers, two priests and a nun were sentenced in federal court in Tacoma, WA Monday March 28, 2011, for confronting hundreds of US nuclear weapons stockpiled for use by the deadly Trident submarines.

Sentenced were: Sr. Anne Montgomery, 83, a Sacred Heart sister from New York, who was ordered to serve 2 months in federal prison and 4 months electronic home confinement; Fr. Bill Bischel, 81, a Jesuit priest from Tacoma Washington, ordered to serve 3 months in prison and 6 months electronic home confinement; Susan Crane, 67, a member of the Jonah House community in Baltimore, Maryland, ordered to serve 15 months in federal prison; Lynne Greenwald, 60, a nurse from Bremerton Washington, ordered to serve 6 months in federal prison; and Fr. Steve Kelly, 60, a Jesuit priest from Oakland California, ordered to serve 15 months in federal prison. They were also ordered to pay $5300 each and serve an additional year in supervised probation. Bischel and Greenwald are active members of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action, a community resisting Trident nuclear weapons since 1977.

What did they do?

In the darkness of All Souls night, November 2, 2009, the five quietly cut through a chain link perimeter fence topped with barbed wire.

Carefully stepping through the hole in the fence, they entered into the Kitsap-Bangor Navy Base outside of Tacoma Washington – home to hundreds of nuclear warheads used in the eight Trident submarines based there.

Walking undetected through the heavily guarded base for hours, they covered nearly four miles before they came to where the nuclear missiles are stored.

The storage area was lit up by floodlights. Dozens of small gray bunkers – about the size of double car garages – were ringed by two more chain link fences topped with taut barbed wire.

USE OF DEADLY FORCE AUTHORIZED one sign boldly proclaimed. Another said WARNING RESTRICTED AREA and was decorated with skull and crossbones.

This was it – the heart of the US Trident Pacific nuclear weapon program. Nuclear weapons were stored in the bunkers inside the double fence line.

Wire cutters cut through these fences as well. There they unfurled hand painted banners which said “Disarm Now Plowshares: Trident Illegal and Immoral”, knelt to pray and waited to be arrested as dawn broke.

What were they protesting against?

Each of the eight Trident submarines has 24 nuclear missiles on it. The Ground Zero community explains that each of the 24 missiles on one submarine have multiple warheads in it and each warhead has thirty times the destructive power of the weapon used on Hiroshima. One fully loaded Trident submarine carries 192 warheads, each designed to explode with the power of 475 kilotons of TNT force. If detonated at ground level each would blow out a crater nearly half a mile wide and several hundred feet deep.

The bunker area where they were arrested is where the extra missiles are stored.

In December 2010, the five went on trial before a jury in federal court in Tacoma charged with felony damage to government property, conspiracy and trespass.

But before the trial began the court told the defendants what they could and could not do in court. Evidence of the medical consequences of nuclear weapons? Not allowed. Evidence that first strike nuclear weapons are illegal under US and international law? Not allowed. Evidence that there were massive international nonviolent action campaigns against Trident missiles where juries acquitted protestors? Not allowed. The defense of necessity where violating a small law, like breaking down a door, is allowed where the actions are taken to prevent a greater harm, like saving a child trapped in a burning building? Not allowed.

Most of the jurors appeared baffled when defendants admitted what they did in their opening statements. They remained baffled when questions about nuclear weapons were objected to by the prosecutor and excluded by the court. The court and the prosecutor repeatedly focused the jury on their position that this was a trial about a fence. Defendants tried valiantly to point to the elephant in the room – the hundreds of nuclear weapons.

Each defendant gave an opening and closing statement explaining, as much as they were allowed, why they risked deadly force to expose the US nuclear arsenal.

Sojourner Truth was discussed as were Rosa Parks, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King.

The resistance of the defendants was in the spirit of the civil rights movement, the labor movement, the suffragist movement, the abolition of slavery movement.

Crowds packed the courtroom each of the five days of trial. Each night there was a potluck and a discussion of nuclear weapons by medical, legal and international experts who came for the trial but who were largely muted by the prosecution and the court.

While the jury held out over the weekend, ultimately, the activists were convicted.

Hundreds packed the courthouse today supporting the defendants. The judge acknowledged the good work of each defendant, admitted that prison was unlikely to deter them from further actions, but said he was bound to uphold the law otherwise anarchy would break out and take down society.

The prosecutors asked the judge to send all the defendants to federal prison plus three years supervised probation plus pay over five thousand dollars. The specific jail time asked for ranged from 3 years for Fr. Kelly, 30 months for Susan Crane, Lynne Greenwald, 7 months in jail plus 7 months home confinement, Sr. Anne Montgomery and Fr. Bill Bichsel, 6 months jail plus 6 months home confinement.

Each of the defendants went right into prison from the courtroom as the spectators sang to them. Outside the courthouse, other activists pledged to confront the Trident in whatever way is necessary to stop the illegal and immoral weapons of mass destruction.

Bill Quigley is part of the legal team supporting the defendants and was in Tacoma for the sentencing. You can learn more about the defendants at disarmnowplowshares.wordpress.com.

Bill Quigley is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Contact Bill at quigley77@gmail.com

 

29 March, 2011

Truthdig.com

The uprisings in the Middle East, the unrest that is tearing apart nations such as the Ivory Coast, the bubbling discontent in Greece, Ireland and Britain and the labor disputes in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio presage the collapse of globalization. They presage a world where vital resources, including food and water, jobs and security, are becoming scarcer and harder to obtain. They presage growing misery for hundreds of millions of people who find themselves trapped in failed states, suffering escalating violence and crippling poverty. They presage increasingly draconian controls and force—take a look at what is being done to Pfc. Bradley Manning—used to protect the corporate elite who are orchestrating our demise.

We must embrace, and embrace rapidly, a radical new ethic of simplicity and rigorous protection of our ecosystem—especially the climate—or we will all be holding on to life by our fingertips. We must rebuild radical socialist movements that demand that the resources of the state and the nation provide for the welfare of all citizens and the heavy hand of state power be employed to prohibit the plunder by the corporate power elite. We must view the corporate capitalists who have seized control of our money, our food, our energy, our education, our press, our health care system and our governance as mortal enemies to be vanquished.

Adequate food, clean water and basic security are already beyond the reach of perhaps half the world’s population. Food prices have risen 61 percent globally since December 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The price of wheat has exploded, more than doubling in the last eight months to $8.56 a bushel. When half of your income is spent on food, as it is in countries such as Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, price increases of this magnitude bring with them malnutrition and starvation. Food prices in the United States have risen over the past three months at an annualized rate of 5 percent. There are some 40 million poor in the United States who devote 35 percent of their after-tax incomes to pay for food. As the cost of fossil fuel climbs, as climate change continues to disrupt agricultural production and as populations and unemployment swell, we will find ourselves convulsed in more global and domestic unrest. Food riots and political protests will be inevitable. But it will not necessarily mean more democracy.

The refusal by all of our liberal institutions, including the press, universities, labor and the Democratic Party, to challenge the utopian assumptions that the marketplace should determine human behavior permits corporations and investment firms to continue their assault, including speculating on commodities to drive up food prices. It permits coal, oil and natural gas corporations to stymie alternative energy and emit deadly levels of greenhouse gases. It permits agribusinesses to divert corn and soybeans to ethanol production and crush systems of local, sustainable agriculture. It permits the war industry to drain half of all state expenditures, generate trillions in deficits, and profit from conflicts in the Middle East we have no chance of winning. It permits corporations to evade the most basic controls and regulations to cement into place a global neo-feudalism. The last people who should be in charge of our food supply or our social and political life, not to mention the welfare of sick children, are corporate capitalists and Wall Street speculators. But none of this is going to change until we turn our backs on the Democratic Party, denounce the orthodoxies peddled in our universities and in the press by corporate apologists and construct our opposition to the corporate state from the ground up. It will not be easy. It will take time. And it will require us to accept the status of social and political pariahs, especially as the lunatic fringe of our political establishment steadily gains power. The corporate state has nothing to offer the left or the right but fear. It uses fear—fear of secular humanism or fear of Christian fascists—to turn the population into passive accomplices. As long as we remain afraid nothing will change.

Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, two of the major architects for unregulated capitalism, should never have been taken seriously. But the wonders of corporate propaganda and corporate funding turned these fringe figures into revered prophets in our universities, think tanks, the press, legislative bodies, courts and corporate boardrooms. We still endure the cant of their discredited economic theories even as Wall Street sucks the U.S. Treasury dry and engages once again in the speculation that has to date evaporated some $40 trillion in global wealth. We are taught by all systems of information to chant the mantra that the market knows best.

It does not matter, as writers such as John Ralston Saul have pointed out, that every one of globalism’s promises has turned out to be a lie. It does not matter that economic inequality has gotten worse and that most of the world’s wealth has became concentrated in a few hands. It does not matter that the middle class—the beating heart of any democracy—is disappearing and that the rights and wages of the working class have fallen into precipitous decline as labor regulations, protection of our manufacturing base and labor unions have been demolished. It does not matter that corporations have used the destruction of trade barriers as a mechanism for massive tax evasion, a technique that allows conglomerates such as General Electric to avoid paying any taxes. It does not matter that corporations are exploiting and killing the ecosystem on which the human species depends for life. The steady barrage of illusions disseminated by corporate systems of propaganda, in which words are often replaced with music and images, are impervious to truth. Faith in the marketplace replaces for many faith in an omnipresent God. And those who dissent—from Ralph Nader to Noam Chomsky—are banished as heretics.

The aim of the corporate state is not to feed, clothe or house the masses, but to shift all economic, social and political power and wealth into the hands of the tiny corporate elite. It is to create a world where the heads of corporations make $900,000 an hour and four-job families struggle to survive. The corporate elite achieves its aims of greater and greater profit by weakening and dismantling government agencies and taking over or destroying public institutions. Charter schools, mercenary armies, a for-profit health insurance industry and outsourcing every facet of government work, from clerical tasks to intelligence, feed the corporate beast at our expense. The decimation of labor unions, the twisting of education into mindless vocational training and the slashing of social services leave us ever more enslaved to the whims of corporations. The intrusion of corporations into the public sphere destroys the concept of the common good. It erases the lines between public and private interests. It creates a world that is defined exclusively by naked self-interest.

The ideological proponents of globalism—Thomas Friedman, Daniel Yergin, Ben Bernanke and Anthony Giddens—are stunted products of the self-satisfied, materialistic power elite. They use the utopian ideology of globalism as a moral justification for their own comfort, self-absorption and privilege. They do not question the imperial projects of the nation, the widening disparities in wealth and security between themselves as members of the world’s industrialized elite and the rest of the planet. They embrace globalism because it, like most philosophical and theological ideologies, justifies their privilege and power. They believe that globalism is not an ideology but an expression of an incontrovertible truth. And because the truth has been uncovered, all competing economic and political visions are dismissed from public debate before they are even heard.

The defense of globalism marks a disturbing rupture in American intellectual life. The collapse of the global economy in 1929 discredited the proponents of deregulated markets. It permitted alternative visions, many of them products of the socialist, anarchist and communist movements that once existed in the United States, to be heard. We adjusted to economic and political reality. The capacity to be critical of political and economic assumptions resulted in the New Deal, the dismantling of corporate monopolies and heavy government regulation of banks and corporations. But this time around, because corporations control the organs of mass communication, and because thousands of economists, business school professors, financial analysts, journalists and corporate managers have staked their credibility on the utopianism of globalism, we speak to each other in gibberish. We continue to heed the advice of Alan Greenspan, who believed the third-rate novelist Ayn Rand was an economic prophet, or Larry Summers, whose deregulation of our banks as treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton helped snuff out some $17 trillion in wages, retirement benefits and personal savings. We are assured by presidential candidates like Mitt Romney that more tax breaks for corporations would entice them to move their overseas profits back to the United States to create new jobs. This idea comes from a former hedge fund manager whose personal fortune was amassed largely by firing workers, and only illustrates how rational political discourse has descended into mindless sound bites.

We are seduced by this childish happy talk. Who wants to hear that we are advancing not toward a paradise of happy consumption and personal prosperity but a disaster? Who wants to confront a future in which the rapacious and greedy appetites of our global elite, who have failed to protect the planet, threaten to produce widespread anarchy, famine, environmental catastrophe, nuclear terrorism and wars for diminishing resources? Who wants to shatter the myth that the human race is evolving morally, that it can continue its giddy plundering of non-renewable resources and its profligate levels of consumption, that capitalist expansion is eternal and will never cease?

Dying civilizations often prefer hope, even absurd hope, to truth. It makes life easier to bear. It lets them turn away from the hard choices ahead to bask in a comforting certitude that God or science or the market will be their salvation. This is why these apologists for globalism continue to find a following. And their systems of propaganda have built a vast, global Potemkin village to entertain us. The tens of millions of impoverished Americans, whose lives and struggles rarely make it onto television, are invisible. So are most of the world’s billions of poor, crowded into fetid slums. We do not see those who die from drinking contaminated water or being unable to afford medical care. We do not see those being foreclosed from their homes. We do not see the children who go to bed hungry. We busy ourselves with the absurd. We invest our emotional life in reality shows that celebrate excess, hedonism and wealth. We are tempted by the opulent life enjoyed by the American oligarchy, 1 percent of whom control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined.

The celebrities and reality television stars whose foibles we know intimately live indolent, self-centered lives in sprawling mansions or exclusive Manhattan apartments. They parade their sculpted and surgically enhanced bodies before us in designer clothes. They devote their lives to self-promotion and personal advancement, consumption, parties and the making of money. They celebrate the cult of the self. And when they have meltdowns we watch with gruesome fascination. This empty existence is the one we are taught to admire and emulate. This is the life, we are told, we can all have. The perversion of values has created a landscape where corporate management by sleazy figures like Donald Trump is confused with leadership and where the ability to accumulate vast sums of money is confused with intelligence. And when we do glimpse the poor or working class on our screens, they are ridiculed and taunted. They are objects of contempt, whether on “The Jerry Springer Show” or “Jersey Shore.”

The incessant chasing after status, personal advancement and wealth has plunged most of the country into unmanageable debt. Families, whose real wages have dropped over the past three decades, live in oversized houses financed by mortgages they often cannot repay. They seek identity through products. They occupy their leisure time in malls buying things they do not need. Those of working age spend their weekdays in little cubicles, if they still have steady jobs, under the heels of corporations that have disempowered American workers and taken control of the state and can lay them off on a whim. It is a desperate scramble. No one wants to be left behind.

The propagandists for globalism are the natural outgrowth of this image-based and culturally illiterate world. They speak about economic and political theory in empty clichés. They cater to our subliminal and irrational desires. They select a few facts and isolated data and use them to dismiss historical, economic, political and cultural realities. They tell us what we want to believe about ourselves. They assure us that we are exceptional as individuals and as a nation. They champion our ignorance as knowledge. They tell us that there is no reason to investigate other ways of organizing and governing our society. Our way of life is the best. Capitalism has made us great. They peddle the self-delusional dream of inevitable human progress. They assure us we will be saved by science, technology and rationality and that humanity is moving inexorably forward.

None of this is true. It is a message that defies human nature and human history. But it is what many desperately want to believe. And until we awake from our collective self-delusion, until we carry out sustained acts of civil disobedience against the corporate state and sever ourselves from the liberal institutions that serve the corporate juggernaut—especially the Democratic Party—we will continue to be rocketed toward a global catastrophe.

Chris Hedges writes a regular column for Truthdig.com. Hedges graduated from Harvard Divinity School and was for nearly two decades a foreign correspondent for The New York Times. He is the author of many books, including: War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, What Every Person Should Know About War, and American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America. His most recent book is Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle.

 

 

28 March 2011  Royalsociety.org

A new group of countries, lead by China and followed by others including Brazil and India, are emerging as major scientific powers to rival the traditional “scientific superpowers” of the US, Western Europe and Japan , a new report from the Royal Society, the UK’s national academy of science, has found.

The report also identified some rapidly emerging scientific nations not traditionally associated with a strong science base, including Iran, Tunisia and Turkey.   The report emphasised the growing importance of international collaboration in the conduct and impact of global science and its ability to solve global challenges such as energy security, climate change and biodiversity loss.

The report, Knowledge, Networks and Nations: Global scientific collaboration in the 21st century, analysed a wide variety of data, including trends in the number of scientific publications produced by all countries.  It found that China’s growing share in the total number of articles published globally is now second only to the long-time scientific world leader, the United States.

Professor Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith FRS, Chair of the Advisory Group for the study, said: “The scientific world is changing and new players are fast appearing.  Beyond the emergence of China, we see the rise of South-East Asian, Middle Eastern, North African and other nations.  The increase in scientific research and collaboration, which can help us to find solutions to the global challenges we now face, is very welcome.  However, no historically dominant nation can afford to rest on its laurels if it wants to retain the competitive economic advantage that being a scientific leader brings.”

The publication data analysed by the report showed changes in the share of the world’s authorship of research papers between the periods 1993-2003 and 2004-20082.  Although the USA still leads the world, its share of global authorship has fallen from 26% to 21%.  China has risen from sixth to second place, with its share of authorship rising from 4.4% to 10.2%.  The UK remains stable in the rankings at third place, although its share of authorship has fallen slightly from 7.1% to 6.5%.

The Royal Society report also analysed citation data (records of the levels at which researchers are citing each others’ work in their research).  Citations are often used as a means of evaluating the quality of publications, as recognition by an author’s peers indicates that the scientific community value the work that has been published. In both time periods, the US leads the ranking, with the UK in second place.  However, both have a reduced share of global citations in 2004-2008, compared to 1999-2003.  The rise of China is also shown in the data, although the rise does not mirror the rapidity of growth seen in the nation’s investment or publication output.

The report found that science is becoming increasingly global, with research undertaken in more and more places and to a greater extent than ever before.  In addition to the meteoric rise of China and, to a lesser extent, Brazil and India, the report also identified a number of other rapidly emerging scientific nations, including:

Turkey has improved its scientific performance at a rate to almost rival China – the R&D spend has been increased nearly six-fold between 1995 and 2007, during which time the number of researchers increased by 43%.  Four times as many papers with Turkish authors were published in 2008 as in 1996.

Iran is the fastest growing country in terms of numbers of scientific publications in the world, growing from just 736 in 1996 to 13,238 in 2008.  The Government is committed to a “comprehensive plan for science”, including boosting R&D investment to 4% of GDP by 2030 (it stood at just 0.59% of GDP in 2006).

Tunisia has increased the percentage of its GDP spent on R&D from 0.03% in 1996 to 1.25% in 2009, whilst restructuring its national R&D system to create 624 research units and 139 research laboratories.

Singapore has almost doubled its R&D spend between 1996 and 2007 (from 1.37% to 2.61% of GDP), whilst more than tripling (from 2620 to 8506) its scientific publications between 1996 and 2008.

Qatar, which has a relatively small population of just over 1.4m and a current GDP of $128billion, aims to spend 2.8% of GDP on research by 2015, giving a potential per capita GERD (gross expenditure on R&D) of $2,474.

The report investigated global collaboration, finding that today over 35% of articles published in international journals are internationally collaborative, up from 25% just fifteen years ago.  International collaboration is growing for a variety of reasons including, most importantly, a desire to work with the best people (who may be based in increasingly divergent locations) and the growing need to collaborate on global issues, as well as developments in communication technologies and cheaper travel.  Beyond the intuitive benefits of international collaboration, the report illustrated a clear correlation between the number of citations per article and the number of collaborating countries (up to a tipping point of ten countries), illustrating the value of engaging in international collaboration in terms of increasing the impact of research.

Finally, the report considered the role of international scientific collaboration in addressing some of the most pressing global challenges of our time, concentrating on  the IPCC, CGIAR, the Gates Foundation, ITER and efforts to deploy carbon capture and storage technology.  It looked at the strengths and shortcomings of these models to provide lessons for how international scientific collaboration might be better deployed in future.

Professor Llewellyn Smith commented: “Global issues, such as climate change, potential pandemics, bio-diversity, and food, water and energy security, need global approaches.  These challenges are interdependent and interrelated, with complicated dynamics that are often overlooked by policies and programmes put in place to address them.  Science has a crucial role in identifying and analysing these challenges, and must be considered in parallel with social, economic and political perspectives to find solutions.”

Publication and citation data for the report was produced by and analysed in collaboration with scientific publisher Elsevier using Scopus citation and abstract data of global peer-reviewed literature.

Read the full report here:  http://royalsociety.org/policy/reports/knowledge-networks-nations/

 

http://theghousediary.blogspot.com/2011/03/swami-vivekananda-gave-new-meaning-to.html

As I was reading the article about Swami Vivekananda, several paragraphs struck me and I am inspired to write the following article.

When Swamiji talks about, “The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist,” He was talking about religion is a pathway to spirituality. I had just responded to Mr. Yogi Sikand on an article about Dawah work in Islam by Maulana Wahiduddin, and Missionary work in Christianity.

In my note, I was hoping to read what the Dawah (an invitation to convert) was for? Is it to make one a Muslim or to guide the person to become the righteous one?  Same question goes to Christianity, Sikh, Baha’i, Hindu and other traditions.

When Jesus said, “follow me”, Krishna said, “Surrender to me” and Allah says, “submit to my will”, the call was to follow God’s law of nature; to live cohesively and in harmony. It is about bringing a balance and equilibrium to everything we do. Balance is sustainable and extremity is not.

Personally I value every religion, and do not consider the need for any one to change his or her faith unless he or she finds solace in a different faith other than the one s/he is accustomed to. Every faith does what it is suppose to do to the believer; bring peace of mind.  No one should compel one to convert or prevent one from converting, let one choose what one believes to bring tranquility to him and harmony with others.   Let it be an individual’s choice.  What difference does it make to you if I eat different food, wear different clothes and speak a different language?

Swamiji touches on diversity, indeed, because we are diverse we have survived if we were all one, we could have been wiped out with one single disease. Each one of us is endowed with a different thumb print, DNA, eye print etc, so let’s have a different faith as well. To repeat his words, “The Christian is not to become a Hindu or a Buddhist,”

Conversion assumes a deficiency in the other faith and that is sheer arrogance. However, I would guide one to be a better Hindu, Jew, Christian, Muslim and ultimately a better human, which is the essence of every religion.  Mahatma Gandhi had emphasized the same thought and Prophet Muhammad’s first model of education was to be truthful, trustworthy and caring and he was called Amin by the people around him.  Jesus embraced every one without flinching, and accepted the otherness of other, in fact he said let’s condemn the sin but not sinner, that was the ultimate in inclusion or I call it Pluralism.

The other thought that really touched me was, “Swamiji was in favour of harmony among religious beliefs and against one religion for all.”

Indeed the Foundation for Pluralism is about that, and the Parliament of Worlds Religion has set the lofty but simple goals such as: harmony rather than unity, convergence of purpose rather than consensus of belief and facilitation rather than structuring.

Those of us who feel insecure about the interfaith movement and fear losing our identity or diluting it, please be assured that the goal of the Parliament is NOT to UNITE religions, but to facilitate a platform to learn about the others first hand and work together for the common good of mankind. 90% of religion is about doing common good; only 10% of it is rituals that give it its own uniqueness.

There is no proselytization element in any of the events the Parliament facilitates. You may love the theme in Melbourne, “hearing each other and healing the earth”. Indeed, that is the need of the day; hearing each other first hand.

The City of Chicago has honored the Swami by naming a street after him, and now get ready to honor the Swami again in 2014 at the Parliament of World’s religions in Brussels. Save the monies and get ready. Insha Allah, God willing, see you there with a topic on Swami Vivekananda.

Mike Ghouse, President of America Together foundation is committed to building cohesive societies and offers pluralistic solutions on issues of the day, and is available to speak at your place of worship, work or in seminars and conferences.

Through the Foundation for Pluralism, Mike champions the idea of co-existence through respecting and accepting the otherness of other, and is committed to nurturing the pluralistic ideals embedded in Islam through the World Muslim Congress.  He is a speaker thinker and a writer on the topics of pluralism, cohesive societies, Islam, interfaith, India and Peace. His work is reflected in 4 website’s and 27 Blogs at http://www.mikeghouse.net/

Reference: http://www.thehindu.com/arts/history-and-culture/article1587374.ece

 at 10:47 PM

 

 

03 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Stories of revolutions take a long time to be told. The tides of change currently sweeping across the Middle East – steadily rattling one kleptocratic autocrat after the next – will amaze and no doubt exhaust the energies of subsequent generations as they attempt to build a theoretical edifice against which the overpowering outburst of collective human sentiment currently being witnessed gains some veritable empirical sense of meaning.

To even the most seasoned in the art, piecing together the jigsaws is quite a delicate task. Much of the ambiguity that pertains to the political futures of Tunisia and Egypt for instance draws from a lack of clarity as regards the forces that propelled these uprisings, their political leanings, and whether or not these actors have the structural capacities to actualise their aspirations. It is thus fair to say that we are far from being in a position to present an analytical framework to comprehend the gripping dynamics of the Middle East’s uprisings.

The above said however, it is quite easy to discount some ridiculous interpretations of unfolding events that have been disseminated by decrepit monarchs and quarters that have an unvoiced proclivity to maintain the present status quo. For more than a month now, the courageous people of Bahrain have taken to the streets to voice their demands against a ruling monarchy that bears all the hallmarks of a classical mafia-like kleptocratic authoritarian dictatorship. In the face of flying bullets and unending billows of choking teargas smoke, both the young and old have descended to the streets with remarkable valour and upheld entirely peaceful methods of protest. Indeed one of the separating features of the Bahraini uprising is the ubiquitous slogan of “silmiyya, silmiyya” (peaceful, peaceful!). The narrative promoted by the ruling Al-Khalifa monarchy, neighbouring dynastic sheikhdoms and their US patrons has centred however on an entirely bogus claim of supposed Iranian interference.

In recent times, the above claim has been recycled many a time over across the Arabian Peninsula from Kuwait to Yemen. Without measuring the credibility of these claims, the mainstream media has often regurgitated accusations in spite of the most glaring contradictions. In the current context of Bahrain, the suggestion of foreign interference in the shape of an ethereal “Iran threat” (whose promotion has become Secretary of State Clinton’s single-most absorbing vocation) does not only represent a wholesale neglect of factual evidence, but in fact proceeds to insult the sacrifices of generations of Bahrainis tracing back to the birth of the nation.

The Constitutional Dream

Having formally attained independence from British rule in 1971, the political situation in Bahrain was characterised by a great deal of vibrancy and optimism. The archipelago state had witnessed organised political action throughout the British protectorate period, particularly in the decades immediately prior to independence. Precursors to the organised demands for political reform that eventually prompted the Emir to dissolve the National Assembly and brazenly violate the constitution less than two years after its promulgation could be found most notably in the mid-Fifties with the broad mobilisation achieved by the National Union Committee (NUC). The NUC represented the highest symbol of a truly nationalist reform project with demands centred upon the empowerment of an elected legislature, an end to British colonial interference, a fairer socio-economic order and a fundamental revision of state security laws.

Echoing calls made a few decades earlier, the demands raised by leading political figures shortly after independence similarly attracted a broad national, cross-sectarian constituency. The tide of political activism that swept through much of the Middle East at the time was keenly felt in Bahrain. The stoning of British Foreign Secretary, Selwyn Lloyd’s, car in 1956 in protest against Britain’s continued interference in Bahraini affairs through the person of Sir Charles Belgrave, as well as regular strikes at the BAPCO petroleum refinery and organised protests during the Suez Crisis later in the same year are representative of the political mobilisation seen in Bahrain during the period. It also highlights the grassroots identification of political movements within the country with the wider Arab situation.

Bahrain’s first post-independence head of state, Emir Isa bin Salman Al-Khalifa’s, decision to dissolve the National Assembly in 1975 set the tone however for a period that came to be defined by the jockeying for power between the Emir and his sibling, Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa. According to most Bahrainis, much of the nation’s contemporary woes trace back to the birth of the nation and the unconstitutional steps undertaken by the first Emir. The popular political narrative thus begins with a great deal of discontent and mistrust towards the Al-Khalifa monarchy.

With a steady decline in the standard of living, rising unemployment and a suffocated public space resulting from years of absolute autocratic rule epitomised by the enforcement of the State Security Law of 1974, nationalist and leftist movements began a series of consultations in June 1990 to discuss the deteriorating situation in Bahrain. Leftists groups had been heavily weakened over the years due to the hard-handed crackdown by the monarchy for the industrial trade strikes of 1974.

These consultations climaxed with the formation of the People’s Petition Committee, and the open petition of October 1994 which was signed by more than 23,000 signatories. The demands set out therein underscored the primary need to restore the National Assembly, and highlighted the debilitating consequences of the Emir’s constitutional transgressions:

“The reality we now face dictates that we will fail our duty if we do not speak-out frankly to you. Your wise leadership witnesses the incorrect circumstances that our country is passing through amid the changing regional and international environment while the constitutional institution is absent. Had the banning of the National assembly been lifted, it would have enabled overcoming the negative accumulations which hinder the progress of our country. We are facing crises with dwindling opportunities and exits, the ever-worsening unemployment situation, the mounting inflation, the losses to the business sector, the problems generated by the nationality (citizenship) decrees and the prevention of many of our children from returning to their homeland. In addition, there are the laws which were enacted during the absence of the parliament which restrict the freedom of citizens and contradict the Constitution. This was accompanied by lack of freedom of expression and opinion and the total subordination of the press to the executive power. These problems, your Highness, have forced us as citizens to demand the restoration of the National Assembly, and the involvement of women in the democratic process. This could be achieved by free elections, if you decide not to recall the dissolved parliament to convene in accordance with article 65 of the Constitution…”

Akin to his reactions in 1975, the Emir now in the third-decade of his absolute rule brutally cracked down on nationalist groups and exiled leading figures including the current secretary general of Bahrain’s largest political group Al-Wifaq, Sheikh Ali Salman. Rather expectedly, the monarchy placed the finger of blame for the unrest on external forces i.e. the Islamic Republic of Iran and Lebanese resistance movement Hezbollah. In order to quell the popular uprising, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia also dispatched two brigades of its National Guard (around 4,000 soldiers).

By the time of the Emir’s death in 1999, Bahrain boasted a horrendous human rights track record including widespread practise of torture under the instruction of British colonial officer Ian Henderson. The promises of reform made by the incumbent Emir Hamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa were partly inspired by the failure of the iron-fist policies to weigh in the discontent, and also in order to buttress his own standing against his uncle, Prime Minister Khalifa bin Salman Al-Khalifa, who wielded a great deal of power acquired over three successive decades as Prime Minister; a position the latter continues to enjoy 40 years after his appointment.

The spirit of optimism was short-lived however, as the Emir reneged on his promises of meaningful reform. The “Bahrain model”, as it has condescendingly come to be known, essentially served to project an illusion of reform without altering in any substantive way, the pre-existing decision-making and power structures. Assurances made by the King in the National Action Charter (overwhelmingly supported by 98% of those who voted between 14-15 February 2002) to institute an assembly that would be elected through free and direct elections in effect gave veracity to the home-grown nature of the pro-democracy movement and its legitimate demands.

The Pearl Protests

As hundreds took to the streets on February 14 in their ‘Day of Rage’, the King’s henchmen had by then already settled on the solution of a violent suppression. Unlike in Tunisia and Egypt where live ammunition was employed after a few days of protests, in Bahrain its resort was almost immediate with the first fatality, Ali Abdulhadi Mushayma, falling on the first day of protests.

The date for the protests, 14th February, was deliberately chosen to provide a clear message to the ruling Al-Khalifa family that the hollow reforms enacted as part of the National Action Charter process had been far from satisfactory. Just as with decades past, the demands of protesters drew from the fundamental frustrations of generations who aspired for real constitutional reforms and a substantive role for an elected national assembly with legislative powers.

The monarchy’s brutal resort to violence that has thus far resulted in the deaths of at least 25 innocents served to exacerbate hopes in the reform-driven process, and has in turn directed grievances at the highest symbol of the status quo, namely, the Al-Khalifa rule. In essence, the ruling family’s desire for an absolute monopoly of power presents an intractable quandary that cannot be permanently masked by the duplicitous reforms carried out since 2002. Faced with the alternative of relenting some of its power to more democratic institutions or to violently suppress the calls for change, the Al-Khalifa regime has clearly selected the latter choice.

Since the outset of protests more than a month ago, Bahrain’s phony veneer of a progressive, liberal form of rule has been crushed before the world. The systematic silencing of journalists, use of live ammunition against defenceless protesters, dozens of arbitrarily detained individuals including major political opposition figures, shameful attacks on hospitals and medical teams, and the targeting of entire villages and neighbourhoods have all served to disclose the reality of the Al-Khalifa monarchy.

The outdated tactic of brandishing the pro-democracy movement within Bahrain as foreign-backed is principally used to deflect attention from the consistent demands for constitutional reform. In this regard, the role of the US in obstructing meaningful reforms and allowing for the gross misrepresentation of the demands of the political opposition has been pivotal. For obvious geopolitical stakes, the continued hosting of the Fifth Fleet base and unequivocal support for successive US military operations stretching from the Gulf War, the Al-Khalifa monarchy has been looked upon by Washington as a key strategic ally. The hypothesized domino-effect and shared fate that connects Bahrain and Saudi Arabia also looms large, no doubt, for US and western officials.

Shortly on the heels of their participation in a seminar at the House of Lords in London to highlight the deterioration in human rights and freedoms, the detention of leading opposition figures in August 2010 was met with the blanket support of US ambassador Adam Ereli who censured them for taking their case outside the shores of Bahrain. Their subsequent torture and the wall of silence erected in the face of journalists also drew little comment from western capitals.

The developments in Bahrain in recent weeks are in fact symptomatic of the confluence of interests of local autocratic tyrannies and imperial powers who continue to hinge their hegemonic agendas to the nightmarish reigns of unpopular despots. For decades, the pre-eminence of geopolitical and energy interests in the foreign policy outlooks of the US and its allies has relegated the suffering of millions of Arabs to a footnote that merit the occasional remonstrations or hand-wringing. All the while, the warehouses of these military-autocratic establishments have been filled with western arms in deals that run into hundreds of billions of dollars.

Revolutions certainly do take a long time to be told, but the time it takes for long compressed frustrations to burst out and overpower the most dictatorial reigns is almost instantaneous in comparison. For the US and its allies, the experiences in Egypt and Tunisia should be reason enough to return to the drawing books.

But more importantly, the uprising peoples of the Middle East have definitively established that the aspirations of peoples cannot forever be ignored in the equations of power. They have proven that real change can only occur in the absence of western tanks and fighter jets. To these brave men and women, the free peoples of the world owe great admiration and respect. The annals of history are lit with the sacrifices of selfless martyrs, and in recent weeks more glorious epics have been added to its volumes. Over time, many have sought to deface the most honourable sacrifices; the least we can do from afar is to ensure that these uprisings are placed within their correct historical, political and socio-economic contexts.

Ali Jawad is a political activist and member of the AhlulBayt Islamic Mission (AIM)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

03 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Despite no legitimate provocation, Israel began terror bombing Gaza on December 27, 2008. Invasion followed, attacking innocent civilian men, women and children for over three weeks, using missiles, bombs, shells, and illegal weapons against defenseless people. Mass slaughter and destruction ensued.

Brazen crimes of war and against humanity were committed. No culpable officials were held responsible. Security Council no-fly zone protection wasn’t ordered. International community leaders approved or were silent. Washington was complicit by supplying Israel with weapons, munitions, and encouragement. Obama acts the same as Bush, waging a quartet of lawless wars and using proxies in others.

Operation Cast Lead remains one of history’s greatest crimes. Yet Israel was green-lighted to wage it with impunity, what it’s done numerous times in its history, besides terrorizing Palestinians by:

— illegal military occupation;

— collective punishment and intimidation;

— air and ground attacks;

— isolating Gaza illegally under siege;

— intermittently bombing and shooting its residents, including noncombatant farmers, fishermen and children;

— regular residential neighborhood incursions;

— bulldozing homes;

— dispossessing residents;

— land seizures;

— arbitrary arrests;

— torture as official policy, including against women and children;

— targeted assassinations;

— denying refugees their right of return;

— movement and free expression restrictions;

— violence, not peaceful coexistence;

–confrontation, not diplomacy;

— war, not peace; and

— denying Palestinian sovereignty, as well as equal justice, human rights and civil liberty protections.

Israel is a rogue terror state, a democracy in name only affording rights solely to Jews. Remember Cast Lead, one of history’s greatest crimes. Justice Richard Goldstone documented them convincingly in his 575 page report titled, “Human Rights in Palestine and Other Occupied Arab Territories: Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.”

It covered Operation Cast Lead, the Gaza siege, the impact of Israel’s West Bank military occupation, and much more, including:

— events between the “ceasefire” period from June 18, 2008 to Israel’s initiated hostilities on December 27, 2008;

— applicable international law;

— Occupied Gaza under siege;

— an overview of Cast Lead;

— obligations of both sides to protect civilians;

— indiscriminate Israeli attacks on civilians, causing many hundreds of deaths and thousands of injuries;

— “the use of certain weapons;”

— attacking “the foundations of civilian life in Gaza: destruction of industrial infrastructure, food production, water installations, sewage treatment plants and housing;”

— using Palestinians as human shields;

— detention and incarceration of Gazans during the conflict;

— the IDF’s objectives and strategy;

— impact of the siege and military operations on Gazans and their human rights;

— the detention of the Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit;

— internal Gaza violence – Hamas v. Fatah;

— the Occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem;

— Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank, including excessive or lethal force during demonstrations;

— Palestinians in Israeli prisons;

— Israeli violations of free movement and access rights;

— Fatah targeting Hamas supporters in the West Bank, and restricting free assembly and expression;

— rocket and mortar attacks against Israeli civilians;

— repression of dissent, access to information, and treatment of human rights defenders in Israel;

— Israeli responses to war crimes charges;

— proceedings by Palestinian authorities;

— universal jurisdiction;

— reparations; and

— conclusions and recommendations.

It collected enough information “of a credible and reliable nature….to make a finding in fact.” It established clear evidence of crimes, determining they were deliberate or reckless. An accompanying press release said:

“(T)here is evidence indicating serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law were committed by Israel during the Gaza conflict, and that Israel committed actions amounting to war crimes, and possibly crimes against humanity.”

It explained that Israel falsely used the pretext of rocket attacks to attack “the people of Gaza as a whole” illegally.

A detailed discussion of Goldstone’s findings can be accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/09/goldstone-commission-gaza-conflict.html

Palestinian Centre for Human Rights Report Remembers Cast Lead

In its December 2010 report titled, “The Illegal Closure of the Gaza Strip: Collective Punishment of the Civilian Population,” the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) remembered Cast Lead, saying it exacerbated isolation:

— killing over 1,400 Gazans, mostly civilians;

— injuring thousands more, many seriously; and

— causing “extensive destruction of houses and civilian infrastructure, including schools, hospitals, and industry.”

Moreover, Israel violated Security Council Resolution 1860 (January 8, 2009), calling for “full withdrawal of Israeli forces,” as well as “unimpeded humanitarian assistance” for Gazan victims. As a result, deepening crisis ensued.

On April 1, Richard Goldstone’s Washington Post op-ed headlined, “Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes,” saying:

“Our report found evidence potential war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity by both Israel and Hamas.” The latter ones, in fact, were minor by comparison, responding only to Israeli provocations.

Israel’s, however, “were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where….evidence (pointed to no) other reasonable conclusion.”

Goldstone, however, softened his initial condemnation by commending Israel’s Cast Lead inquiry, ignoring how all its internal investigations whitewash crimes of war and against humanity – most recently the Gaza and May 2010 Freedom Flotilla massacres.

According to PCHR:

“Rather than uphold the rule of law, the Israeli investigative and judicial system is artfully manipulated to provide an illusion of investigative and judicial rigour, while systematically perpetuating pervasive impunity” for crimes too extreme to ignore.

 

Whitewash Examples

On April 29, 2009, IDF Chief of Staff, General Gabi Ashkenazi authorized publication of the findings of five military investigate teams. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that:

“(T)throughout the fighting in Gaza, the IDF operated in accordance with international law. The IDF maintained a high professional and moral level while facing an enemy that aimed to terrorize Israeli civilians whilst taking cover amidst uninvolved civilians in the the Gaza strip and using them as human shields.”

It continued at some length justifying brazen Israeli crimes of war and against humanity. In contrast, a year after hostilities ended, Human Rights Watch called Israeli attacks “indiscriminate, disproportionate (and) at times seemingly deliberate, in violation of the laws of war,” condemning IDF investigations as no “substitute for impartial and thorough investigations into laws-of-war violations” they whitewashed.

In his April 1 op-ed, Goldstone failed to explain and denounce them. Instead, he defended the indefensible.

Netanyahu’s (Jacob) Turkel commission investigation of Israel’s Freedom Flotilla massacre also produced lies, distortions, omissions, false conclusions, and exoneration of cold-blooded murder, ordered by top government and military officials who got off scot-free like Cast Lead criminals.

Specifically, it concluded that Israel’s (illegal siege) does not break international law….(and) there were clear indications that the flotilla intended to break the naval blockade….By clearly resisting capture, the Mavi Marmara had become a military objective,” despite on board activists having no weapons and offering no resistance. Saying so was a lie.

In contrast, an independent UN Human Rights Council investigation “concluded that a series of violations of international law, including international humanitarian and human rights law, were committed by the Israeli forces during the interception of the flotilla and during the detention of passengers in Israel prior to deportation.”

It added that Israel’s attack:

“was unnecessary, disproportionate, excessive and inappropriate and resulted in the wholly avoidable killing and maiming of a large number of civilian passengers.”

Also that at least six of the dead were killed by “extra-legal, arbitrary and summary executions,” some shot multiple times in the head at close range.

Moreover, similar tactics were used before, during, and after Cast Lead, facts Richard Goldstone knows and should have explained instead of suggesting civilians may not have been “intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.”

Indeed they always are under Israel’s “Dahiya Doctrine,” targeting civilians as official policy. Named after the Beirut suburb IDF attacks destroyed in the 2006 Lebanon war, it’s how all Israeli wars are waged. IDF Northern Commander Gabi Eisenkot explained, saying:

“What happened in the Dahiya quarter of Beirut in 2006 will happen in every village from which Israel is fired on. We will apply disproportionate force at the heart of the enemy’s weak spot (civilians) and cause great damage and destruction. From our standpoint, these are not civilian villages (towns or cities), they are military bases. This is not a recommendation. This is a plan. And it has been approved.”

It also prioritizes damaging or destroying assets, economic interests, and centers of civilian power, requiring long-term reconstruction even though international law prohibits attacking civilians and non-military related targets. Israel spurned international law in Cast Lead, against humanitarian Flotilla activists, and in all its belligerent confrontations.

Instead of condemning this policy, Goldstone softened his criticism, contradicting his detailed findings, replicated by other reputable human rights studies, unequivocally accusing Israel of crimes of war and against humanity.

A Final Comment

On March 25, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution, urging the General Assembly address Israel’s Cast Lead impunity by asking the Security Council to request investigation, action and resolution by the International Criminal Criminal Court (ICC).

For over two years, justice for thousands of Palestinian victims has been denied. Gaza remains illegally under siege. Meaningful action is demanded. Crimes this great can’t be tolerated.

Under Chapter VII of the UN Charter, the Security Council can request ICC action. Washington’s veto, of course, looms. Nonetheless, it’s high time other members demanded, shamed, and did whatever it takes to assure long-suffering Palestinians justice. Then do it for other victims of injustice instead of authorizing war on Libya when it should have acted resolutely to prevent it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

 

 

 

 

 

 

03 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

The attack on Libya is essentially an attack on one person, Colonel Muammar Gadhafi, who is the present poster boy for evil. Every Gadhafi deed is interpreted as malevolent; every word as an untruth. The characterizations might be correct, but when the media uses spurious and contradictory statements to expose his ‘untruths,’ its rhetoric become questionable and its reports lose credibility.

Although insurrections and civil war generate mass killings and accusations of retribution, no authoritative reports confirm these occurrences in the Libyan conflict. After rebels retook several cities, reporters had entry and came up with nothing but shrill words. Estimates of casualties are contradictory and without confirmation. Never stated is how many of the deceased are fighters on both sides.

ITN News, Feb 23, 2011

Italy has said 1,000 people may have been killed in Libya after an armed uprising against Colonel Muammar Gaddafi.

March 04, 2011 , Businessweek by Massoud A. Derhally

The conflict in Libya between government troops and opponents of leader Muammar Qaddafi has left 6,000 people dead, the rebel forces spokesman, Colonel Abdullah Al Mahdi, said on Al Jazeera television today.

AAP March 10, 2011

At least 400 people have died and 2,000 been wounded in eastern Libya since the uprising broke out against Muammar Gaddafi, medics told reporters in the rebels’ Benghazi base. “There have been 400 dead since the beginning in Derna, Baida, Brega, Benghazi, Ras Lanuf and Bin Jawad,” Salah Jabar, a medical coordinator for cities held by the rebels in the east, told reporters.

Paul Wolfowitz , former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense, without citing or being asked sources, volunteered on CNN, March 21, 2011 that “at least 8000 dead, equivalent to 500,000 in the United States ,” have been killed.

CNN lost credibility with its one-sided commentaries and reports .

Arwa Damon, the CNN reporter in eastern Libya, wearing the Arab keffiyeh to give her legitimacy, never presented interviews, always stated to the camera what she heard, and quoted rumors that soon grew into facts. As one example, her presentation of only having heard that Gadaffi soldiers asked civilians to come out and then shoot them soon became a fact and yet had no conformation from other reporters.

A typical unconfirmed report which trusts the words of a partial person. Note how the reporter transcribes one resident’s words to become ‘residents.’

“Residents painted a grim picture of the situation in Misrata.

The situation here is very bad. Tanks started shelling the town this morning,” a resident called Mohammed told Reuters by telephone from outside the city’s hospital, adding: “Snipers are taking part in the operation too. A civilian car was destroyed killing three children on board, the oldest is aged 13 years.”

Nic Robertson, CNN reporter in eastern Libya , after being shown shrapnel at the Gadhafi compound, related that it looks like a missile, smells like a missile, tastes like a missile but couldn’t say it’s a coalition missile. Robertson did confirm Fox News duplicity, in which a Foxie reporter intimated Libya was attempting to using reporters as human shields. “The idea that we were some kind of human shields is nuts,” Robertson said. “I mean, if they had actually been there — Steve Harrigan, the correspondent here, is somebody I’ve known for many years — I see him more times at breakfast than I see him out on trips with government officials here.”

Constant appearances on CNN of Fouad Ajami, a neocon Hawk, an outspoken supporter of the Iraq War, and a commentator who actually credited the Egyptian Revolution and Tunisian Revolution to the Iraq War and Bush’s advocacy of democracy, skewed the CNN reporting.

Then there is the case of Journalists being detained . Headlines have:

Times Journalists Held Captive in Libya Faced Days of Brutality

March 22, 2011 , New York Times

Nothing but the usual scare techniques in headlines, but on inside pages:

“But moments of kindness inevitably emerged, drawing on a culture’s far deeper instinct for hospitality and generosity. A soldier brought Tyler and Anthony, sitting in a pickup, dates and an orange drink. Lynsey had to talk to a soldier’s wife who, in English, called her a donkey and a dog. Then they unbound Lynsey and, sitting in another truck, gave Steve and her something to drink.”

CNN stressed “the journalists had a chilling account.”

Here were journalists in a foreign nation with no visa and reporting as an enemy of the state. If they were correspondents from Al Jazeera, wandering the United States with no entry visa and apprehended in a sensitive area, how would they be treated? In 2003, the US military shelled the Basra hotel, where Al Jazeera journalists were the only guests. One of their Iraq correspondents, Tareq Ayoub, was killed a few days later in Baghdad .

The reports favorable to Gadhafi always contain a question or doubt .

“Thousands of ordinary Libyans had poured into the compound on Saturday, willingly, it seemed, and with great enthusiasm. Gaddafi supporters denounced the strike as barbarous

They had come to express their solidarity with their leader. Young men chanted rhythmic slogans of support; women said they loved Muammar Gaddafi; old men said he was their brother and their father.They had come to show that if he was to die, they were ready to die with him.There seemed no doubting their sincerity. But how representative are they ?”

“We cannot know what is in the minds of the hundreds of thousands of Tripoli citizens who do not join these spontaneous demonstrations of devotion. The true sentiment of Tripoli , in the current atmosphere, is unknowable .”

“One Tripoli resident – who did not want to be identified for his own safety – describes the latest scenes in the capital.

Life goes on, but under the surface there is tension.

Information is coming through at a snail’s pace due to heavy surveillance of modern communications.

On the ground, people and families only exchange tales when they meet in person .

As for the claims made by the Libyan opposition abroad of a fighter jet suicide attack on Col Gaddafi’s Bab al-Azizia compound that evening – it’s unlikely, but who knows? The rumour around town is that some even saw smoke rising from the compound.”

Greetings are always done with fake smiles .”

All this topped by CNN’s Elliot Spitzer comment: Stop the genocide!

Not a verified case of retribution after Gadhafi forces recaptured cities and no known case of internment in Tripoli . Where is the genocide?

Another “report.”

“One resident said an attempt by government forces to take control of the city center had been fought off by rebels but that afterwards pro-Gadhafi forces started indiscriminate shelling of Misrata’s port and the city center.”

“They used tanks, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar rounds and other projectiles to hit the city today. It was a random and very intense bombardment,” a rebel spokesman called Sami told Reuters by telephone. “We no longer recognize the place. The destruction cannot be described.”

“The pro-Gadhafi soldiers who made it inside the city through Tripoli Street are pillaging the place, the shops, even homes, and destroying everything in the process. They are targeting everyone, including civilians’ homes. I don’t know what to say, may Allah help us,” he said.

CNN international correspondent Frederik Pleitgen traveled to Misrata, and obtained an exclusive look at “a city of fear, uncertainty and human suffering.” Plietgen mentioned hearing one shell fall near the port and his photos show limited damages, more like Watts after a riot. One photo showed rebels firing an anti-tank missile at a tank, which must have done some structural damage.

CNN’s video on http://www.mediaite.com/online/ drew these comments.

“Wonder if they came under fire from Quadaffi or Al Queda?”

“Are such journalists “war profiteers” since they get richer and become even more famous because of these wars?”

“Maybe the sniper forgot he was in Misrata and not Fallujah.”

“It was probably Phil Griffin taking aim at CNN since neither one of them can catch Fox News.”

Dan Lieberman is the editor of Alternative Insight, a monthly web based newsletter.

He can be reached at alternativeinsight@earthlink.net