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The African National Congress, once a bastion of non-racism, has recently descended into racial politics.

The recent court judgment in a South African court declaring the singing of a popular liberation struggle song, “Shoot the Boer”, as hate speech has brought renewed attention to the racial dynamics that are so pervasive in this society. While no one should be surprised that race informs so much of the political discourse in a country with a history such as South Africa’s, the increasingly antagonistic nature of this discourse should be a matter of concern to all South Africans – as well as to those who seek to hold the South African “miracle” as an example of a country dealing successfully with the trauma of more than 300 years of colonialism and apartheid.

The “miracle” transition that South Africa experienced in the mid-1990s was extraordinary, in the sense that an oppressed population, having suffered the brutality of an inhuman system of apartheid and colonialism since 1652, felt not the slightest need for revenge, wide-scale violence or the expulsion of their white compatriots. This is especially notable – bordering on miraculous – given the fact that the transition itself was marked by a level of violence against black communities not even seen at the height of apartheid rule.

And yet we are now witnessing a racialisation of South African politics that is extremely dangerous and threatens to take us down a route of racial antagonism, the outcome of which we are unable to predict. Needless to say, history is replete with examples of miraculous transitions gone horribly wrong. It is about time that South Africans are liberated from their false exceptionalism – the idea that we are really different from all those other countries where the potential for fundamental transformation was swept away by the discourse of race, ethnicity, and tribe.

The relatively peaceful nature of the political transition in South Africa has been variously ascribed to the greatness of the political leaders of the two principled political formations, the African National Congress’ Nelson Mandela and FW De Klerk, the leader of the apartheid National Party. While Nobel Peace Prizes are awarded to great men such as Mandela and De Klerk, the real motive force behind the peaceful transition, and the absence of a race war in South Africa, was the African National Congress.

While it has become fashionable for everyone to preach non-racialism in contemporary South Africa, the ANC was the only major political party, together with its communist allies, that preached an unflinching non-racism for most of its 100-year history. Its adoption of the Freedom Charter in 1955 cemented the non-racialism of the ANC and provided the political platform on which the organisation challenged the apartheid system in the ensuing four decades. During its long years in exile, the ANC expelled prominent black members who preached a racially-defined struggle, suffered a significant breakaway with the formation of the Pan-Africanist Congress by disenchanted Africanists, and had to explain to thousands of angry youth, fresh from the battles of Soweto in 1976, why the struggle against apartheid was not a struggle of black against white.

Although race has been one of the fundamental contradictions of South African society, and its most apparent one at that, the ANC never based its political programme on pitting one race against another. The presence of white, coloured and Indian leaders in the ANC was never a token presence. Anyone who witnessed the reverence with which Joe Slovo, the white chief of staff of the ANC’s military wing, was received in South Africa’s townships would easily dispel that notion.

“What has thus far been a blessing to South Africans, and the main factor in preventing a racial polarisation, might now become a part of the racialisation of South African politics.”

Traumatised and divided societies often have one institution that commands the respect of a vast majority of the populace. These institutions are key centres around which transformative political projects can coalesce. In Latin America, the church often played this role in the struggle against the right-wing dictatorships; likewise, the monarchy in Spain after the death of Franco, the military in Egypt, and the clergy in Iran during the 1979 revolution provided the institutions and legitimacy that profound changes in these countries required. In South Africa, the ANC has historically played this role without wavering. The cohesion of the South African political system remains dependent on the cohesion of the ANC, and the continued commitment of the ANC to its legacy of non-racialism. Whatever opposition parties or the chattering classes say, there is no institution that commands the level of historical loyalty and legitimacy as this organisation.

What has thus far been a blessing to South Africans, and the main factor in preventing a racial polarisation, might now become a part of the racialisation of South African politics. The fact that most opposition parties represent the interests of particular racial groups, despite their protests to the contrary, means that they can never have the impact of a party such as the ANC. It is in this light that the emergence of an openly racial discourse within the ANC, and the organisation’s increased use of racial categories, becomes disconcerting.

The utterances by the ANC government’s chief spokesman Jimmy Manyi earlier this year, targeting the minority coloured community, and the ruling party’s subsequent attack on cabinet minister Trevor Manuel for defending the non-racism of the ANC against Manyi’s ethnic politicking, is indicative of at least a tolerance for racial politics within the organisation.

The ANC’s knee-jerk response to any criticism, blaming white interests or parties, and an automatic defence of ministers, party leaders or judicial candidates because they are black, intensifies this polarisation. Of course there are lots of white racists in South Africa, and race clearly remains a fundamental factor in the distribution of resources and opportunity in the country. This does not mean that all criticism of the ANC is based on race, or that our defence against such racism must mimic the very racial categories we are trying to defeat. Certainly, black South Africans also deserve competent ministers, judges and civil servants. Even in the Western Cape province, where the ANC lost power to the opposition Democratic Alliance, the organisation is attempting to regain power by adopting the principles of ethnically-based mobilisation by focusing its efforts on the coloured community, which constitutes a majority of the population in this province. Non-racism has been overtaken by political expediency and the rush for power.

A non-racial South Africa cannot be built without a non-racial ANC, and the recent history of the organisation indicates that this dream is in danger of being washed away by a combination of populist Africanist rhetoric, ill-considered defence of whomever is black in government or the civil service – simply because they are black, and the adoption of racial mobilisation tactics. It remains to be seen whether an ANC that has lost its political moorings and its firm foundations of non-racism – and instead has become a battleground for factional and material interests – can reposition itself at the vanguard of the struggle for a non-racial society.

Let no one be fooled that this mantle can simply be picked up by any of the myriad of opposition forces. The death of non-racism in the ANC means the withering away of this dream for the country as a whole.

By David Africa

23 September 2011

@Al Jazeera

David Africa is an independent security analyst based in South Africa. He has previously worked in counter-terrorism intelligence and research, and served in the underground of the then-banned African National Congress in South Africa.

 

The poverty rate in the US soared to 15.1 percent in 2010, its highest level since 1993, according to a report released by the Census Bureau on Tuesday. Household incomes continued to fall sharply, amidst the worst jobs crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the number of people without health insurance increased.

The bureau’s report documents a shocking decline in the living standards of millions of people, a devastating indictment of the policies of the Obama administration and the entire political establishment. The new figures cover conditions one year after the supposed beginning of the recovery in June 2009.

The poverty rate increased nearly a full percentage point, from 14.3 percent in 2009. It was the third consecutive annual increase in the poverty rate and the fourth consecutive annual increase in the number of people living in poverty. Last year, there were 46.2 million people living in poverty, defined at the absurdly low level of about $22,000 a year for a family of four and $11,000 a year for an individual.

The number of people earning less than twice the poverty rate (about $44,000 for a family of four) stood at 103 million in 2010, or about 34 percent of the population.

The percentage of children under 18 living in poverty increased from 20.7 percent to 22.0 percent. A total of 16.4 million children live in poverty, equivalent to the population of New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston combined.

The total number of people in poverty is equivalent to the combined population of the 50 largest cities in the United States. There are more people in poverty in the US in 2010 than during any year on record going back to 1959.

Since 2007, the poverty rate has increased from 12.5 percent to 15.1 percent, or 2.6 percentage points.

The poverty rate for African-Americans increased at a particularly rapid rate, from 25.8 percent in 2009 to 27.4 percent in 2010.

Millions of people live in what is known as “deep poverty,” with incomes less than 50 percent of the official poverty level (or less than about $11,000 a year for a family of four). The deep poverty rate increased from 6.3 percent in 2009 to 6.7 percent in 2010, an increase of 1.5 million to a total of 20.5 million people.

While children under 18 represent 24.4 percent of the overall population, they make up 36 percent of the population (7.5 million individuals) living in deep poverty.

The absolute number of people living in deep poverty and the deep poverty rate are both at the highest level since the government began tabulating these figures in 1975.

The Census report also documented a continued decline in income for working people, with the real median household income falling to $49,445 in 2010, down 2.3 percent ($1,154) from 2009. Since 2007, the report notes, “real median income has declined 6.4 percent and is 7.1 percent below the median household income peak that occurred in 1999.”

These averages mask the enormous inequality that has become the central feature of American society. The lowest 20 percent of households, with incomes of $20,000 or less, saw their share of total income fall from 3.4 percent to 3.3 percent. The top 20 percent took home more than 50 percent of all money income.

A report by the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities notes that since 1999, real income “has fallen 12.1 percent for those at the 10th income percentile but only 1.5 percent for those at the 90th percentile. The income gap between those at the 10th and 90th percentile was this highest on record.”

Since 1999, real household income has fallen 5.5 percent for non-Hispanic whites, 14.6 percent for African Americans, 8.9 percent for Asians and 10.1 percent for Hispanics, according to the Census report.

For men with full-time, year-round jobs, the real median income is about the same today as it was in 1973, having remained largely flat for three decades.

Mass unemployment is a major driving force behind the decline in living standards, as corporations utilize the jobs crisis to push through wage and benefit cuts for those who are able to find work. Since 2007, the number of year-round, full-time workers fell by 9.4 million, a fall without parallel since the Great Depression.

These conditions have continued into 2011. Official unemployment stands at 9.1 percent, with the most recent jobs report from the Labor Department showing zero net job growth last month. The level of long-term unemployment is at a historic high. The percent of the population unemployed increased from 16.1 percent to 16.3 percent.

The number of people without health insurance in the United States was 49.9 million in 2010, an increase of nearly one million over 2009. The rise in the uninsured is a particularly damning exposure of the fraud of Obama’s health care “reform,” which was in fact an opening shot in a drive to reduce health care costs for corporations and the government.

The rise in poverty is a product of the long-term decline of American capitalism, combined with the ferocious class war waged by the ruling class, now led by the Obama administration. Mass impoverishment is the outcome of a deliberate policy that has resulted in a vast transfer of wealth into the hands of a small corporate and financial aristocracy.

These indices of mass social distress come at a time of record profits, with corporations sitting on a cash hoard estimated at more than $2 trillion. The government has handed over trillions of dollars to the banks, inflating the stock market while bailing out the wealthy. Far from leading to an economic revival, the conditions for the vast majority of the population have suffered a catastrophic decline.

Amidst clear signs of a world economy sinking into a depression, the response of the ruling class is to push for massive austerity. States and local governments throughout the country are implementing cuts in the most basic programs to prevent poverty. The Michigan state government, for example, passed a measure this month that will cut 41,000 people from welfare assistance, including nearly 30,000 children, beginning October 1.

Meanwhile, after outlining a phony jobs proposal that will do nothing to address the unemployment crisis, the Obama administration is set to propose trillions of dollars in cuts to health care and retirement programs.

The administration has made a point of insisting that a proposal being worked on by a bipartisan budget deficit committee must include deep cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, the main federal health care programs.

To fight against these conditions, the working class must enter into industrial and political struggle.

The Socialist Equality Party calls for emergency measures to eliminate poverty, including a multi-trillion dollar public works program to employ tens of millions of workers in high-paying, productive jobs rebuilding infrastructure and meeting other critical social needs. A livable income to meet all basic needs is a social right that must be guaranteed to everyone.

To pay for this program, the SEP fights for a radical redistribution of wealth, including a 90 percent tax on all incomes over $500,000. Corporations, currently engaged in a hiring strike, must be taken over by the working class and run democratically in the interests of social need.

The implementation of these measures is impossible outside of a direct attack on the interests of the wealthy and on the capitalist two-party system, through the building of a mass socialist political movement of the working class.

By Joseph Kishore

14 September 2011

@ WSWS.org

 

 

 

So there I was, on the Via Dolorosa of course, chatting to a middle-aged guy in a red T-shirt and just a wisp of a beard with a prayer rug under his left arm.

And I asked him, of course, what he thought about Barack Obama’s speech. He grinned at me like he knew I had already guessed what he was going to say. “What did you expect?” he asked. Correct guess. After all, Haaretz had already referred this week to “President Barack Netanyahu” while the racist Israeli foreign minister said he would sign the speech with both hands. Maybe, I reflected in Jerusalem yesterday, Obama really is seeking election – to the Israeli Knesset.

But what was so striking about the streets of Jerusalem yesterday was the sense of resignation, of weary acceptance. The Israeli papers had warned of mass violence, but the crowds who turned up for morning prayers at Al-Aqsa simply laid out their prayer rugs on the highway outside the Damascus Gate or in the laneways behind the mosque and showed scarcely any interest in talking about Obama. Maybe America’s UN veto will rouse them to passion, but I have my doubts.

It’s a bit like the aftermath of the Abu Ghraib torture pictures, when the Americans restricted the number of photos to be released because they feared the pictures would enrage Iraqis. But I was in Baghdad that day and no one expressed any particular rage. What did I expect? After all, the Iraqis knew all about Abu Ghraib already – they were the ones who had been tortured there. So, too, Jerusalem yesterday. The Palestinians have watched America’s uncritical acceptance of Israeli occupation – the longest in the world – for 44 years. They knew all about it. It is only we Westerners who are horrified by torture pictures and by Obama’s hypocrisy.

The Palestinians even accepted the Israeli rule on morning prayers. No one under the age of 50 would be allowed to worship on the Al-Aqsa esplanade. Which is why those who could not enter simply spread their rugs on the tarmac and flagstones outside – in effect enlarging the forbidden holy esplanade over the traffic islands and pavements. Even the Israeli border guards and cops treated the thing as routine. There was, shall we say, a normality about it, a bit of shouting from a young man at the barricade on the main highway, a lot of shrugging by the Israelis. There were even some nicely groomed police horses which watched the proceedings with big, tired eyes.

On the iron barrier, the police captain didn’t even bother to ask for my press pass; he just flicked his head and pulled the barrier aside. The television crews dutifully filmed the Israelis holding their assault rifles and truncheons. And – since I am a believer in the Department of Home Truths – I have to add that in other Middle East nations right now, I doubt if armed policemen would be quite so indifferent to the cameras. Needless to say, the more aggressive of Israel’s colonisers in the West Bank are not so keen to be filmed. Hence the scarves over their faces when they attack Palestinians. And daubing “Mohamed is a pig” in Hebrew on the wall of the mosque at Qusra, 30 miles from Nablus, wasn’t going to improve Arab-Israeli relations. The Palestinians have painted out “is a pig”, but naturally left the name of the Prophet untouched. You can see the same stuff on the walls of the Jewish colony at Hebron.

But again, it’s acquired its own normality, like the massive Israeli wall that scrapes across the landscape above Jerusalem, a terrible, hateful scar on the politics of this place which should blight the eye of every Palestinian or Israeli who sees it. Oddly, we Westerners seem to have stopped talking about it; maybe that’s why we like calling it a “security barrier” rather than a wall, something that is a problem to be solved – to quote Obama – “by the parties themselves.” And there was one little incident yesterday which illustrated this rather well.

Prayers had ended at the Al-Aqsa mosque and the police were ready to go home and the shopkeepers were reopening their stalls when an old Palestinian woman in black came hobbling down some steps with two large, empty cardboard boxes. They were the “legs” to a table upon which she started arranging a set of tawdry children’s clothes and plastic shoes decorated with stars.

But a soldier told her to move the boxes three feet further down the street. There was no reason to – he was bored, I suppose, and in the mood for a bit of fun – but the old lady started shouting in Arabic that “It’s all over”. I think she meant that it was “all over” for the Palestinians – or maybe for the Israelis. But the soldier laughed and repeated her words in Arabic. “Yes, it’s all over,” he said, and maybe he was talking about the morning prayers.

And as he went on taunting the old woman and kicking the cardboard boxes, a trail of tourists came winding their way up the laneway from the Via Dolorosa. The woman was shrieking away and the tourists, light-coloured hair, blue eyes, speaking German, were all too aware of what was happening.

Their eyes flicked to the side of the road where the woman was shouting and the soldier was still kicking the boxes, but their heads didn’t move. They still faced forward, as if the whole wretched scene was a normal part of Jerusalem life. They wouldn’t directly look at the woman or the soldier. They certainly wouldn’t intervene. And so they passed by on the other side.

By Robert Fisk

24 September 2011

@ The Independent

The struggle for Palestinian nationhood is entering yet another new phase in its decades long history.

Failure to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and Israel’s 40-year occupation, in the words of UN former Secretary General Kofi Annan, would “continue to hurt the reputation of the United Nations and raise questions about its impartiality”.

No cause has consumed as much UN paper work as the plight of the displaced and occupied Palestinians. But hundreds of its resolutions on Palestine have not been respected let alone applied for over half a century.

Nowhere has the UN ideals and mechanisms been more mired in power politics than in Palestine. The efforts to neutralise UN intervention have been championed mainly by the United States. This week’s efforts by the Obama administration working on behalf of Israel took advocacy into a whole new level.

Washington has vetoed more than 40 UN Security Council resolutions critical of its policies some of which were drafted by its European allies. A quick look at today’s Middle East makes it clear that such obstructions worked for the interest of neither party, nor for peace and security in the region.

Cold-War rivalries have also contributed to UN paralysis in the Israeli Palestinian-Arab conflict, which explains why more than half of the 690 resolutions adopted by the General Assembly from 1947-1990 have been ignored.

But what justifies sidelining the UN ever since, while keeping it at an arm’s length from a two decades of Peace Process?

The short answer is a double standard.

All major post-Cold War conflicts have seen direct UN involvement including, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and of late, Lebanon, South Sudan. Not the Palestine problem. It was deferred to the US sponsored diplomatic process even though Washington’s close relations with Israel rendered it anything but an impartial broker.

Not only was Palestinian Israeli conflict snatched out of the world body, most relevant US resolutions critical of Israel were ignored by the US sponsors.

Only after the peace process failed to yield a solution a decade later, did the Bush administration allow the United Nations to join, and even then, only as a junior partner in a newly formed International Quartet that includes the European Union and Russia, all of whom are members of the UN!

Meanwhile, Israel has disregarded tens of resolutions, “censuring”, “calling”, “urging”, “recommending”, or “condemning” its attacks, settlement, deportations, occupation, etc.

Likewise, all pleas and demands for humanitarian and political interventions fell on deaf ears. The only time the UN was allowed to act, was in 1997 when it sent few international unarmed observers to the occupied city of Hebron. Alas, they weren’t mandated to speak publicly about the ongoing violations.

For the past four decades, Israel has violated all relevant UNSC council resolutions such as the resolution 465 of 1980 that strongly deplored all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure of status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem.

It also rejected Resolution 476, which reaffirmed the necessity to end the Israeli occupation of Arab territories ongoing since the 1967 war. The only UN Security Council Resolution that was accepted by the US and Israel as the basis of the diplomatic process, i.e. 242 of 1967, was also systematically violated. Israel has been expanding its settlement activity when the resolution notes the “inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force”.

Paradoxically, Israel was created by a UN recommendation for Partitioning Palestine in 1947, and was accepted as a new UN member on the basis of its commitment to respect its resolution, and specifically UNGA 194 regarding the return of the Palestinian refugees.

Now that all other venues have been tried and failed, including 18 years of bilateral negotiations, the UN Security Council must carry its responsibilities by demanding that Israel carry its obligations under UN charter and by recognising the Palestinian right for self-determination in a state of their own. Period.

Marwan Bishara is Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst.

He was previously a professor of International Relations at the American University of Paris. An author who writes extensively on global politics, he is widely regarded as a leading authority on the Middle East and international affairs.

By Marwan Bishara

21 September 2011

@ Al Jazeera

Islamophobic parties in Europe have established a tight network, stretching from Italy to Finland. But recently, they have extended their feelers to Israeli conservatives, enjoying a warm reception from members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition. Some in Israel believe that the populists are Europe’s future.

Anders Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto is nothing if not thorough. Pages and pages of text outline in excruciating detail the ideological underpinnings of his worldview — one which led him to kill 76 people in two terrible attacks in Norway last week.

It is a document which has led many to question Breivik’s sanity. But it has also, due to its myriad citations and significant borrowing from several anti-immigration, Islamophobic blogs, highlighted the deeply entwined network of right-wing populist groups and parties across Europe — from the Front National in France to Vlaams Belang in Belgium to the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ).

But recently it has become clear that Europe’s populist parties aren’t merely content to establish a network on the Continent. They are also looking further east. And have begun establishing tight relations with several conservative politicians in Israel — first and foremost with Ayoob Kara, a parliamentarian with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party who is also deputy minister for development of the Negev and Galilee districts.

The reason for the growing focus on Israel is not difficult to divine. “On the one hand,” Strache told SPIEGEL ONLINE in a recent interview, “we are seeing great revolutions taking place in the Middle East. But one can’t be totally sure that other interests aren’t behind them and that, in the end, we might see Islamist theocracies surrounding Israel and in Europe’s backyard.”

In other words, in the battle against what right-wing populists see as the creeping Islamization of Europe, Israel is on the front line.

‘More Sensitive to the Dangers’

Many in Israel see it the same way. Eliezer Cohen, known in Israel by his nickname “Cheetah,” says that leftist parties in both Europe and Israel have lost their way. Cohen, a decorated Israeli air force colonel now in retirement, is a former member of the Knesset with Yisrael Beiteinu, the hardline nationalist party led by Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman that currently governs together in a coalition with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.

“Right-wing politicians in Europe are more sensitive to the dangers facing Israel,” Cohen, who gave a keynote address during Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders’ visit to Berlin last October, told SPIEGEL ONLINE. “They are talking the exact same language as Likud and others on the Israeli right. I’m too old for bullshitting — we hope the right wing wins out in Europe.”

Kara sounds no different. “I am looking for ways to lessen the Islamic influence in the world,” Kara told the Israeli daily Maariv in June. “I believe that is the true Nazism in this world. I am the partner of everyone who believes in the existence of this war.”

At first glance, the European populists’ relationship with Israel would hardly appear to be a marriage built on love. Many see the FPÖ as being just one tiny step away from classic neo-Nazi groups and the same holds true for their partners throughout Europe. While such parties insist that they are not anti-Semitic — Strache claims that he takes a close look at populist parties’ stances toward Israel and Jews before he enters into partnerships with them — it is not difficult to find indications of extreme, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic vitriol from within the populist party membership rolls.

Andreas Mölzer, for example, a member of the European Parliament for the FPÖ who has recently changed his tune to defend Strache’s approaches to Israel, edits a weekly called Zur Zeit which is replete with attacks on Israel. Following its incursion into the Gaza Strip in late 2008, the paper accused Israel of acting in “the Talmudic spirit of annihilation” and that it was trying to “finally annihilate the open-air concentration camp of the Gaza Strip in the spirit of the Old Testament.”

‘Neo-Nazi Millionaire’

Indeed, when it comes to the FPÖ, observers of the party say the embrace of Israel, however far to the right it is taking place, is an insincere effort to establish foreign policy credibility. “The strategy is clearly that of normalizing itself, of becoming socially acceptable,” Heribert Schiedel, an expert on the FPÖ with the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance, a foundation which monitors right-wing extremism, wrote in an e-mail. “We presume that anti-Semitism remains a fundamental part of the party’s ideology.”

Many in Israel would tend to agree. And Kara was blasted in the Israeli press for a recent meeting in Berlin he held with Patrick Brinkmann, a German right-wing populist. “Deputy Minister Meets Neo-Nazi Millionaire,” read a headline in the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth earlier this month, noting that Brinkmann, while now insistent that he is not anti-Semitic, once had close ties with the right-wing extremist National Democratic Party of Germany (NPD). Following a visit to Vienna in December to meet with Strache, Vienna Jewish community leader Ariel Muzicant published an open letter in which he demanded that Netanyahu fire Kara.

The primary focus of the FPÖ’s political message, however, is — like that of populist parties from the True Finns in Finland to the Lega Nord in Italy — one of extreme skepticism of Muslim immigration. The groups are opposed to the construction of minarets, convinced that Europe’s future is threatened by high Muslim birth rates and certain that the Christian West must defend itself from Islam.

“For decades, politicians in Europe have ignored demographic developments and we are now in a situation where we have to warn that we are experiencing the Islamification of Europe,” Strache says. “We don’t want to become an Islamic society.”

Geert Wilders, who hit the headlines in 2008 with his virulently anti-Muslim film “Fitna” in 2008, pioneered the European populist-Israeli connection that same year. He has been back to visit Israel several times since.

Allied with the Settlers

Broader relations began in earnest late last year. Strache, together with Vlaams Belang party boss Filip Dewinter, Kent Ekeroth from the Swedish Democrats and René Stadtkewitz, who founded a German Islam-critical party called “Freedom” last October, traveled to Israel in December. The visit was quickly reciprocated with a trip by Kara and others to Vienna at the very end of December. Other exchanges, including Kara’s visit with Brinkmann in July, have followed.

The partners that the European right-wing has sought out in Israel are, perhaps not surprisingly, well to the right of center. Kara himself, a member of the minority Druze religious community who enjoys close ties with Netanyahu, opposed the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and is a loyal supporter of Jewish settlements in the West Bank. Gershon Mesika, a settler leader in the West Bank, received the populist delegation in December. Hillel Weiss and David Ha’ivri, both proponents of “neo-Zionism,” a movement which holds the belief that it is impossible to live in peace with Arabs, traveled to Germany last April for a conference hosted by the small, German right-wing populist movement Pro-NRW.

Their hope is that a pan-European platform will begin to emerge that values Israel as an important bastion in resisting the advancing tide of Islam. And they think, with the populist right making electoral gains across Europe in recent years, the smart bet is on Strache and Co.

‘Europeans Cannot Sleep’

“The reasonable right parties have their roots at home. The Germans in Germany, the Swedes in Sweden and so on,” says David Lasar, a member of the Vienna city government for the FPÖ. “I think that Israel is also a country that says this is our homeland and we can’t open the borders and let everyone in as happened in Europe. That is a reason that Israel today has more trust in the right-wing parties in Europe than in the left-wing parties.”

Lasar himself is Jewish and is one of the key players in ongoing efforts to tighten relations between Israel and the Europeans. And his view on Israel is one which would seem to be at odds with his party’s past positions on the Middle East. Whereas Lasar is skeptical of peace negotiations which would require Israel to give up East Jerusalem or to withdraw from the settlements, the FPÖ has traditionally been allied with Arab leaders such as Moammar Gadhafi and remained skeptical of America’s hard-line position on Iran.

That, though, Strache made clear, is changing. “There are areas where we Europeans cannot sleep, where we can’t remain silent,” says Strache. “Israel is in danger of being destroyed. Were that to happen, it would also result in Europe losing its foundation for existence.”

29 July 2011

© SPIEGEL ONLINE 2011

“So let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against all anti-Zionists, against all cultural Marxists/Multiculturalists”. Anders Behring Breivik’s Manifesto

“. . . two more cells exist in my organization”. . . Ander Behring Breivik in police custody (Reuters 7/25/11)

Introduction:

The July 22, 2011, bombing of the office of the Norwegian Prime Minister, Labor Party Jen Stoltenberg, which killed 8 civilians, and the subsequent political assassination of 68 unarmed activists of the Labor Party Youth on Utoeya Island, just 20 minutes from Oslo, by militant neo-fascist Christian-Zionists, raises fundamental questions about the growing links between the legal Far-Right, the ‘mainstream media’, the Norwegian police, Israel and rightwing terrorism.

The Mass Media and the Rise of Rightwing Terrorism:

The leading English language newspapers, The New York Times (NYT), the Washington Post (WP), the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and the Financial Times (FT), as well as President Obama, blamed “Islamic extremists”, upon the first police reports of the killings, publishing a series of incendiary (and false) headlines and reports, labeling the event as ‘Norway’s 9-11’,in terms, which echoed the ideological motivation and justifications cited by the Norwegian Christian-Zionist political assassin, Anders Behring Breivik himself. The July 23/24 front page of the Financial Times (of London), read “Islamist extremism fears: Worst Europe strike since 2005”. Obama immediately cited the terrorist attack in Norway to further justify his overseas wars against Muslim countries. The FT, NYT, WP and WSJ trotted out their self-styled “experts” who debated over which Arab/Islamic leaders or movements were responsible – despite Norwegian press reports of ‘the arrest of a Nordic man in police uniform’.

Clearly, the US mass media and political elite were eager to use the bombing and assassinations to justify ongoing overseas imperial wars, ignoring the burgeoning domestic extremist rightwing organizations and violent individuals who are the outgrowth of official Islamophobic hate propaganda.

When Anders Breivik, a known neo-fascist extremist, handed his weapons over to Norwegian police without resistance and claimed credit for the bombing and massacre, the second phase of the official cover-up took place: He was immediately described as “a lone wolf assassin”, who “acted alone” (BBC July 24, 2011) or as mentally deranged, downplaying his political networks, his American, European and Israeli ideological mentors and commitments, which led to his acts of terrorism. Even more outrageous, the media and officials ignored the fact that this complex, multiphase terrorist attack was beyond the capacity of one ‘deranged’ person.

Anders Behring Breivik had been a dues-paying member of a Far-Right political party, The Progress Party and a collaborator and contributor to an overtly neo-Nazi web site. He frequently focused his hatred on the ruling Labor Party for its relative tolerance of immigrants. He despised immigrants especially, Muslims, and was an ardent Christian-Zionist supporter of Israeli repression and terror against the Palestinian people. His criminal action was political in essence and embedded in a much wider political network.

The political elite and media have scrambled to deny the overlapping links between ‘legal’ ideological Islamophobes, like the American Zionists Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller, the Dutch far-right Party of Freedom led by the hate-monger Geert Wilders and their counterparts in the Norwegian Progress Party who rail against the “Muslim threat”. The “direct action” terrorists take their cues from electoral parties, like the Progress Party, who recruit and indoctrinate activists, like Behring Breivik, who then leave the ‘electoral road’ to carry out their bloody carnage, allowing the ‘respectable’ hate-mongers to hypocritically condemn him… after the outrage.

The Lone Assassin: A Fascist Superman Travels Faster than a Speeding Bullet Versus the Police Moving Slower than an Arthritic Turtle

The case for the “lone wolf terrorist” defies credence. It is a tissue of lies used to cover up state complicity, intelligence malfeasance, and the sharp right-turn in the domestic and foreign policies of NATO countries.

There is no basis to accept Breivik’s initial claim that he acted alone for several outstanding reasons: First, the car bomb, which devastated downtown Oslo, was a highly complex weapon requiring expertise and coordination – the kind available to state or intelligence services, like the Mossad, which specialize in devastating car bombs. Amateurs, like Breivik, with no training in explosives, usually blow themselves up or lack the skill required to connect the electronic timing devices or remote detonators (like the unsuccessful ‘shoe’, ‘underpants’ and ‘Times Square’ bombers have proved) . Secondly, the details of (a) moving the bomb, (b) obtaining (stealing) a vehicle, (c) placing the device at the strategic site, (d) successfully detonating it and (e) then gowning up in an elaborate special police uniform with an arsenal of hundreds of rounds of ammunition and driving off in another vehicle to Utoeya Island, (f) waiting patiently while armed to the teeth for a ferry boat, g) crossing with other passengers in his police uniform, (h) rounding up the Labor youth activists and commencing the massacre of scores of unarmed youth and finally (i) finishing off the wounded and hunting for those trying to hide or swim away – cannot accord with the activity of a lone zealot. Even the combination of Superman, Einstein and a world class marksman could not perform those tasks.

The media and NATO leaders must view the public as passive morons to expect them to believe that Anders Behring Breivik “acted alone”. He is willing to take a 20 year prison sentence if it means, as he maintains, that their collective action is the spark that ignites his comrades and advances the agenda of the violent and legal far rightwing parties. Facing a Norwegian judge on July 25, he publically declared the existence of “two more cells in my organization”. According to witness testimony on Utoeya Island shots from two distinct weapons were heard from different directions during the massacre. The police say they are… “investigating”. Needless to say the police have found nothing; instead they put on a “show” to cover their inaction by raiding two houses far from the massacre and quickly released the suspects.

The most serious political implication of the terrorist action, however, is the conspicuous complicity of top police officials. The police took 90 minutes to arrive at Utoeya Island, located less than 20 kilometers from Oslo, 12 minutes by helicopter and 25 to 30 minutes by car and boat. The delay allowed the right wing assassins to use up the ammunition, maximizing the death toll of young, anti-fascist activists and devastating the Labor youth movement. The police chief, Sveinung Sponheim, made the feeblest excuse and cover-up, claiming “problems with transport”. Sponheim argued that a helicopter “wasn’t on standby” and they “could not find a boat” (Associated Press, July 24, 2011). Yet a helicopter was available; it managed to fly to Utoeya and film the ongoing slaughter, and over half of Norwegians, a seafaring people for millennia, own or have access to a boat. A police force, faced with what the Prime Minister calls the ‘worst atrocity since the Nazi occupation’, moving at the pace of an arthritic turtle to rescue youth activists, raises the suspicion of some level of complicity. The obvious question arises as to the degree to which the ideology of right wing extremism – neo-fascism – has penetrated the police and security forces, especially the upper echelons? This level of “inactivity” raises more questions than it answers. What it suggests is that the Social Democrats only control part of the Government – the legislative, while the neo-fascists influence the state apparatus.

The plain fact is that the police did not save a single life. When they finally arrived, Anders Behring Breivik had run out of ammunition and surrendered turning himself over to the police. The police literally did not fire a single shot; they did not even have to hunt or capture the assassin. An almost choreographed scenario: Hundreds wounded, 68 unarmed, peaceful activists killed and the Labor youth movement decimated.

The police can claim “crime solved” while the mass media prattles about a “lone assassin”. The far right has a “martyr” to mask a further advance in their anti-Muslim, pro Israel crusade. (It is reminiscent of the celebrated Israeli-American fascist mass murderer, Dr. Baruch Goldstein, who slaughtered dozens of unarmed Palestinian men and boys at prayer in 1994).

Only two days before the political murders, the head of the Labor Party Youth Movement, Eskil Pederson, gave an interview to the Dagbladet, Norway’s second largest tabloid, in which he announced a “unilateral economic embargo of Israel from the Norwegian side” (Gilad Atzmon, July 24, 2011).

The fact of the matter is that the Norwegian military has no problem promptly dispatching 500 troops to Afghanistan, half way around the world and providing six Norwegian Air Force jets and pilots to bomb and terrorize Libya. And yet they can’t find a helicopter or a row boat to transport their police a couple hundred

 

 

yards to stop a domestic right wing terrorist – whose murderous rampage was being described second by second by the terrorized young victims on their cell phones to their frantic parents?

The Imperial Roots of Domestic Fascism: Conclusion

Clearly, the decisions of Norway and other Scandinavian nations to participate in the US imperial crusades against Muslim and especially Arab people in the Middle East have aroused and energized the neo-fascist right. They now want to “bring the war home”; they want Norway to go further, to ‘cleanse the nation’ by expelling Muslims. They want to “send a message” to the Labor Party: Either it must accept a full neo-fascist pro-Israeli agenda or expect more massacres, more elected fascists, more followers of Anders Behring Breivik.

The “Progress Party” is now the second largest political party in Norway. If a “conservative” coalition defeats Labor, neo-fascists will probably sit in the Government. Who knows, after a few years of good behavior, they might find an excuse to commute their ex-comrades sentence . . . or proclaim him mentally rehabilitated and freed.

Clearly what is needed is the immediate withdrawal of all troops from imperial wars and a systematic, coherent and organized fight against domestic right-wing terrorists and their intellectual godparents, in America, Israel and Europe. Labor youth must go press on with their demand that the Labor Government, under Prime Minister Jen Stoltenberg, recognize the nation of Palestine and implement a total boycott of Israeli goods and services. A national and international political-educational campaign must be organized to expose the links between respectable electoral fascists and violent terrorists. The Labor Youth martyrs of Utoeya Island should be cherished and their ideals taught in all the schools. Their far-right enemies and supporters whether overt, covert or directly complicit, should be exposed and condemned. The best weapon against the renewed neo-fascist onslaught is a political and educational offensive, taking up the anti-fascist, anti-Quisling (Norway’s notorious Nazi collaborator) fighting traditions of their grandparents’ era. It’s not too late – if the Labor Party, the Norwegian trade unions and the anti-fascist youth act now before the flood of resurgent fascism.

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association’s Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

31 July, 2011

Countercurrents.org

 

The march towards democracy proceeds amid suspicions that generals and Islamists are trying to slow it down

DURING the Egyptian summer tempers rise along with temperatures. Street fights erupt with alarming regularity. Purple faces, bulging veins and blood-curdling threats seem to portend carnage. Yet much of this is theatre, played out in the confidence that passers-by will intervene, separate combatants and make them reconcile.

Emerging from decades in a deep freeze of authoritarianism, Egyptian politics is showing a similar propensity to grow dangerously heated, then subside into calm as cooler heads intervene. In recent weeks the political scene, occupied by scores of passionate new actors produced by the big bang of revolution, has looked frighteningly polarised. It pits mostly secular forces, impatient for sweeping change, against wary conservatives who are backed by the ruling army high command and bolstered, ironically, by Islamist groups that faced repression under the pre-revolutionary regime. The tension has at times risen beyond rhetoric. On July 23rd pro-army vigilantes attacked a protest march in Cairo, leaving more than 300 people injured.

Yet fears that opposing forces may descend on Tahrir Square en masse, provoking open battles in the heart of Egypt’s capital, were quickly allayed. Islamists, led by puritan Salafist parties that have emerged as a powerful alternative to the relatively moderate Muslim Brotherhood, were quietly advised to withdraw a threat to call a million-man counter-march to assert Egypt’s “Islamic identity”. Politicians parlayed a truce, calling instead for a big joint demonstration on July 29th to deliver a short list of common demands to the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the body of 19 generals that serves as a collective presidency.

Some of those generals had earlier raised eyebrows by accusing the April 6th Movement, a youth group that played a key part in mobilising thousands of followers during the revolution, of being an agent for foreign powers. The army’s annoyance was understandable. April 6th spearheaded a reoccupation of public squares in several cities in early July to push for speedier adoption of revolutionary reforms. Joined by a motley coalition of activists, including Salafist splinters and Muslim Brotherhood factions, the activists have increasingly targeted the generals as obstacles to change.

Their most bitter complaint is that, whereas some 10,000 civilians have been served harsh jail terms by military courts since the revolution, most officials of the former regime have so far escaped justice for decades of corruption and abuse of power, including the widespread use of torture and the killing of more than 800 people during the revolution. The toppled president, Hosni Mubarak, has languished in a fancy hospital in the resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh, hidden from view pending his trial on the feeble charge of having paid too little for a beach house.

Considering that the ruling generals have nurtured an image as neutral guarantors of revolutionary goals, their sudden hostility to one of the revolution’s primary instigators has jarred. Some attribute sinister motives to the army, pointing to evidence of attempts to plant plain-clothes agitators in protests and to mute the thriving independent press while encouraging state-owned media to portray protesters as hooligans. There are even whispers of a quiet alliance between the army and Islamist parties, aimed at securing a “Caesar option” whereby military rule will eventually be acclaimed by a weary people as a welcome alternative to chaos.

Such fears are overblown. Egypt’s military has little experience or understanding of civilian life, and even less preparation for its current role. Being by nature conservative, xenophobic and more disciplined than Egypt’s fissiparous secularists, Islamist groups may seem natural partners in keeping order. Unlike most other parties, the Islamists laud the generals’ plan to postpone forging a new constitution until after the election of a parliament, which would then be asked to form a 100-strong constitutional congress. Yet their support does not reflect love for the army. Rather, it stems from confidence that elections will produce an Islamist parliamentary bloc big enough to prevent the adoption of a constitution they would deem too secular.

Such tactics are worrying to the many Egyptians, not just the 8% Coptic Christian minority, who would prefer some separation of religion and state. Still more anxiety stems from the fact that rules for the poll, now set for November, are extremely complex, mixing party lists and individual candidacies. With the army set to ban foreign election monitors, the risk of a flawed or contested outcome has grown.

Despite all this, opinion polls suggest that Egyptians remain broadly hopeful of the future. The government under prime minister Essam Sharaf, a pious professor of traffic management, has generally responded to the revolutionary clamour. It has promised to speed trials of former officials, including Mr Mubarak, and open them to the public. Successive cabinet changes have replaced unpopular ministers. Further purges are expected, including policemen, provincial governors and university administrators. Perhaps, as with Egypt’s theatrical street fights, the mood of suspicion and recrimination will prove a prelude to lasting reconciliation.

 

 

30 July 2011

PARIS – It is difficult not to be struck by the contrast between the “Asian”-like energy of Israel’s economy and civil society and the purely defensive nature of its approach to political change, both within and outside the country. A recent law bars Israeli citizens from supporting Western boycotts aimed at reversing the country’s settlement policies and at backing an independent Palestinian state. While Israel has never been so affluent, dynamic, and confident, it also has never been so isolated internationally.

Israel could have embraced the Arab Spring as an opportunity, rather than as a profound risk. If Arab citizens could transform their culture of humiliation into a culture of hope, perhaps they would be able to reconcile themselves with Israel’s existence. But Israeli leaders reacted purely negatively to the Arab upheavals. In their estimation, a complex regional environment has now become even more dangerous, making prudence even more urgent.

For Israel, yesterday’s despots, like Egypt’s former president, Hosni Mubarak, were much more predictable than the “Arab masses.” While some of the demonstrators might be inspired by democratic ideals, let’s have no illusions, the Israelis seem to be saying: Islamist forces will emerge as the only winners, and they are much more hostile to Israel and the West than their predecessors were.

Of course, with the Syrian regime’s massacres of its own citizens, some in Israel say that the suffering of Gaza’s inhabitants pales in comparison, and thus fails to attract the same sympathy as it did last year. But this should not obscure the overall diplomatic picture for Israel, which remains essentially negative.

One of the more ironic results of the region’s changing political configuration is that Israel now perceives a strategic convergence with Saudi Arabia. Despite their political systems’ deep differences, they both favor the regional status quo, and they share an obsessive suspicion of Iran.

But why not dream of a new strategic triangle comprising Israel, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, just as Israelis once dreamed of a non-Arab triangle between Israel, Turkey, and the Shah’s Iran? The Turks’ appalled reaction to the Syrian regime’s brutal behavior creates an opportunity that Israel should use to try to restore the privileged relationship with Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s government that existed before the Gaza blockade. But that would presuppose a small gesture towards the Palestinians, whom Israelis regard as being so deeply divided among themselves that no progress toward a peace settlement seems possible.

Israel’s leaders seem intent on gaining time both tactically, by resisting the soft pressure of US President Barack Obama’s administration, and strategically, by preparing the country for a new world in which emerging powers such as China play an increasingly important role.

That world, however, will be one in which Israel can no longer count on feelings of Holocaust guilt to influence major powers. It is a world in which monotheistic rivalries will be diluted in an ocean of polytheist faiths, and in which Israel will be able to depend only on its comparative merits in the eyes of cynical, realistic actors who will judge it solely on the basis of their own national interests.

Israel may be “of Europe,” and its main ally may well remain the United States for many years to come, but Israeli leaders must start thinking of how their country can thrive in a post-Western world. The most recent “President’s Conference,” held in June in Jerusalem under the patronage of Israeli President Shimon Peres, was highly symbolic of this evolution. In the opening session, Obama’s special envoy, Denis Ross, was greeted with resounding silence when he conveyed to the participants his boss’s warm wishes. By contrast, China’s culture minister was welcomed very warmly when he spoke, in typical fashion, of the growing need for global “harmony.”

In the minds of a few Israeli strategic thinkers, Israel must resist firmly for two or three more generations in order to become an irreversible reality in the region and a legitimate “accomplished fact” of the international system. At that point, who would want to boycott a country whose technological prowess is needed all over the world?

In this context, the idea of a peace settlement with the Palestinians seems more abstract than ever. Indeed, it makes the current status quo seem comfortable. The gap between Israel’s rich and poor nowadays may recall Brazil, but who remembers the original Zionists’ social-democratic ideals?

The country’s prosperity is simply overwhelming. From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, luxurious penthouses are multiplying. Are we in Singapore, Hong Kong, or São Paulo? Why challenge the certainties of the present with the uncertainties of the future?

Moreover, Israel has not only become much more prosperous; it has also moved decisively to the right. The second Intifada may very well have proven fatal to the Israeli left. Triumphant capitalism, idolatry of the land, and the comforts of the status quo produce a heady cocktail. But, high on the benefits of globalization, and waiting with a mixture of excitement and apprehension for the coming of a new post-Western world order, Israelis are dancing on the rim of a volcano.

2011-07-27

@ Project Syndicate

Dominique Moisi is the author of The Geopolitics of Emotion.

On July 9 I took part in a demonstration in front of the White House, the theme of which was “Stop Bombing Libya”. The last time I had taken part in a protest against US bombing of a foreign country, which the White House was selling as “humanitarian intervention”, as they are now, was in 1999 during the 78-day bombing of Serbia. At that time I went to a couple of such demonstrations and both times I was virtually the only American there. The rest, maybe two dozen, were almost all Serbs. “Humanitarian intervention” is a great selling device for imperialism, particularly in the American market. Americans are desperate to renew their precious faith that the United States means well, that we are still “the good guys”.

This time there were about 100 taking part in the protest. I don’t know if any were Libyans, but there was a new element — almost half of the protesters were black, marching with signs saying: “Stop Bombing Africa”.

There was another new element — people supporting the bombing of Libya, facing us from their side of Pennsylvania Avenue about 40 feet away. They were made up largely of Libyans, probably living in the area, who had only praise and love for the United States and NATO. Their theme was that Gaddafi was so bad that they would support anything to get rid of him, even daily bombing of their homeland, which now exceeds Serbia’s 78 days. I of course crossed the road and got into arguments with some of them. I kept asking: “I hate that man there [pointing to the White House] just as much as you hate Gaddafi. Do you think I should therefore support the bombing of Washington? Destroying the beautiful monuments and buildings of this city, as well as killing people?”

None of the Libyans even tried to answer my question. They only repeated their anti-Gaddafi vitriol. “You don’t understand. We have to get rid of Gaddafi. He’s very brutal.” (See the CNN video of the July 1 mammoth rally in Tripoli for an indication that these Libyans’ views are far from universal at home.)

“But you at least get free education and medical care,” I pointed out. “That’s a lot more than we get here. And Libya has the highest standard of living in the entire region, at least it did before the NATO and US bombing. If Gaddafi is brutal, what do you call all the other leaders of the region, whom Washington has long supported?”

One retorted that there had been free education under the king, whom Gaddafi had overthrown. I was skeptical of this but I didn’t know for sure that it was incorrect, so I replied: “So what? Gaddafi at least didn’t get rid of the free education like the leaders in England did in recent years.”

A police officer suddenly appeared and forced me to return to my side of the road. I’m sure if pressed for an explanation, the officer would justify this as a means of preventing violence from breaking out. But there was never any danger of that at all; another example of the American police-state mentality — order and control come before civil liberties, before anything.

Most Americans overhearing my argument with the Libyans would probably have interjected something like: “Well, no matter how much you hate the president you can still get rid of him with an election. The Libyans can’t do that.”

And I would have come back with: “Right. I have the freedom to replace George W. Bush with Barack H. Obama. Oh joy. As long as our elections are overwhelmingly determined by money, nothing of any significance will change.”

Postscript: Amidst all the sadness and horror surrounding the massacre in Norway, we should not lose sight of the fact that “peaceful little Norway” participated in the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999; has deployed troops in Iraq; has troops in Afghanistan; and has supplied warplanes for NATO’s bombing of Libya. The teenagers of those countries who lost their lives to the US/NATO killing machine wanted to live to adulthood and old age as much as the teenagers in Norway. With all the condemnation of “extremism” we now hear in Norway and around the world we must ask if this behavior of the Norwegian government, as well as that of the United States and NATO, is not “extremist”.

The Berlin Wall — Another Cold War Myth

The Western media will soon be revving up their propaganda motors to solemnize the 50th anniversary of the erecting of the Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961. All the Cold War clichés about The Free World vs. Communist Tyranny will be trotted out and the simple tale of how the wall came to be will be repeated: In 1961, the East Berlin communists built a wall to keep their oppressed citizens from escaping to West Berlin and freedom. Why? Because commies don’t like people to be free, to learn the “truth”. What other reason could there have been?

First of all, before the wall went up thousands of East Germans had been commuting to the West for jobs each day and then returning to the East in the evening; many others went back and forth for shopping or other reasons. So they were clearly not being held in the East against their will. Why then was the wall built? There were two major reasons:

1) The West was bedeviling the East with a vigorous campaign of recruiting East German professionals and skilled workers, who had been educated at the expense of the Communist government. This eventually led to a serious labor and production crisis in the East. As one indication of this, the New York Times reported in 1963: “West Berlin suffered economically from the wall by the loss of about 60,000 skilled workmen who had commuted daily from their homes in East Berlin to their places of work in West Berlin.” 1

In 1999, USA Today reported: “When the Berlin Wall crumbled [1989], East Germans imagined a life of freedom where consumer goods were abundant and hardships would fade. Ten years later, a remarkable 51% say they were happier with communism.” 2 Earlier polls would likely have shown even more than 51% expressing such a sentiment, for in the ten years many of those who remembered life in East Germany with some fondness had passed away; although even 10 years later, in 2009, the Washington Post could report: “Westerners say they are fed up with the tendency of their eastern counterparts to wax nostalgic about communist times.” 3

It was in the post-unification period that a new Russian and eastern Europe proverb was born: “Everything the Communists said about Communism was a lie, but everything they said about capitalism turned out to be the truth.” It should also be noted that the division of Germany into two states in 1949 — setting the stage for 40 years of Cold War hostility — was an American decision, not a Soviet one. 4

2) During the 1950s, American coldwarriors in West Germany instituted a crude campaign of sabotage and subversion against East Germany designed to throw that country’s economic and administrative machinery out of gear. The CIA and other US intelligence and military services recruited, equipped, trained and financed German activist groups and individuals, of West and East, to carry out actions which ran the spectrum from juvenile delinquency to terrorism; anything to make life difficult for the East German people and weaken their support of the government; anything to make the commies look bad.

It was a remarkable undertaking. The United States and its agents used explosives, arson, short circuiting, and other methods to damage power stations, shipyards, canals, docks, public buildings, gas stations, public transportation, bridges, etc; they derailed freight trains, seriously injuring workers; burned 12 cars of a freight train and destroyed air pressure hoses of others; used acids to damage vital factory machinery; put sand in the turbine of a factory, bringing it to a standstill; set fire to a tile-producing factory; promoted work slow-downs in factories; killed 7,000 cows of a co-operative dairy through poisoning; added soap to powdered milk destined for East German schools; were in possession, when arrested, of a large quantity of the poison cantharidin with which it was planned to produce poisoned cigarettes to kill leading East Germans; set off stink bombs to disrupt political meetings; attempted to disrupt the World Youth Festival in East Berlin by sending out forged invitations, false promises of free bed and board, false notices of cancellations, etc.; carried out attacks on participants with explosives, firebombs, and tire-puncturing equipment; forged and distributed large quantities of food ration cards to cause confusion, shortages and resentment; sent out forged tax notices and other government directives and documents to foster disorganization and inefficiency within industry and unions … all this and much more. 5

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, of Washington, DC, conservative coldwarriors, in one of their Cold War International History Project Working Papers (#58, p.9) states: “The open border in Berlin exposed the GDR [East Germany] to massive espionage and subversion and, as the two documents in the appendices show, its closure gave the Communist state greater security.”

Throughout the 1950s, the East Germans and the Soviet Union repeatedly lodged complaints with the Soviets’ erstwhile allies in the West and with the United Nations about specific sabotage and espionage activities and called for the closure of the offices in West Germany they claimed were responsible, and for which they provided names and addresses. Their complaints fell on deaf ears. Inevitably, the East Germans began to tighten up entry into the country from the West, leading eventually to the infamous Wall. However, even after the wall was built there was regular, albeit limited, legal emigration from east to west. In 1984, for example, East Germany allowed 40,000 people to leave. In 1985, East German newspapers claimed that more than 20,000 former citizens who had settled in the West wanted to return home after becoming disillusioned with the capitalist system. The West German government said that 14,300 East Germans had gone back over the previous 10 years. 6

Let’s also not forget that Eastern Europe became communist because Hitler, with the approval of the West, used it as a highway to reach the Soviet Union to wipe out Bolshevism forever, and that the Russians in World War I and II, lost about 40 million people because the West had used this highway to invade Russia. It should not be surprising that after World War II the Soviet Union was determined to close down the highway.

We came, we saw, we destroyed, we forgot

An updated summary of the charming record of US foreign policy. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States of America has …

1. Attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, most of which were democratically-elected. 7
2. Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries. 8
3. Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries. 9
4. Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries. 10
5. Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders. 11

In total: Since 1945, the United States has carried out one or more of the above actions, on one or more occasions, in the following 69 countries (more than one-third of the countries of the world):

Afghanistan
Albania
Algeria
Angola
Australia
Bolivia
Bosnia
Brazil
British Guiana (now Guyana)
Bulgaria
Cambodia
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Congo (also as Zaire)
Costa Rica
Cuba
Dominican Republic
East Timor
Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Fiji
France
Germany (plus East Germany)
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Honduras
India
Indonesia
Iran Iraq
Italy
Jamaica
Japan
Kuwait
Laos
Lebanon
Libya
Mongolia
Morocco
Nepal
Nicaragua
North Korea
Pakistan
Palestine
Panama
Peru
Philippines
Portugal
Russia
Seychelles
Slovakia
Somalia
South Africa
Soviet Union
Sudan
Suriname
Syria
Thailand
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam (plus North Vietnam)
Yemen (plus South Yemen)
Yugoslavia

(See a world map of US interventions.)

The occult world of economics

When you read about economic issues in the news, like the crisis in Greece or the Wall Street/banking mortgage shambles are you sometimes left befuddled by the seeming complexity, which no one appears able to untangle or explain to your satisfaction in simple English? Well, I certainly can’t explain it all myself, but I do know that the problem is not necessarily that you and I are economic illiterates. The problem is often that the “experts” discuss these issues as if we’re dealing with hard and fast rules or laws, not to be violated, scientifically based, mathematically sound and rational; when, in fact, a great deal of what takes place in the real world of economics and in the arena of “expert” analysis of that world, is based significantly on partisan party politics, ideology, news headlines, speculation, manipulation, psychology (see the utter meaninglessness and absurdity of the daily rise or fall of stock prices), backroom deals of the powerful, and the excessive power given to and reliance upon thoroughly corrupt credit-rating agencies and insurers of various kinds. The agencies like Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s are protection rackets — pay our exorbitant fees or we give you a bad rating, which investors and governments then bow down to as if it’s the result of completely objective and impressive analytical study.

Then there’s the exceptions made for powerful countries to get away with things that lesser countries, like Greece, are not allowed to get away with, but all still explained in terms of the unforgiving laws of economics.

And when all other explanations fail to sound plausible, the experts fall back on “the law of supply and demand”. But that law was repealed years ago; just try and explain the cost of gasoline based on it, as but one example.

So there’s a lot to cover up, many reasons why the financial-world players can’t be as open as they should be, as forthright as the public and investors may assume they are.

Consider the US budget deficit, about which we hear a great deal of scare talk. What we don’t hear is that the most prosperous period in American history occurred in the decades following the Second World War — from 1946 to 1973. And guess what? We had a budget deficit in the large majority of those years. Clearly such a deficit was not an impediment to growth and increasing prosperity in the United States — a prosperity much more widely shared than it is now. Yet we’re often fed the idea of the sanctity of a balanced budget. This and other “crises” are typically overblown for political reasons; the current “crisis” about the debt ceiling for example. Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, now an independent columnist, points out that “regardless of whether the debt ceiling is raised the US government is not going to go out of business. … If Goldman Sachs is too big to fail, certainly, the US government is.”

In economic issues that occupy the media greatly, such as the debt ceiling, one of the hidden keys to understanding what’s going on is often the conservatives’ perennial hunger to privatize Social Security and Medicare. If you understand that, certain things become much clearer. Naomi Klein points out that “the pseudo debate about the debt ceiling … is naked class war, waged by the ultra rich against everyone else, and it’s well past time for Americans to draw the line.”

Consider, too, the relative value of international currencies. Logically, reasonably, if the British pound is exchangeable for two dollars, one should be able to purchase in Washington goods and services for two dollars which would cost one pound in London. In real life, this of course is the very infrequent exception to the rule. Instead, at places called “exchanges” in New York and Chicago and London and Zurich and Frankfurt a bunch of guys who don’t do anything socially useful get together each day in a large room, and amidst lots of raised voices, busy computers, and numerous pieces of paper, they arrive at a value for the pound, as well as for a barrel of oil, for a pound of porkbellies, and for various other commodities that affect our daily lives. Why should these speculators and parasites have so much influence over the real world, the real economy, and our real lives?

As a general rule of thumb, comrades, as an all-purpose solution to our economic ills, remember this: We’ll keep going around in crisis circles forever until the large financial institutions are nationalized or otherwise placed under democratic control. We hear a lot about “austerity”. Well, austerity has to, finally, visit the super-rich. There are millions (sic) of millionaires and billionaires in the United States and Europe. As governments go bust, the trillions of dollars of these people must be heavily taxed or confiscated to end the unending suffering of the other 95% of humanity. My god, do I sound like a (choke, gasp) socialist?

 

29 July 2011

Killinghope.org

William Blum is the author of:
Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire.

Asian powers jostle for position amid vast mineral reserves and strategic oil pipelines, while West keeps bombing.

Afghanistan is not often perceived as a mineral Holy Grail.

But, as it turns out, between $1-3 trillion in mineral wealth lies unexplored across the Hindu Kush. There’s enough uranium, lithium, copper and iron ore to potentially turn Afghanistan into a commodities powerhouse.

The Pentagon knows all about it – how could it not? And the Russians have known about it since at least the 1970s, when they mapped out all the uranium riches of northern Afghanistan.

Washington may have complex geopolitical energy reasons to remain in Afghanistan – as explored in a previous Al Jazeera article that generated enormous reader response.

For its part, Islamabad is still obsessed with viewing Afghanistan as a pliable satrap. But the going gets much juicier when one looks at key Eurasian players such as Russia, India and China and their own, non-Pentagonised reasons to come to this mineral Walhalla.

Business suits, not bombs

Early next month a crucial bidding war begins in Kabul. It concerns Hajigak, the world’s biggest iron ore deposits, which are located in central Afghanistan (at least 1.8bn tons, according to a Soviet estimate made in the 1960s). To the sound of much predictable Taliban grumbling, all 15 bidding companies are from India – including giants Tata Steel and JSW, the country’s third-largest private steel company.

A stable, business-friendly Afghanistan is absolutely essential for India – a gateway to oil and gas from Iran, Central Asia and the Caspian. India is building power stations and strategic roads, such as the one linking Afghanistan with the Iranian port of Chahbahar.

Few may know it, but it’s not only Africa that is the object of a fierce India-China business “war”. Afghanistan is also a key chessboard. There are five types of minerals on the Afghan horizon – gold, copper, iron ore, and inevitably, oil and gas – and the Indians and the Chinese are all over them.

China Metallurgical Corporation already got a big prize in 2008 – the Aynak copper mine in Logar, southeast of Kabul – for $3.4bn. Why? Because Western companies were asleep at the wheel (or paranoid with “security”); because the Chinese wasted no time; and, according to the Afghan Ministry of Mines, “because of their package” (in characteristic Chinese style, that includes building a whopping $6bn railway connecting northern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan and Pakistan with western China).

Kabul will get up to $350m a year in royalties. At least 5,000 jobs will be created, with added benefits such as health clinics, roads and schools. Security may indeed be a huge problem; there’s a war going on and safe transit routes are a mirage. But as war-weary Afghans are poignantly stressing, that’s already a start.

The business track in Afghanistan now runs parallel to the political track.

Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari visited Tehran twice within only three weeks. He had two face-to-face meetings with Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The House of Saud, to put it mildly, freaked out.

After all, this Islamabad-Tehran lovefest totally smashes the myth that the so-called “Shia crescent” is the greatest threat to Sunnis in the Middle East and South Asia.

Washington, predictably, was also hardly fond of it. The occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq can be seen as an attempt by the US to encircle Iran from both east and west (that’s certainly Tehran’s view), and Washington believed Pakistan would play the same role on Iran’s southeast border.

In a fascinating exchange that must have choked many a throat across the Potomac, Khamenei told Zardari that Pakistan’s “real enemy” was the West, “and the US on top of it”, while Zardari told Khamenei that Iran was a “model of resistance and path to progress”. What next? Karachi taxis sporting Khomeini magnets?

But the most fascinating part is that Tehran and Islamabad are now discussing not only security matters but also business, such as an upcoming free-trade agreement and a currency swap scheme that would move both countries away from the US dollar.

On the security front, Islamabad has proposed what would be an Integrated Border Management Regime – that is, Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan fighting together against drug trafficking. That also happens to be Russia’s number-one priority in Central and South Asia. Over twelve tonnes of pure heroin – that’s over 3bn single doses – reach Russia every year from Afghanistan.

On the business front, it was all about the crucial Pipelineistan gambit, the Iran-Pakistan (IP), also known as the “peace pipeline”. IP may supply as much as 50 per cent of Pakistan’s energy needs.

There are delays, of course. By the end of 2012, Iran will have built its whole stretch of pipeline up to the Pakistani border. Yet Pakistan will only start working on its own stretch by early 2012.

But by 2015 IP should be online, forming a strategic umbilical cord between Shia Iran and majority-Sunni Pakistan and rocking the Eurasian geopolitical equation. IP will cross ultra-strategic Balochistan, which is not only dripping with resources but which also, as a transit corridor, provides the shortest access to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea.

Iran and Pakistan as allies?

So look for another unintended consequence of Washington’s obsession with the war on terror: Iran and Pakistan as increasingly close allies. One can already foresee Tehran sharing on-the-ground intelligence with Islamabad on Washington’s myriad covert ops inside Pakistani territory.

Another unintended consequence – unthinkable only two or three years ago – is that now Tehran, which is tremendously influential in northwest Afghanistan, views the Taliban the Mullah Omar way: as an indigenous “national resistance” movement against US/NATO occupation and perpetual military bases. Moreover, Tehran is also in sync with Islamabad in their support for the wily Hamid Karzai, who has increasingly distanced himself from Washington.

There are huge problems, of course. Although Zardari told Khamenei that Islamabad supports Karzai and an “Afghan-led and Afghan-owned” peace process, hardly any progress can be made without a substantial reversal of Pakistan’s official Afghan policy, which considers Afghanistan as little more than “strategic depth” in a confrontation with India, and which does everything to contain India’s influence in Afghanistan.

Moreover, regional priorities differ. Moscow worries about its own “war on drugs,” wants NATO out of its backyard, and does not want US military bases in Afghanistan. Beijing worries about the Taliban influencing the Uighurs in Xinjiang. Tehran will keep cultivating its privileged relationship with Tajiks, Hazaras and Uzbeks – and not Pashtuns.

What is certain is that any unilateral Made-in-USA road map for Afghanistan, of the “surge, bribe and stay” variety, is doomed to failure without input from these key Eurasian players.

Tragedy aside, the US/NATO war in Afghanistan is now seriously flirting with surrealism – witness the Taliban’s accusation that the West hacked their website, their phones, their emails and spread false rumours of Mullah Omar’s death. Forget about “medieval towelheads on hash”; these are iPhone-friendly Taliban who tweet and post on Facebook – and command quite a following. Unsurprisingly, gloomy war-machine NATO “declines to comment”.

It will be fascinating to watch what schemes the House of Saud will concoct to smash the new business-friendly Tehran-Islamabad axis; after all, Saudi Arabia essentially treats Pakistan as a sort of political/economic annex.

But not as fascinating as watching which Russian, Chinese and Indian companies will make a killing off of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth while the Atlanticist West bomb themselves to irrelevancy.

Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His latest book is Obama Does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

29 July 2011

@ Al Jazeera