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One sweltering day in August of last year, Burmese opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi arrived for the first time in the capital of her country. The city of Naypyidaw, inaugurated six years ago by Burma’s mercurial military rulers, is a supremely artificial creation, a place of vacant boulevards and echoing plazas built in the foothills some 200 miles away from the old capital of Rangoon. Rangoon is the city that Aung San Suu Kyi calls home, and it is there that she had spent 15 of the past 22 years under house arrest.

She had come to Naypyidaw to meet the man who had orchestrated her release from detention 10 months earlier. Burmese President Thein Sein, like most of the men who have ruled the country since World War II, spent almost his entire adult life as an army officer. Then, in 2010, he took off his uniform, assumed the leadership of the ruling political party, and led it to victory in an election denounced by most international observers as a sham. He then took office as the head of the first ostensibly civilian government in Burma (also known as Myanmar) in 49 years and announced that he was preparing to lead the country toward democracy.

Aung San Suu Kyi was understandably cautious as she went into her meeting with the president. She and her fellow activists have watched Burma’s leaders break promises for decades. Was this one really any different?

To her surprise, the president welcomed her warmly, lavishing praise upon her father Aung San, a hero of Burma’s anti-colonial struggle in the 1940s. Two decades ago, wary of the late Aung San’s continuing star power (and that of his daughter, who entered politics after the 1988 uprising), the military junta had erased his image from the national currency. Now, in demonstrative contrast, the president insisted that he and Aung San Suu Kyi pose for an official photo beneath a portrait of her father. Later that evening Thein Sein’s wife welcomed Aung San Suu Kyi to a “family dinner” in the presidential palace. She greeted Burma’s leading dissident with a warm embrace.

In the weeks that followed, the opposition leader told her colleagues that it was time to take the president’s promises of reform for real. She moved to obtain official registration for her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), and stated that she wanted to see it participate in parliamentary by-elections to be held on April 1 of this year. Even if the NLD wins every seat at stake, it would still fall short of anything like a legislative majority. Victory, though, could ensure an important opposition voice in the hitherto docile body. On Jan. 10, after weeks of uncertainty, she finally announced that she will run for a seat in the parliament.

Allowing the NLD to participate is merely the latest in a series of dramatic moves made by the president. Since Thein Sein took power in March 2010, he has freed hundreds of political prisoners, initiated discussions about legalizing trade unions, and loosened censorship. Over the past year the new Burmese government has taken more steps toward political reform than the previous military regime took in over two decades.

Yet none of this can disguise the fact that Burma is still a country under authoritarian rule, and that means its further progress depends to a critical extent on the motives and capabilities of the man who holds its highest office. Many observers wonder whether Thein Sein is committed to meaningful progress or is simply serving as the public face of the old junta in its quest to retain power under a quasi-civilian government. Once a pillar of the old regime, he was one of its highest-ranking generals when in 2007 he assumed the office of prime minister, a post that he retained throughout the government’s crackdown on pro-democracy protests that year.

There are also questions about the extent to which Thein Sein is truly in control. Several leaders of the military regime still hold positions in his government. (In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Aung San Suu Kyi cautioned that the generals still wield enormous power despite the veneer of democracy provided by the elections. “I am concerned about how much support there is in the military for changes,” she said. “In the end that’s the most important factor, how far the military are prepared to cooperate with reform principles.”) Although the government denies it, former junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe, a master political chess player, continues to exercise considerable influence behind the scenes, say some experts.

The culture of secrecy surrounding Burma’s military rulers makes it especially difficult to gauge just how far they will allow the current opening to go. But Thein Sein’s biography provides some intriguing clues. The son of peasants from the Irrawaddy Delta, he graduated from the country’s elite military academy in 1968. As a young officer in the 1970s, he was sent to the front lines of the Burmese military campaign against the Chinese-backed communist insurgency. Retired Lt. Gen. Chit Swe, under whom Thein Sein served in the 1980s, describes the president as someone who rarely shows his emotions, is notably devoid of arrogance, and is usually willing to listen to differing opinions.

When Burma was rocked by nationwide protests in 1988, Thein Sein commanded an elite battalion stationed in the rural areas of the country’s northwest. On one occasion, Thein Sein’s unit captured pro-democracy activists fleeing toward the Indian border. In contrast with the bloody crackdown being orchestrated by his colleagues in Rangoon, he either freed the activists or handed them over to local authorities.

Ex-army officer Ko Ko Hlaing, who once served under Thein Sein, is now one of the president’s chief advisors: “He’s polite and likes to keep a low profile,” says Ko Ko Hlaing. “He’s not after personal popularity. He’s a bit media-shy and not really suited for the life of a populist politician. But his honesty and sincerity could attract public sympathy.”

This assessment is echoed by others who know the man, yet the president is also someone who thrived in the vicious internal intrigues that characterized life at the top of Burma’s harsh military regime. In 1991 he received a senior post in the Defense Ministry that placed him in direct proximity to the country’s top military leaders, including, most importantly, Than Shwe. In 2004, when Than Shwe purged the powerful intelligence chief who was one of his main rivals for power, Thein Sein was the main beneficiary, rising to the fourth-most powerful position in the junta. When the prime minister died from leukemia in 2007, the all-powerful Than Shwe named Thein Sein to fill the vacancy.

Even now, however, Thein Sein manages to demonstrate a degree of sensitivity that nearly all his fellow generals lack. It’s a trait that seems at odds with his position as one of the leaders of the same ruthless regime that gunned down unarmed monks and demonstrators during the 2007 Saffron Revolution.

For example, when Cyclone Nargis slammed into the Irrawaddy Delta in 2008 and Than Shwe’s government blocked significant amounts of foreign aid to the area, Thein Sein was the first top general to travel to the delta and meet the victims. Meanwhile, despite the heavy death toll from the cyclone and mounting international criticism about Burmese government relief efforts, the regime pushed through a constitutional referendum in the immediate aftermath of the devastating storm.

The 2008 Constitution, drafted by the military in a process overseen by Thein Sein, was approved in a sham referendum. The announcement of the results then kicked off a long period of speculation over who would lead Burma once a general election was held.

Larry Dinger, head of the U.S. mission in Rangoon, sent a cable to Washington (later published by WikiLeaks) that offered a concise assessment of the situation at the time. “The most senior generals are looking for an escape strategy,” he wrote. “The current senior generals are getting old … [they] undoubtedly want assurances that, if they voluntarily step aside, they and their families will retain their assets and will not be prosecuted.”

During this time of uncertainty, Thein Sein emerged as the international face of the Burmese regime, attending both regional and international summits. In 2009, when he traveled to the U.N. General Assembly in New York to defend the junta’s policies, diplomats characterized him as quiet but persuasive. These were qualities that would serve him well as the aging Than Shwe began casting about for a successor.

Thein Sein’s main rivals for the job were both powerful confidants of the outgoing junta leader, but they were also burdened by allegations of corruption. In the end, Than Shwe opted for Thein Sein, a man with international experience who was personally untainted by dubious business dealings or human rights abuses. Perhaps even more importantly, Thein Sein had no internal power base that posed a threat to the dictator’s personal or financial security.

Yet the ambiguities about his role persist. Crucially, it remains unclear just how much authority Thein Sein really has in the new government. Insiders say that Than Shwe continues to wield great influence over major decisions. They say that a hard-line faction continues to hobble the president and resist reforms.

In any event, the ultimate authority on anything related to national security (which in Burma means almost everything) rests with the 11-member National Defense and Security Council (NDSC). In Thein Sein’s defense, his aides say that the president continues to argue for the reform process in NDSC meetings and has made the final decision on many important issues.

If the meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi was the last act that convinced many that Thein Sein was serious about at least some degree of reform, then his September decision to suspend work on the China-funded Myitsone Dam project was what helped dispel the notion that he was weak and indecisive.

The decision was a slap in the face to China, Burma’s giant neighbor and traditional ally that for years had shielded the Burmese regime from U.N. Security Council censure debates and international condemnation. But Thein Sein was rewarded for his audacity. The move brought him domestic accolades, served as a signal to the West that Burma wanted to balance out its relationship with China, and significantly increased the momentum for his reforms.

“He might look gentle, but he’s a man of strong will,” Ko Ko Hlaing told me. “Once he’s made a decision, he sticks with it.”

Some critics, however, noted that many other Chinese-funded and controlled mega-projects, including other Irrawaddy River dam projects, as well as a gas pipeline and railway line to China’s Yunnan province, remained untouched. There are also skeptics who continue to argue that all the steps Thein Sein and his government have taken have been a facade aimed at gaining the chairmanship of ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) for 2014. They say that Burma’s rulers are also keen on persuading Western countries to lift sanctions in order to get international investment flowing into domestic businesses controlled by the ex-junta leaders and their cronies.

In November, Thein Sein succeeded in convincing ASEAN to grant Burma its 2014 chair, and on the heels of that decision U.S. President Barack Obama announced that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would become the first top U.S. diplomat to visit Burma in over 50 years. But though her visit gave another injection of legitimacy to the new government, she held the line and said that sanctions would not be lifted until further reforms were made. The message was repeated by British Foreign Secretary William Hague during his visit in early January.

Yet there are also at least two cases where there is good reason to doubt the depth of the new government’s commitment to reform.

First, there is the problem of the government’s continuing conflict with ethnic minority groups. Thein Sein has launched an effort to enter into cease-fire agreements with some of them, and in some cases he has succeeded. The army, however, has openly defied his public call to cease its attacks in the northern state of Kachin. The surge in fighting there, including widespread report of abuses by the army, has created some 30,000 refugees in the area. When asked recently about the discrepancy, Ko Ko Hlaing noted only that the army’s chief, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, is a member of the NDSC. He added, “Our country is no longer an autocratic state as before.” To those versed in the Burmese art of circumlocution, these comments implied that Thein Sein has no personal power to tell the Burmese military to refrain from anything. (On Jan. 12, the government announced a historic ceasefire agreement with another rebel group, the Karen National Union. But fighting with the Kachin continues.)

Then there is the matter of political prisoners. For the past few months Thein Sein and other senior government officers had been dropping hints that the rest of Burma’s political prisoners would soon be set free, with Jan. 4 (Independence Day) as the date most often mentioned. But on Jan. 2, the president signed an insulting amnesty order that freed fewer than 40 political prisoners and left many languishing in jail. That prompted Aung San Suu Kyi to issue another warning about dangers to the reform process.

There are two possible explanations for these failures to follow through, and neither is good for the image that Thein Sein has been trying to cultivate. One possibility is that he genuinely wants the political prisoners to be released but has no power to make that happen. The other is that he is a willing participant in an effort by the military to present a facade of liberalization in the hopes of gaining concessions from the West.

In any event, Thein Sein remains an enigma. He is a man who has demonstrated some admirable qualities while acting as one of the leaders of a brutally immoral regime. He is also a man who has spent his adult life obeying the military’s chain of command in an authoritarian junta and who now purports to head up a civilian government on the path toward democracy. Finally, he is the man who most believe represents the Burmese people’s best hope for internal government reform, even while he remains closely connected with those who wish to remain in absolute power.

Under these circumstances, it is understandable that most Burmese are likely to insist that they will gauge the depth of Thein Sein’s reforms by the actions of his government rather than simply taking him at his word.

BY AUNG ZAW

12 January 2012

@ Foreign Policy

Aung Zaw is founding editor of the Irrawaddy magazine based in Thailand.

Brilliant humanitarian Indian writer Arundhati Roy has commented powerfully on simultaneous First World holocaust commission and holocaust denial: “the ultimate privilege of the élite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience” (see Arundhati Roy in “The Cheque-book and the Cruise Missile”). In the British TV comedy “ Fawlty Towers ”, hotelier Basil Fawlty (John Clease), faced with some German guests,  famously told his staff “Don’t mention the war”. The look-the-other-way Mainstream media of Australia – and no doubt those of other Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies – have applied this dictum by ignoring the horrendous carnage in reviewing a blood-soaked 2011.

Thus the  Sydney Morning Herald (SMH, Fairfax media empire) opined “We can sum up 2011 as a year when the foundations were shaken. Literally and tragically so in some instances: Christchurch, that most stable of cities, was devastated by an earthquake and still has aftershocks that liquefy the very ground; Japan’s Tohoku region was swept by a double tsunami, and confidence in its nuclear power industry shattered by the resulting Fukushima disaster; devastating floods took their toll on some of the world’s poorest people. For the rest of us, particularly in the wealthy countries, it was more a sudden shakiness in the pillars holding up the world’s financial system. The second wave of the global financial crisis struck….” but offered not a word about the war (see SMH editorial, National Times, “2012- hang together or hang separately”, SMH National Times, 31 December 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/2012–hang-together-or-hang-separately-20111230-1pfhr.html ).

The SMH’s Melbourne  sister Fairfax empire newspaper The Age reviewed 2011 but offered only the following about the war: “For the United States, which spent much of the year trying to define the terms of its withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, the finding and killing of Osama bin Laden in May did not so much close a chapter as throw open a door onto the ghastly failings of the Pakistani state, an abyss into which even the most determined nation-builder would shudder to look ” (The Age editorial, National Times, “99% searching for a common cause in an upturned world”, The Age, National Times, 231 September 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/editorial/99-searching-for-common-cause-in-an-upturned-world-20111230-1pfik.html ).

However Rory Cahill, a section editor for The Conversation, a novel academic-based web magazine for expert opinion, does offer a small glimpse of the war-related horrors of 2011: “The forces unleashed by the Arab Spring will continue to play out. 2011 drew to an ominous close in Libya and Egypt , with rival militia fighting for control of Tripoli ‘s airport while the Egyptian Army turned its guns on protestors in Tahrir Square . The dream of democracy could yet become a blood-soaked nightmare more reminiscent of post-invasion Iraq than the stable Muslim state of Turkey . Iran will continue to be the focus of much attention. Over the course of 2012 the world will come to understand that the much-anticipated war on Tehran is already underway, albeit not the kind of war we recognise. Instead of tanks crossing the border, war on Iran involves viruses like Stuxnext being planted on laptops” (Rory Cahill, “2011, the year that was: politics & society”, The Conversation, 30 December 2011: https://theconversation.edu.au/2011-the-year-that-was-politics-and-society-4828 ).

The Age published a review of 2011 by eminent but very conservative Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC (he was awarded a Companion of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day Honours list of 2000 for his service to academia, research and scholarship), who was formerly Professor History at the University of Melbourne. Professor Blainey’s article was entitled “Turbulent times but journeys to remember in 2011” (see The Age On-line National Times Section, 30 December 2011: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/turbulent-times-but-journeys-to-remember-in-2011-20111229-1pe6u.html ).

Professor  Blainey’s summary of 2011 followed Basil Fawlty’s famous dictum of “don’t mention the war” and opined: “This was the year of the televised disaster. A host of present-day Australian children, when they grow old, will recall how in the year 2011 they saw on their screens the Japanese tsunami and nuclear nightmare, the earthquake in Christchurch , drought in north-east Africa and flood in Thailand . In eastern Australia the severe floods in successive years were a special surprise for those who, a few years previously, had been told by the more outspoken climate-scientists that Australians might never see floods again in their lifetime. Across the world a pervasive fear centred on debt. The hopes of a steady recovery from the globe’s financial crisis of 2008-09 were pricked this year by the realisation that Europe might be crippled by debt and, even more, by its own disagreements on how to handle debt. The European Union had been a notable achievement of the 20th century, and nations now sit together at a thousand conference tables and drink coffee rather than fight.”

But not a word about the US Alliance wars in Somalia, Iraq,  Afghanistan and Libya that have been associated with  war-related deaths totalling 2.2 million, 4.6 million, 5.0 million and 50,000, respectively (see Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ ).

Further, re Professor Blainey’s assertion about “floods” and “outspoken climate scientists”, CSIRO Australia’s premier scientific research organization in its 2011 report “Climate change: science and solutions for Australia” (see: http://www.publish.csiro.au/Books/download.cfm?ID=6558 ) shows decreased precipitation drought in southern and south eastern Australia [p7] and increasing precipitation  in northern and central Australia [p7] and states “Climate models indicate that there is likely to be less rainfall in southern areas of Australia, especially in winter, and in southern and eastern areas in spring, caused by the contraction in the rainfall belt towards the higher (more southern) latitudes (Figure. 3.2). Future changes in summer tropical rainfall in northern Australia remain highly uncertain. It is also likely that the most intense rainfall events in most locations will become more extreme, driven by a warmer, wetter atmosphere [p38] … For Australia, heatwaves, fires, floods, and Southern Australian droughts are all expected to become more frequent and more intense in the coming decades [p46] … Water security, or reliability if water supply, in southern and eastern Australia is expected to decline in future as a result of reduced rainfall and higher rates of evaporation [p48]”.

Professor Blainey’s blinkered view of history as it is actually happening  has nevertheless registered that others perceive reality otherwise. His essay on 2011 concludes with the following extraordinary non-sequitur: “This nation, so far, has had two Jewish governors-general; and one, Sir Zelman Cowen, long ago wrote the life of the other, Sir Isaac Isaacs. In his book of 1967, Sir Zelman wrote affectionately of Sir Isaac and singled out his ”mind of great strength, power and range” and his ”unflagging and almost inexhaustible energy”. Those were also among the qualities of Sir Zelman, who, at the age of 92, died this month. Some of those who write Australia ‘s history textbooks devote an indignant chapter or two to what they see as the unparalleled racism of this country. But the day will come when they realise that, more than probably any European nation, Australia has recognised and honoured the talent of its Jewish citizens”. Professor Blainey seems to be saying (a) that Australia cannot be racist, (b) because  it (assertedly) treats Jews properly – and if so, he is wrong on both counts.

In reality Sir Isaac Isaacs, Australia’s first Australian-born Governor General was a decent man who, unlike the rabidly pro-Zionist Liberal Party-National Party Coalition Opposition and rabidly pro-Zionist Labor Party Government (the Lib-Labs who together account for 80% of the vote in Australia),  strongly opposed Zionism as he articulated as  follows: “The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism.” and “The Zionist movement as a whole…now places its own unwarranted interpretation on the Balfour Declaration, and makes demands that are arousing the antagonism of the Moslem world of nearly 400 millions, thereby menacing the safety of our Empire, endangering world peace and imperiling some of the most sacred associations of the Jewish, Christian, and Moslem faiths. Besides their inherent injustice to others these demands would, I believe, seriously and detrimentally affect the general position of Jews throughout the world” ( Sir Isaac Isaacs, quoted by Wikipedia, ”Isaac Isaacs”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Isaacs ).

Further, Australia has a long history of anti-Jewish anti-Semitism that continues to this day. Indeed the current Lib-Lab anti-Jewish anti-Semitism is potentially  far more dangerous than that in Australia in the past (for shocking details of past anti-Semitism see Chapter 17, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History”: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) . Thus the pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-US imperialism Lib-Labs are anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by remorselessly ignoring the decent views of outstanding  anti-racist Australian Jews such as Sir Isaac Isaacs and many others (for the expert , humanitarian opinions  numerous such outstanding anti-racist Jewish scholars and writers  “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home ) and by falsely identifying decent, anti-racist Jews with the appalling, genocidal crimes of racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel (0.1 million Palestinians killed, 1.4 million non-violent war-related deaths, 7 million refugees) and the racist Zionist-beholden US Alliance (12 million war-related deaths since 1990 in the racist Zionist-backed US War on Muslims).

For a glimpse of the extraordinary Australian Mainstream censorship of the humane views of anti-racist Jewish Australian intellectuals  see “ Australian ABC censorship of top Jewish intellectuals against racist Zionism”, Bellaciao, 27 December 2011: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article21532 and “ABC Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/home .

I sent a comment on Professor Blainey’s article and under my professional name (Dr Gideon Polya) to The Age but – in keeping with its regular practice of censoring informed, credentialled and non-anonymous professional comments – The Age completely censored my comments, presumably as containing material unfit for its readers to read, know or think about (see “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age ) :

“Professor Blainey can praise the European countries for not attacking each other anymore (the NATO attacks on Serbia aside) but ignores 2 decades of US Alliance attacks on the Muslim World that have been associated with 12 million war-related deaths (violent deaths plus avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation), the breakdown being 4.6 million (Iraq, 1990-2011), 2.2 million (Somalia, 1992-2011), 5.0 million (Afghanistan, 2001-2011), these estimates being consonant with avoidable under-5 infant deaths totalling 1.8 million, 1.2 million and 2.6 million, respectively, and reflected in refugee numbers totalling 5-6 million, 2.0 million and 3-4 million, respectively.

Professor Blainey similarly failed to notice in his “A Short History of the World” and his “A Very Short History of the World” the 6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British (with Australian complicity) in the 1942-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust (although he does note “the loss of at least two million lives” there in his “The Great Seesaw. A new view of the Western world 1750-2000”).

Professor Blainey dismisses ongoing Australian racism (towards Asians and Aborigines) because he claims Jews have been treated properly – they have not been, they still are not and why shouldn’t they be?”

This, in brief,  is what the Australia Mainstream media chose not to notice in looking back on 2011: Australia withdrew its last 33 soldiers from Iraq in August 2011 leaving a country that since 1990 has suffered 4.6 million war-related deaths, 1.7 million violent deaths, 2.9 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 1.8 million avoidable under-5 infant deaths and 5-6 million refugees (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ) but Australia still has about 1,500 troops in Afghanistan that since the US Alliance invasion in 2001 has suffered 5.0 million war-related deaths, 1.2 million violent deaths, 3.8 million avoidable deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 2.7 million under-5 infant deaths, 2.4 million avoidable under-5 infant deaths and 3-4 million refugees (plus a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees generated by US and US-backed violence in NW Pakistan) (see “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ).

Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We are obliged to inform everyone we can about horrendous crimes against humanity. A key resolution for everyone for 2012 is to do exactly that.

By Dr Gideon Polya

01 January 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career.

The taxpayer-funded Australian ABC has failed to report a petition by some of Australia’s most outstanding Jewish scholars denouncing and renouncing the racist and genocidal Israeli “law of return” that is a key instrument in Apartheid Israel’s Palestinian Genocide. This is a further instance of egregious lying by omission by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden Australian ABC.

The taxpayer-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC) is Australia ‘s equivalent of the taxpayer-funded British  BBC. The Australian ABC has an appalling record of lying by omission and lying by commission, indeed  ABC censorship has plumbed Orwellian depths (see “ABC Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/ ). This extraordinary  ABC censorship stems from the reality that the ABC, like other Mainstream media in Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy Australia and in other Western Murdochracies and Lobbyocracies, is subject to pressure form neocon Americans, racist Zionists (RZs) and their associates.

Australia is a Murdochracy (Big Money determines public perception of the truth and hence votes) and a Lobbyocracy (Big Money buys politicians and policy). The racist Zionist Lobby is extremely powerful in what has become an Apartheid Australia that now follows the Apartheid Israeli and Apartheid Israel-supported Apartheid South African racism examples and applies race-based laws and regulations to Indigenous Australians and to refugees. Thus in 2010 the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who had been elected with a huge majority in 2007,  was deposed in a pro-Zionist-led overnight Coup. The impetus for PM Rudd’s demise came from a $23 million Mining Industry campaign against his proposed Mining Tax  but the people who did the dirty work of deposing a democratically-elected Australian Prime Minister were mostly members of the extreme pro-Zionist faction of the Australian Labor Party (the ALP, aka the Apartheid Labor Party and the Apartheid Israel-supporting Labor Party) (see Antony Loewenstein, “Does the Israeli Lobby have blood on its hands in Australia?”: http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/07/02/does-the-zionist-lobby-have-blood-on-its-hands-in-australia/ ).

The racist, extreme right wing ALP is well-funded by pro-Zionists with some of this funding  notoriously coming from the proceeds of crime.  This is a great irony because  the Labor Government had no objection to former PM John Howard profiting from  his recently  published memoirs (PM Howard  had  illegally invaded Iraq and is thus complicit  in  2.7 million  post-invasion war related Iraqi deaths; see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ ) but referred the case of David Hicks to the Australian Federal Police under Australian “no profit from crime” laws (David Hicks has killed nobody, broke no Australian laws,   was abusively imprisoned and tortured by the  Americans in Guantanamo Bay for 5 years and has recently published his memoir “Guantanamo: My journey: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo:_My_Journey ).

In March 2010 a large number of decent, anti-racist Australian Jewish intellectuals  signed a petition against the racist and genocidal Israeli “law of return” that gives all Jews (as defined by the racist Zionists running Apartheid Israel) the “right” to live in Palestine with Israeli citizenship to the exclusion of 7 million Palestinians forbidden to live in the land inhabited continuously by their Palestinian forebears since the literal dawn of history.

According to outstanding Jewish Australian writer Antony Loewenstein “Some of the key signatories include world-renowned ethicist Peter Singer, actor Miriam Margolyes, legendary feminist campaigner Eva Cox, La Trobe University’s Dennis Altman, Monash University’s Andrew Benjamin, Sydney University’s David Goodman and John Docker, legal scholar GJ Lindell, best-selling author and journalist Antony Loewenstein, writers Susan Varga and Sara Dowse, ANU’s Ned Curthoys and many others” (see:

http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/03/03/prominent-australian-jews-including-peter-singer-reject-the-israeli-right-of-return/ ).

However the ABC has resolutely failed to report this remarkable, ethical statement by some of Australia ‘s most famous Jewish intellectuals in a continuing act of anti-Jewish anti-Semitic lying by omission by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden ABC. Thus a Search of “the entire ABC site” using the “ABC Search” function for the phrase “law of return” yields  4 reports, but ZERO (0) reportage of this important letter by these outstanding anti-racist Jewish Australian intellectuals: http://search.abc.net.au/search/search.cgi?form=simple&num_

ranks=20&collection=abcall&query=%22law+of+return%22 ).

The petition is reproduced below – this is what the Australian taxpayer-funded but Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden ABC does not wants its viewers, readers and listeners to see, read, hear, know about or think about .

“Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews

March 2010

We are Jews from Australia , who, like Jewish people throughout the world, have an automatic right to Israeli citizenship under Israel ‘s “law of return.” While this law may seem intended to enable a Jewish homeland, we submit that it is in fact a form of racist privilege that abets the colonial oppression of the Palestinians.

Today there are more than seven million Palestinian refugees around the world. Israel denies their right to return to their homes and land—a right recognized and undisputed by UN Resolution 194, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Meanwhile, we are invited to live on that same land simply because we are Jewish, thereby potentially taking the place of Palestinians who would dearly love to return to their ancestral lands.

We renounce this “right” to “return” offered to us by Israeli law. It is not right that we may “return” to a state that is not ours while Palestinians are excluded and continuously dispossessed.

Signed:

Professor Peter Singer – Princeton University

Miriam Margolyes (OBE) – renowned actor

Eva Cox (AO) – National Chair of the Women’s Electoral Lobby.

Professor Dennis Altman – Professor of Politics, La Trobe University

Professor Andrew Benjamin – Monash University

Sara Dowse – writer

GJ Lindell – Adjunct Professor of Law, University of Adelaide

Susan Varga – writer

Antony Loewenstein – writer, journalist, author of My Israel Question

Professor David SG Goodman – Professor of Chinese Politics, University of Sydney

Professor John Docker – Sydney University

Jean McClean – advisor to Vice-Chancellor at Victoria University on East-Timor

Dr Peter Slezak – University of New South Wales

Dr Tony Balint – Blue Horizon Clinic

Dr Ron Witton – University of Wollongong

Dr Ned Curthoys – Australian National University

Dr Rick Kuhn – Australian National University

Dr. Tamas Pataki

Russell Bancroft – Manager Industrial Relations, Government Branch

Alice Beauchamp

Toni Beauchamp

Wendy Crew

Bronwyn Dahlstrom

Nicole Erlich – PhD candidate, University of Queensland

Marshall Harris

David Hermolin

Sylvie Leber

Jeffrey Loewenstein

Stefan Moore

Martin Munz

Vivienne Porzsolt

Joe Rich

Margot Salom

Rene Tsukasov

Nic Witton.” [1].

[1]. Antony Loewenstein, “Prominent Australian Jews reject the Israeli “right of return”, Media release, 3 March 2010:

http://antonyloewenstein.com/2010/03/03/prominent-australian-jews-including-peter-singer-reject-the-israeli-right-of-return/ .

Summary and Conclusions.

All decent, anti-racist  folk will  applaud this courageous and ethical statement by these wonderful anti-racist, humanitarian  Jewish Australian intellectuals denouncing  and renouncing  the genocidal, racist Zionist (RZ)  “law of return”

For anti-racist Jews and indeed all anti-racist humanitarians the core moral messages from the Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation) and from the more general WW2 European Holocaust (30 million Slav, Jewish and Gypsy dead) are “zero tolerance for racism”, “never again to anyone”, “bear witness” and “zero tolerance for lying”.

In 1880 there were about 0.5 million Indigenous Palestinians. Of the  25,000 Jews in Palestine in 1880 half were immigrants (see:  http://www.palestineremembered.com/Acre/Palestine-Remembered/Story559.html and http://www.mideastweb.org/palpop.htm ).  Palestinian deaths  from war violence total about 80,000 since 1948 and about 100,000 since 1936 (see “Palestinian casualties of war”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_casualties_of_war ). However one must also consider avoidable Palestinian deaths from war-, expulsion- and occupation-imposed deprivation that now total about 1.4 million since 1948. Palestinian refugees  total over 7 million. This has been a Palestinian Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention.

Decent, anti-racist people will accordingly similarly applaud the words of outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Jared Diamond who in his best-selling book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin edition) enunciated the “moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people” – an injunction grossly violated by racist Zionist (RZ)-run Apartheid Israel and its racist, genocide-committing and genocide-ignoring US Alliance backers.

Racist Zionism is not simply a huge threat to Palestinians (1.5 million dead, 7 million refugees, 4.3 million without rights under Occupier guns in West Bank mini-Bantustans and the Gaza Concentration Camp, 6 million forbidden to even step foot in the land continuously inhabited by their forebears for thousands of years, only the adults of 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis are permitted to vote for the government ruling all of  Palestine, albeit as third class citizens in a race-based Apartheid Israel) –  it is also a huge threat to decent, anti-racist Jews around the world.

All decent, anti-racist, humanitarians must vigorously oppose: those supporting racist Zionism, Apartheid Israel and racist Western wars and occupations who are currently complicit in  0.7 million non-violent excess deaths annually and 12 million Muslim deaths since 1990 in the Zionist-backed US Alliance War on Muslims; continuing, racist perversion of human rights, humanitarian  values and rational discourse in the Western democracies; the ignoring of a worsening climate genocide (that may kill 10 billion non-Europeans this century through unaddressed man-made climate change); and egregious anti-Jewish anti-Semitism through utterly false identification of decent, anti-racist Jews with these appalling crimes.

Racist Zionist-beholden Australian media are not just anti-Arab anti-Semitic (by supporting  the ongoing Palestinian Genocide and the ongoing Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide that has killed 12 million Muslims in the last 2 decades) but are also anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by resolutely ignoring the opinions of outstanding  anti-racist Jewish scholars  (for such views from Hannah Arendt to Howard Zinn  see “Jews Against Racist Zionism”: https://sites.google.com/site/jewsagainstracistzionism/home ) and  by utterly falsely and dangerously conflating racist Zionism and its genocidal crimes with decent, anti-racist,  secular, liberal and Orthodox Jews.

The taxpayer-funded ABC is anti-Arab anti-Semitic through its  lying by omission and commission  over the Palestinian Genocide,  Iraqi Genocide, Afghan Genocide and Muslim Genocide (12 million Muslim war- and occupation-related deaths, 1990-2011) and anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by endangering decent anti-racist Jews and sidelining their opinions. The failure of the ABC to report the  “ Petition Against the Right of Return to Israel on Behalf of Australian Jews” signed  by outstanding anti-racist Australian Jewish intellectuals is a further instance of lying by omission by the Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)- beholden ABC (see “ABC Censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/abccensorship/ )  and of its  entrenched anti-Arab anti-Semitism and inherent anti-Jewish anti-Semitism that threatens Palestinians, Arabs,. Muslims and decent, anti-racist Jews.

By Dr Gideon Polya

28 December 2011

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003).

The visit by Arab League observers to Homs, Hama, Idlib, Deraa , the Damascus suburb of Douma and other conflict zones has become the focus of concerted demands for the Western powers to intervene militarily into the ongoing civil war in Syria.

The mission was endorsed by Syria, in line with an Arab League plan calling for the withdrawal of military forces, a halt to violence against civilians and the release of detainees.

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) initially responded with a media campaign designed to discredit the mission. Demonstrations were staged wherever the observers visited.

The Arab League monitors are clearly under orders from Washington to come up with a hostile report on the regime of President Bashir al-Assad. On Tuesday, the US State Department warned that “if the Syrian regime continues to resist and disregard Arab League efforts, the international community will consider other means to protect Syrian civilians.”

There is no reason to assume that the Arab League will disappoint the US. The head of the observers, Sudanese intelligence chief General Mustafa al-Dabi, has been denounced for his involvement in war crimes in Darfur, especially after he said the “situation seemed reassuring” on his initial visit to Homs. But Sudan’s Islamist government was given charge of the mission as reward for its support for the war to overthrow Colonel Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.

By Friday, amid mass opposition rallies following prayers in several cities, there was a marked change in tone towards the mission. Washington urged critics to allow the monitors to finish their work and businessman Rami Abdul Rahman, head of the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, described the Arab League’s presence as “the only ray of light” for Syrians.

Foreign Policy magazine this week wrote that “top officials in President Barack Obama’s administration are quietly preparing options for how to assist the Syrian opposition,” including the option of setting up a no-fly zone. The US National Security Council (NSC) “has begun an informal, quiet interagency process,” led by NSC Senior Director Steve Simon.

In mid-December, former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) whistle-blower Sibel Edmonds wrote that US troops have been stationed on the Jordanian and Syrian borders.

Foreign Policy cites a policy paper of the Syrian National Council, entitled “Safe Area for Syria,” which lays out the argument for armed intervention. The magazine fails to explain that the paper was produced by the Strategic Research and Communication Centre, whose head, Ausama Monajed, was previously in charge of Barada TV, a London-based US government-funded satellite network.

An Arab front for military operations with the aim of deposing Assad is considered politically expedient by Washington and other Western powers. This would deprive their ultimate target, Iran, of its main regional ally and help consolidate US hegemony of the entire Middle East, to the detriment of Russia and China.

SNC head Burhan Ghalioun has made clear that the SNC understands the Arab League plan to be a diversionary tactic behind which imperialist intervention is being prepared. He urged the Arab League and the United Nations “to defend Syrians by establishing isolated and secure areas inside Syria.”

The Arab League “plan to defuse the crisis” is a “good” plan,” he said, “but I do not believe the Arab League really has the means” to enforce it. “It is better if the UN Security Council takes this (Arab League) plan, adopts it and provides the means for its application. That would give it more force.”

Events in Syria closely mirror the run-up to the military campaign to depose Gaddafi in Libya, with the SNC acting as a front for the operations of US, British and French forces and those of the Gulf regimes.

On December 27, the right-wing Israeli web site DEBKAfile alleged that Qatar was building up a “Sunni intervention force of Libyan, Iraqi terrorists against Assad.”

It wrote, “The new highly mobile force boosts the anti-Assad Free Syrian Army, whose numbers have jumped to 20,000 fighters, armed and funded by Qatar and now forming into military battalions and brigades at their bases in Turkey… the Qatari and Saudi rulers approved a crash program for the Qatari chief of staff, Maj.-Gen Hamas Ali al-Attiya, to weld this mobile intervention Sunni Muslim force out of Al Qaeda-linked operatives for rapid deployment on the Turkish-Syrian border.”

DEBKAfile reports that the force numbers 2,500, including 1,000 members of the Islamic Fighting Group in Libya (IFGL) and 1,000 operatives of the Iraqi Ansar al-Sunna.

The report cannot be verified, but it is in line with statements made by Britain’s Sir David Richards, chief of the defence staff, to the Royal United Service Institute in London this month. He insisted that the “key” to the success of the Libyan intervention, providing a model for future UK foreign policy, was “integrating the Qataris, Emiratis and Jordanians into the operation.”

These countries had made up the key land element of the war in Libya, Richards said. “Without them and their defence chiefs’ leadership,” he declared, “especially the huge understanding they brought to the campaign, it is unlikely that the NTC’s [National Transitional Council] militias could have successfully acted as the land element without which the right outcome would have been impossible.”

Qatar first admitted its role in providing ground troops to Libya in late October. Chief-of-Staff Major-General Hamad bin Ali al-Atiya, said, “We were among [the NTC] and the numbers of Qataris on the ground were hundreds in every region. Training and communications had been in Qatari hands… We acted as the link between the rebels and NATO forces.”

The Wall Street Journal on October 17 reported: “With the blessing of Western intelligence agencies, Qatar flew at least 18 weapons shipments in all to anti-Gaddafi rebel forces this spring and summer,” the majority directly to “militias run by Islamist leaders.”

Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Jordan were all also active in the Libyan intervention.

Back in November, Richards told Sky News that Britain had contingency plans should Iran’s nuclear program or a deteriorating situation in Syria necessitate action. “We’ve got a lot of plans in the locker, and we talk to other nations who would inevitably be involved in them so that if ever the situation deteriorated to the stage where armed force would have to be used, we could do it quickly and efficiently,” he said.

On December 29, Reuters issued an eyewitness account of the real situation on the ground in Homs. He describes a “vicious sectarian fight … tearing Homs apart and overshadowing peaceful protest. Roads are blocked with checkpoints and some neighbourhoods are carved up by trenches. Kidnappings are an almost daily occurrence.”

The Free Syrian Army “launch attacks with increasing frequency,” Reuters wrote, while in Alawite neighbourhoods armed men and the security forces have formed their own squads.

By Chris Marsden

31 December 2011

WSWS.org

A nuclear scientist who supervised a department at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility has been killed by a magnetic bomb placed on his car by two assailants in northern Tehran, Iranian media reported.

The attack strongly resembles earlier killings of scientists working on the country’s controversial nuclear programme.

The bomb explosion killed Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz facility in central Iran, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Roshan, 32, was inside the Iranian-assembled Peugeot 405 car together with two others when the bomb expoded near Gol Nabi Street, Fars reported.

Fars described the explosion as a “terrorist attack” targeting Roshan, a graduate of the prestigious Sharif University of Technology in Tehran.

“The deputy governor of Tehran is blaming [the attack] on Israel, saying it wants to destabilise the country ahead of presidential elections in March,” Al Jazeera’s Dorsa Jabbari said.

“But it’s unclear as to how, in such a secure city as Tehran, such attacks can take place over and over again.”

Previous attacks

Ahmadi Roshan was “working as the deputy in charge of commerce at the Natanz [uranium enrichment] site”, said a posting on Sharif University’s website. “He was working on project of making polymeric membrane for separating gas.”

A similar bomb explosion on January 12, 2010, killed Masoud Ali Mohammadi, a senior physics professor at Tehran University, when a bomb-rigged motorcycle exploded near his car as he was about to leave for work.

In November 2010, a pair of back-to-back bomb attacks in different parts of the capital killed one nuclear scientist and wounded another.

The slain scientist, Majid Shahriari, was a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran and co-operated with the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran.

The wounded scientist, Fereidoun Abbasi, was almost immediately appointed head of Iran’s atomic agency.

And in July 2011, motorcycle-riding gunmen killed Darioush Rezaeinejad, an electronics student. Other reports identified him as a scientist involved in suspected Iranian attempts to make nuclear weapons.

Rezaeinejad allegedly participated in developing high-voltage switches, a key component in setting off the explosions needed to trigger a nuclear warhead.

Imad Khadduri, a nuclear expert, told Al Jazeera, “There are hundreds if not thousands of such scientists”, beyond the five targeted in recent attacks.

While he said the string of assassinations was “100 per cent Mossad”, he called the victims “small fish”.

‘Unnatural’ events

Wednesday’s assassination is “evidence of [foreign] government-sponsored terrorism” but will not stop Iran’s nuclear programme, Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi told state television.

“Today those who claim to be combatting terrorism have targeted Iranian scientists,” he said. “They should know that Iranian scientists are more determined than ever in striding towards Iran’s progress.”

The US and Israel say Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons technology. Iran denies the allegations, saying that its programme is intended for peaceful purposes.

There was no immediate word from officials in Israel, which has always declined comment on previous such bombings.

On Tuesday, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz, Israel’s military chief of staff, was quoted as saying that Iran should expect more “unnatural” events in 2012.

His comments, to a closed-door parliamentary panel, were widely interpreted as alluding to previous acts of sabotage.

“For Iran, 2012 is a critical year in combining the continuation of its nuclearisation, internal changes in the Iranian leadership, continuing and growing pressure from the international community and things which take place in an unnatural manner,” Gantz was quoted as saying.

By Al Jazeera

11 January 2012

@ Al Jazeera

“Many parents who wouldn’t think of letting their children see the above-named movie wouldn’t think twice if their children joined the Marines.

Oh, but this is just a few bad apples in the military [as Sec. of State Hillary Clinton said]. This has been said so often and for so long that it’s getting to the point where so many apples are bad it is hard to find a good one. You know, the good ones who just kill for the US government without killing civilians for sport, bombing wedding parties, carrying out battlefield executions, killing hundreds with cluster bombs, covering up botched raids, posing for pictures with their victims, murdering civilians, and keeping body parts of their victims “

Some day in the perhaps not so distant future, after Americans are humiliated by the defeat of their government’s attempt to control and exploit every bit of the planet and its inhabitants, they will be finally free to rehabilitate themselves as the Germans did after suffering through their Nazi era.

US military history includes invading, occupying and usually bombing and often torturing (in chronological order), the nations of Native Americans, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Samoa, Japan (Commodore Perry) China, Nicaragua, China, Fiji, Uruguay, China, Panama, China, Nicaragua, Uruguay, Turkey, Paraguay, Angola, Columbia, Japan, Panama, Mexico, China, Colombia, Hawaiian Islands, Nicaragua, Formosa, Chile, Hawaii, Brazil, Nicaragua, China, Korea, Colombia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Nicaragua, Samoa, Philippines, China, Panama, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Honduras, China, Honduras, Nicaragua, China, Mexico, Haiti (for 19 years), China, Dominican Republic (for 8 years), Cuba (for 3 years), Mexico, Panama, Soviet Union (for 2 years), Panama, Nicaragua, China, Korea (3 years in the north 60 years troops garrisoned in the South), Thailand, Laos (23 years), Congo, Vietnam (30 years), Dominican Republic, Congo, Cambodia (5 years), Cambodia, Lebanon, Iran (8 year collaboration with Iraq invasion), Zaire, Iran, El Salvador, Libya, Lebanon, Honduras, Chad, Grenada, Libya, Bolivia, Libya, Panama, Colombia, Philippines, Panama, Iraq, Zaire, Kuwait, Iraq, Somalia, Iraq, Macedonia (all listed DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY — NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND) and going on from 1993, Serbia, Kosovo, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Pakistan, Libya. [This list does not include a number twice as great of US military incursions solely to protect Americans and their property, nor laudable protective occupations of nations threatened with Nazi invasion.]

But, more importantly, sadly and unfortunately for a clear picture of a consistently inhumane US foreign policy, this official list does not include CIA sponsored violence fomenting the overthrow of governments all around the world unfavorable to unjust and manipulative private US investments, and nefarious activity within almost every single nation on earth arranging the marginalization of uncooperative patriot leaders.

With the now overwhelming control of news and information right down into primary schools by a Western, largely white, consensus of investors, even when horrific facts of US crimes against humanity come to light, such desperately needed info is media managed into insignificance for a psyop bombarded TV watching America public as well as for the great population watching via satellite transmission in all industrialized commercialized and materialist programed societies abroad.

Deeply buried in the tangle of distracting spectacular entertainment is the fact that most of America’s wealthy families backed, invested in and collaborated with Adolph Hitler, almost every major corporation functioning right up to, and some even during, the German war in Europe; that during the US participation in WW II, a million German and Japanese homes were targeted with fire-bombs, atom bombs dropped on women and children, and since the war threats to nuclear bomb again elsewhere made on fourteen occasions. Rationalized or just shrugged off are its genocidal slave trade and slavery, its Wounded Knee, No Gun Ri, Sinchon, My Lai, Fallujah style masscres over America’s two-hundred and twelve years short history; its Guantanamo, its Abu Ghraib, its frantic terrorism by its military and now unmanned drones in the poor former colonial world, its super in size, unequaled in history, investment in production and distribution of weapons of mass distruction; its placement of US military bases to cover the globe into protect those, what Martin Luther King Jr. called, “unjust predatory investments” creating and sustaining wars for their maintenance; its preparations for a world war of incrementally greater profits than the previous ones; its threat through further ‘development’ and mindless material progress to the very physical survival of the planet and its species.

The advice of the flower children of the 60s, to “just drop out” of US imperialism, was similar to that of Jack Keroac of the Dharma bums of the earlier ‘Beat Generation’, so influenced by black jazz musician greats, seemed to echo Jack London and Walt Whitman’s call to an reappreciation of nature and humanity ‘on the road’ in true individual freedom to avoid spiritual death in stifling conformity to an inculcated ideal of desperate greed.

Of course a similar case can me made for citizens of European empires having to choose to be on the side of humanity or on the side of an empire persecuting humanity for plunder, such as, especially, the British and French so recently challenged witnessing their empires bomb wealthy Libya into submission to their proxy armed insurgents, who were also those of the US, the EU and the international community of nations, (read international community of predatory investors), currently focused on destroying the intolerable independence of Syria.

Americans like Tom Pain, Eugene Debs, W.E.B. Debois, Helen Keller, Paul Robeson, and to a great extent Thomas Jefferson refused to choose and sought to fight with an intense aim to change their US into something more intelligent, more sane, more moral and acceptable. They fought surrounding corruption, amorality and misanthropic materialism in the tradition of the anarchist heroes of Europe: Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Victor Hugo, Emile Zola, E. F. Schumacher and Ivan Illich in the Americas, just as those rebels of the ancient world, Zeno, Lao Tzu, Mo Ti, Sidhartha Gautama (Buddha), and Jesus fought against stultifying and imprisoning imperial dictatorships of body and mind.

Shall Americans choose between sanity or empire, or choose not to choose but to change America?

Or remain bent out of shape, their backs twisted.

By Jay Janson

13 January 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Jay Janson, 80, is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer, who has lived and worked on all the continents and whose articles on media have been published in China, Italy, England, India and the US, and now resides in New York City. Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his.

An American past in an Israeli future for an ever present and brutal occupation

Happy Christmas Mr President or may I call you Barack this Yule Tide? As you know “Christmas is the day that holds all time together” (Alexander Smith) certainly as you rustle through your Christmas stocking and wrestle with your conscience perhaps to find as you dig deep in both and past ‘hegemonic imperatives’ an olive twig or a so-called ‘peace process’? Perhaps not. But as you dig, can you hear the whispers? No. They are not the whispers from the Presidents of Christmas past, we will come to them; no? You are not listening attentively Mr President; that’s because you’ve been genuflecting on the Christmas message of that other great statesman Prime Minister Netanyahu, “we are living in a time of great uncertainty and instability in the Middle East and Israel , throughout this instability, remains a beacon of religious freedom and pluralism.” Wow. On what rock is Israel built and how Netanyahu bestrides it as America holds it, for “As the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser” (Plato). And which is which?

No Mr President the whispers are coming from the stones of Palestine and Israel and they do “cry out” for past Presidents have remained quiet behind lofty rhetoric and where are they now? “It was [is] the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.”(Dickens). You’re a “keen student of history” Mr President what about the human condition and the children lost to a sordid history created by Israel and paid for by American tax dollars? Below are some of their names, the stone told me to tell you their names. God Bless you and God Bless America . Which way are you going?

Remember these Children Mr President:

• “Yael Ohana, 11, of Hamra settlement, killed by Palestinian gunfire while in her home. 6 February 2002
• “Fadi Tayseer al-Azazi, 16, of Rafaha, Gaza , killed by IDF shelling to his chest. 6 February 2002 .”
• “Total Israeli Deaths since September 2002 125” children
• “Total Palestinian Deaths since September 2002” 1470 children

The Stoned

The American stone cast, that gave rise to the ripples that became the waves that is the American Israeli tsunami that engulfs Palestine today, was even in the beginning unusually dense, in the sense obtuse. Quarried and romanced in the USA this stone was to be formed, scuffed then ruthlessly scored by matchless Zionist discontent and ambition, tossed, retrieved, polished and tossed again by successive American Presidents into the same murky American Zionist Israeli foreign policy sea. The rising waves, Israeli aggression and ambition, supported by Zionist America and Presidential weakness, merciless waves beating against the blameless lives of countless Palestinian children past and present and their valiant resistance through the lengthening shadows and dark hours of a brutal occupation as the international community crept decade after supine decade to rectify this grave and ongoing crime against humanity with all the energy of a sloth on diazepam.

American Presidential rhetoric the becoming edict that led to endless Israeli atrocities “unlawful Israeli behaviour [supported by US Aid] that start[ed] out as “facts” have over time been transformed into “conditions”, or in the words of the American Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, “subsequent developments” that are treated [unlawfully] as essentially irreversible.” Moreover, “USAID and American taxpayers [are] financing, and thereby further entrenching, the Israeli de facto annexation of the West Bank .” (Richard Falk, UNHRC, 16 th Session, Agenda Item 7, A/ HRC /16/72, 10 January 2011 ), and the ruinous blockade and the deaths of Palestinian children.

For these two states America and Israel have been / are up to no good; are, in this criminality together, up to their necks “because everything that Israel does is done up to the limits that the United States supports and authorizes. So it’s U.S. Israeli atrocities.” (Noam Chomsky, Power And Terror ). America and Israel justifying, “represent[ing] the institutionalization of a system of power in which justice is inoperative and its perversion hidden in clouds of rhetoric and obfuscation.” and where, “The rule of law implicitly applies only to others.” (Edward S. Herman and David Peterson)

Successive American and Israeli Administrations, each, an apostate to the other: “See!” he said to all the people “This stone will be a witness against us. It has heard all the words the lord has said to us. It will be a witness against you if you are untrue to your God.” Joshua 24:27.

All the Presidents then

President John Adams , his mind high on effulgent heroic, saw conquest, envisioning Mordeca Manue Noah in 1819 “Marching with them [the Israelites] into Judea & making a conquest of that country & restoring your nation to the Dominion of it”. An “independent nation” thought John Quincy Adams, because, they deserved declared Abraham Lincoln a “leg up”. All saw the stone that would be a rock and declared it an American good. And the die and the dying in the stone were cast. Time then, wrapped around the stone, ran through it, became beloved in an American Hegemonic Zionist dream warping space and time, imprisoning Palestinians in a boxed ‘continuum’. An American red hot wax seal legitimising the continuum making it ‘official’ in 1948 as the Ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the stealing bit by bit of ‘Mandated Palestine’ had begun and in ferocious fashion. The Israeli aggression rewarded with a hundred thousand US dollars in 1949 and Israel ‘s aggression rewarded with billions of dollars in 2011.

The Children of Palestine in 1948 were standing in an American Israeli wind tunnel they are standing in it today. And as we come back from the future and indeed as we move from the past to the present, we see the pernicious results of successive Presidential and illegal leg ups the art of hubris and a continuum of failure. Here then an American Presidential Israeli nightmare and the subtitles of the Palestinian river of suffering that runs through it:

• “ 14 th November 2011 , Israeli aircraft attacked a small naval post building in North Gaza district. As a result, one police officer was killed and ten persons were injured, including one woman and six police officers.”
• “In 2009 in North Gaza, Gaza, Dair El Balah, Khan Younis, and Rafah, 1061 Palestinians lost there lives to Israeli aggression. In the Gaza strip in that same year, 323 children and 104 women were killed by the occupying forces.”

Remember this Child Mr President:

• “Basel Muhammad Nafe abu-Edwan, 14 killed by an unexploded IDF ordinance while he and his brother were herding sheep near their home.” Died 27th January 2011 .

The stone was picked up and skimmed across the surface of the brimming Zionist sea by the deft wrist of Woodrow Wilson 3 rd of March 1919 in reaction to the Balfour Declaration, the text of which was presented to him for approval before publication, “The allied nations with fullest concurrence of our government and people are agreed that in Palestine shall be laid the foundation of a Jewish commonwealth.” Then President Warren G. Harding grabbed the stone from the Zionist air stating “the Hebrew people restored to their historic national home,” would enter a “new and yet greater phase of their contribution to the advance of humanity.”

• “Number of houses demolished in Gaza strip, since the beginning of the intifada until the end 2009. North Gaza , houses 5399, residents, 54900. Gaza houses, 7060, residents,73149. Dair El Balah, houses 1004, residents, 8925. Khan Younis, houses, 1596, residents, 12247. Rafah, houses, 3774, residents, 32284. Total houses 18833, Total residents, 181505.”
• “The number of damaged water wells. North Gaza , 120. Gaza , 154. Dair El Balah, 62. Khan Younis, 23. Rafah, 14. Total, 373.”
• “2008 Women and children killed by Israel in the Gaza Strip. Children, 107, women, 23.”

Remember this child Mr President:

• “Shiran Ismail Abdullah abu-Shawareb 11, of Nuserat refugee camp, Gaza died of heart problems at Nasr paediatric Hospital in Gaza , which lacked necessary equipment, after Israel denied her entry for medical treatment. Doctors had requested transfer to an Israeli hospital on Dec. 27 [2010] On Jan. 10, believing permission for a transfer had been granted, Shiran’s father took her to the Erez checkpoint where Israel again denied her entry.” Died 15 th January 2008

The stone retrieved by Coolidge was polished with expressed “sympathy with the deep and intense longing which finds such fine expression in the Jewish National Homeland in Palestine.” then caressed in short sighted rhetoric by President Hoover who as other Presidents before and after him couldn’t see around histories sharp corner or dint want to saying 1932, “I am interested to learn that a group of distinguished men and women is to be formed to spread knowledge and appreciation of the rehabilitation which is going forward in Palestine under Jewish auspices.”

• “Number of damaged industrial establishments by IOF’s, in 2006 19, 2005 7, 2004 86, 2003 77.”
• “Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip; 2006 531, 2005 99, 2004 646, 2003 398.”
• “Number of Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip (women, children) 2006 children 115, women 34, 2005 children 32, women 1, 2004 children 156, women 10, 2003 children 81, women 17.”

Remember this child Mr President:

• “Muhammad Jaber hassan Adila Said, 15, of osreen, near Nablus , killed by IDF gunfire to his chest.” January 2004.

Franklin Roosevelt viewed the stone empathetically, could feel its vital pulse, perhaps he had a pet name for the stone perhaps it was ineluctable? Or was it inexorable he had in mind as he sat to write to Senator Tydings on October 19, 1938 as The Nakba loomed. “I have on numerous occasions, as you know, expressed my sympathy in the establishment of a National Home for the Jews in Palestine and, despite the set backs caused by the disorders there during the last few years, I have been heartened by the progress which has been made and by remarkable accomplishments of the Jewish settlers in that country.”

• “Number of Palestinians killed by Israel occupying forces in the Gaza Strip, 2003 North Gaza 89, Gaza 118, Dair El Balah 75, Khan Younis 42, Rafah 72.”
• “Palestinians killed by Israeli occupying forces in the Gaza strip (women children) 2002 children 94, women 25, 2001 children 69, women 4, 2000 children 38 women 0.”

Remember this child Mr President

• “Muhammad Jamal Muhammad al-Durrah, 12 of Burejj refugee camp, Gaza , killed by IDF gunfire to his chest as his father tried to protect him during a demonstration at Netzarim Junction.”

Then shining with Zionist zeal, it was to morph into a rock in 1948 enfolded in to Israel’s emboldened clenched fist, and as the British looked the other way, smashed Palestine leaving Palestinians between it and a hard place, supported by intellectuals with nothing in their heads but the propaganda they were fed, and a Presidential endorsement. Eleven minutes after Israel ‘s proclamation of independence President Harry Truman declared, “I had faith in Israel before it was established; I have faith in it now.” He further said in 1952 “I believe it has a glorious future before it- not just another sovereign nation, but an embodiment of the great ideals of our civilization.”

• “The majority of these [Palestinian] children were killed and injured while going about normal daily activities, such as going to school, playing, shopping, or simply being in their homes. Sixty-four percent of children killed during the first six months of 2003 died as a result of Israeli air and ground attacks, or from indiscriminate fire from Israeli soldiers”.(Catherine Cook)

Remember these children Mr President:

• “ Ophir Rahum, 16, of Ashkelon, killed by Palestinian gunfire in al-Birah after being led to believe he was meeting an internet acquaintance, 17 th January 2001.”

• “Omar Farouq Khaled 11,of al-Bireh, died of head wounds sustained Jan.7 2001 from IDF gunfire during a demonstration.”

And after 1948, a Presidential stream of consciousness compounding the problem for Palestine with unquestioning and ever increasing aid for Israel ‘s gluttony, her voracious appetite to oppress and appropriate, and kill those who would thwart her:

Eisenhower: “our forces saved the remnant of the Jewish People of Europe for a new life and a new hope in the reborn Israel . Kennedy: “ Israel was not created to disappear- Israel will endure and flourish.” Nixon: “The United States stands by its friends. Israel is one of its friends Peace can be based only on agreement between parties and agreement can only be achieved only through negotiations between them. The United States will not impose the terms of peace. [But] The United States is prepared to supply military equipment necessary to support the efforts of friendly governments, like Israel ‘s to defend the safety of their people.” Carter: “a few days ago in a conversation with about 30 members of the House of Representatives, I said that I would rather commit suicide than hurt Israel .” President Regan : Israel exists; it has a right to exist in peace behind secure and defensible borders; and it has a right to demand of its neighbours that they recognize those facts.” Bush Sr: “The friendship, the alliance between the United States and Israel is strong and solid, built upon a foundation of shared democratic values.” Clinton : “The United States admires Israel for all that it has overcome and for all it has accomplished.” And President George W. Bush: “ Israel is a small country that has lived under threat throughout its existence. At the first meeting of my National Security Council, I told them a top foreign policy priority is the safety and security of Israel .”

Remember this child Mr President:

• “Sara Abdul-Azim Abdul-Haq Hasan, 18 months, of Sarah, near Salfit, killed by Israeli settler gunfire to her head while riding with her father in a car. 1 st October 2000 .”

And last but not the least short sighted lacking historical memory, also will as did the others President Barack Hussein Obama: “The American people and the Israeli peoples share a faith in the future and believe that democracies can shape their own destinies and that opportunities should be available to all. Throughout its own extraordinary history, Israel has given life to that promise.”

Remember this child Mr President:

• “ Haitham Ahmad Mustafa Maruf, 13 of Beit Lahiya, Gaza , died in Shifa Hospital , Gaza , of wounds sustained from an IDF drone attack while working on his family farm 29 August 2011 .”

By Clive Hambidge

28 December, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Clive Hambridge is the Human Development Director at Facilitate Global. He can be contacted at: clive.hambidge@facilitateglobal.org

China’s state-owned National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) signed a $700 million oil exploration contract with the Afghan government last week, the first foreign company to do so in many decades. Mining Minister Wahidullah Shahrani hailed the deal as “historic,” saying it was “the first time that Afghanistan has signed a great contract for the country’s oil exploration.”

The agreement will intensify geopolitical rivalries in Central Asia as the major powers compete for access to vast mineral and energy resources. It will draw Beijing closer into conflict with the ongoing US-led occupation of Afghanistan, as well as with China’s regional rival, India.

The CNPC will form a joint venture with Afghan partner Watan Group in the northern provinces of Sar-e Pul and Faryab to drill three oil blocks in the Amu Darya Basin. First surveyed by Soviet geologists in the 1960s, the basin has proven reserves of 87 million barrels of oil, although both the Chinese and Afghan sides believe that the actual deposits are much larger. In total, Afghanistan is estimated to have some 1.6 billion barrels of oil.

The project is expected to pay Kabul $5 billion over 10 years, with 70 percent of profits from oil and gas sales going to the Afghan government. In addition, the CNPC will pay 15 percent royalties, 30 percent corporate taxes and rents for using Afghan land.

The CNPC’s terms were considerably more generous than rival bidders such as British Tethys Petroleum, which said it was unable to compete with the Chinese corporation, because “it is the representative of a government and it was able to offer terms that were non-commercial.”

The CNPC’s primary aim is to ensure oil supplies to China. The three oil blocks are only 640 kilometres from the border of China’s western Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, a staging base for Chinese companies to build pipelines throughout Central Asia.

With the backing of cash-rich state banks, other Chinese companies are pushing into Afghanistan, which according to a survey by Pentagon in 2010, holds mineral resources worth $1 trillion, including oil, copper, gold and lithium.

In 2007, the 44 percent state-owned China Metallurgical Group (CMG) paid $2.9 billion—the largest foreign investment in Afghan history—for the Mes Aynak copper mine, in Logar Province. The price was 70 percent higher than that offered by the second-placed bidder, Canada’s Hunter Dickinson Inc. Moreover, the CMG offered a 400-megawatt power plant, a coal mine to fuel it and a smelter for the copper, plus an 800-kilometre rail line, bringing the total investment to $3.5 billion. The Afghan government allocated 1,500 National Police officers to guard the mine.

The US has tacitly allowed China to establish a presence in Afghanistan, largely because such investments could improve the country’s financial self-sufficiency. At present, 90 percent of Afghan government spending depends on foreign aid. After the Aynak copper mine deal, Taliban insurgents stepped up their activities in Logar province, prompting the US to send 2,000 troops to the region.

Because of the unstable security situation, progress on Chinese investment projects has been slow over the past few years. As a result, China is completely dependent on the US and allied forces to provide protection, which could change if relations with Washington worsen.

In 2001, China implicitly supported the US invasion of Afghanistan in the name of the “war on terror,” in the hope that it would stifle the Islamic fundamentalists connected to separatist tendencies among Xinjiang’s Muslim minorities. However, China and Russia oppose a protracted US military presence in their “backyard”—a key strategic energy-rich region in the Eurasian heartland. In 2001, Beijing and Moscow also formed the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) with four Central Asian republics, purportedly to combat “terrorism, extremism and separatism,” while in fact seeking to counter the US. The SCO has conducted joint military exercises in recent years.

A section of the US ruling elite has been critical of allowing Chinese corporations to “freeload” in Afghanistan, relying on American military protection. Strategic commentator Robert D. Kaplan wrote in 2009: “The problem is that while America is sacrificing its blood and treasure, the Chinese will reap the benefits. The whole direction of America’s military and diplomatic effort is toward an exit strategy, whereas the Chinese hope to stay and profit.”

Kaplan also argues for US dominance over the Indian Ocean, so as to be able to cut off China’s shipping lanes for oil and raw materials from the Middle East and Africa. In order to respond to the threat of such a US naval blockade, China is seeking to expand access to oil and gas in Central Asia and the Middle East via land routes

China’s “construction” assistance to Kabul of $200 million since 2001 is dwarfed by India’s $1.3 billion in aid, making New Delhi the biggest donor. Washington has backed India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, because India occupies an increasingly crucial position in Washington’s strategic calculations as a counterweight to China.

With Washington’s backing, India and Afghanistan signed a strategic partnership agreement last October. The pact will ensure that New Delhi plays a major role in safeguarding American interests in Afghanistan after the formal NATO withdrawal in 2014, paving the way for India to train and equip Afghan security forces.

Within weeks of signing the security agreement, Kabul granted rights to an Indian government-backed steel consortium to develop the Hajigak iron ore deposit between the Bamyan and Wardak provinces. With 1.8 billion metric tonnes of reserves, it is Asia’s largest untapped iron ore deposit. The consortium plans to spend $11 billion to develop the mine, including the construction of a steel mill, power plant and transport links. The group also proposes to build a 900-kilometre railway line from Bamyan to Zahedan, across the border in Iran, at a cost of $4.3 billion, from where ore will be transported back to India.

India’s growing presence in Afghanistan is fuelling tensions with its neighbouring rival Pakistan, as well as with China. India’s press last week revealed a supposedly “secret” intelligence report warning that China, Islamabad’s key ally, plans to use or build military bases in northern Pakistan.

China’s quest to secure access to Afghanistan’s untapped oil resources will intensify the scramble for control over Central Asia. Given the reckless US escalation of what has become the AfPak war, the rivalry could evolve into a far more dangerous conflagration.

By John Chan

10 January 2012

@ WSWS.org

“War with Iran is already here,” wrote a leading Israeli commentator recently, describing “the combination of covert warfare and international pressure” being applied to Iran.

Although not mentioned, the “strategic prize” of the first stage of this war on Iran is Syria; the first campaign in a much wider sectarian power-bid. “Other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself,” Saudi King Abdullah was reported to have said last summer, “nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria.” [1]

By December, senior United States officials were explicit about their regime change agenda for Syria: Tom Donilon, the US National Security Adviser, explained that the “end of the [President Bashar al-]Assad regime would constitute Iran’s greatest setback in the region yet – a strategic blow that will further shift the balance of power in the region against Iran.”

Shortly before, a key official in terms of operationalizing this policy, Under Secretary of State for the Near East Jeffrey Feltman, had stated at a congressional hearing that the US would “relentlessly pursue our two-track strategy of supporting the opposition and diplomatically and financially strangling the [Syrian] regime until that outcome is achieved”. [2]

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region.

The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – “Which Path to Persia?” [3] – continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.

A rereading of it, together with the more recent “Towards a Post-Assad Syria” [4] (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the “Paths to Persia” report with the same key objective: regime change.

The authors of these reports include, among others, John Hannah and Martin Indyk, both former senior neo-conservative officials from the George W Bush/Dick Cheney administration, and both advocates for regime change in Syria. [5] Not for the first time are we seeing a close alliance between US/British neo-cons with Islamists (including, reports show [6], some with links to al-Qaeda) working together to bring about regime change in an “enemy” state.

Arguably, the most important component in this struggle for the “strategic prize” has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a “killing machine” [7] led by the “monster” [8] Assad.

Whereas in Libya, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) claimed it had “no confirmed reports of civilian casualties” because, as the New York Times wrote recently, “the alliance had created its own definition for ‘confirmed’: only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed”.

“But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations,” the Times wrote, “its casualty tally by definition could not budge – from zero”. [9]

In Syria, we see the exact opposite: the majority of Western mainstream media outlets, along with the media of the US’s allies in the region, particularly al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV channels, are effectively collaborating with the “regime change” narrative and agenda with a near-complete lack of questioning or investigation of statistics and information put out by organizations and media outlets that are either funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance – the very same countries instigating the regime change project in the first place.

Claims of “massacres”, “campaigns of rape targeting women and girls in predominantly Sunni towns” [10] “torture” and even “child-rape” [11] are reported by the international press based largely on two sources – the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCCs) – with minimal additional checking or verification.

Hiding behind the rubric – “we are not able to verify these statistics” – the lack of integrity in reporting by the Western mainstream media has been starkly apparent since the onset of events in Syria. A decade after the Iraq war, it would seem that no lessons from 2003 – from the demonization of Saddam Hussein and his purported weapons of mass destruction – have been learnt.

Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the “regime change” alliance.

The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams [12] allocated US$130 billion to “palliate the masses” of the Arab Spring).

What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, “facts”, and often exaggerated claims of “massacres” and even recently “genocide”.

Although it claims to be based in its director’s house [13], the Observatory has been described as the “front office” of a large media propaganda set-up run by the Syrian opposition and its backers. The Russian Foreign Ministry [14] stated starkly:

The agenda of the [Syrian] transitional council [is] composed in London by the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights … It is also there where pictures of ‘horror’ in Syria are made to stir up hatred towards Assad’s regime.

The Observatory is not legally registered either as a company or charity in the United Kingdom, but operates informally; it has no office, no staff and its director is reportedly awash with funding.

It receives its information, it says, from a network of “activists” inside Syria; its English-language website is a single page with al-Jazeera instead hosting a minute-by-minute live blog page for it since the outset of protests. [15]

The second, the LCCs, are a more overt part of the opposition’s media infrastructure, and their figures and reporting is similarly encompassed only [16] within the context of this main narrative: in an analysis of their daily reports, I couldn’t find a single reference to any armed insurgents being killed: reported deaths are of “martyrs”, “defector soldiers”, people killed in “peaceful demonstrations” and similar descriptions.

The third is al-Jazeera, whose biased role in “reporting” the Awakenings has been well documented. Described by one seasoned media analyst [17] as the “sophisticated mouthpiece of the state of Qatar and its ambitious emir”, al-Jazeera is integral to Qatar’s “foreign-policy aspirations”.

Al-Jazeera has, and continues, [18] to provide technical support, equipment, hosting and “credibility” to Syrian opposition activists and organizations. Reports show that as early as March 2011, al-Jazeera was providing messaging and technical support to exiled Syrian opposition activists [19] , who even by January 2010 were co-ordinating their messaging activities from Doha.

Nearly 10 months on, however, and despite the daily international media onslaught, the project isn’t exactly going to plan: a YouGov poll commissioned by the Qatar Foundation [20] showed last week that 55% of Syrians do not want Assad to resign and 68% of Syrians disapprove of the Arab League sanctions imposed on their country.

According to the poll, Assad’s support has effectively increased since the onset of current events – 46% of Syrians felt Assad was a “good” president for Syria prior to current events in the country – something that certainly doesn’t fit with the false narrative being peddled.

As if trumpeting the success of their own propaganda campaign, the poll summary concludes:

The majority of Arabs believe Syria’s President Basher al-Assad should resign in the wake of the regime’s brutal treatment of protesters … 81% of Arabs [want] President Assad to step down. They believe Syria would be better off if free democratic elections were held under the supervision of a transitional government. [21]

One is left wondering who exactly is Assad accountable to – the Syrian people or the Arab public? A blurring of lines that might perhaps be useful as two main Syrian opposition groups have just announced [22] that while they are against foreign military intervention, they do not consider “Arab intervention” to be foreign.

Unsurprisingly, not a single mainstream major newspaper or news outlet reported the YouGov poll results – it doesn’t fit their narrative.

In the UK, the volunteer-run Muslim News [23] was the only newspaper to report the findings; yet only two weeks before in the immediate aftermath of the suicide explosions in Damascus, both the Guardian [24], like other outlets, within hours of the explosions were publishing sensational, unsubstantiated reports from bloggers, including one who was “sure that some of the bodies … were those of demonstrators”.

“They have planted bodies before,” he said; “they took dead people from Dera’a [in the south] and showed the media bodies in Jisr al-Shughour [near the Turkish border.]”

Recent reports have cast serious doubt on the accuracy of the false narrative peddled daily by the mainstream international press, in particular information put out by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the LCCs.

In December, the mainstream US intelligence group Stratfor cautioned:

Most of the [Syrian] opposition’s more serious claims have turned out to be grossly exaggerated or simply untrue … revealing more about the opposition’s weaknesses than the level of instability inside the Syrian regime. [25]

Throughout the nine-month uprising, Stratfor has advised caution on accuracy of the mainstream narrative on Syria: in September it commented that “with two sides to every war … the war of perceptions in Syria is no exception”. [26]

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and LCC reports, “like those from the regime, should be viewed with skepticism”, argues Stratfor; “the opposition understands that it needs external support, specifically financial support, if it is to be a more robust movement than it is now. To that end, it has every reason to present the facts on the ground in a way that makes the case for foreign backing.”

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov observed: “It is clear that the purpose is to provoke a humanitarian catastrophe, to get a pretext to demand external interference into this conflict.” [27] Similarly, in mid-December, American Conservative reported:

CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] analysts are skeptical regarding the march to war. The frequently cited United Nations report that more than 3,500 civilians have been killed by Assad’s soldiers is based largely on rebel sources and is uncorroborated. The Agency has refused to sign off on the claims.

Likewise, accounts of mass defections from the Syrian army and pitched battles between deserters and loyal soldiers appear to be a fabrication, with few defections being confirmed independently. Syrian government claims that it is being assaulted by rebels who are armed, trained and financed by foreign governments are more true than false. [28]

As recently as November, the Free Syria Army implied their numbers would be larger, but, as they explained to one analyst, they are “advising sympathizers to delay their defection” until regional conditions improve. [29]

A guide to regime change

In relation to Syria, section three of the “Paths to Persia” report is particularly relevant – it is essentially a step-by-step guide detailing options for instigating and supporting a popular uprising, inspiring an insurgency and/or instigating a coup. The report comes complete with a “Pros and Cons” section:

An insurgency is often easier to instigate and support from abroad … Insurgencies are famously cheap to support … covert support to an insurgency would provide the United States with “plausibility deniability” … [with less] diplomatic and political backlash … than if the United States were to mount a direct military action … Once the regime suffers some major setback [this] provides an opportunity to act.

Military action, the report argues, would only be taken once other options had been tried and shown to have failed as the “international community” would then conclude of any attack that the government “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.

Key aspects for instigating a popular uprising and building a “full-fledged insurgency” are evident in relation to developments in Syria.

These include:

>> “Funding and helping organize domestic rivals of the regime” including using “unhappy” ethnic groups;

>> “Building the capacity of ‘effective oppositions’ with whom to work” in order to “create an alternative leadership to seize power”;

>> Provision of equipment and covert backing to groups, including arms – either directly or indirectly, as well as “fax machines … Internet access, funds” (on Iran the report noted that the “CIA could take care of most of the supplies and training for these groups, as it has for decades all over the world”);

>> Training and facilitation of messaging by opposition activists;

>> Constructing a narrative “with the support of US-backed media outlets could highlight regime shortcomings and make otherwise obscure critics more prominent” – “having the regime discredited among key ‘opinion shapers’ is critical to its collapse”;

>> The creation of a large funding budget to fund a wide array of civil-society-led initiatives (a so-called “$75 million fund” created under former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice-funded civil society groups, including “a handful of Beltway-based think-tanks and institutions [which] announced new Iran desks)” [30];

>> The need for an adjacent land corridor in a neighboring country “to help develop an infrastructure to support operations”.

“Beyond this,” continues the report, “US economic pressure (and perhaps military pressure as well) can discredit the regime, making the population hungry for a rival leadership.”

The US and its allies, particularly Britain [31] and France, have funded and helped “shape” the opposition from the outset – building both on attempts started by the US in 2006 to construct a unified front against the Assad government, and the perceived “success” of the Libyan Transitional National Council model. [32]

Despite months of attempts – predominately by the West – at cajoling the various groups into a unified, proficient opposition movement, they remain “a diverse group, representing the country’s ideological, sectarian and generational divides”.

“There neither has been nor is [there] now any natural tendency towards unity between these groups, since they belong to totally different ideological backgrounds and have antagonistic political views,” one analyst concluded. [33]

At a recent meeting with the British foreign secretary, the different groups would not even meet with William Hague together, instead meeting him separately. [34]

Nevertheless, despite a lack of cohesion, internal credibility and legitimacy, the opposition, predominately under the umbrella of the Syrian National Council (SNC), is being groomed for office. This includes capacity-building, as confirmed by the former Syrian ambassador to the US, Rafiq Juajati, now part of the opposition.

At a closed briefing in Washington DC in mid-December 2011, he confirmed that the US State Department and the SWP-German Institute for International and Security Affairs (a think-tank that provides foreign policy analysis to the German government) were funding a project that is managed by the US Institute for Peace and SWP, working in partnership with the SNC, to prepare the SNC for the takeover and running of Syria.

In a recent interview, SNC leader Burhan Ghaliyoun disclosed (so as to “speed up the process” of Assad’s fall) [35] the credentials expected of him: “There will be no special relationship with Iran,” he said. “Breaking the exceptional relationship means breaking the strategic, military alliance,” adding that “after the fall of the Syrian regime, [Hezbollah] won’t be the same.” [36]

Described in Slate magazine [37] as the “most liberal and Western-friendly of the Arab Spring uprisings”, Syrian opposition groups sound as compliant as their Libyan counterparts prior to the demise of Muammar Gaddafi, whom the New York Times described as “secular-minded professionals – lawyers, academics, businesspeople – who talk about democracy, transparency, human rights and the rule of law” [38]; that was, until reality transitioned to former leader of the Libyan Islamist Fighting Group Abdulhakim Belhaj and his jihadi colleagues.

The import of weapons, equipment, manpower (predominantly from Libya) [39] and training by governments and other groups linked to the US, NATO and their regional allies began in April-May 2011, [40] according to various reports [41], and is co-ordinated out of the US air force base at Incirlik in southern Turkey. From Incirlik, an information warfare division also directs communications to Syria via the Free Syria Army. This covert support continues, as American Conservative reported in mid-December:

Unmarked NATO warplanes are arriving at Turkish military bases close to Iskenderum on the Syrian border, delivering weapons … as well as volunteers from the Libyan Transitional National Council … Iskenderum is also the seat of the Free Syrian Army, the armed wing of the Syrian National Council. French and British special forces trainers are on the ground, assisting the Syrian rebels while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers. [42]

The Washington Post exposed in April 2011 that recent WikiLeaks showed that the US State Department had been giving millions of dollars to various Syrian exile groups (including the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Movement for Justice and Development in London) and individuals since 2006 via its “Middle East Partnership Initiative” administered by a US foundation, the Democracy Council. [43]

Leaked WikiLeak cables confirmed that well into 2010, this funding was continuing, a trend that not only continues today but which has expanded in light of the shift to the “soft power” option aimed at regime change in Syria.

As this neo-con-led call for regime change in Syria gains strength within the US administration, [44] so too has this policy been institutionalized among leading US foreign policy think-tanks, many of whom have “Syria desks” or “Syria working groups” which collaborate closely with Syrian opposition groups and individuals (for example USIP [45] and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy) [46] and which have published a range of policy documents making the case for regime change.

In the UK, the similarly neo-con Henry Jackson Society (which “supports the maintenance of a strong military, by the United States, the countries of the European Union and other democratic powers, armed with expeditionary capabilities with a global reach” and which believes that “only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate”) is similarly pushing the agenda for regime change in Syria [47].

This is in partnership with Syrian opposition figures including Ausama Monajed, [48] a former leader of the Syrian exile group, the Movement for Justice & Development, linked to the Muslim Brotherhood, which was funded by the US State Department from 2006, as we know from WikiLeaks.

Monajed, a member of the SNC, currently directs a public relations firm [49] recently established in London and incidentally was the first to use the term “genocide” in relation to events in Syria in a recent SNC press release. [50]

Since the outset, significant pressure has been brought to bear on Turkey to establish a “humanitarian corridor” along its southern border with Syria. The main aim of this, as the “Paths to Persia” report outlines, is to provide a base from which the externally-backed insurgency can be launched and based.

The objective of this “humanitarian corridor” is about as humanitarian as the four-week NATO bombing of Sirte when NATO exercised its “responsibility to protect” mandate, as approved by the UN Security Council.

All this is not to say that there isn’t a genuine popular demand for change in Syria against the repressive security-dominated infrastructure that dominates every aspect of people’s lives, nor that gross human-rights violations have not been committed, both by the Syrian security forces, armed opposition insurgents, as well as mysterious third force characters operating since the onset of the crisis in Syria, including insurgents, [51] mostly jihadis from neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, as well as more recently Libya, among others.

Such abuses are inevitable in low-intensity conflict. Leading critics [52] of this US-France-UK-Gulf-led regime change project have, from the outset, called for full accountability and punishment for any security or other official “however senior”, found to have committed any human-rights abuses.

Ibrahim al-Amine writes that some in the regime have conceded “that the security remedy was damaging in many cases and regions [and] that the response to the popular protests was mistaken … it would have been possible to contain the situation via clear and firm practical measures – such as arresting those responsible for torturing children in Deraa”. And it argues that the demand for political pluralism and an end to the all-encompassing repression is both vital and urgent. [53]

But what may have began as popular protests, initially focused on local issues and incidents (including the case of the torture of young boys in Dera’a by security forces) were rapidly hijacked by this wider strategic project for regime change. Five years ago, I worked in northern Syria with the United Nations managing a large community development project.

After evening community meetings, it wasn’t uncommon to find the mukhabarat (military intelligence) waiting for us to vacate the room so they could scan flipcharts posted on the walls. That almost every aspect of people’s daily lives was regulated by a sclerotic dysfunctional Ba’ath party/security bureaucracy, devoid of any ideology apart from the inevitable corruption and nepotism that comes with authoritarian power, was apparent in every feature of people’s lives.

Tuesday, December 20 was reportedly the “deadliest day of the nine-month [Syrian] uprising “with the “organized massacre” of a “mass defection” of army deserters widely reported by the international press in Idlib, northern Syria. Claiming that areas of Syria were now “exposed to large-scale genocide”, the SNC lamented the “250 fallen heroes during a 48-hour period”, citing figures provided by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. [54] Quoting the same source, the Guardian reported that the Syrian army was:

… hunt[ing] down deserters after troops … killed close to 150 men who had fled their base”. A picture has emerged … of a mass defection … that went badly wrong … with loyalist forces positioned to mow down large numbers of defectors as they fled a military base. Those who managed to escape were later hunted down in hideouts in nearby mountains, multiple sources have reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimated that 100 deserters were besieged, then killed or wounded. Regular troops allegedly also hunted down residents who had given shelter to the deserters. [55]

The Guardian’s live blog-quoted AVAAZ, the citizen political advocacy/public relations group, which “claimed 269 people had been killed in the clashes”, and cited AVAAZ’s precise breakdown of casualties: “163 armed revolutionaries, 97 government troops and 9 civilians”. [56] They noted that AVAAZ “provided nothing to corroborate the claim”.

The Washington Post reported only that they had spoken to “an activist with the rights group AVAAZ [who] said he had spoken to local activists and medical groups who put the death toll in that area Tuesday at 269”. [57]

A day after initial reports of the massacre of fleeing deserters, however, the story had changed. On December 23, the Telegraph reported:

At first they were said to be army deserters attempting to break into Turkey to join the FSA [Free Syrian Army], but they are now said to be unarmed civilians and activists attempting to escape the army’s attempts to bring the province back under control. They were surrounded by troops and tanks and gunned down until there were no survivors, according to reports. [58]

The New York Times had, on December 21, reported that the “massacre”, citing the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, was of “unarmed civilians and activists, with no armed military defectors among them, the rights groups said”.

It quoted the head of the Observatory who described it as “an organized massacre” and said his account corroborated a Kfar Owaid witness’ account: “The security forces had lists of names of those who organized massive anti-regime protests … the troops then opened fire with tanks, rockets and heavy machine guns [and], bombs filled with nails to increase the number of casualties. [59]

The LA Times quoted an activist it had spoken to via satellite connection who, from his position “sheltering in the woods” commented: “The word ‘massacre’ seems like too small a word to describe what happened.” Meanwhile, the Syrian government reported that on December 19 and 20, it had killed “tens” of members of “armed terrorist gangs” in both Homs and Idlib, and had arrested many wanted individuals. [60]

The truth of these two “deadly” days will probably never be known – the figures cited above (between 10-163 armed insurgents, 9-111 unarmed civilians and 0-97 government forces) differ so significantly in both numbers reported killed and who they were, that the “truth” is impossible to establish.

In relation to an earlier purported “massacre” in Homs, a Stratfor investigation found “no signs of a massacre”, concluding that “opposition forces have an interest in portraying an impending massacre, hoping to mimic the conditions that propelled a foreign military intervention in Libya”. [61]

Nevertheless, the “massacre” of December 19-20 in Idlib was reported as fact, and was etched into the narrative of Assad’s “killing machine”.

Both the recent UN Human Rights Commissioner’s report and a recent data blog report [62] on reported deaths in “Syria’s bloody uprising” by the Guardian (published December 13) – two examples of attempts to establish the truth about numbers killed in the Syrian conflict – rely almost exclusively on opposition-provided data: interviews with 233 alleged “army defectors” in the case of the UN report, and on reports from the Syrian Human Rights Observatory, the LCCs and al-Jazeera in the case of the Guardian’s data blog.

The Guardian reports a total of 1,414.5 people (sic) killed – including 144 Syrian security personnel – between January and November 21, 2011. Based solely on press reports, the report contains a number of basic inaccuracies (eg sources not matching numbers killed with places cited in original sources): their total includes 23 Syrians killed by the Israeli army in June on the Golan Heights; 25 people reported “wounded” are included in total figures for those killed, as are many people reported shot.

The report makes no reference to any killings of armed insurgents during the entire 10-month period – all victims are “protesters”, “civilians” or “people” – apart from the 144 security personnel.

Seventy percent of the report’s data sources are from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the LCCs and “activists”; 38% of press reports are from al-Jazeera, 3% from Amnesty International and 1.5% from official Syrian sources.

In response to the UN Commissioner’s report, Syria’s ambassador to the UN commented: “How could defectors give positive testimonies on the Syrian government? Of course they will give negative testimonies against the Syrian government. They are defectors.”

In the effort to inflate figures of casualties, the public relations-activist group AVAAZ has consistently outstripped even the UN. AVAAZ has publicly stated it is involved in “smuggling activists … out of the country”, running “secret safe houses to shelter … top activists from regime thugs” and that one “AVAAZ citizen journalist” “discover[ed] a mass grave”. [63]

It states proudly that the BBC and CNN have said that AVAAZ data amounts to some 30% of their news coverage of Syria. The Guardian reported AVAAZ’s latest claim to have “evidence” of killings of some 6,200 people (including security forces and including 400 children), claiming 617 of whom died under torture [64] – their justification to have verified each single death with confirmation by three people, “including a relative and a cleric who handled the body” is improbable in the extreme.

The killing of one brigadier-general and his children in April last year in Homs illustrates how near impossible it is, particularly during sectarian conflict, to verify even one killing – in this case, a man and his children:

The general, believed to be Abdu Tallawi, was killed with his children and nephew while passing through an agitated neighborhood. There are two accounts of what happened to him and his family, and they differ about the victim’s sect.

Regime loyalists say that he was killed by takfiris – hardline Islamists who accuse other Muslims of apostasy – because he belonged to the Alawite sect. The protesters insist that he is a member of the Tallawi family from Homs and that he was killed by security forces to accuse the opposition and destroy their reputation. Some even claim that he was shot because he refused to fire at protesters.

The third account is ignored due to the extreme polarization of opinions in the city [Homs]. The brigadier-general was killed because he was in a military vehicle, even though he had his kids with him. Whoever killed him was not concerned with his sect but with directing a blow to the regime, thus provoking an even harsher crackdown, which, in turn, would drag the protest movement into a cycle of violence with the state. [65]

By Aisling Byrne

5 January 2012

Asia Times Online

Aisling Byrne is Projects Co-ordinator with Conflicts Forum and is based in Beirut.

Forget the past (Saddam, Osama, Gaddafi) and the present (Assad, Ahmadinejad). A bet can be made over a bottle of Petrus 1989 (the problem is waiting the next six years to collect); for the foreseeable future, Washington’s top bogeyman – and also for its rogue North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners and assorted media shills – will be none other than back-to-the-future Russian President Vladimir Putin.

And make no mistake; Vlad the Putinator will relish it. He’s back exactly where he wants to be; as Russia’s commander-in-chief, in charge of the military, foreign policy and all national security matters.

Anglo-American elites still squirm at the mention of his now legendary Munich 2007 speech, when he blasted the then George W Bush administration for its obsessively unipolar imperial agenda “through a system which has nothing to do with democracy” and non-stop overstepping of its “national borders in almost all spheres”.”

So Washington and its minions have been warned. Before last Sunday’s election, Putin even advertised his road map The essentials; no war on Syria; no war on Iran; no “humanitarian bombing” or fomenting “color revolutions” – all bundled into a new concept, “illegal instruments of soft power”. For Putin, a Washington-engineered New World Order is a no-go. What rules is “the time-honored principle of state sovereignty”.

No wonder. When Putin looks at Libya, he sees the graphic, regressive consequences of NATO’s “liberation” through “humanitarian bombing”; a fragmented country controlled by al-Qaeda-linked militias; backward Cyrenaica splitting from more developed Tripolitania; and a relative of the last king brought in to rule the new “emirate” – to the delight of those model democrats of the House of Saud.

More key essentials; no US bases encircling Russia; no US missile defense without strict admission, in writing, that the system will never target Russia; and increasingly close cooperation among the BRICS group of emerging powers.

Most of this was already implied in Putin’s previous road map – his paper A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making. That was Putin’s ippon – he loves judo – against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund and hardcore neo-liberalism. He sees a Eurasian Union as a “modern economic and currency union” stretching all across Central Asia.

For Putin, Syria is an important detail (not least because of Russia’s naval base in the Mediterranean port of Tartus, which NATO would love to abolish). But the meat of the matter is Eurasia integration. Atlanticists will freak out en masse as he puts all his efforts into coordinating “a powerful supranational union that can become one of the poles of today’s world while being an efficient connecting link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific Region”.

The opposite roadmap will be Obama and Hillary’s Pacific doctrine. Now how exciting is that?

Putin plays Pipelineistan

It was Putin who almost single-handedly spearheaded the resurgence of Russia as a mega energy superpower (oil and gas accounts for two-thirds of Russia’s exports, half of the federal budget and 20% of gross domestic product). So expect Pipelineistan to remain key.

And it will be mostly centered on gas; although Russia holds no less than 30% of global gas supplies, its liquid natural gas (LNG) production is less than 5% of the global market share. It’s not even among the top ten producers.

Putin knows that Russia will need buckets of foreign investment in the Arctic – from the West and especially Asia – to keep its oil production above 10 million barrels a day. And it needs to strike a complex, comprehensive, trillion-dollar deal with China centered on Eastern Siberia gas fields; the oil angle has been already taken care of via the East Siberian Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. Putin knows that for China – in terms of securing energy – this deal is a vital counterpunch against Washington’s shady “pivoting” towards Asia.

Putin will also do everything to consolidate the South Stream pipeline – which may end up costing a staggering $22 billion (the shareholder agreement is already signed between Russia, Germany, France and Italy. South Stream is Russian gas delivered under the Black Sea to the southern part of the EU, through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia). If South Stream is a go, rival pipeline Nabucco is checkmated; a major Russian victory against Washington pressure and Brussels bureaucrats.

Everything is still up for grabs at the crucial intersection of hardcore geopolitics and Pipelineistan. Once again Putin will be facing yet another Washington road map – the not exactly successful New Silk Road (See US’s post-2014 Afghan agenda falters, Asia Times Online, Nov 4, 2011.)

And then there’s the joker in the pack – the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Putin will want Pakistan to become a full member as much as China is interested in incorporating Iran. The repercussions would be ground-breaking – as in Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran coordinating not only their economic integration but their mutual security inside a strengthened SCO, whose motto is “non-alignment, non-confrontation and non-interference in the affairs of other countries”.

Putin sees that with Russia, Central Asia and Iran controlling no less than 50% of world’s gas reserves, and with Iran and Pakistan as virtual SCO members, the name of the game becomes Asia integration – if not Eurasia’s. The SCO develops as an economic/security powerhouse, while, in parallel, Pipelineistan accelerates the full integration of the SCO as a counterpunch to NATO. The regional players themselves will decide what makes more sense – this or a New Silk Road invented in Washington.

Make no mistake. Behind the relentless demonization of Putin and the myriad attempts to delegitimize Russia’s presidential elections, lie some very angry and powerful sections of Washington and Anglo-American elites.

They know Putin will be an ultra tough negotiator on all fronts. They know Moscow will apply increasingly closer coordination with China; on thwarting permanent NATO bases in Afghanistan; on facilitating Pakistan’s strategic autonomy; on opposing missile defense; on ensuring Iran is not attacked.

He will be the devil of choice because there could not be a more formidable opponent in the world stage to Washington’s plans – be they coded as Greater Middle East, New Silk Road, Full Spectrum Dominance or America’s Pacific Century. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to rumble.

9 March 2012

By Pepe Escobar

@ Aisa Times

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His most recent book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com (Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd.