Archives: Articles

The attacks in Norway on July 22 were a tragic illustration of madness empowered in our modern society. They showcased just how crazy an individual and our society can both be, and they raise some important issues we need to face and manage going forward. And I do mean going forward, not going backward.

Power to the people?

We have all heard the mantras of empowering people, repeated endlessly in the egalitarian societies of Northern Europe and North America, and trumpeted across the globe as THE way to manage people in communities and in organizations. Never mind the fact that only 9% of the world’s population live in egalitarian societies and 91% live in hierarchical societies, the egalitarians think they have it right, and everybody else has it wrong. It has come to the extreme of trying to impose “Northern” values on the rest of the world by employing military force.

The truth is, no culture in itself is better than any other. They are not “right” or “wrong”, they are just different.

To each and every culture there are “positive” and “negative” aspects that must be acknowledged and dealt with. No set of cultural values should be imposed on another community.

For decades the Scandinavian model has been touted as an utopia by many media voices. The tragedy in Norway puts the spotlight on some of its shortcomings. The tragedy also raises important issues about the “right” versus “left” movements in politics and about leading change and managing integration in modern society, in all cultures.

Technological advances in communication (the web, social networking, mobile devices) has given enormous power to individuals. This enables people to find their friends and keep in contact, instantly, no matter where they are. This empowerment of the individual has been hailed by the individualistic and egalitarian media as the apex of “Northern” values come to life, utopia becomes reality: everyone is powerful and free to express themselves as individuals.

The popular revolts I the Arab World have been hailed by such pundits as “Facebook Revolutions” and welcomed as a shift towards egalitarian and individualistic values, leaving hierarchical and collectivistic values behind.

However, we need to realize that social networking is not a value in itself. It is just a technology, and it may be equally used for evil purposes as well as for noble purposes. You can find your friends to conspire, to commit crimes against humanity, just as well as you simply agree to meet on Saturday night to have fun together.

Empowerment of individuals may not necessarily be a good thing, when it also empowers the crazies of Oslo and of Arizona, as well as the jihadists and Al Quaeda. The real issue is not “Facebook”, but rather what is it being used for.

People have criticized the Chinese government for trying to control the internet, but the issue all societies need to tackle is: how do you strike the balance between individual freedom and collective harmony? And how do you resolve the dilemma between equal distribution of power and respect for authority?

Every society has to resolve these dilemmas, and each has done so in a different way. That is the basis of the research and analyses made by Hofstede, Trompenaars and the many social scientists who study culture.

Dark Side of Individualism

The dilemma between Individualism and Collectivism, as enounced by Hofstede, or between individual freedom and group harmony, has actually been approached by many philosophers throughout history. It is sometimes summarized as “my rights go as far as where the rights of my neighbor begin”. Hofstede’s research went as far as measuring exactly how far do societies go in terms of choosing between extremes, and he identified (through factor analysis) five dimensions of cultural values, one of which is precisely the “Individualism versus Collectivism” dimension.

Looking at that research we can see how 100 different countries score as compared to each other, and we can see that the cultures who most treasure individual freedom are the Anglo-Saxon, the Dutch-Scandinavian and the Germanic. These are also very egalitarian cultures, as opposed to the collectivistic and hierarchical cultures found in places such as Guatemala and Malaysia, to mention just two examples on the opposite side of the spectrum.

My point here is that extremes tend to be dysfunctional, no matter on which side they are. When you are sitting in one of those extremes, culture-wise, you tend to think that the other side has got it “wrong”, while you have it “right”. However, it is very important to look at the downside of these extreme cultural choices, as we strive to develop cultural values that will make our world a better place for generations to come.

Individualistic and egalitarian societies offer many benefits to individuals, such as freedom of expression and a sense of empowerment. They also value individual accountability and the respect of individual privacy. However, the downside is sometimes the isolation of individuals and a feeling of loneliness in the crowd.

The empowerment of these societies means that anyone is free to buy automatic weapons and “express himself” by shooting random people. Of course, no society deliberately endorses that, but we need to realize that distortions result from the values we espouse.

Whenever a madman goes on a rampage (Oklahoma, Tucson, Oslo, etc) or when we suddenly find that an individual has kept someone as a prisoner in his basement for years (Austria, Germany, California, etc.), we ask each other: how could that happen? How could this have been averted? Why was this not detected earlier?

The answer lies precisely in the values treasured by these cultures. The extreme valuing of freedom goes overboard and the respect for privacy translates into “not noticing” that someone next door is keeping prisoners captive for 20 years. (!)

Similarly, a guy acts crazy, starts sending all kinds of signals that he is psychotic or a psychopath, but people around fail to see that, or fail to act on that.

People fail to see the signs, because they have been brought up to look at explicit communication, rather than implicit communication. They look for content, rather than format. While people in Guatemala and Malaysia (just to use my previous examples) have been brought up to strive for “group harmony” and therefore are keen on body language, non-verbal communication and implicit signs of expression, people in Scandinavia, the Us and in Germany disregard such signs and focus on the explicit content of messages.

People fail to act on the signals they perceive (if they perceive them) because of the respect for privacy and the unconscious voice that tells them “I am responsible for my own actions, not for anybody else’s… this is none of my business”.

And then disaster happens.

This “individual responsibility” taken to extremes leads to social isolation and even lack of solidarity. It breeds individuals who go crazy and turn against those around them.

The opposite example was shown to me recently in Singapore, where a Chinese presenter stressed the importance of “mindfulness” when leading groups in Action Learning. To my request for clarification, she explained that “mindfulness” is “an awareness of the people in the room, of the situation as it unfolds, being sensitive to what is going on”. Collectivistic cultures (such as the Chinese) foster this “mindfulness” in everyone, since childhood. Individualistic cultures do not.

Best Of All Worlds

I am not saying that the Chinese culture is better than the Norwegian. Nor am I saying the opposite. Let’s just stop advocating that this cultural model is better than that one. Let’s start by becoming aware of our own culture bias and how they lead to prejudice. Let’s start looking at the pros and cons of our respective cultures, and let’s explore ways in which we could make them less extreme, in both sides of the respective spectrum.

Right after the Norway tragedy, BBC reporters where suggesting that Norway should “change its policies” regarding police not wearing guns and lacking surveillance and control of public spaces. These reporters did not realize that they were asking Norwegians to become more British, in terms of reacting to the incident as if they were British. They failed to see that they were judging the situation from their own cultural perspective, rather than trying to take an impartial stance or simply asking open questions and allowing the interviewees to express themselves freely.

Perhaps I am asking too much when I long for news reporters who do not strive to push their own agendas as they broadcast from different parts of the world… That would show some real respect for people!

What I am asking for is for us to look at our values and to discuss ways of improving the way we teach our children the notion of “right” and “wrong”, beyond what we were taught by the previous generations. Globalization means that we have the opportunities to explore and learn from all cultures. Globalization is not “Americanization”, it means exploring the full spectrum in each cultural dimension and forging different futures for each community.

It does not mean moving towards a “single global culture”, but it does mean tapping on the richness of exposure to all cultures, understanding where your own culture is coming from, and shaping your community’s future.

Fear Of Change

The biggest obstacle in all this is balancing support and challenge, balancing the need for continuity to maintain identity and the need for change to adapt for new realities. On one side of the spectrum you have “progressives” who push for change, on the opposite you have “conservatives” who resist change.

This is a different dimension from being “right wing” or “left wing”. Conservatives are basically fundamentalists, and the “clash of civilizations” between “West” and “East” is actually a misnomer… In reality it is a clash between conservative Christians and conservative Muslims.

Progressives have nothing to do with that. Progressives are about integrating religions and values to build a better future. Conservatives are about fearing the future and thinking that the past was better, therefore we should preserve it and try to return to it. Progressives are about “up, up and away”; conservatives are about “back, back and stay”.

We need both identity AND change. We need to balance both in order to move forward without loosing our minds and going crazy.

In that sense, the craziness of Oklahoma and Oslo are a signal that, for some people, progress is going too far, too fast, too soon. That doesn’t mean we should stop social progress. It does not mean we should stop immigration and miscegenation, it does not mean we should go back to the notion of “pure” races and Nazism.

It does mean that we must address the social discontents and misfits who turn to violence, that we must manage social change in such a way as to avoid that the Geert Wilders of today turn into the Adolf Hitlers of tomorrow. We need to acknowledge that the “Tea Party” movements all over the world are expressions of the fear of progress, and these movements, when not addressed, may spin out of control (even out of control of their own creators and leaders) and generate mass murder, genocide and even destruction of the whole planet.

In the US and UK media people talk about avoiding that “rogue governments” or “terrorists” (as in Muslim terrorists) gain access to nuclear weapons or chemical weapons and wreak havoc and destruction among millions. I am equally concerned that some crazy Christian fundamentalist in Utah may do the same thing!

People who are afraid of social progress can be very dangerous, whether they pray in a mosque, in a synagogue, or in a cathedral. To avoid the madness we must turn to acknowledging it, recognizing it, understanding it and treating it. It’s no use trying to control it by force, by imposing an Orwellian police state. We do need to address it through education (and I mean radically changing traditional education practices), through social and political debate, through innovative approaches and policies.

If we ignore the craziness next door, we run the risk of becoming their next victim, or worse: we run the risk that our children become the victims of the social craziness we did not address.

28 July 2011

From the time Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak took over as Prime Minister he had indulged in many activities to entice the Indians back to the BN fold. He visited Batu Caves during Thaipusam,visited India and took pains to paid a courtesy call on the former Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, personally launched the Makkal Sakti party after the big loss of the MIC at the last elections, managed to force Samy Velu to step down as MIC president and recently appeared to have heeded the call by MIC to release of the 6 PSM leaders detained under the Emergency Ordinance. He even agreed to alter the university semester to cater for the Deepavali festival and provide buses to transport Hindu students in campuses to temples on Fridays.

He readily appointed Datuk G.Palanivel,the current President of MIC to a full minister in his cabinet, something which the MIC had been fighting for a very long time without success. However this came so abruptly which caught everyone by surprise as it was granted without any pressure now.

Why has Najib to go out of the way to court the Indians, who just comprise less than 8% of the population and who have hardly any political or economic power in the country? If at all they have any power it is their perceived “divine” power. The reason is not very difficult to decipher. His support from the Chinese can be written off and that from the Malays is eroding fast. With this situation and with the elections looming what choice does he have other than to entice the Indians back?

The moves by Najib may be signs of his goodwill to the Indian community but will they be enough to convince the Indians? It would have in the past but not anymore. In fact many see his moves as being too little too late and others question the sincerity of his motives. His latest move to appoint Palanivel is seen as a desperate move to please the Indians which is not being well received by the community, as most Indians feel an additional cabinet post is the least the Indians need now.

By his appointment Palanivel and the MIC may have got what they wanted, but is it want the Indians themselves wanted? What they want is to be accorded their social, economic and political rights and dues as legitimate citizens of the country. They want to be treated with respect as rightful citizens who want to coexist harmoniously with the other races in peace and unity.

The pathetic state of the Indians in Malaysia cannot be overcome by mere gestures of goodwill by the government especially at times of elections. It has to be addressed as a Malaysian problem and not as an isolated Indian one. The problem is a complex socio-economic one that need careful planning and bold execution to overcome it.

The Indians alone cannot solve their problems in isolation. They need the concerted actions of all and a government that adopts a more concerned multiracial attitude to solve their problems not as Indians but as citizens belonging to an impoverished group of Malaysians. It is sad that Najib and his Umno-BN is not willing to that now anytime now.

At the same time the Indians must adopt a new mindset to consider themselves as Malaysians first and fight for their rights together with the other communities as Malaysians not as Indians fighting for Indian rights. We have to accept the fact that we are all Malaysians and no one community can live happily with another in dire poverty and distress. Rise or fall we will together no matter how strong or rich one may be.

2 August 2011

Dr. Chris Anthony is a practicing surgeon by profession.A medical doctor since 1978.

Kamlesh, a 9 year old Dalit girl from a village called Trauali Jhanauti in Mathura District of Uttar Pradesh in North India, was thrown onto a burning bush by an upper caste man on April 29, 2008. She suffered 80% burns. It was her punishment for walking on the path reserved for upper caste communities in her village.

The news of the incident shocked the world, appeared in national and international newspapers and television channels. The man accused was booked under India’s criminal law and imprisoned for six months.

Surprisingly, the accused was set free by the lower court in Mathura due to a lack of witnesses. Kamlesh’s mother is illiterate and could not testify against the accused as the court termed her mentally unfit to give witness despite the lack of medical proof. Kamlesh was left without proper medical attention until Operation Mercy India Foundation revisited her in December 2010.

A ray of hope dawned for Kamlesh as Operation Mercy India Foundation began campaigning for justice. Well wishers came forward to help her financially with a post-burn surgery at the Indian Spinal Injuries Centre, New Delhi on June 3, 2011. Her hands and fingers have become normal but she still needs to wear a special garment and do regular massage and exercises for the next three months.

She will still have to go through more plastic surgery to correct burns on her back, knee and both hands. This will be done after recovering from the first of multiple surgeries.

Operation Mercy India Foundation, on behalf of Kamlesh and her father and mother, would like to thank you for concern and financial help given toward her first multiple post-burnt contracture surgery.

Operation Mercy India Foundation has committed to rebuild Kamlesh’s life first by giving medical treatment, secondly by appealing to the High Court for her justice, and third, helping provide education. Education for Kamlesh is a long term commitment, and we will not able to do it without the help from well wishers.

To make the ray of hope complete for Kamlesh, we are setting up a project in her name, “KAMLESH’S ASHA” an initiative of Operation Mercy India Foundation, for well wishers to take part in rebuilding her life. The project includes her medical treatment, a campaign for legal justice, and rebuilding her life through education.

The shelter home of Operation Mercy India Foundation at Delhi has begun giving home tuition to Kamlesh and her sister Pinky, 13 years old, preparing them for admission for the next school session.

Would you like to be a part of rebuilding Kamlesh’s life, which was shattered for simply being born an untouchable? We need your commitment to stand with Kamlesh and help financially toward her educational cost. Any interested well-wishers may contact me at following address.

1 August 2011

Countercurrents.org

 

 

Mullen says his forces must be given immunity from prosecution as Baghdad politicians hold talks on US withdrawal.

Mullen says the Iraqi president and prime minister have promised to quickly consider the US offer [Reuters]

Admiral Mike Mullen, the US military chief, has said Iraq must decide as soon as possible whether it wants US troops to stay in the country, and also whether to include provisions on immunity for US soldiers.

Iraqi political leaders are meeting in Baghdad to discuss whether to keep US troops in the country beyond a December 31 deadline.

Mullen, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Tuesday in the Iraqi capital that US troops must be given immunity from prosecution as part of any agreement to keep them in Iraq and that this protection must be approved by the country’s parliament.

After talks on Monday evening with Nouri al-Maliki, the prime minister, and President Jalal Talabani, Mullen said he was confident they were aware of the urgency of the issue, but added that they faced internal political challenges to reach a deal.

“Time is quickly running out for us to be able to consider any other course,” Mullen said at the US military’s Victory Base Camp on the outskirts of Baghdad.

Mullen and other US officials have been pushing Iraq to decide whether they would want additional American forces to stay in the country past their departure date, and the immunity issue has been one of the key sticking points.

“An agreement, which would include privileges and immunities for our American men and women in uniform will need to go through the Council of Representatives [Iraqi parliament],” he said.

Mullen said in Baghdad that Talabani and al-Maliki had both promised to consider the offer quickly.

“A significant part of this is just a physics problem. You get to a point in time where you just can’t turn back and all the troops must leave. That’s why it’s so important to make the decision absolutely as soon as possible,” he said.

Al Jazeera correspondent Jane Arraf, reporting from Baghdad, said: “There’s lack of clarity so far on the issue of whether US troops should stay.

“Essentially what Mullen is talking about is an agreement to ask the US to start negotiations and not an agreement to ask US troops to stay.”

US troops unpopular

US officials have said repeatedly that they need to know soon whether Iraq wants them to stay longer so they can figure out which of their forces must stay and which must go.

Right now, about 46,000 US forces remain in the country, but their departure will gain momentum this autumn onwards.

The US has offered to let up to 10,000 US troops stay for training Iraqi forces on tanks, fighter jets and other military equipment.

But Iraqi politicians and government officials have been undecided about taking a public stand on whether they want American forces to stay or go.

The troops are still unpopular with many Iraqis who are tired of eight years of war, and Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shia Muslim leader, who is one of Maliki’s important allies, has made it his mission to drive them from the country, leaving the prime minister in a tough position.

Maliki said in a statement on his website late on Monday that he hoped Iraqi political blocs would be able to reach a consensus on Tuesday night when they are expected to meet.

He stressed that regardless of the decision on US troops, he wanted the two countries to continue co-operation, especially in the area of air defence.

Violence increased

Meanwhile, a car parked outside a church in Baghdad exploded injuring up to 23 people, including five worshipers.

“Level of violence has increased compared to last year, and Mullen’s comment that northern Iraqi city of Mosul, which is still violent, was “peaceful and prosperous” is a news to a lot of Iraqis,” our correspondent said.

“We have to remember though, senior US officials don’t get out on the ground most often,” she said.

“There is quite a large difference between people concerned that there is not real stability so far and US military officials, who say compared to bad dark days of civil war things are pretty good.”

2 August 2011

WRITTEN STATEMENT

MICHAEL POSNER, ASSISTANT SECRETARY,

BUREAU OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS, AND LABOR, AND

JEFFREY FELTMAN, ASSISTANT SECRETARY,

BUREAU OF NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS

HOUSE FOREIGN AFFAIRS COMMITTEE, SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE

MIDDLE EAST AND SOUTH ASIA

July 27, 2011

Chairman Chabot, Ranking Member Ackerman, Distinguished Members of the Committee: thank you for inviting us to appear before you today to discuss the Iranian and Syrian governments’ continuing and worsening abuses against their own people.

As people across the region are taking stock of their governments, we see in the Syrian and Iranian regimes a parallel failure to respond to or respect the will of their citizens. Our concerns about these countries’ horrendous human rights abuses are longstanding, but never has their repression been more flagrantly at odds with the realities of the region – the irrepressible demands for democracy and fundamental human rights that have already swept two leaders from power. The United States has played an essential leading role in demanding an end to this repression, enlisting the international community’s support for fundamental human rights in the region, and leveraging our resources to support the peoples’ demands for justice, freedom and dignity. We have used new authorities to single out and sanction those most responsible for these abuses and have encouraged other countries to do join us in this effort. Going forward, the United States will expand our efforts to answer the call of Syrian and Iranian citizens that their governments be held accountable for their actions.

As a prime example of its contempt for dissent, the Iranian regime has held the de facto leaders of the Green Movement, former presidential candidates Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, under house arrest without charges since February. Many from the second-tier leadership of the Green Movementaffiliated entities remain imprisoned or have fled Iran, and their family members have been intimidated, attacked, and detained. This has left the Green Movement beleaguered and scattered. Although demonstrations are rarer, government intimidation didn’t stop the Green Movement last February from demonstrating in solidarity of their kindred spirits protesting government oppression across the Arab world.

In Syria, a committed, peaceful grassroots opposition movement has rapidly emerged in response to the Asad regime’s brutality. Last March, security forces fired upon demonstrators calling for the release of children held for weeks for simply writing political graffiti. That brutal act sparked the collective outrage of the long-oppressed Syrian people. The growing momentum for change, which has drawn people from across Syria to participate in peaceful demonstrations, is now well into its fourth month.

President Asad and his regime have responded with gunfire, mass arrests, torture and abuse. Human rights organizations report that more than 1,800 Syrians have been killed and over ten thousand jailed, while security forces hold the Syrian people hostage to a widening crackdown. Through high-level intervention, Ambassador Ford and Embassy Damascus have secured the release of ten Americans who had been detained on security grounds since January.

Amnesty International has reported killings and torture by security forces in the town of Tell Kalakh near the Lebanese border in May. Residents reported seeing scores of males including some elderly and under18 being rounded up. Detainees described brutal torture, including beatings, prolonged use of stress positions and the use of electric shock to the genitals. Human Rights Watch interviewed 50 witnesses to the weeks of violence in Daraa, and reported that member of various branches of the mukhabarat security forces and snipers on rooftops deliberately targeted protestors and that victims had lethal head, neck and chest wounds.

But in spite of this intense repression, the Syrian people have lost their fear. They have not backed down.  They are continuing to take to the streets to demand freedom, respect for their basic rights, and a transition to democracy. Beyond demonstrations, we have also seen the opposition organize itself and begin to articulate an agenda for Syria’s future, recognizing that the strongest Syria is one in which all citizens, regardless of faith or ethnicity, are equal participants. And for our part, the Obama administration has articulated clearly that the United States has absolutely nothing invested in the  Bashar al-Asad regime, which has clearly lost legitimacy, most importantly in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have taken to the streets. A peaceful and democratic transition would be a positive step for Syria, the region, and the world.

It is up to the Syrian people to determine what the next chapter holds for Syria, as the pages turn toward a new future for this country. President Asad can delay or obstruct it but he cannot, however, stop it. As Syrians chart their own future, we hope to see the participation of and respect for all of Syria’s ethnic and religious groups. The United States, and the international community, want to see a Syria that is unified, where tolerance, respect for human rights, and equality are the norm. This is the message that Ambassador Ford is delivering to the Syrian leadership and the Syrian people.

Even as the Syrian military and security forces have besieged communities, conducted mass arrests, targeted emergency medical responders, tortured children, shot peaceful protestors with impunity, cut off water, internet and telephone services, and barred an independent media, people have found ways to get their word out, through reports, images and videos taken by brave demonstrators and smuggled out.

In bearing witness to these terrible abuses, the United States has and will continue to play a crucial role. Demonstrators have peacefully protested for over a month in Hama, where over 10,000 Syrians were killed in 1982 by President Asad’s father Hafez Asad. The people of Hama kept their peace despite their tragic history and the provocation of the government forces besieging the city. We know this precisely because our representative to the Syrian people, Ambassador Ford, toured Hama and reported seeing no protestors carrying weapons, nor damage to government buildings. We also know through Ambassador Ford’s reports that, contrary to the promises from President Asad to end the emergency law and follow proper judicial procedures, the government has carried out sweeps and arrested dozens of peaceful demonstrators in Hama, and reports of torture in custody are well documented. Our diplomatic presence and watchfulness is an important way for us to gain independent knowledge of the facts, to show support for Syrians’ rights, and to speak directly and plainly to the Syrian government about the need to change course.

Returning to Iran, more than two years since that country’s disputed presidential election, Iranian authorities persist in harassment, arbitrary detention, torture, and imprisonment of their citizens, as well as some of ours. Targets include those who demand accountability from their government and who stand up for the rights of their fellow citizens; ethnic and religious minorities; journalists, women’s rights activists, bloggers and students.

Unfortunately, the situation has only further deteriorated in 2011. Protestors were killed in Tehran in February and in ethnically-Arab areas in April; political prisoners are held in deplorable conditions with convicted murderers in former stockyards; those released from prison are forced to pay exorbitant bail sums or often released with conditions such as long bans on travel or work in their field; additional sentences were levied on those already in prison merely for sending letters to family members; mass executions of mainly ethnic minority prisoners have been carried out without their families’ knowledge; at least 190 people have been executed this year, more than in any other country in the world except China; restrictions on speech have intensified; journalists and bloggers continue to be targeted by the regime for daring to write the truth; teachers and other workers are harassed and incarcerated when they seek freedom of association and payment of wages owed; trade union leaders remain imprisoned on questionable charges; politically-active students have been banned from universities; entire university faculties deemed un-Islamic face threat of closure; and, recently, female journalists and artists have been arrested for merely practicing their profession.

Particularly troubling is the deepening persecution of religious minorities. On May 1, the Revolutionary Court in the northern city of Bandar Anzali tried 11 members of the Church of Iran, including Pastor Abdolreza Ali-Haghnejad and Zainab Bahremend, the 62-year-old grandmother of two other defendants, on charges of “acting against national security.” This month, Iranian courts ruled that Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani must recant his Christian faith or face the death penalty for apostasy. In March, over 200 Gonabadi Sufis were summoned to courts around the country to answer allegations that they were insulting Iranian authorities. In April, eight other Sufis were re-arrested on charges of disrupting public order – charges for which they had been punished with flogging and imprisonment. The Iranian government also continues to arrest and harass members of the Baha’i faith.

As the Iranian and Syrian regimes have expanded their repressive tactics, we have expanded the scope of our efforts to challenge these governments’ deplorable human rights violations. We have designated 11 Iranian officials and three government entities for serious human rights abuses in accordance with the Comprehensive Iran Sanctions Accountability and Divestment Act and, as the act requires, we are actively seeking more information on possible targets. Separately, on July 8, the United States and the United Kingdom imposed visa restrictions on officials of the Government of Iran and other individuals who have participated in human rights abuses in Iran. Iranian officials subject to this visa ban include government ministers, military and law enforcement officers, and judiciary and prison officials.

Responding to the atrocities in Syria, President Obama signed two executive orders. The first, E.O. 13572, signed on April 29, targets those responsible for human rights abuses and the repression of the Syrian people. The second, E.O. 13573, signed on May 18, targets senior officials of the Syrian government because of the ongoing crackdown and refusal to implement political reform. These two authorities were used to impose sanctions against President Asad and senior Syrian officials responsible for human rights abuses. In addition to President Asad, the sanctions so far have designated the Vice President, Prime Minister, ministers of interior and defense, the head of Syrian military intelligence, and director of the political security directorate. Other U.S. sanctions target President Asad’s brother and two cousins, the Syrian military and civilian intelligence services, its national security bureau and the air force intelligence, as well as Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Qods Force and senior Qods force officers that have assisted the Asad regime in suppressing Syrian civilians.

It is no coincidence both Iran and Syria have responded to their citizens with similar contempt and brutal tactics. As the latter designation shows, we know that the Syrians have employed Iranian help in curbing dissent. This has exposed a strident hypocrisy on the part of the Iranian regime, which has tried unsuccessfully to take credit for democratic movements in Egypt and elsewhere and laud protesters when it suited its strategic interests, but has materially helped the Syrian government crush its own protestors in order to preserve their ally. The Iranian regime’s false narrative is further exposed even as the regime continues to smother its own domestic opposition.. Nevertheless, hundreds of brave Iranian citizens continue to engage in the most basic but critical of human rights work, documenting and reporting on abuses, with the hope that one day Iranian government officials will be held accountable for crimes they have committed against their fellow citizens.

In the case of Syria, we have seen the regime play a cruel double game designed to divert attention away from people’s demands and justify the regime’s monopoly on power. Asad is exploiting fears of sectarianism and factionalism by surreptitiously fomenting violence of an intentionally sectarian nature, while at the same time cautioning Syrians not to rock his carefully guided boat. As a consequence, deadly violence has at times taken a purportedly sectarian shade. This has only left more blood on Asad’s hands.

We view these incidents as further evidence that President Assad’s government continues to be the real source of instability within Syria. He has promised reforms but delivered no meaningful changes. He talks about dialogue, but continues to engage in violence that proves his rhetoric hollow. Assad has made clear that he is determined to maintain power regardless of the cost. And the human toll is mounting.

Nevertheless, the Syrian people will not be distracted – they have shown they will not cease their demands for dignity and a future free from intimidation and fear, and they are countering the regime’s propaganda falsely accusing them of seeking that division and ethnic strife. Asad has made occasional conciliatory gestures, but to date these starts have not been credible, sustained, or made in good faith. The regime’s promises of reform have been shown to be false by the continued arrests and shootings of peaceful demonstrators.

The European Union and other nations have joined the United States in enacting sanctions on key regime figures in Iran and Syria to hold their leaders accountable for the violence. We continue to urge more nations to join our call, in bilateral and multilateral settings, to shine a spotlight on these countries’ gross violations of human rights. We also urge other countries to press Iran on its abuses in their bilateral diplomacy. An international consensus is forming to mobilize greater diplomatic pressure on these regimes. We successfully prevented both governments from joining the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC) after they had announced their candidacies and have appropriately used this forum to draw the world’s attention to their offenses. And in the U.N. General Assembly last year, we helped win passage of a Canadian-led resolution condemning Iran’s human rights abuses by the largest margin in eight years. At the March session of the HRC, we led a successful effort to establish a Special Rapporteur on Iran, the first country-specific human rights rapporteur created since the Council came into being, and last month, the Council confirmed former Foreign Minister for the Maldives Ahmed Shaheed at that position. This historic action sent an unmistakable signal to Iran’s leaders that the world will not stand passive in front of their systematic abuse of their own citizens’ human rights. More importantly, the Special Rapporteur serves as a critical voice for those Iranians whose own voice is repressed because of their political, religious, and ethnic affiliations.

In a Special Session in April, the HRC also condemned the ongoing violations by the Syrian authorities. The Council called on Syrian authorities to release prisoners of conscience and those arbitrarily detained, and to end restrictions on Internet access and journalists. It also established an international investigation led by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, though President Asad refuses to allow the monitors mandated by the Council to enter Syria. In the June HRC session, the United States joined Canada and more than 50 other countries in a forceful joint statement that again condemned violations committed by the Syrian authorities and called for credible, independent, and transparent investigations into these abuses, accountability for those who perpetrated such abuses, and unfettered access to the UN High Commissioner’s mission to investigate the many allegations of human rights abuses. The High Commissioner will present a report on the human rights situation in Syria in the September session.

We have been working assiduously with other members on the UN Security Council to obtain a resolution condemning the ongoing atrocities being committed by the Asad regime. We are aware that some key Council members oppose such a resolution, but we are moving to forge consensus and will press for a vote.

Our efforts to support the Iranian and Syrian people as they seek to exercise their rights have been consistent and sustained. Just as we do throughout the region, we work with civil society organizations to support their efforts to defend human rights and to advocate for change. We help them expand political space and hold their government accountable. We provide training and tools to civil society activists in Iran and Syria, and throughout the world, to enable citizens to freely and safely exercise their freedoms of expression, association, and assembly on the Internet and via other communication technologies. In cases like Iran and Syria, where governments have good reason to fear the spotlight on their activities, access to technological tools allows the people to tell their story to the world. Despite both government’s ramped up activities to try to suppress information flows, the days are gone when governments could brutalize their people without the world knowing.

As Secretary Clinton has said, “we stand for a single internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas. …This challenge may be new, but our responsibility to help ensure the free exchange of ideas goes back to the birth of our republic.” Our Internet freedom programming is aimed at making sure that voices for peaceful democratic reform across the region can be heard. Countering such regimes’ increasingly active Internet surveillance and censorship efforts requires a diverse portfolio of tools and training. State Department grants will support more advanced counter-censorship technologies, including circumvention tools in Farsi and Arabic, secure mobile communications, and technologies to enable activists to post their own content online and protect against cyber attacks. We also have trained 5,000 activists worldwide, including many from the Middle East, in cyber-self defense. And we plan to expand these efforts to teach democratic activists, journalists, bloggers, human rights defenders and others how to protect their online privacy and their data – so that they in turn can train others. Given the evolving state of technology, no single tool will overcome the efforts of Internet-repressive regimes, and that is why we have invested in incubating a diverse portfolio of technologies and digital safety training. This way, even if one particular tool is blocked, other tools will still be available. Likewise, we work to prevent all repressive governments from acquiring sensitive technology to repress its citizens.

A strong, representative government can be responsive to popular demands; an autocratic one is threatened by empowered publics. But these crackdowns also indicate a basic lack of understanding that free speech – whether it’s supportive speech or subversive speech – is harder than ever to suppress in the Digital Age. The young people who have taken to the streets across the Arab world this year understand what their governments are suppressing. It’s not just the Internet, it is people – it’s their demands for dignity and a say in the political and economic future of their countries.

The United States will continue to stand with those who struggle to assert their fundamental humanity. It is essential that these brave people know that the international community supports them, just as it is essential that human rights abusers in Damascus and Tehran know that we are watching them. Until such time as they are held accountable by domestic authorities, it is our responsibility to hold them accountable at the international level.

Similarly, we hope that today’s hearing will serve as further evidence that the American people and our government in Washington stand united in our admiration and support for those across the region who have boldly assumed the duty and made the sacrifices to advance their rights. For this opportunity, we wish to thank the Committee again, and welcome your questions.

CAN YOU describe how the Arab Spring that began with the overthrow of U.S.-backed authoritarian regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has reshaped the terrain faced by those engaged in the struggle for Palestinian liberation?

I THINK it has become clear that for a long time, the major obstacle between Palestinians and freedom–as well as for other Arab peoples–is the role of U.S. hegemony and empire in the region. That’s not something new or particularly controversial. The only thing is that people call it by different names.

People who support it talk about “U.S. influence” or “the U.S. role” or “U.S. interests,” and people who tend to oppose it call it by the name of “empire.” But we’re really talking about the same thing.

The Arab Spring–or the Arab uprisings, which I think is a more descriptive term–are as much a set of uprisings against local rulers as they are against a regional order which has kept those dictatorships in place, misusing the resources of the countries in the region and generally holding back people from fulfilling their potential.

I think the uprising exists in that context, and Israel fits into it because Israel is highly dependent on U.S. support. I don’t particularly buy the argument that Israel is an enormous asset to the United States. I think Israel is, in many respects, a burden and an obstacle to smooth U.S. control of the region.

But in any case, the U.S. and Israel are intertwined, and the challenge to U.S. power is also a challenge to Israeli power. So the struggle in the long term or medium term is whether Arab countries, especially Egypt, can really gain independence and sovereignty. If so, that is a real threat to Israeli and American hegemony in the region.

I think that would generally favor the prospects for Palestinians getting their own freedom. But there is obviously a very strong U.S.-led counterrevolution, in which it has local and regional allies–Israel and Saudi Arabia, in particular). The jury is out on whether these uprisings are going to be able to really push back the frontiers of empire and create a space for people in the region to determine their own futures.

THERE SEEM to be many different ideas about how the struggle should proceed strategically and tactically–from the mass marches on the borders of Israel on the Nakba and Naksa day protests to the push for Palestinian statehood at the UN in September. What is driving these debates?

WE’RE IN the midst of an enormous paradigm shift that has been ongoing for a few years, and which I’ve spoken and written about in the past–the slow death of the paradigm of a so-called “two-state solution” and of the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization.

What gave the Oslo Accords their legitimacy was the notion that at the end of the road, there was going to be a free and independent Palestinian state that was going to fulfill the rights and aspirations of the Palestinian people. That was the carrot that was always held out–if you keep plodding along this road, eventually you’ll get there.

So the Oslo Accords heralded the creation of a Palestinian Authority (PA), but the PA was thoroughly under Israeli control. I think what people see now is that you’ll never get there, and this whole charade of the peace process has been a cover for deepening Israeli colonization and ethnic cleansing.

The PA has really become–as it was meant to be from the very beginning–an enforcement arm for Israeli occupation, suppressing any form of Palestinian resistance, whether it’s popular resistance or armed resistance, in order to permit Israel a headache-free occupation and colonization of Palestinian land.

Meanwhile, within the pre-1967 boundaries of Israel, we see increasing repression of the 1.4 million Palestinians living there. And there’s a growing resort to outright fascist and repressive measures by Israel’s ultra-national government to enforce its ideological outlook on both Arabs and Jews.

For example, there’s making kindergarten children sing the Israeli national anthem–which should really be called a Jewish nationalist anthem instead of a national anthem, because it’s a specifically sectarian anthem that is designed to instill a chauvinist ideology in children.

There’s the banning of discussion of the Nakba, the 1948 ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. There’s the recently passed law criminalizing any individual or group calling for a boycott of Israel. There’s a series of laws stripping parliamentary immunity and privileges from Palestinian citizens of Israel in the Knesset, like Haneen Zoaby.

There’s also a growing slew of laws and practices that are about residential segregation and enforcement of apartheid in order to preserve particular areas for Jews only. There are “morality patrols” that are designed to deter Jewish women from dating or marrying or seeing Arab men, which are so reminiscent of Jim Crow-era racism and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States.

So we see Israeli society retreating into this increasingly racist and chauvinistic register, both at the level of official laws and policies and at a social level.

In this context, the notion of negotiations–the constant refrain that “if the Israelis and Palestinian Authority just sat down at the negotiating table”–isn’t convincing anymore. Nobody believes that the PA, which is totally under the thumb of Israel and the U.S., sitting down with an extremist government like Israel’s can come up with a reasonable and just peace.

It defies logic. It requires you to believe in all kinds of fairy tales and magic to think that those ingredients can produce any kind of a just or viable or legitimate peace settlement. So I think the struggle is shifting back toward the people from whom it was wrested by the so-called “peace process.” That’s why we see an increase in popular resistance on the ground in Palestine–for example, the mass marches to the boundaries of Palestine on Nakba day and Naksa day.

And of course, we see the growth of the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, which Israel perceives as an enormous threat, because it is independent of governments and independent of institutions. It’s being taken to heart by people around the world, based on their support for the principles contained in the Palestinian civil society call for BDS.

So that’s where I see the struggle shifting–and why I see the debate shifting away from partition, segregation and the creation of ethno-national states to keep people apart, and toward universal rights, justice and equality. I think historically, those ideas are impossible to resist and that’s the direction we’re heading.

WHAT ABOUT the push for Palestinian statehood, for which the PA is hoping to gain enough support to get a vote at the UN in September. I’ve talked to some activists who have expressed enthusiasm for this, saying that even if it’s only a small step forward, it should be celebrated. And I’ve talked to others who oppose it. What do you think?

I DON’T think it’s something to be celebrated, and I think we need to be very clear about that.

First of all, Palestinian civil society has not asked activists and international solidarity movements to support the UN statehood bid. On the other hand, Palestinian civil society has expressed, on many occasions, a consensus in support of BDS.

There was a statement issued a few weeks ago by the BDS National Committee about the question of statehood. It was carefully worded–it didn’t say, “We’re against this.” But it did say that regardless of the specifics of what happens, a declaration at the UN is going to make no difference at all. The struggle has to be a struggle for the rights of Palestinians everywhere, and that’s not going to change at all.

Even PA President Mahmoud Abbas, who’s supposedly behind this, said on July 21 that this won’t affect the peace process, and we’ll still have to go back to the same old negotiations–which, of course, have gone nowhere for decades–regardless of whether the UN votes to admit the state of Palestine.

So what’s really going on here? At the most, what would happen in September, if it happens at all, is that the UN would vote to admit Palestine as a state. The UN will not vote to create a state of Palestine. It will not recognize Palestine, and it will not take any enforcement action against Israel to make Palestine happen.

This will amount–at most–to symbolically changing the nameplate of the existing Palestinian Authority delegation at the UN from “Observer Mission of Palestine” to “State of Palestine.” That’s it. As I said before, you’d have to believe in magic to think that this would miraculously translate into some kind of concrete action.

The argument I’ve heard time and again is, “Well look, if Palestine is recognized as a state, this will encourage all sorts of international action and sanctions. Israel will be in violation of the rights of a sovereign state, and this will somehow increase pressure on Israel.”

But all you have to do is look at the precedents of what has happened up to this point. Israel has occupied the territory of many sovereign states–whether it’s Lebanon or Syria or Egypt–for decades, and the UN never took action to enforce international law and force Israel to withdraw.

Secondly, none of the violations on the ground–whether we’re speaking of settlements, colonization, wall construction, mass incarceration, ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their land in the West Bank or the siege of Gaza–will change with a UN declaration. Unless of course there were to be some concrete action taken to force Israel to comply. But we’ve seen dozens of resolutions over decades saying all of these activities by Israel are illegal and must stop, and no action has ever been taken.

So why would that change all of a sudden in September? How would the PA, which can’t even pay the salaries of its armies of civil servants and patronage payroll workers, suddenly be able to take on Israel just because it has another piece of paper from the UN?

People need to focus not on the fetish of statehood, but on actual Palestinian rights, which are expressed in the BDS call. We need to focus on a real end to the occupation of all Arab lands occupied in 1967; an end to all forms of discrimination, inequality and apartheid for Palestinians within Israel; and full respect for the rights of refugees, including the right of return.

That is the essence of equality, the essence of universal rights, and that’s actually what the Palestinian cause has been about since the beginning.

ARE THERE ways in which statehood is not only not a step forward but actually a step backward? For example, if “statehood” is achieved, could it freeze in place existing arrangements that are, as you pointed out, inherently unequal and don’t fulfill the basic rights of Palestinians?

I THINK there are dangers of that, to be honest. Part of the problem is that this is completely uncharted territory. But the danger, I think, is that by recognizing a state within boundaries that Israel doesn’t even recognize, Israel’s acquisition of land by force up to this point will be given UN recognition.

And why should Palestinians recognize Israel’s conquest of 78 percent of Palestine in 1948 when Israel doesn’t recognize any Palestinian right to any part of the land? The danger is that some governments will say, “Look, we voted for statehood, what more do you want from us? It’s time for you to give up on the laundry list of other demands”–which, of course, are basic Palestinian rights.

So there is a danger that this would legitimize the status quo–that countries would say, “We’ve fulfilled our obligation toward you, and this is now just a border dispute between two states of the kind that exists in the dozens around the world.”

The PA has a history of relying on the good will of the so-called “international community”–but the international community doesn’t have good will when it comes to enforcing Palestinian rights. So PA officials have essentially disempowered themselves as well as the popular movements, and now they again want to throw themselves on the mercy of a UN that has never acted to enforce its decisions when it comes to Palestine.

So yes–there are risks, and we don’t even know the full extent of them. This could be a very dangerous step.

COULD YOU describe what the U.S.–as a leading part of the “international community”–is doing to stand in the way of these legitimate Palestinian demands?

WHAT ISN’T the U.S. doing to frustrate Palestinian rights and crush any movement toward Palestinian liberation? That would be a shorter list than what it is doing.

Of course, Israel is dependent on the U.S.–militarily, politically and diplomatically. And as I mentioned, the U.S. is a declining power, particularly in the Arab world and in southwest Asia in general. That doesn’t mean the U.S. isn’t still very powerful. But it is also under challenge. And it certainly cannot guarantee its hegemony the way it did for many years.

So that’s on one side. Then on the other side, there is the voice of people–the kind of mass movements that we’re seeing now, which present a real challenge to the existing order.

But of course, the U.S. is helping Israel in every possible way, including using its veto at the UN to prevent even symbolic action toward accountability for Israel’s war crimes–toward actually making Israel comply with international law in any way.

Another element of this is bringing Israel’s war to the United States through the increasing criminalization of Palestine solidarity work in the U.S.–through the harassment, the subpoenas and the raids we’ve seen against Palestine solidarity activists and antiwar and labor activists under the Obama administration. This is a really ominous sign of the ongoing attempt to criminalize solidarity with Palestine.

WHY DO you think the U.S. is taking these steps?

THAT’S OF course a question that people debate. I think that the United States supports Israel, and Israel supports U.S. hegemony in the region. They’re kind of symbiotic in that sense.

I think there has been some sense among U.S. elites in the past couple years that Israel is actually starting to become a burden–a strategic burden which stands in the way of smooth American hegemony in the region. This has created a fear among some of the most pro-Israel elements in the U.S. that the U.S. may be getting ready to abandon Israel in some way.

I certainly think that the notion, agreed upon by the Israeli lobby and by some on the left, that Israel is the cat’s paw of U.S. imperialism in the region–or to put it the way the Israel lobby does that Israel is America’s unsinkable aircraft carrier–is not an obvious narrative to me. Because I think Israel makes life quite difficult for the U.S.

But as we can see, within domestic politics in the U.S., pro-Israel constituencies still have great influence, and those pro-Israel constituencies include not just the ones that are easily identified, such as American Jewish groups that support Israel, but also the large radical Christian movement that supports Zionism. Then there’s the defense, military and intelligence communities–they all have strong relationships with Israel that favor the status quo.

WHAT ARE some of the next steps for who are part of the effort to address the long-standing injustices suffered by the Palestinians?

I THINK we have to keep on with what we’re doing. We’re facing increasing resistance from pro-Israel elements in the U.S., and I think that’s because our work is effective, and it’s reaching people. It’s particularly reaching young people on university campuses.

It’s also starting to reach people in labor unions and churches and just about everywhere. The debate at the ground level is really starting to shift. At the elite level, it’s still very much a pro-Israel discussion, with an exclusion and marginalization of any other voices. But I think that the Internet and our access to creating our own media means that we’ve been able to bypass the gatekeepers of public discourse in this country and really start to reach far and wide.

We have to keep doing that–keep educating people about the BDS movement, why it’s moral, why it’s just, pro-peace and pro-human rights. We have to step up the effort, and I believe strongly that things are moving in the right direction.

Interview by Ali Abunimah 

July 26, 2011

Envoys agree on statement criticising human rights violations, as tanks continue to shell besieged city of Hama.

UN Security Council envoys have issued a statement condemning human rights violations and use of force against civilians by the Syrian government, amid a tank attack on Hama, a city of 800,000 residents.

The text was adopted on Wednesday after three days of heated discussions by the 15-member body, as a council statement rather than as a resolution.

The statement “condemn[s] widespread violations of human rights and the use of force against civilians by the Syrian authorities”.

The diplomatic developments came as fresh explosions erupted in Hama, the venue of some of the largest demonstrations against Bashar al-Assad’s rule during the unrest.

Activists say the president has shown no signs of halting the intense military assault against the uprising, now in its fifth month.

Residents said Syrian military vehicles had occupied the main Orontes Square in Hama’s centre.

The Security Council had been struggling since Monday over how to respond to the crisis, with European powers and the US seeking a tough condemnation.

But Russia, China and some other nations so far were blocking action, saying it could lead to a Libya-style military intervention by the West.

Divisions centred on the wording of any condemnation of Assad’s crackdown on protests and whether it should be a formal resolution or a less weighty statement.

‘Does not help’

Syria’s neighbour, Lebanon, where Syrian influence is strong, disassociated itself from the statement, a rare but not unprecedented move that still allowed the statement to pass.

Lebanese envoy Caroline Ziade told the council the statement “does not help in addressing the current situation in Syria.”

According to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), 1,629 civilians and 374 members of the security forces have been killed since pro-democracy protests erupted on March 15.

“Something that’s missing is a call for an investigation that was in the original resolution put forth by Europeans,” Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from the UN, said. “

“But there is a phrase in the text that calls fon all sides to refrain from violence, including violence against the state,” our correspondent said, referring to modifications that were strongly emphasised by Russia.

Following the latest changes, Russia lifted its objections and its UN envoy, Vitaly Churkin, called the new version “balanced”.

Meanwhile, the White House hardened its stance against Assad on Wednesday.

“We do not want to see him remain in Syria for stability’s sake and, rather, we view him as the cause of instability in Syria,” Jay Carney, a spokesman, said.

More deaths reported

Syrian security forces shot and killed four civilians after evening prayers on Wednesday, Rami Abdel Rahman, the SOHR head, said.

He said one death occurred in the southwestern town of Nawa, in Deraa province, one in the central city of Palmyra, and two in Damascus, Syrian troops have tightened their siege on Hama since Sunday, sending residents fleeing for their lives.

Activists say more than 1,600 civilians have been killed in the unrest [Reuters]

“There are some 100 tanks and troop carriers on the highway leading to the central city of Hama and about 200 tanks around the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor,” Abdel Rahman said.

Telephone and internet communication were cut in Hama and nearby areas, he said.

Abdel Raman also reported that a local official in Deir ez-Zor “received advise from well-informed sources that residents should flee while they still had time before the army storms the town by Friday”.

In Hama, tanks were deployed in several districts and shelling could be heard across many neighbourhoods, other activists said.

“From the sound of the shelling, it sounds like it’s open warfare,” the Local Co-ordination Committees, which represents the protesters, said, describing plumes of smoke over the city.

“People are deserting the city and are faced by live gunfire from security forces and army troops if they don’t respond to orders to go back inside,” the committees said.

Security forces set up checkpoints in and around Hama, where a building and several homes reportedly collapsed due to the shelling.

The accounts could not be independently verified as foreign reporters are not allowed to travel in Syria to report on the unrest.

The fierce crackdown on Hama – where an estimated 20,000 people were killed in 1982 when Assad’s father Hafez crushed a revolt by the Muslim Brotherhood  – has prompted solidarity protests across Syria and international condemnation.

Security Council statement

The statement adopted on Wednesday was the Security Council’s first pronouncement on Syria since the protests started.

The statement called “on the Syrian authorities to fully respect human rights and to comply with their obligations under applicable international law”.

It said that “those responsible for the violence should be held accountable”.

International pressure on the Security Council to agree on a stand had mounted since weekend violence in which an estimated 140 people were killed in a military assault on Hama and other protest towns.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, vented his anger after the killings, saying al-Assad had “lost all sense of humanity”.

Al Jazeera’s Rula Amin, reporting from Beirut, said Syrians welcomed Wednesday’s statement.

“So for the people of Syria, it’s one step forward,” she said. “They don’t want military intervention. They want more support – not just from European countries – but from neighbouring Arab countries and Turkey.”

For its part, the Syrian state news agency SANA has said the parliament will meet in an extraordinary session on Sunday to discuss “issues concerning the nation and its citizens”.

It also said funerals were held on Wednesday for seven members of the security services and army who were killed by “armed terrorist gangs” in a suburb of Damascus as well as in Homs, Hama and Deraa.

State television on Monday aired an amateur video showing corpses being thrown from a bridge into a river, and said the bodies were of security forces killed by anti-government protesters.

Rights activists, however, have challenged that account, saying the victims were pro-democracy protesters killed by the army.

4 August 2011

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission. Now, say that 70 times and you’re done… for the day. Without the knowledge of the American public, a secret force within the U.S. military is undertaking operations in a majority of the world’s countries. This new Pentagon power elite is waging a global war whose size and scope has never been revealed, until now.

After a U.S. Navy SEAL put a bullet in Osama bin Laden’s chest and another in his head, one of the most secretive black-ops units in the American military suddenly found its mission in the public spotlight. It was atypical. While it’s well known that U.S. Special Operations forces are deployed in the war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and it’s increasingly apparent that such units operate in murkier conflict zones like Yemen and Somalia, the full extent of their worldwide war has remained deeply in the shadows.

Last year, Karen DeYoung and Greg Jaffe of the Washington Post reported that U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, U.S. Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. “We do a lot of traveling — a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq,” he said recently. This global presence — in about 60% of the world’s nations and far larger than previously acknowledged — provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military’s Secret Military

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight U.S. service members died, U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate. Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Army’s “Green Berets” and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States’ most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal “kill/capture” campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls “an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine.”

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen. In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM’s baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command — the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 — indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. “I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000,” he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role. Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association’s annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night. Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet — mostly the industrialized nations of the global north — were considered the key areas. “But the world changed over the last decade,” he said. “Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south… certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren’t.”

To that end, Olson launched “Project Lawrence,” an effort to increase cultural proficiencies — like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs — for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed “Lawrences of Wherever.”

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government. According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won’t disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. “We’re obviously going to have some places where it’s not advantageous for us to list where we’re at,” says Nye. “Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have — it may be internal, it may be regional.”

But it’s no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while “white” forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against al-Qaeda and other militant groups. In the Philippines, for instance, the U.S. spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism’s National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America’s most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland. So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. “Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises.”

 

The Pentagon’s Power Elite

 

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces — like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines — a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress, SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people’s heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops. Since 2001, SOCOM’s prime contracts awarded to small businesses — those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons — have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself. As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM “is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies.”

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military. Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as “the president’s private army,” today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive’s private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans. Once “special” for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows. Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: “I am convinced that the forces… are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer.”

Recently at the Aspen Institute’s Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that U.S. Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them. When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, “Are you talking about unattributed explosions?”

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden mission, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM. Right now, he emphasized, U.S. Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada’s entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America’s elite troops now operate each year, and it’s only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret — and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available. It just won’t be coming from Olson or his troops. “Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it,” he said in response to questions about SOCOM’s secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military’s secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

5 August 2011

TomDispatch.com

Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist.

 

 

 

Chinese officials are understandably angry about the irresponsible brinkmanship demonstrated by their American counterparts in recent weeks. Unfortunately, anger counts for little in international finance. The danger facing the US is that after Tuesday’s debt deal any sense of urgency over a dire fiscal situation will dissipate. The danger for China is that it does not learn the right lesson – namely, that now is the time to end its dependency on the US dollar.

China is worried about the possibility of a US default for obvious reasons. As the largest foreign holder of US Treasuries, either a default or a downgrade would bring huge losses. Even after this week’s debt deal, however, the risk remains that US debt will continue to grow to the point where its government is left with no option but to inflate the burden away. While there is little China can do about its existing Treasury holdings, it can rethink past policies – and ask both how it fell into this trap, and how it might free itself.

China has run a current account surplus and a capital account surplus almost uninterruptedly for more than two decades. Inevitably this has led to an accumulation of foreign reserves. It is clear, however, that running these surpluses persistently is not in China’s best interests. A developing country, with per capita income ranking below the 100th in the world, lending to the world’s richest country for decades is not reasonable. Even worse is the fact that, as one of the largest foreign direct investment-absorbing countries in the world, China essentially lends money it borrowed at a high cost back to its creditors, by buying US Treasuries, rather than importing goods and services.

China holds a large stash of dollar-denominated foreign assets, as well as significant amounts of renminbi-denominated liabilities. Clearly this currency structure of assets and liabilities makes its net international investment position very vulnerable to any devaluation of the dollar against the renminbi.

The Chinese government has admitted that its foreign-exchange reserves have already exceeded its needs. It has tried various measures to slow down the growth of these reserves and protect the value of its existing stock. This has included demand stimulation, allowing the renminbi to appreciate gradually and creating sovereign wealth funds. It has also promoted reform of international monetary systems and the internationalisation of the renminbi. Sadly, none of these has worked. With large capital inflows and a current account surplus, China’s foreign exchange reserves have continued to rise rapidly.

These policies failed because they did not address the real cause of the rapid increase in foreign exchange stocks, namely state intervention aimed at controlling the pace of renminbi appreciation. The question is: what losses is China willing to bear in its foreign exchange reserves in order to slow the pace of the renminbi appreciation?

One further factor is that any losses in the financial assets held by China will not be realised until their holders decide to cash out. If the US government continues to pay back its public debt, and China continues to pack its savings into US securities, this game may continue for a very long time. However, the situation is ultimately unsustainable. The longer it continues, the more violent and destructive the final adjustment will be.

If there is any lesson China can draw from the US debt ceiling crisis, it is that it must stop policies that result in further accumulation of foreign exchange reserves. Given that many large developed countries are simply printing money (and the recent rumours are that the US might return to quantitative easing) China must realise that it can no longer invest in the paper assets of the developed world. The People’s Bank of China must stop buying US dollars and allow the renminbi exchange rate to be decided by market forces as soon as possible. China should have done so a long time ago. There should be no more hesitating and dithering. To float the renminbi is not costless. However, its benefits for the Chinese economy will vastly offset those costs, while being favourable to the global economy as well.

4 August 2011

Source: The Financial Times

The writer is a former member of the monetary policy committee of the Chinese central bank

 

David KriegerWe remember the horrors of the past so that we may learn from them and they will not be repeated in the future.  If we ignore or distort the past and fail to learn from it, we are opening the door to repetition of history’s horrors.

In August, we remember the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which took place on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. Both were illegal attacks on civilian populations, violating long-standing rules of customary international humanitarian law prohibiting the use of indiscriminate weapons (as between combatants and non-combatants) and weapons that cause unnecessary suffering.

In a just world, those who were responsible for these attacks, in violation of the laws of war, would have been held to account and punished accordingly.  They were not.  Rather, they were celebrated, as the atomic bombs themselves were celebrated, in the false belief that they brought World War II to an end.

The historical record is clear about these facts: First, at the time Hiroshima and Nagasaki were leveled, each with a single atomic bomb, Japan had been trying to surrender. Second, the US had broken the Japanese codes and knew that Japan had been trying to surrender. Third, prior to the use of the atomic bombs, the only term of surrender offered to Japan by the US was “unconditional surrender,” a term that left the Emperor’s fate in US hands.  Fourth, the precipitating factor to Japan’s actual surrender, as indicated by Japanese wartime cabinet records, was not the US atomic bombs, but the Soviet Union’s entry into the war against them.  Fifth, when Japan did surrender, after the atomic bombings, it did so contingent upon retaining the Emperor, and the US accepted this condition.

The US drew a self-serving causal link from the bombings, which was: we dropped the bombs and won the war.  In doing so, we reinforced the US belief that it can violate international law at times and places of its choosing and that US leaders can attack civilians with impunity.

Following the victory in Europe, the Allied powers held the Nazi leaders to account at the Nuremberg Tribunals for crimes against peace, war crimes and crimes against humanity.  The Charter creating the Nuremberg Tribunals was signed by the US on August 8, 1945, two days after it had dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima.  One day after signing the Charter, the US would drop a second atomic bomb on the city of Nagasaki.  Both atomic bombings were war crimes that, if they had been committed by Nazi leaders, most certainly would have been universally denounced and punished at Nuremberg.

Upon reflection, we must come to understand Hiroshima and Nagasaki as war crimes, if such crimes are not to be repeated.  We must resist the double standard that makes crimes committed by our enemies punishable under international law, while the same crimes committed by our leaders are deemed to be acceptable.  We must resist nuclear weapons themselves. They are city-destroying weapons whose possession should be considered prima facie evidence of criminal intent.

It has been two-thirds of a century since Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed by atomic bombs.  There remain over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world.  We must resist the tendency to normalize these weapons and consign them to the background of our lives. They reflect our technological skills turned to massively destructive ends and our failed responsibility to ourselves and to future generations.

Looking back at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, General Eisenhower said that the bombings were not necessary because Japan was already defeated; and Admiral William Leahy, Truman’s chief of staff, compared us to barbarians of the Dark Ages and said that he was not taught to make war by destroying women and children.  Einstein said that, looking forward, we must change our modes of thinking or face unparalleled catastrophe.  Changing our modes of thinking begins with remembrance, reflection and resistance.

5 August 2011

© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 2011

David Krieger is President of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.