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China’s rapid economic development over the past two decades is something to celebrate. But after the display of horrifying indifference that some Chinese showed toward a bleeding two-year-old girl – in a video watched by millions around the world – the country’s leaders acknowledged Tuesday that the country’s “cultural development” lags behind its other accomplishments.

The official report released by the Xinhua news agency at the end of the annual gathering of the powerful Central Committee of the Communist Party made no mention of Wang Yue, the toddler who was run over twice and ignored by 18 passersby as she lay in a pool of her own blood in a Guangdong market last week. But it was hard not to see a connection between the jarring incident – which has provoked widespread soul-searching among Chinese Internet users – and the Central Committee’s call for a shift in focus from the country’s booming economy to addressing the voids that success has created.

After a four-day closed-door meeting, the 200-plus member Central Committee issued a communiqué calling for the country to build a “powerful socialist culture” that would involve “significantly improving the nation’s ideological and moral qualities.” Earlier, senior Politburo member Li Changchun was quoted as saying “venality, lack of integrity and moral anomalies” were on the rise in Chinese society.

Little Yueyue, as the girl is known here, remained in intensive care in a Guangzhou hospital yesterday, clinging to life, breathing with the help of a respirator. Local media quoted the hospital’s head of neurosurgery as saying the girl will likely remain in a vegetative state if she survives.

The Central Committee decided on cultural development as its main theme for this year’s plenum (last year’s focused on the five-year economic plan) well before the shocking video started an emotional discussion on the Chinese Internet about why people seem to have so little compassion for each other. Yueyue’s case was just the latest scandal in a country that has become increasingly accustomed to astonishing stories of wanton corruption, Internet scams, tainted baby food, and even child abductions with official involvement.

Many see the Communist Party as having created the vacuum it now seeks to fill. Religion was crushed following the country’s 1949 Revolution, and the ideology that was supposed to replace it – Maoism – went out the window when the country undertook its economic reforms of the 1980s and 1990s.

“The Central Committee knows there’s something very, very seriously wrong with the Chinese value system. Officially, they say that they do have a socialist value system, but no one knows what that means,” said Bo Zhiyue, an expert on Chinese politics at the National University of Singapore. “No one believes in Marxism any more, Confucianism is not being revived, and the so-called Western universal values are not being accepted.”

What the government can do about it is unclear. A statue of Confucius was briefly erected on the edge of Tiananmen Square early this year, signalling what some saw as a campaign to resurrect the great scholar’s values as something of a moral code for the country. However the statue’s placement raised the ire of Maoists, and it was later moved to a less prominent spot inside the nearby National Museum.

The communiqué issued by the Central Committee suggested the Ministry of Culture and the Propaganda Department will lead the push to create a more ethical “socialist” culture, following the long-standing Communist tradition of trying to lead the masses through media and propaganda campaigns. But many Chinese believe that little can change unless the country’s widely distrusted legal system is overhauled.(Many Internet commentators admitted they understood the reaction of those who walked by injured Yueyue, since getting involved in another’s business can often have unpredictable consequences.)

With President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao set to retire next year, the debate over the country’s direction will almost certainly fall to the next generation of China’s leaders to resolve. Not mentioned in the communiqué was the behind-the-scenes jockeying for posts in the next Standing Committee of the Politburo, the Party’s top decision-making body.

While Vice-President Xi Jinping and Vice-Premier Li Keqiang are seen as virtual locks to succeed Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen next year, there could be as many as seven other spots available on the nine-person Politburo.

A taste of the campaigning taking place behind the sealed doors of the Great Hall of the People drifted onto the pages of the People’s Daily newspaper, which on the eve of the Central Committee meeting devoted a 3,000-word front-page article to the accomplishments of Bo Xilai, the charismatic boss of the megacity of Chongqing.

Mr. Bo has made himself the hero of the Party’s “new left” through his campaigns in Chongqing – which have included a harsh crackdown on crime and an effort to restore “Red culture” by encouraging the singing of Mao-era songs – and the prominent article was seen as a sign that he and the leftists might be in ascendance.

But on Monday, the Party’s liberals – often seen as the weaker grouping – got their moment in the People’s Daily, which devoted only slightly less prominent front-page coverage to Wang Yang, the reformist Party boss of coastal Guangdong province.

Mr. Wang recently launched a campaign known as “Happy Guangdong,” arguing that the region’s development needs to be measured by factors other than the pace of economic development. Citizens need to be “both rich of pocket and rich of brain,” the People’s Daily quoted him as saying.

By MARK MacKINNON

18 October 2011

@ Globe and Mail

NAIROBI, Kenya — The Kenyan government revealed on Wednesday that its extensive military foray into Somalia this month to battle Islamist militants was not simply a response to a wave of recent kidnappings, as previously claimed, but was actually planned far in advance, part of a covert strategy to penetrate Somalia and keep the violence in one of Africa’s most anarchic countries from spilling into one of Africa’s most stable.

For several years, the American-backed Kenyan military has been secretly arming and training clan-based militias inside Somalia to safeguard Kenya’s borders and economic interests, especially a huge port to be built just 60 miles south of Somalia.

But now many diplomats, analysts and Kenyans fear that the country, by essentially invading southern Somalia, has bitten off far more than it can chew, opening itself up to terrorist reprisals and impeding the stressed relief efforts to save hundreds of thousands of starving Somalis.

Somalia has been a thorn in Kenya’s side ever since Kenya became independent in 1963, and the two countries have followed wildly different paths. Somalia has become synonymous with famine, war and anarchy, while Kenya has become one of America’s closest African allies, a bastion of stability and a favorite of tourists worldwide.

Kenyan officials said it was becoming impossible to coexist with a failed state next door. They consider the Shabab, a ruthless militant group that controls much of southern Somalia, a “clear and present danger,” responsible for piracy, militant attacks and cross-border raids.

When Kenya sent troops storming across Somalia’s border on Oct. 16, government officials initially said that they were chasing kidnappers who had recently abducted four Westerners inside Kenya, two from beachside bungalows, and that Kenya had to defend its tourism industry.

But on Wednesday, Alfred Mutua, the Kenyan government’s chief spokesman, revised this rationale, saying the kidnappings were more of a “good launchpad.”

“An operation of this magnitude is not planned in a week,” Mr. Mutua said. “It’s been in the pipeline for a while.”

Many analysts wonder how Kenya will be able to defy history and  stabilize Somalia when the United Nations, the United States, Ethiopia and the African Union have all intervened before, with little success. They argue that the Kenyan operation seems uncoordinated and poorly planned, with hundreds of troops bogged down in the mud from rains that fall at this time every year.

Kenyan military officials also publicly said the United States and France were helping them, but both countries quickly distanced themselves from the operation, insisting that they were not taking part in the combat.

“The invasion was a serious miscalculation, and the Kenyan economy is going to suffer badly,” said David M. Anderson, a Kenya specialist at Oxford.

The Shabab, who have pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, have killed hundreds in suicide attacks in Somalia and are now vowing to punish Kenya, much as they struck Uganda last year for sending peacekeepers.

There have already been two grenade attacks in Nairobi, which Kenyan officials said were the work of Shabab members, and this usually laid-back capital city has shifted into war mode. Security guards peer into purses at supermarkets, shopping centers are deserted because many Kenyans are now scared to congregate in public, and the American government has warned of “an imminent threat of terrorist attacks” at malls and nightclubs.

Despite their close relationship with Kenyan security services, which receive millions of dollars in American aid each year, American officials said they had been caught off guard by the incursion.

“The United States did not encourage the Kenyan government to act, nor did Kenya seek our views,” said Katya Thomas, a spokeswoman at the American Embassy in Nairobi. “We note that Kenya has a right to defend itself.”

Pentagon officials are now watching cautiously. “This is not something that’s coordinated with us at all, so it’s not something we have much knowledge about,” a senior Pentagon official. “We want to see how this develops.”

Pentagon officials said the immediate impact of dispersing Shabab fighters was good. But without knowing much about the overall Kenyan strategy or long-term plan, they are a bit wary.

“It’s difficult to discern what’s the next step,” the official said.

Kenyan officials say the next step is marching to Kismayu, a port town controlled by the Shabab, who derive tens of millions of dollars a year in taxes from it.

But Lazarus Sumbeiywo, a former leader of Kenya’s army, said the Kenyans were erring tactically. “It should have been surgical strikes,” Mr. Sumbeiywo said, arguing for small teams of special forces to hunt down militants and eliminate them quietly.

In 1990, before he became chief of staff, Mr. Sumbeiywo said, he ran special operations to kill Somali gunmen who had infiltrated Kenya. He said that his men had worked in small units —   tracker, sharpshooter, translator —   and that Kenya had been bedeviled by Somalia for decades. “It was like that all the way from the beginning,” he said, describing how Kenyan forces fought Somali militants in the 1960s and 1970s, losing hundreds of men.

Kenya has tried to use proxy militias in Somalia to push out the Shabab and create a buffer zone stretching to Kismayu. But the militias have been struggling, and Kenyan officials said their plans for a major port in Lamu, near Somalia’s border, were imperiled by the instability pouring out of southern Somalia.

“This isn’t about tourism,” said a senior Kenyan official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “This is about our long-term development plan. Kenya cannot achieve economically what it wants with the situation the way it is in Somalia, especially Kismayu.”

“Just imagine you’re trying to swim,” he added. “If someone is holding your leg and your arm, how far can you swim?”

Somali officials, despite being enemies of the Shabab, have been furious about the Kenyan incursion. Somalia’s president, Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed, called it an “inappropriate” encroachment on Somali sovereignty

The dispute has left Western diplomats to mediate between the two sides, but Mr. Mutua said that “a lot has been lost in translation” and that the Kenyans and the Somalis were still close.

Still, aid organizations are deeply concerned that the military operations will affect efforts to reach starving people in Somalia’s famine-stricken interior. The United Nations has said that tens of thousands of Somalis have died and that 750,000 could starve to death. The Shabab control many of the hardest-hit areas, and have blocked most Western aid groups from entering.

“Some of the drought-affected people who arrived from other parts of the country are now facing multiple displacements in the wake of the military activities,” a United Nations report said Wednesday. “Movement of humanitarian personnel and supplies are also likely to be restricted, subsequently affecting the timely delivery of assistance.”

Eric Schmitt contributed reporting from Washington, and Josh Kron from Nairobi.

By JEFFREY GETTLEMAN

26 October 2011

@ The New York Times

Wars are constructed as a ‘Masculine’ concept where in only men are interested. Whatever women have done as warriors or ideologues or revolutionaries seems to be a deviation or aberration from the ‘norm’. The recognition of norm which is ‘War is Masculine’ is coming from none other than the women who challenge the norms of patriarchy. Feminists believe that ‘women’ are the enormous populaces who get crushed are helpless when there is a conflict between two ‘armed masculinities’. Therefore the one stop solution of the problem is ‘if there is a conflict women must ‘Build Peace’. The idea we are entering is not women are peaceful or women ignore the conflict and stay peaceful but “women build peace”. As can be pointed out by even a non intellectual movement ‘all women are not peaceful’ or thinking women to be peaceful alone is another essentialist argument that needs to be condemned.

What is peace building? When questioned about the process, an Indian feminist’s response is “please do not think it is a situation where women are standing with a white flag” but it is a very political process. Although she did not explain how it was a political process, we are here amidst the Kashmir conflict left to wonder.

Being peaceful is a virtue and we all struggle to attain peace through out our lives. In a ravaging conflict situation, peace has many meanings, for some it is the absence of the conflict, for many it is to be able to live in their dwellings without much worry of outer space and for most it is the ultimate resolution of the conflict. In this imagination, resolution of the conflict comes across as a situation which would leave way for others to have their understanding of peace eventually. Women in traditional societies, see the need of peace in the place where they struggle which most often is the dwelling. They strive hard to maintain an amiable living condition inside the house while completely ignoring the outer conflict. Emancipated women in traditional societies are the ones who are ‘political’ who believe in achieving peace in the society by nonconformist standpoints fetch for their localities whatever they need without have to realize their right’s independent of the community. But their rights as embedded as much are the rights of non-warring men, children and old aged.

In Kununposhpora, Bakhiti is a local activist who fought with the army personals to save women of her village from ‘sexual assaults’ and the men from the ‘physical beating’. Not only did women run to her even men never shied away from taking her help and governance as a local leader.

At the level of armed struggle, women if convinced about the struggle that would get the peace they have visualized women have taken part in the armed struggle as well. The LTTE in Srilanka or the Palestinian women in the Intifada movement are important examples.

But here the question is ‘peace building’ as a political process. The women of the ‘oppressor community’ want to create women’s ‘peaceful groups’ in a community which is oppressed.

Women of oppressor’s have easy access to the women of the oppressed community, since when women of oppressed community are discouraged from being political who is benefiting from this association? Where patriarchy is breathing its last when the oppressed community’s men are ‘Emasculated’, indeed ‘peace building’ is a very political process for oppressors. Women should not take part in the protests of the oppressed because their men oppress them? Then why should Indian feminists feed into the back channel of its masculine army? Why should this distinction fall as void or invalid?

The Centre for Dialogue and Reconciliation (CDR) in collaboration with Srinagar based NGO—Women for Peace (WFP)—organized the conference titled—Women’s Roles in Society: Issues of Mutual Concern. In Kashmir valley where Indian feminists are raising the slogans in the name of women are doing an oppressed community more harm than good. Kashmiri woman prefers her helpless oppressed man that the backchannel of her husband’s oppressor. In these peace groups seldom is the patriarchal and communal out lash of the oppressors acknowledged or evaluated.

When asked about her son’s death, Maugel says “My husband and my two sons were martyred while fighting the Indian Rule. I am 70 years old now, have no energy in my ailing bones, but if I had (I swear by God) I would give the last inch of it for my people to be relieved of a tyranny’

Women visualize peace in much different way than the ones in the seminars. Peace for Zainab who lives in front of the army camp and her daughters move through the surveillance of army and have to hear sexual remarks as usual, is nothing but “AZADI”

By Inshah Malik

03 October 2011

Countercurrents.org

Inshah Malik is scholar from Tata Institute of Social Sciences

Israeli museum not so tolerant, group of archaeologists say

REPORTING FROM JERUSALEM — A group of prominent international archaeologists are among the latest people to publicly denounce plans to build a museum on the site of a centuries-old Muslim cemetery not far from Jerusalem’s historic Old City.

In a letter addressed to the board of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, the mayor of Jerusalem and the director of the Israel Antiquities Authority, all of whom are backing the controversial project, 84 archeologists argued that construction of the museum would desecrate the sanctity of the site, known to be the location of the Mamilla Cemetery, or Ma’man Allah, the sanctuary of God.

The site is “one of the most historically renowned and ancient Muslim cemeteries in the world,”  said the group, which includes American, European, Arab and Israeli architects. “Such insensitivity towards religious rites, towards cultural, national and religious patrimony, and towards families whose ancestors lay buried there causes grave concern from a scientific and humanitarian standpoint.”

The project is slated for 33 acres of land in the heart of Jerusalem. The Jerusalem Municipality gave the property to the Simon Wiesenthal Center.

However, the project has been dogged by lawsuits filed by opponents who say not only would it defile a sacred site, but it’s also too large. Differences over architectural design and a turnover of architects have also slowed the project’s launch.

The archaeologists contend that such treatment of the burial site would not have occurred if were a Jewish burial site, and they quoted an Israeli official from the Ministry of Religious Affairs as saying that excavations would immediately stop “if one Jewish skeleton were found.”

But the Wiesenthal Center has defeated legal challenges in Israeli courts and has vowed to press ahead with the museum.

By Maher Abukhater

24 October 2011

@ Los Angeles Times

Many people, especially women, ask me if family planning is permissible in Islam. They say the imams and ulama say Qur’an prohibits family planning and quote a verse which says, “And kill not your children for fear of poverty – We provide for them and for you. Surely the killing of them is a great wrong.” (17:31). In no way this verse refers to family planning because it is talking of ‘killing’ and you kill one who exists. No law in the world will permit killing one who is already born and hence Qur’an rightly condemns killing of children.

Some people suggest that it refers to the practice of burying the girl child alive and when asked they would say we cannot provide for them and hence Allah says We provide for them and for you. But, as Imam Razi suggests it refers to both male and female children being kept ignorant. Thus killing them has not been used killing the body but mind which is as bad as killing the body. The word used here is ‘*awlad’* i.e. children which include both male as well as female and not only female.

Imam Razi’s suggestion seems to be quite reasonable and in fact large family means children cannot be properly educated by poor parents and hence parents kill them mentally by keeping them ignorant. They cannot even cloth them properly nor can provide proper space for lining. In such circumstances one cannot have good quality Muslims and mere quantity does not matter much. Better quality is more desirable than mere quantity.

First of all we should understand that in those days the problem of family planning did not exist nor that of population control. It is very much modern problem which has arisen in nation states. Most of the nation states in third world do not have economic means to support large population and when we say supporting large population it does not mean only feeding it but it also includes to educate them and also to provide proper health services. These are basic duties of modern nation states.

In fact in view of paucity of resources it has become necessary to adopt family planning. When Qur’an was being revealed there was neither any properly organized state nor education or health services being provided by any state agency. It is important to note that Qur’an which shows eight ways to spend zakat, does not include education or health which is so essential for the state to provide today. Thus what Imam Razi suggests is not only very correct and also enhances importance of family planning in the modern times as small family can support better education and health services.

It would be interesting to note that as for verse 4:3 (which is used by Muslims for justification of polygamy) Imam Shafi’I interprets rather differently. It ends with the words *alla ta’ulu which is generally translated as ‘you may not do injustice’ i.e. * do not marry more than one so that you may not do injustice. But Imam Shafi’I renders it as ‘so that you do not have large family’ Qur’an has already mentioned that ‘if you fear injustice then marry only one’ and so there was no need to repeat it. That is why Imam Shafi’I feels it should be translated as ‘so that you do not have large family’.

It can be seen that in understanding Qur’an even very eminent imams and great scholars differed from each other. One should not impose one single meaning of a verse on all Muslims. It could be interpreted differently by different people in their own context and circumstances. Family planning being a modern need one should not reject it out of hand and quote Qur’anic verses out of context.

In fact family planning does not mean killing children after they are born but to plan birth of children in a way that parents can bear all the expenses for their education, health, living space etc. in a proper manner. Qur’an also suggests that a child be suckled at least for two years and it is well known that as long as mother suckles she would not conceive. Thus indirectly Qur’an also suggests spacing of a child.

Even in hadith literature we find that the Prophet (PBUH) permitted prevention of conceiving in certain circumstances. When a person asked Prophet for permission for *‘azl* (coitus interrupts) as he was going for a long journey along with his wife and he did not want his wife to conceive while travelling the Messenger of Allah allowed him. In those days ‘azl * *was the only known method for planning of birth of a child. Today there are several methods available like use of condoms.

Imam Ghazzali, a very eminent theologian and philosopher allows even termination of pregnancy if mother’s life is in danger and shows several methods for termination. He even allows termination of pregnancy on health grounds or if mother’s beauty is in danger provided it is in consultatio with her husband.. Some scholars referring to the verse 23:14 conclude that one can terminate pregnancy up to three months as Qur’an, in this verse describes stages of development of sperm planted in mother’s womb and it takes three months for life to begin.

However, many ulama oppose termination of pregnancy. Whatever the case one cannot declare family planning as prohibited in Islam as it in no way amounts to killing a child already born or even termination of pregnancy but to plan birth of a child by preventing pregnancy for spacing birth of a child according to ones financial resources.

By Asghar Ali Engineer

13 October 2011

In the past decade, Washington has killed, maimed, dislocated, and made widows and orphans millions of Muslims in six countries, all in the name of the “war on terror.” Washington’s attacks on the countries constitute naked aggression and impact primarily civilian populations and infrastructure and, thereby, constitute war crimes under law. Nazis were executed precisely for what Washington is doing today.

Moreover the wars and military attacks have cost American taxpayers in out-of-pocket and already-incurred future costs at least $4,000 billion dollars–one third of the accumulated public debt–resulting in a US deficit crisis that threatens the social safety net, the value of the US dollar and its reserve currency role, while enriching beyond all previous history the military/security complex and its apologists.

Perhaps the highest cost of Washington’s “war on terror” has been paid by the US Constitution and civil liberties. Any US citizen that Washington accuses is deprived of all legal and constitutional rights. The Bush-Cheney-Obama regimes have overturned humanity’s greatest achievement–the accountability of government to law.

If we look around for the terror that the police state and a decade of war has allegedly protected us from, the terror is hard to find. Except for 9/11 itself, assuming we accept the government’s improbable conspiracy theory explanation, there have been no terror attacks on the US. Indeed, as RT pointed out on August 23, 2011, an investigative program at the University of California discovered that the domestic “terror plots” hyped in the media were plotted by FBI agents. http://rt.com/usa/news/fbi-terror-report-plot-365-899/

FBI undercover agents now number 15,000, ten times their number during the protests against the Vietnam war when protesters were suspected of communist sympathies. As there apparently are no real terror plots for this huge workforce to uncover, the FBI justifies its budget, terror alerts, and invasive searches of American citizens by thinking up “terror plots” and finding some deranged individuals to ensnare. For example, the Washington DC Metro bombing plot, the New York city subway plot, the plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago were all FBI brainchilds organized and managed by FBI agents.

RT reports that only three plots might have been independent of the FBI, but as none of the three worked they obviously were not the work of such a professional terror organization as Al Qaeda is purported to be. The Times Square car bomb didn’t blow up, and apparently could not have.

The latest FBI sting ensnared a Boston man, Rezwan Ferdaus, who is accused of planning to attack the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes packed with C-4 explosives. US Attorney Carmen Ortiz assured Americans that they were never in danger, because the FBI’s undercover agents were in control of the plot. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/story/2011-09-28/DC-terrorist-plot-drone/50593792/1

Ferdaus’ FBI-organized plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes has produced charges that he provided “material support to a terrorist organization” and plotted to destroy federal buildings–the most serious charge which carries 20 imprisoned years for each targeted building.

What is the terrorist organization that Ferdaus is serving? Surely not al Qaeda, which allegedly outwitted all 16 US intelligence services, all intelligence services of America’s NATO and Israeli allies, NORAD, the National Security Council, Air Traffic Control, Dick Cheney, and US airport security four times in one hour on the same morning. Such a highly capable terror organization would not be involved in such nonsense as a plot to blow up the Pentagon with a model airplane.

As an American who was in public service for a number of years and who has always stood up for the Constitution, a patriot’s duty, I must hope that the question has already popped into readers’ minds why we are expected to believe that a tiny model airplane is capable of blowing up the Pentagon when a 757 airliner loaded with jet fuel was incapable of doing the job, merely making a hole not big enough for an airliner.

When I observe the gullibility of my fellow citizens at the absurd “terror plots” that the US government manufactures, it causes me to realize that fear is the most powerful weapon any government has for advancing an undeclared agenda. If Ferdaus is brought to trial, no doubt a jury will convict him of a plot to blow up the Pentagon and US Capitol with model airplanes. Most likely he will be tortured or coerced into a plea bargain.

Apparently, Americans, or most of them, are so ruled by fear that they suffer no remorse from “their” government’s murder and dislocation of millions of innocent people. In the American mind, one billion “towel-heads” have been reduced to terrorists who deserve to be exterminated. The US is on its way to a holocaust that makes the terrors Jews faced from National Socialism into a mere precursor.

Think about this: Are not you amazed that after a decade (2.5 times the length of WW II) of killing Muslims and destroying families and their prospects in six countries there are no real terrorist events in the US?

Think for a minute how easy terrorism would be in the US if there were any terrorists. Would an Al Qaeda terrorist from the organization that allegedly pulled off 9/11–the most humiliating defeat ever suffered by a Western power, much less “the world’s only superpower”–still in the face of all the screening be trying to hijack an airliner or to blow one up?

Surely not when there are so many totally soft targets. If America were really infected with a “terrorist threat,” a terrorist would merely get in the massive lines awaiting to clear airport “security” and set off his bomb. It would kill far more people than could be achieved by blowing up an airliner, and it would make it completely clear that “airport security” meant no one was safe.

It would be child’s play for terrorists to blow up electric sub-stations as no one is there, nothing but a chain link fence. It would be easy for terrorists to blow up shopping centers. It would be easy for terrorists to dump boxes of roofing nails on congested streets and freeways during rush hours, tying up main transportation arteries for days. Before, dear reader, you accuse me of giving terrorists ideas, do you really think that these ideas would not already have occurred to terrorists capable of pulling off 9/11?

But nothing happens. So the FBI arrests a guy for planning to blow up America with a model airplane. It is really depressing how many Americans will believe this.

Consider also that American neoconservatives, who have orchestrated the “war on terror,” have no protection whatsoever and that the Secret Service protection of Bush and Cheney is minimal. If America really faced a terrorist threat, especially one so professional to have brought off 9/11, every neoconservative along with Bush and Cheney could be assassinated within one hour on one morning or one evening.

The fact that neoconservatives such as Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Condi Rice, Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, John Bolton, William Kristol, Libby, Addington, et. al., live unprotected and free of fear is proof that America faces no terrorist threat.

Think now about the airliner shoe-bomb plot, the shampoo-bottled water plot, and the underwear-bomb plot. Experts, other than the whores hired by the US government, say that these plots are nonsensical. The “shoe bomb” and “underwear bomb” were colored fireworks powders incapable of blowing up a tin can. The liquid bomb, allegedly mixed up in an airliner toilet room, has been dismissed by experts as fantasy.

What is the purpose of these fake plots? And remember, all reports confirm that the “underwear bomber” was walked onto the airliner by an official, despite the fact that the “underwear bomber” had no passport. No investigation was ever conducted by the FBI, CIA, or anyone into why a passenger without a passport was allowed on an international flight.

The purpose of these make-believe plots is to raise the fear level and to create the opportunity for former Homeland Security czar Michael Chertoff to make a fortune selling porno-scanners to the TSA.

The result of these hyped “terrorist plots” is that every American citizen, even those with high government positions and security clearances, cannot board a commercial airline flight without taking off his shoes, his jacket, his belt, submitting to a porno-scanner, or being sexually groped. Nothing could make it plainer that “airport security” cannot tell a Muslim terrorist from a gung-ho American patriot, a US Senator, a US Marine general, or a CIA operative.

If a passenger requires for health or other reasons quantities of liquids and cremes beyond the limits imposed on toothpaste, shampoo, food, or medications, the passenger must obtain prior approval from TSA, which seldom works. One of America’s finest moments is the case, documented on UTube, of a dying woman in a wheelchair, who requires special food, having her food thrown away by the gestapo TSA despite the written approval from the Transportation Safety Administration, her daughter arrested for protesting, and the dying woman in the wheelchair left alone in the airport.

This is Amerika today. These assaults on innocent citizens are justified by the mindless right-wing as “protecting us against terrorism,” a “threat” that all evidence shows is nonexistent.

No American is secure today. I am a former staff associate of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee. I required high security clearances as I had access to information pertaining to all US weapons programs. As chief economist of the House Budget Committee I had information pertaining to the US military and security budgets. As Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, I was provided every morning with the CIA’s briefing of the President as well as with endless security information.

When I left the Treasury, President Reagan appointed me to a super-secret committee to investigate the CIA’s assessment of Soviet capability. Afterwords I was a consult to the Pentagon. I had every kind of security clearance.

Despite my record of highest security clearances and US government confidence in me including confirmation by the US Senate in a presidential appointment, the airline police cannot tell me from a terrorist.

If I were into model airplanes or attending anti-war demonstrations, little doubt I, too, would be arrested.

After my public service in the last quarter of the 20th century, I experienced during the first decade of the 21st century all of America’s achievements, despite their blemishes, being erased. In their place was erected a monstrous desire for hegemony and highly concentrated wealth. Most of my friends and my fellow citizens in general are incapable of recognizing America’s transformation into a warmonger police state that has the worst income distribution of any developed country.

It is extraordinary that so many Americans, citizens of the world’s only superpower, actually believe that they are threatened by Muslim peoples who have no unity, no navy, no air force, no nuclear weapons, no missiles capable of reaching across the oceans.

Indeed, large percentages of these “threat populations,” especially among the young, are enamored of the sexual freedom that exists in America. Even the Iranian dupes of the CIA-orchestrated “Green Revolution” have forgotten Washington’s overthrow of their elected government in the 1950s. Despite America’s decade-long abusive military actions against Muslim peoples, many Muslims still look to America for their salvation.

Their “leaders” are simply bought off with large sums of money.

With the “terrorist threat” and Al Qaeda deflated with President Obama’s alleged assassination of its leader, Osama bin Laden, who was left unprotected and unarmed by his “world-wide terrorist organization,” Washington has come up with a new bogyman–the Haqqanis.

According to John Glaser and anonymous CIA officials, US Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen “exaggerated” the case against the Haqqani insurgent group when he claimed, setting up a US invasion of Pakistan, that the Hagganis were an operating arm of the Pakistan government’s secret service, the ISI. Adm. Mullen is now running from his “exaggeration,” an euphemism for a lie. His aid Captain John Kirby said that Mullen’s “accusations were designed to influence the Pakistanis to crack down on the Haqqani Network.” In other words, the Pakistanis should kill more of their own people to save the Americans the trouble.

If you don’t know what the Haqqani Network is, don’t be surprised. You never heard of Al Qaeda prior to 9/11. The US government creates whatever new bogymen and incidents are necessary to further the neoconservative agenda of world hegemony and higher profits for the armaments industry.

For ten years, the “superpower” American population has sat there, being terrified by the government’s lies. While Americans sit in fear of non-existent “terrorists” sucking their thumbs, millions of people in six countries have had their lives destroyed. As far as any evidence exists, the vast majority of Americans are unperturbed by the wanton murder of others in countries that they are incapable of locating on maps.

Truly, Amerika is a light unto the world, an example for all.

By Paul Craig Roberts

30 September 2011

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously an editor for the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds [1],” details why America is disintegrating.

Iran injected a new twist on Tuesday into the week-old American accusation of an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington, asserting that one of the defendants really belongs to an outlawed and exiled opposition group.

The defendant, Gholam Shakuri, identified by the Justice Department as an operative of the elite Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps, is actually a “key member” of the Mujahedeen Khalq, Iran’s Mehr News Agency reported.

The agency did not explain the group’s possible motive but left the implication that the plot was a bogus scheme meant to frame and ostracize Iran.

It said Mr. Shakuri, who is at large, had last been seen in Washington and in Camp Ashraf, the group’s enclave in Iraq. “The person in question has been traveling to different countries under the names of Ali Shakuri/Gholam Shakuri/Gholam-Hussein Shakuri by using fake passports including forged Iranian passports,” Mehr said.

American officials did not immediately comment on the Mehr report. Mark Toner, a State Department spokesman, reiterated the American view in a daily press briefing in Washington that “this was a serious breach of international law and that Iran needs to be held accountable.”

The opposition group itself dismissed the Mehr report as nonsense. Shahin Gobadi, a spokesman, said in an e-mailed response that “this is a well-known tactic that has been used by the mullahs in the past 30 years where they blame their crimes on their opposition for double gains.”

The group, also known as the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is regarded by Iran as a violent insurgent organization with a history of assassinations and sabotage aimed at overthrowing the Islamic government that took power in 1979. While the group claims to have renounced violence a decade ago, it is still classified as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department, but not by Britain or the European Union. It maintains a headquarters in Paris.

Mehr said it had learned what it called the new information about Mr. Shakuri from Interpol but was not more specific. Calls and e-mailed queries to Interpol headquarters in Lyon, France, were not immediately returned.

If Mr. Shakuri were in fact a member of the opposition group, it would be an embarrassing turn for the United States, which announced the suspected plot with some fanfare a week ago in a televised news conference by Attorney General Eric. H. Holder Jr., who said American investigators believed high officials in Iran’s government were responsible.

The Justice Department has accused Mr. Shakuri and Mansour J. Arbabsiar, a naturalized Iranian-American citizen from Corpus Christi, Tex., of conspiring to hire assassins from a Mexican drug gang for $1.5 million to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.

American officials have acknowledged the suspected plot sounds hard to believe but asserted they have the evidence to back it up. Saudi Arabia, apparently accepting the accusation as fact, has accused Iran of a “dastardly” scheme, and other American allies say they regard the accusation seriously.

Britain has gone farther than others, announcing on Tuesday it had ordered British banks to impound any assets of the two defendants as well as three other Iranian officials in the Quds Force suspected of running the plot.

Since Mr. Holder’s news conference, Iran has sought to counter the accusation with a mix of verbal counterattacks, accusing the Obama administration of concocting the plot to divert attention from other problems, conspiring with Israel to malign Iran and driving a wedge into Iran’s relationship with Saudi Arabia.

Iran scholars in the United States have said the suspected plot, while sounding far-fetched and amateurish, is not implausible. Ray Takeyh, a senior fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, said it could reflect an attempt by Iran’s security forces to retaliate for what they view as American-hatched plots carried out within Iran.

“It is suggesting, if true, that they’re trying to meet pressure with pressure,” he said. “From their perspective, the United States is involved in Iran’s internal affairs.”

By RICK GLADSTONE

18 October 2011

@ The New York Times

Reporting was contributed by Artin Afkhami in Boston, Maïa de la Baume in Paris and Ravi Somaiya in London.

Protesters have descended on Boston’s Financial District, setting up a tent village and decrying what they see as the economic hardships of ordinary Americans – one of several such demonstrations erupting across the country.

Today’s round of protests could snarl traffic during the morning rush hour near the demonstrators’ base, across from South Station and the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The group, called Occupy Boston, is inspired by Occupy Wall Street, a demonstration entering its third week in Manhattan’s Financial District that led to the arrest of 700 people Saturday on charges of blocking the Brooklyn Bridge. The effort has spread to several communities nationwide, with tens of thousands of people participating.

In Boston, the protests on Friday swelled to about 1,000 in Dewey Square. Police arrested 24 people on trespassing charges when they refused to leave the Bank of America building nearby.

But the demonstration, largely fueled by social media, has generally been a peaceful attempt to call attention to what protesters call the “bottom 99 percent’’ of Americans, who are strapped by rising costs for education, housing, and health care.

“The common root that everybody here has is that they feel like something’s wrong with the system,’’ said Tim Hansen, 21, a student at the University of Massachusetts Lowell who is facing thousands of dollars in college loans. “They feel they’ve been disenfranchised.’’

The demonstrators are a loosely organized group drawn together by e-mails, phone calls, and a personal fear that the country is heading in the wrong direction. They do not yet have demands, but they are holding daily general meetings, often broadcast on the Internet, to air concerns and discuss possible solutions.

Michael Flowers, a 24-year-old makeup artist and a spokesman for the Boston group, said efforts aim to appeal to a wide array of people, including conservatives worried about inaction in Washington. He said a well-off benefactor donated tents. In less than two days, they raised $1,200, he said.

“Wall Street started a spark, and it ignited a unified feeling of alienation from what it means to be an American,’’ Flowers said.

The protesters said they have no plans to leave anytime soon – a message that was echoed by demonstrators in New York, who said they plan to stay as long as they can.

Yesterday, the Boston campsite had become a high-tech micro-village filled with mostly young people running a sophisticated operation on a sodden expanse of grass in the shadow of the Financial District’s gleaming skyscrapers.

Tents sought to provide some of the services they say many ordinary Americans are lacking – including medical care, food, and shelter. They fed homeless people and offered them a berth in the community tent. They had recycling, garbage collection, and group meditation.

One young woman offered to do people’s laundry. Signs read “human need, not corporate greed,’’ and “fight the rich, not their wars.’’ Some protesters stayed for a few hours; others have slept there since Friday through winds and rain.

According to some media reports, the national movement began over the summer when a liberal Canadian organization called Adbusters called for an occupation of Wall Street. The plan germinated online and with activists until a real occupation began in mid-September in Manhattan.

Corrie Garnet, a licensed practical nurse in Gill, traveled more than two hours to reach the protest. She said she doesn’t have health care because it would cost $600 a month, almost as much as her rent.

Some protesters stayed in the tent village for a few hours; others have slept there since Friday through winds and rain.

“I have been really frustrated with the situation in this country,’’ she said, working in the medical tent, wearing a scarf adorned with peace symbols. “I know people who are graduating as nurses now who cannot find a job. That’s really sad.’’

Jason Potteiger, a 25-year-old college graduate who studied advertising, said he has had at least 20 job interviews – but no offers. At the protesters’ general meetings, he said, people are trying to find solutions since Washington has not.

Mary Nguyen, 20, wearing rubber boots as she emerged from her tent, said she was forced to take a year off from college because expenses are too high and financial aid falls short.

“Even after all my loans, I still have a lot of out-of-pocket expenses,’’ she said.

Susan Chivvis, 61, an accountant from Concord, said she jumped in her minivan with a sleeping bag and a rubber mat and rushed to the protest Friday, after she read about it on the Internet. The self-described former hippie is a long way from her days at Wellesley College, when she was tear-gassed at a march on Washington to protest the invasion of Cambodia.

Now, decades later, she has an MBA and a sincere appreciation for corporations that create jobs. But she is troubled that so many families slip into poverty, and the nation does not pull them out.

“I like to be a citizen in an orderly democracy and I like the government to handle certain social issues,’’ she said.

“We are sick of the growing disparities and the contempt for people’s needs.’’

By Maria Sacchetti

© 2011 The Boston Globe

“Both of Ibrahim’s arms were cut off. He had a hole in his lung. Parts of his legs were missing. His kidney was in a bad condition…we need people to stand with us.” These were the words of an exhausted man as he described the condition of his dying son in an interview with The Real News, an alternative news source.

Ibrahim Zaza was merely a 12-year-old boy. He and his cousin Mohammed, 14, were hit by an Israeli missile in Gaza, fired from an manned drone as they played in front of their house.

The story started on August 18. The next day, the British Telegraph reported: “Israel launches fightback after militant attack on Egypt border,” The whitewashing of the recent Israeli strikes at besieged Gaza leaves one wondering if all reporters used Israeli army talking points as they conveyed the story. Palestinians were punished for an attack at Israelis that reportedly accrued near the Israeli border with Egypt. There is no evidence linking Gaza to the attack, and Egyptian authorities are now disputing the Israeli account altogether.

“At least six Palestinians were killed in the first wave of bombing. Israel said they were members, including the leader, of the militant group known as the Popular Resistance Committees it accused of responsibility for the attacks,” wrote Phoebe Greenwood and Richard Spencer (The Telegraph, August 19).

The Popular Resistance Committees had dissociated themselves from the attack, as had Hamas and all Palestinian factions. But that was hardly enough to spare the lives of innocent men and women in Gaza, already reeling under untold hardship. Among the dead in the first wave of attacks that targeted ‘militants’ were two children, one aged three and the other 13.

In the media, Palestinian casualties only matter when they amount to a sizable number. Even then, they are placed within a context that deprives the victims of any sympathy, or worse, blames Palestinian militants for indirect responsibility (pushing Israel to resort to violence to defend its security). In fact, the term ‘Palestinian security’ is almost nonexistent, although thousands of Gazans have been killed in the last three years alone.

Even the news of Palestinian children killed in the August strikes was reported with a sense of vagueness and doubt. News networks downplayed the fact that the majority of Palestinian victims were civilians. The Telegraph reported that: “Hamas, which runs Gaza, said that two children were also killed in the air raids…” Quoting Hamas, not human rights groups or hospital sources, is hardly shocking when the reporter is based in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.

Neither was it shocking when the boy, Ibrahim Zaza, died. His heart was the only organ that had continued to function for nearly thirty days after the drone attack. The father, who was allowed to accompany Ibrahim and Mohammed to an Israeli hospital, was then prevented from leaving the hospital for he constituted a security threat. He kept circulating around his son’s frail body, hoping and praying. He appealed to people to stand by his family, stressing his lack of means to buy a wheelchair, which he thought Ibrahim would need once he woke up again.

There is no need for a wheelchair now. And Mohammed’s unyielding pain continues. His legs are bare with no skin. His belly area is completely exposed. His screams are haunting.

Ibrahim’s death seemed to compel little, if any, media coverage. There were no New York Times features, no Time magazine pictorials of the weeping mother and the devastated community. Ibrahim’s existence in this world was short. His death was mostly uneventful outside the small circle of those who dearly loved him.

There will be no debates on Israel’s use of airstrikes that kill civilians, and no urgent UN meetings over the incessant killings caused by Israeli drones, which in themselves constitute a highly profitable industry. Clients who have doubts about the effectiveness of the Elbit Systems Hermes 900 UAV, for example, need only view Israeli Air Force videos of the drone gently gliding over Gaza. According to sUAS News, it “can reach a higher altitude of 30,000 feet…(and) can be quickly and easily converted for the operator’s needs, without the need to adjust the operating infrastructure for every mission” (June 6, 2011).

Israel has been testing its drones on Palestinians for years. In Gaza, these vultures can be observed with the naked eye. Whenever the glider draws near, people scramble for cover. But it took a WikiLeaks report to verify Israel’s use of drones for the purpose of killing. According to a recently leaked document, Israeli army Advocate-General Maj. Gen. Avichai Mandelblit had, in February 2010, informed previous US Ambassador to Israel, James Cunningham, of Israel’s use of weaponized unmanned aircrafts to kill suspected militants.

In The Real News video report, Lia Tarachansky spoke to Lt. Col. Avital Leibowitz, a spokesperson for the IDF, to try and understand why Ibrahim and his cousin were targeted.

Lia Tarachansky: “There was only one missile shot, according to witnesses, and it was at two children, one 12 and one 14, sitting outside of their house.”

Avital Leibowitz: “The logic is that when someone is trying to launch a rocket at you, then the logic is – we better target that person before he targets us.”

The one photo I could retrieve of Ibrahim Zaza showed him posing shyly for the camera, his hair brushed forward. My heart breaks now as I think of him, and all the other victims of Israel’s “logic”.

By Ramzy Baroud

29 September 2011

Countercurrents.org

– Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His latest book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story (Pluto Press, London), available on Amazon.com.

David Cameron’s statement regarding the killing of Moammar al-Gaddafi  will go down as another piece of brash hypocrisy, which would be breathtaking if it was not so expected from the British premier. He mentioned that he was “proud of the role that Britain has played” in the uprising – intending of course the support given by NATO once it was clear that the Libyan people had risen up against the man en masse.

However he neglected to mention some of the other roles that Britain previously played with the Gaddafi regime which have undoubtedly had an effect on the events:

· Many of the weapons used by Libyan dictator’s regime were in fact purchased from Britain. According to the AP: “Britain sold Libya about $55 million worth of military and paramilitary equipment in the year ending Sept. 30, 2010, according to Foreign Office statistics. Among the items: sniper rifles, bulletproof vehicles, crowd control ammunition, and tear gas”

· The notorious Khamis brigade troops (Libya’s elite forces under the direct command of one of the Gaddafi son’s) contracted an £85 million command and control system from General Dynamics UK – one of the deals cut with the personal backing of the then British PM Tony Blair .

· Not only did the British arm the forces of the Gaddafi regime, they also trained them. The Khamis brigade troops were also trained by the SAS as well as being armed by British companies.

Cameron also stated that today was “a day to remember all of Colonel Gaddafi’s victims”. However, he neglected to mention those victims who were kidnapped and rendered to the Gaddafi regime by the British intelligence service such as Sami al Saadi who is now suing the British government for not only being complicit in his rendition and torture, but actually actively organizing it as highlighted by documents unearthed in Libya.

The American’s are also not free of association with the Libyan regime – and were also actively pursuing both commercial and security interests with the country.

Documents have shown that the CIA kidnapped the current head of the Tripoli military council Abdel Hakim Belhaj, torturing him before rendering him and his family to the Libyan regime back in 2004.

While the CIA had obviously begun their relationship with the regime earlier, by 2008, former president George W. Bush sent his top diplomat Condoleezza Rice to Libya for talks with the regime, and in the same year, Texas-based Exxon Mobil signed an exploration agreement with the Libyan National Oil Corp. to explore for hydrocarbons off the Libyan coast. According to the same AP report :

The US also approved the sale of military items to Libya in recent years, giving private arms firms licenses to sell everything from explosives and incendiary agents to aircraft parts and targeting equipment.

The Bush administration approved the sale of $3 million of materials to Libya in 2006 and $5.3 million in 2007. In 2008, Libya was allowed to import $46 million in armaments from the US. The approved goods included nearly 400 shipments of explosive and incendiary materials, 25,000 aircraft parts, 56,000 military electronics components, and nearly 1,000 items of optical targeting and other guidance equipment

The Obama administration has not released figures showing the depth of their relationship with the Gaddafi regime, but it is not likely to be any less repulsive than that of the previous American government.

In summary – Britain and America armed the Libyan regime, as well as actively co-operating with it in the torture of opposition figures. This was done alongside supporting it politically through opening up diplomatic channels and meetings, and working hard to open the regime up to Western commercial interests.

The rehabilitation of the Gaddafi regime was done under the rubric of the “war on terror”, with the dictator being just one of a number of unsavory regimes embraced by the West (Uzbekistan being another) due to their perceived usefulness in combating the all-encompassing “Al-Qaeda” threat as an imagined part of a global Islamic revolt against the Western way of life (as opposed to foreign policy, or indeed just wanting a government that represented their own point of view over them). As such, “counter-terrorism” provided the justification for all kinds of sweet commercial deals, along with not so sweet intelligence and interrogation co-operation with the Libyan regime.

Taking the above into account, it is widely held that the long-time presence of the various collection of Middle Eastern despots was in no small part due to Western support, a fact that automatically negates any altruism on the part of the same governments when extolling the virtues of their military intervention in this case. Without the weapons, training, and diplomatic legitimacy and support given to regimes from Libya to Tunisia to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, it is doubtful that they would have survived up until today given that popular dissatisfaction against them had been brewing for decades.

As an example – the relative silence and inaction of the West vis-à-vis the bloody and violent actions of their Bahraini ally (a benevolent monarch or oppressive dictator depending on which side is supported), as well as that of their partner in the war on terror Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh whose forces continue to kill protestors on an almost daily basis (while the Americans continue to bomb victims,  including American teenagers , with predator drones), exposes any claims that the West’s intervention in Libya was about anything altruistic. Again, the specter of a Shia-Iran and a terrorist threat in Yemen drive policy there.

Opposite to their lofty, but empty, rhetoric, the West has no real interest in supporting popular uprisings against regimes historically aligned with them, a message that has been sent to the populations of the region through the support of both Ben Ali and Mubarak until their final moments while working hard to “manage” any process of change which would maintain their interests, and their continued support of the Khalifa family, Abdullah Saleh and the remaining despots in the Arabian peninsula. This is along with their refusal to abandon their “reform” candidate in Syria Bashar al-Assad for months after he began massacring the people there. Indeed, the current stand-offish attitude towards the Syrian revolution is in large part due again to fears that the regime will be overthrown by a more independent Islamic (“extremist”) alternative – and so the World continues to watch wondering whether Bashar or the opposition will tire first. Going further afield to places like Pakistan, it is the United States that is currently killing civilians with alarming regularity  through the use of their unmanned aerial drones , with the silent collaboration of the Zardari regime.

While many celebrate the killing of a despot hated by the people of the region, it is unlikely that the region will forget the history of supporting, and continuing support, for the dictators of the Middle East. While for the remaining illegitimate regimes in the area, the lesson of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak, Ben Ali and now Moammar al-Gaddafi is that friends can be quickly forsaken by their Western patrons when the writing is on the wall, the best lesson that the common man may draw from these events is to never trust a Western politician, and that the only way to alter the status quo is through radical change.

By Reza Pankhurst

21 October, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Reza Pankhurst  is the editor of New Civilisation. He is also contributing writer on Foreign Policy Journal. He has a Masters in the History of International Relations and a PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Government department. He was a political prisoner of the previous Mubarak regime in Egypt, spending 4 years in jail between 2002 and 2006. He resides in the UK where he is currently completing work on his forthcoming book. He can be contacted at rezapankhurst@newcivilisation.com