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The European Union summit held in Brussels on Thursday and Friday was dominated by a major confrontation which ended with the virtual exclusion of Britain from the future affairs of the European Union.

This year has seen increasing speculation in financial and political circles on the possible exit of certain member states from the euro zone as a result of the deepening sovereign debt crisis. This speculation has centred on several of the continent’s smallest and most indebted economies, such as Greece and Portugal. Now the year is drawing to a close with the de facto exclusion of Europe’s third biggest economy from any effective voice in the operation and organisation of the European Union.

At Friday’s session of the summit, 26 of the 27 EU member states declared they would go ahead with plans put forward by France and Germany to enforce new austerity measures and budgetary targets across Europe. The only oppositional voice was that of the British Prime Minister David Cameron.

The conflict inside the summit unfolded on Thursday when, in the course of 11 hours of stormy negotiations, Cameron sought to block the changes proposed by France and Germany after the two latter countries refused to agree to a protocol excluding the City of London from the effects of legislation being drawn up by the EU to regulate a number of financial practices. Justifying his stance, Cameron argued, “I had to pursue very doggedly what was in British national interest.”

Three other nations—Sweden, the Czech Republic and Hungary—declared that they could not agree to the terms proposed by Berlin and Paris and would first have to consult their respective national parliaments.

On Thursday evening, French President Nicholas Sarkozy told reporters that the British stance at the conference was “unacceptable.” He went on to scold Cameron for attempting to dictate terms for dealing with the euro crisis while at the same time refusing to join the euro zone. Sarkozy then described the summit as “historic.” Alluding to the 17 EU member states that use the common currency and the ten that do not, he hailed the creation of a “euro plus” block (which excludes Great Britain).

On Friday, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Hungary decided to close ranks with the 23 member states supporting the Sarkozy-Merkel plan, leaving Cameron isolated. In previous EU discussions, the British Prime Minister had been able to rely on a degree of support in determining European policy from other non-euro countries such as Poland, Sweden and Denmark. Now the French-German initiative has effectively removed this political prop.

At the heart of the divisions at the Brussels summit are the diverging interests of British finance capital and European banking consortiums. The banks and financial institutions concentrated in the City of London dominate the financial services markets in the EU and have long been a thorn in the side of European banking interests centred in Paris and Frankfurt.

Just a week ago, the British prime minister made clear that his main task at the Brussels summit was to preserve the sovereignty of the British financial markets. “It is absolutely vital that we safeguard it,” he told the House of Commons.

The issues at stake for Britain were outlined in a recent report by the Open Europe think tank, which advises the British banking sector. According to the report, the EU was drawing up at least 49 new regulatory proposals that could have negative repercussions for the City of London. Open Europe noted that “whereas in the 1990s and early 2000s, EU politicians and policymakers generally (but not always) felt constrained from imposing financial regulation on the UK, this has now ceased to be the case.”

In particular, the report said that proposals for an EU-wide financial transaction tax, bans on short-selling, and the insistence by the European Central Bank that financial transactions in euros be conducted within the euro zone rather than London represented a fundamental challenge to the United Kingdom. Based on its findings, the report advised the British prime minister to take exactly the stance adopted by Cameron in Brussels.

While the Brussels summit exposed a deep rift between British banking interests and the rest of Europe, it would be mistaken to conclude that the EU member states had any intention of reining in the power of the banks. One of the most significant features of the deal worked out in Brussels this week is the agreement forged by France and Germany to ensure that in future no private banks or bondholders would be called upon to suffer losses as a result of the bailout of a European economy. The entire cost of covering the bad investments of the banks is to be born by the working class.

Over the past two years, the call for private investors to take losses in the event of a sovereign debt bailout was a major plank of German financial policy. In the face of unrelenting pressure from the international banks and the credit rating agencies, including a threat earlier this week by Standard & Poor’s to downgrade most euro zone nations, including Germany, the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel dropped the demand during her talks with Sarkozy to work out a common plan in advance of the summit.

Sharp differences remain among the countries that signed up to the Sarkozy-Merkel plan, including between France and Germany. The former wants a somewhat looser regime of fiscal oversight from Brussels and a far more expansionary policy on the part of the European Central Bank to provide cheap euros to hard-pressed European banks—in the first instance, the French banks. Germany wants a more centralized mechanism to override national parliaments and enforce fiscal austerity across the EU, combined with a far more limited role for the European Central Bank.

However, all are agreed—including Britain—on implementing the draconian austerity programs dictated by the international finance elite. On the issue of making the working class pay for the crisis, there are no differences between London, Paris and Berlin.

In addition to abandoning any call for the banks to take a “haircut” as part of efforts to ease the European debt crisis, the main elements of the plan agreed by the 26 nations in Brussels include the granting of semi-dictatorial powers to the Brussels bureaucracy to oversee and dictate the fiscal and budgetary policies of individual EU nations, and the imposition of sanctions on those states that violate strict budget guidelines.

The new agreements are a veritable political and legal minefield. The final text of a deal is to be thrashed out in advance of a new summit planned for the spring of next year.

Most stock markets rose on Friday in response to the summit, primarily because of the abandonment of calls for the banks to take a “haircut” on their European sovereign debt holdings and the summit decision to bring forward by one year the permanent European rescue fund (European Stability Mechanism—ESM) to July 2012.

But proposals pushed by the United States, the International Monetary Fund and many European governments for a massive boosting of the resources of the ESM and its transformation into a bank to flood the markets with cheap credit were blocked by Germany.

The respite in the European crisis is likely to be short-lived. Europe has already plunged back into recession, the US economy remains mired in slump, and economic growth in key “emerging economies” such as China, India and Brazil is slowing. The austerity measures being imposed in the weaker European countries—Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy—have already thrown them into recession and deepened their debt crises, and similar policies in France, Britain and other EU countries will now be intensified.

These policies will fuel a growth of working class resistance as well as a sharpening of inter-imperialist antagonisms. It is only a question of time before the euro crisis takes a new turn for the worse.

The exclusion of Britain from new structures and decision-making bodies marks a nodal point in the disintegration of the European Union itself. Under the blows of the crisis, the capitalist integration of Europe that began more than fifty years ago is rapidly unravelling.

By Stefan Steinberg

10 December 2011

WSWS.org

On a superficial level, the story revolves around the Emirof Qatar, Hamad bin-Khalifa, who founded and owns the world wide network, and funds it in the hundreds of millions.  At the very same time, possibly wearing his other hat as head of state, the Emir has donated more millions to the recent uprisings in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, and continues to fund the uprising in Syria.  His secret service has been notoriously active in Libya in conjunction with the British and French, and also in building the Syrian insurgency with Britain, France and Turkey.  “But,” Eldar continues, “it is Al Jazeera’s satellite broadcasts and online news sites that are the unconventional weapon influencing the Arab uprisings, more than any combat plane squadrons and tank division wielded by the old regimes.”

This is true as far as it goes, but the real truth is lies a bit deeper.  Eldar begins his piece by noting that the entrance to the Al Jazeera compound in Doha, Qatar, resembles a closed military base, where security personnel closely examine a driver’s passport and identity papers, open the car’s glove compartment and carefully check the trunk.  Al Jazeera has turned tiny Qatar, which has 250,000 citizens and another 1.5 million foreign workers, into a regional power. BRITISH PRIME MINISTERTONY BLAIR REPORTEDLY PERSUADED U.S. PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH TO DROP A FOOLISH PLAN TO BOMB THIS MEDIA COMPOUND SIX YEARS AGO.

The real power of Al Jazeera is not the Arabic-language television network, piped into 70 million homes, but the autonomous English-language television network, Al Jazeera English, or AJE, piped into a growing 250 million homes in 130 countries worldwide. Eldar rightly calls Al Anstey who runs it,”one of the world’s most influential journalists.”  (Not an Arab,”Al-Anstey,” but an Englishman named “Al.”)

Anstey gave Eldar an interview.  “Squirming uncomfortably,” he insisted that, “We report on events.  Under no circumstances do we create events.”

Who is Al Anstey?  He is a lifelong Arab handler for the British, based for most of his career in Bahrain, where he headed up a multifaceted communications empire before briefly working for ITV in Britain and then joining Al Jazeera in 2006.

A well-informed Washington intelligence source maintains that the British have by now milked the Arab-Israeli conflict for just about all they can get out of it.  Their new cause is are religious war between Shi’a and Sunni Muslims.  This is what Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov starkly warned of on Dec. 23, saying that he saw that conflict taking off, but that once it got going, it would be unstoppable.  But this is exactly the way all the Arab revolts and pseudo-revolts are now being steered,–among others by “Al Jazeera,” or more appropriately said, by Al Anstey and British Intelligence.

The Washington source went on to say that this Thirty Years War-like religious mayhem was not intended mainly for Southwest Asia or the Middle East, so-called.  The Middle East is only the launching-ground; the target is Asia as such, with its billions comprising most of the world’s population.

That is why Al Anstey went to New Delhi, India, this Nov. 17 for a gala meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, to inaugurate AJE’s grand entry into Indian television, with an initial audience of 150 million Indian homes.  [ap]            http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/al-jazeera-covering-the-revolutions-or-fueling-them-1.401762

HUSSEIN ASKARY OF SWEDEN’S LAROUCHE MOVEMENT ON AL JAZEERA Dec. 26, 2011 (EIRNS)–Al-Jazeera, since its inception in 1996, was nothing but the Arabic BBC TV which was moved to Qatar after the Sheikh Hamad coup which was blessed by the Queen, against his father. It has been a tool of British Pan-Islamic (although dressed as liberal) anti-American propaganda. I have written a lot about this for our intelligence staff through the years.     The Qataris are the not-so-Saudi British agents in the region. They had quarrels with the Saudis and Egyptians, they supported the Palestinian cause, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden, and looked like anti-imperialists (anti-American and not anti-British) to get the support of frustrated and gullible people around the world.  It has functioned as a military-intelligence organ from the beginning of the Arab uprisings, to deflect them from peaceful, legitimate revolutions against the global financial and economic order, into bloody confrontations against local “dictators.” They have been a center of communication for the armed rebels. Their studios host the films of so-called defecting Syrian soldiers. And who knows, maybe the beheading of Americans and other hostages in Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan were conducted there!            This is a typical British disinformation and cultural warfare operation.  [hus]

Dec. 26, 2011 (EIRNS)–Akiva Eldar, a veteran journalist whore presents the saner factions in Israel, has a well-grounded expose in {Ha’aretz} under the title, “Al Jazeera: Covering the Revolutions or Fueling Them?”

Tuesday’s decision to declare neo-fascist Anders Behring Breivik insane was driven by the political interests of the Norwegian and European ruling elite.

The man who massacred 77 people in a twin bomb attack in Oslo and a mass shooting of children on Utoeya Island in July has been deemed unfit to face trial and his incriminating testimony dismissed as merely the ravings of a madman.

This decision has nothing to do with concern over Breivik’s mental state. Rather, it is motivated by the fear in ruling circles that even a limited investigation of the events leading up to July 22, which a trial would undertake, would raise uncomfortable questions for those with connections to Breivik.

This includes not only parties of the far right across Europe, some of whom had direct links with the Norwegian terrorist, but also the political establishment itself, which has promoted the reactionary nostrums upon which Breivik based his fascist ideology.

Considered from a legal standpoint, the decision to declare Breivik insane is absurd on its face. All the evidence points to an individual with a clear political programme, who embraced positions identified with fascism and the far right. He viewed himself as a “crusader” against multiculturalism and immigrants. In some recent reports, it has become clear that his aim was to target the leadership of the Norwegian Labour Party, which he viewed as “Marxist.”

His acts of terrorist violence were meticulously planned and carried through, as he explains in his own words in his lengthy “manifesto” published online. These acts were directed towards a definite political agenda—in his own words, to create a “cultural-conservative revolution” throughout Europe.

Mere articulation of such views, even in private diaries, is enough for Muslim extremists in Europe, the US and elsewhere to be hauled up before the courts. Had Breivik’s professed ideology been Islamic fundamentalism, there is no question that he would have been put on trial, received extensive media coverage, and been imprisoned for years.

But clearly the “war on terror” does not apply to fascists.

By dismissing Breivik’s actions as those purely of a psychotic individual, the political establishment hope to portray him as a “lone wolf”, who acted without any support.

All available evidence shows the contrary. Ever since Breivik was taken into custody, details have emerged linking him to far right organisations within Norway and internationally. Police investigators have confirmed that Breivik claims to know of 80 “cells” across Europe who share his political outlook and violent aims.

Breivik remained a member of the anti-immigrant and far-right Progress party until 2006, having joined its youth wing nearly a decade earlier. His ties to the fascist English Defence League (EDL) also became known, with Breivik having engaged in several discussions with leading members. At one such discussion in London in 2002, he claimed that some of those present at a meeting of the “Knights Templar” were EDL leaders, whilst others came from paramilitary groups in the Balkans.

Investigations of these connections have been extremely limited. There has been no attempt to pursue any of those figures mentioned in Breivik’s manifesto or subsequently linked to him. Even when a group of individuals were arrested at a flat belonging to Breivik in the days following July 22, they were promptly released.

Within the political establishment, notwithstanding initial expressions of outrage and horror, no investigation is being conducted to examine the attacks. Norway’s commission of inquiry did not even intend to question the head of the PST intelligence services. It was compelled to request her presence before a parliamentary committee only after details emerged uncovering the PST’s failure to act on information regarding Breivik’s ties to a Polish businessman who provided the fertiliser for his bomb.

Internationally, no attempt has been made to seriously investigate any of those with whom Breivik met and discussed his political agenda. These include Alan Lake, a businessman who bankrolls the EDL, and Paul Ray, a blogger who writes under the name Lionheart and is referred to in Breivik’s 1,500-page manifesto.

It is not possible to explain this merely as a negligent response: definite political calculations are at work.

In this context, revelations that a far-right terrorist group in Germany has been collaborating closely with the state intelligence forces for over a decade are particularly significant. The group, whose outlook mirrors that of Breivik, has been responsible for at least nine murders of immigrants since 1998. State intelligence operatives not only turned a blind eye to their activities, but actively participated and facilitated the group’s actions.

There is no reason to believe that similar relations are not replicated between the far right and state intelligence services across Europe. In Britain, the EDL has long been recognised as an organisation infiltrated by informers and intelligence operatives, who assist in the planning and staging of so-called “demonstrations” that in reality are organised provocations against Muslims and the immigrant population of Britain. Placing Breivik on trial raised the prospect of such ties being brought out into the public arena.

The political establishment is also conscious of the fact that Breivik did not draw his disturbing ideological outlook out of thin air.

Many of the positions of Breivik and the far right in general have become standard fare in Europe’s ruling elite. Breivik’s “manifesto” contains the names of leading political and media figures whose increasingly anti-immigrant rhetoric inspired his conceptions.

His hostility to “multiculturalism” draws succour from those such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and Britain’s David Cameron, who have both announced its failure. More openly, Thilo Sarrazin, a prominent German Social Democrat, has blamed foreigners, particularly Muslims, for turning Germans “into strangers in their own country.”

The adoption by the political elite throughout Europe of conceptions associated with the extreme right is linked directly to the crisis of the capitalist system.

In every country, the bourgeoisie is moving to discard its traditional forms of parliamentary rule as it seeks a new base of support against emerging class struggles.

It is this that accounts for the increasing integration of far-right parties into the political mainstream. The most recent expression of this was the inclusion of the neo-fascist LAOS party in the Greek coalition government imposed by the international financial elite, led by the European Union and International Monetary Fund.

This process has been exemplified in Britain by the calls made by a number of Labour party figures associated with the “Blue Labour” tendency for cooperation with the EDL. Maurice Glasman—an academic who helped initiate the project, which is said to represent “flag, faith and family”—stated that he wanted to see “people who support the EDL involved within our party.”

The Breivik case must act as a warning to working people.

As the world has entered a period of economic crisis not seen since the 1930s, conditions are again being created for the fascist far right to play a leading role in the defence of bourgeois rule. The massive build-up of the security apparatuses of capitalist states around the world is not a guarantor against such a development. Rather, these institutions work to nourish and cultivate such tendencies to use in the struggle to suppress the development of a political movement of the working class.

By Jordan Shilton

2 December 2011

WSWS.org

Jordan Shilton is a WSWS.org writer

The end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq coincided with Bradley Manning’s military hearing to determine whether he will face court-martial for exposing U.S. war crimes by leaking hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents to Wikileaks. In fact, there is a connection between the leaks and U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq.

When he announced that the last U.S. troops would leave Iraq by year’s end, President Barack Obama declared the nine-year war a “success” and “an extraordinary achievement.” He failed to mention why he opposed the Iraq war from the beginning. He didn’t say that it was built on lies about mushroom clouds and non-existent ties between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. Obama didn’t cite the Bush administration’s “Plan for Post-Saddam Iraq,” drawn up months before 9/11, about which Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill reported that actual plans “were already being discussed to take over Iraq and occupy it – complete with disposition of oil fields, peacekeeping forces, and war crimes tribunals – carrying forward an unspoken doctrine of preemptive war.”

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta also defended the war in Iraq, making the preposterous claim that, “As difficult as [the Iraq war] was,” including the loss of American and Iraqi lives, “I think the price has been worth it, to establish a stable government in a very important region of the world.”

The price that Panetta claims is worth it includes the deaths of nearly 4,500 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. It includes untold numbers wounded – with Traumatic Brain Injury and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – and suicides, as well as nearly $1 trillion that could have prevented the economic disaster at home.

The price of the Iraq war also includes thousands of men who have been subjected to torture and abuse in places like Abu Ghraib prison. It includes the 2005 Haditha Massacre, in which U.S. Marines killed 24 unarmed civilians execution-style. It includes the Fallujah Massacre, in which U.S. forces killed 736 people, at least 60% of them women and children. It includes other war crimes committed by American troops in Qaim, Taal Al Jal, Mukaradeeb, Mahmudiya, Hamdaniyah, Samarra, Salahuddin, and Ishaqi.

The price of that war includes two men killed by the Army’s Lethal Warriors in Al Doura, Iraq, with no evidence that they were insurgents or posed a threat. One man’s brains were removed from his head and another man’s face was skinned after he was killed by Lethal Warriors. U.S. Army Ranger John Needham, who was awarded two purple hearts and three medals for heroism, wrote to military authorities in 2007 reporting war crimes that he witnessed being committed by his own command and fellow Lethal Warriors in Al Doura. His charges were supported by atrocity photos which have been released by Pulse TV and Maverick Media in the new video by Cindy Piester, “On the Dark Side in Al Doura – A Soldier in the Shadows.” [http://vimeo.com/33755968]. CBS reported obtaining an Army document from the Criminal Investigation Command suggestive of an investigation into these war crimes allegations. The Army’s conclusion was that the “offense of War Crimes did not occur.”

One of the things Manning is alleged to have leaked is the “Collateral Murder” video which depicts U.S. forces in an Apache helicopter killing 12 unarmed civilians, including two Reuters journalists, and wounding two children. People trying to rescue the wounded were also fired upon and killed. A U.S. tank drove over one body, cutting the man in half.

The actions of American soldiers shown in that video amount to war crimes under the Geneva Conventions, which prohibit targeting civilians, preventing the rescue of the wounded, and defacing dead bodies.

Obama proudly took credit for ending U.S. military involvement in Iraq. But he had tried for months to extend it beyond the December 31, 2011 deadline his predecessor negotiated with the Iraqi government. Negotiations between Obama and the Iraqi government broke down when Iraq refused to grant criminal and civil immunity to U.S. troops.

It was after seeing evidence of war crimes such as those depicted in “Collateral Murder” and the “Iraq War Logs,” also allegedly leaked by Manning, that the Iraqis refused to immunize U.S. forces from prosecution for their future crimes. When I spoke with Tariq Aqrawi, Iraq’s ambassador to the United Nations, at a recent international human rights film festival in Vienna, he told me that if they granted immunity to Americans, they would have to do the same for other countries as well.

Manning faces more than 30 charges, including “aiding the enemy” and violations of the Espionage Act, which carry the death penalty. After a seven day hearing, during which the prosecution presented evidence that Manning leaked cables and documents, there was no evidence that leaked information imperiled national security or that Manning intended to aid the enemy with his actions.

On the contrary, in an online chat attributed to Manning, he wrote, “If you had free reign over classified networks… and you saw incredible things, awful things… things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC… what would you do?”

He went on to say, “God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms… I want people to see the truth… because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.“

Manning has been held for 19 months in military custody. During the first nine months, he was kept in solitary confinement, which is considered torture as it can lead to hallucinations, catatonia and suicide. He was humiliated by being stripped naked and paraded before other inmates.

The U.S. government considers Manning one of America’s most dangerous traitors. Months ago, Obama spoke of Manning as if he had been proved guilty, saying, “he broke the law.” But Manning has not been tried, and is presumed innocent in the eyes of the law. If Manning had committed war crimes instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today. If he had murdered civilians and skinned them alive, he would not be facing the death penalty.

Besides helping to end the Iraq war, the leaked cables helped spark the Arab Spring. When people in Tunisia read cables revealing corruption by the ruling family there, they took to the streets.

If Manning did what he is accused of doing, he should not be tried as a criminal. He should be hailed as a national hero, much like Daniel Ellsberg, whose release of the Pentagon Papers helped to expose the government’s lies and end the Vietnam War.

By Marjorie Cohn

26 December 2011

CommonDreams.org

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past President of the National Lawyers Guild, is the deputy secretary general for external communications of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She is the author of Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law and co-author of Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent (with Kathleen Gilberd). Her anthology, The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse, is now available. Her articles are archived at www.marjoriecohn.com

The poorest taxpayers are subsidising the richest people in Europe: and this spending will remain uncut until at least 2020.

What would you do with £245? Would you a. use it to buy food for the next five weeks?, b. put it towards a family holiday?, c. use it to double your annual savings?, or d. give it to the Duke of Westminster?

Let me make the case for option d. This year he was plunged into relative poverty. Relative, that is, to the three parvenus who have displaced him from the top of the UK rich list(1). (Admittedly he’s not so badly off in absolute terms: the value of his properties rose last year, to £7bn). He’s the highest ranked of the British-born people on the list, and we surely have a patriotic duty to keep him there. And he’s a splendid example of British enterprise, being enterprising enough to have inherited his land and income from his father.

Well there must be a reason, mustn’t there? Why else would households be paying this money – equivalent to five weeks’ average spending on food and almost their average annual savings (£296)(2) – to some of the richest men and women in the UK? Why else would this 21st Century tithe, this back-to-front Robin Hood tax, be levied?

I’m talking about the payments we make to Big Farmer through the Common Agricultural Policy. They swallow €55bn (£47bn) a year, or 43% of the European budget(3). Despite the spending crisis raging through Europe, the policy remains intact. Worse, governments intend to sustain this level of spending throughout the next budget period, from 2014-2020(4).

Of all perverse public spending in the rich nations, farm subsidies must be among the most regressive. In the European Union you are paid according to the size of your lands: the greater the area, the more you get. Except in Spain, nowhere is the subsidy system more injust than in the United Kingdom. According to Kevin Cahill, author of Who Owns Britain, 69% of the land here is owned by 0.6% of the population(5). It is this group which takes the major pay-outs. The entire budget, according to the government’s database, is shared between just 16,000 people or businesses(6)*. Let me give you some examples, beginning with a few old friends.

As chairman of Northern Rock, Matt Ridley oversaw the first run on a British bank since 1878, and helped precipitate the economic crisis which has impoverished so many. This champion of free market economics and his family received £205,000 from the taxpayer last year for owning their appropriately-named Blagdon Estate(7). That falls a little shy of the public beneficence extended to Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian fixer at the centre of the Al-Yamamah corruption scandal. In 2007 the Guardian discovered that he had received a payment of up to £1bn from the weapons manufacturer BAE(8). He used his hard-earned wealth to buy the Glympton Estate in Oxfordshire(9). For this public service we pay him £270,000 a year(10). Much obliged to you guv’nor, I’m sure.

But it’s the true captains of British enterprise – the aristocrats and the utility companies, equally deserving of their good fortune – who really clean up. The Duke of Devonshire gets £390,000(11), the Duke of Buucleuch £405,000(12), the Earl of Plymouth £560,000(13), the Earl of Moray £770,000(14), the Duke of Westminster £820,000(15). The Vestey family takes £1.2m(16). You’ll be pleased to hear that the previous owner of their Thurlow estate, Edmund Vestey, who died in 2008, managed his tax affairs so efficiently that in one year his businesses paid just £10. Asked to comment on his contribution to the public good, he explained, “we’re all tax dodgers, aren’t we?”(17).

British households, who try so hard to keep the water companies in the style to which they’re accustomed, have been blessed with another means of supporting this deserving cause. Yorkshire water takes £290,000 in farm subsidies, Welsh Water £330,000, Severn Trent, £650,000, United Utilities, £1.3m. Serco, one of the largest recipients of another form of corporate welfare – the private finance initiative – gets a further £2m for owning farmland(18).

Among the top blaggers are some voluntary bodies. The RSPB gets £4.8m, the National Trust £8m, the various wildlife trusts a total of £8.5m(19). I don’t have a problem with these bodies receiving public money. I do have a problem with their receipt of public money through a channel as undemocratic and unaccountable as this. I have an even bigger problem with their use of money with these strings attached. For the past year, while researching my book about rewilding, I’ve been puzzling over why these bodies fetishise degraded farmland ecosystems and are so reluctant to allow their estates to revert to nature. Now it seems obvious. To receive these subsidies, you must farm the land(20).

As for the biggest beneficiary, it is shrouded in mystery. It’s a company based in France called Syral UK Ltd. Its website describes it as a producer of industrial starch, alcohol and proteins, but says nothing about owning or farming any land(21). Yet it receives £18.7m from the taxpayer. It has not yet answered my questions about how this has happened, but my guess is that the money might take the form of export subsidies: the kind of payments which have done so much to damage the livelihoods of poor farmers in the developing world.

In one respect the government of this country has got it right. It has lobbied the European Commission, so far unsuccessfully, for “a very substantial cut to the CAP budget”(22). But hold the enthusiasm. It has also demanded that the EC drop the only sensible proposal in the draft now being negotiated by member states: that there should be a limit to the amount that a landowner can receive(23). Our government warns that capping the payments “would impede consolidation” of landholdings(24). It seems that 0.6% of the population owning 69% of the land isn’t inequitable enough.

If subsidies have any remaining purpose it is surely to protect the smallest, most vulnerable farmers. The UK government’s proposals would ensure that the budget continues to be hogged by the biggest landlords. As for payments for protecting the environment, this looks to me like the option you’re left with when you refuse to regulate. The rest of us don’t get paid for not mugging old ladies. Why should farmers be paid for not trashing the biosphere? Why should they not be legally bound to protect it, as other businesses are?

In the midst of economic crisis, European governments intend to keep the ultra-rich in vintage port and racehorses at least until 2020. While inflicting the harshest of free market economics upon everyone else, they will oblige us to support a parasitic class of tax avoiders and hedgerow-grubbers, who engorge themselves on the benefactions of the poor.

*UPDATE: It’s just dawned on me that the government’s list must be incomplete. It says it covers all “legal persons”, but it seems that legal persons excludes actual persons, as opposed to companies, partnerships, trusts etc. It would be fascinating to discover whose subsidies have not being listed.

References:

1. http://www.therichest.org/nation/sunday-times-rich-list-2011/

2. The average UK household contribution to the CAP is £245 (DEFRA, by email). Average household weekly expenditure on food and drink is £52.20. Average household weekly savings and investments is £5.70.

Office of National Statistics, 2010. Family Spending 2010 Edition. Table A1: Components of Household Expenditure 2009. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/publications/re-reference-tables.html?edition=tcm%3A77-225698

3. DEFRA, by email.

4. European Commission, 19th October 2011. Regulation Establishing Rules for Direct Payments to Farmers Under Support Schemes Within the Framework of the Common Agricultural Policy. COM(2011) 625 final/2 2011/0280 (COD). http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/cap-post-2013/legal-proposals/com625/625_en.pdf

5. I wanted to go to source on this, but the copies available online are amazingly expensive (there’s an irony here, but I can’t quite put my finger on it). So I’ve relied on a report of the contents of his book: http://www.newstatesman.com/society/2010/10/land-tax-labour-britain

6. The database is here: http://www.cap-payments.defra.gov.uk/Download.aspx DEFRA’s database search facility isn’t working – http://www.cap-payments.defra.gov.uk/Search.aspx – so you’ll have to go through the spreadsheets yourself.

7. The entry in the database is for Blagdon Farming Ltd. I checked online: this is one of the properties of the Blagdon Estate. http://www.blagdonestate.co.uk/theblagdonhomefarm.htm , http://www.192.com/atoz/business/newcastle-upon-tyne-ne13/farming-mixed/blagdon-farming-ltd/292e5a6d3883fe2f4a207c94d6c41e61747a8b50/ml/ and http://www.misterwhat.co.uk/company/384132-blagdon-farming-ltd-newcastle-upon-tyne

8. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/07/bae1

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/jun/09/bae.foreignpolicy

9. http://www.guardian.co.uk/baefiles/page/0,,2095831,00.html

10. The payment is listed as Glympton Farms Ltd. I rang them – they confirmed that Glympton Farms belongs to the estate.

11. Listed as Chatsworth Settlement Trustees. This page identifies the owners: http://www.boltonabbey.com/welcome_trustees.htm

12. Listed as Buccleuch Estates Ltd

13. Listed as Earl of Plymouth Estates Ltd.

14. Listed as Moray Estates Development Co.

15. Listed as Grosvenor Farms Limited. See http://www.grosvenorestate.com/Business/Grosvenor+Farms.htm

16. Listed as Thurlow Estate Farms Ltd. See http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/1570710/Edmund-Vestey.html and http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/fat-cats-benefit-from-eu-farming-subsidies-780192.html

17. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/07/edmund-vestey-tax-will

18. All these utility companies are listed under their own names.

19. I stopped adding the wildlife trust payments shortly after getting down to the £100,000 level, so it is probably a little more than this.

20. The CAP’s Good Agricultural and Environmental Condition rules (an Orwellian term if ever there was one) forbid what they disparagingly call “land abandonment”.

21. http://www.tereos-syral.com/web/syral_web.nsf/Home/index.htm

22. DEFRA, January 2011. UK response to the Commission communication and consultation:

“The CAP towards 2020: Meeting the food, natural resources and territorial challenges of the future”. http://archive.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/policy/capreform/documents/110128-uk-cap-response.pdf

23. European Commission, 19th October 2011, as above.

24. DEFRA, January 2011, as above.

By George Monbiot. Published in the Guardian 29th November 2011.

28 November 2011

Why did the Durban climate talks fail? Ultimately, the culprit is the near-universal pursuit of economic growth. All the major players want growth: the US, because it’s still pulling out of a recession; China, because it knows 10 percent annual growth can’t go on forever, but is trying to avoid a hard landing; Europe, which is trying to pull out of its sovereign debt spiral. The US and China, in particular, know that fossil fuels have given them growth in the past, and are especially reluctant to give them up now.

The Chinese pulled a PR coup during the talks by announcing that they were willing to consider emissions cuts if the US signs onto a global binding agreement. Perhaps Beijing felt safe saying this because there is a general understanding that binding climate action is currently unthinkable in the US for domestic political reasons. If China were indeed seriously concerned about climate, then as the world’s foremost greenhouse gas emitter it could simply unilaterally cut back on emissions and then challenge the US and other countries to follow suit. But of course that’s not what we’re seeing; instead, China is leading not only in total national emissions but in rates of emissions increase, due to its phenomenal coal consumption.

Can the world decouple GDP growth from carbon emissions? To a certain extent, yes. During the 90s there was some decoupling, especially in the US, but it was mostly due to globalization and financialization. Industrialized countries outsourced much of their production, mainly to China, which burned its coal to make America’s consumer goods; meanwhile, the financial industry blossomed as debt grew faster than GDP and banks leveraged that debt through securitization and derivatives. But, as we’ve seen since 2008, growing the size of the financial industry relative to the size of the rest of the economy can have some nasty long-term side effects.

Over the past decade, most of the decoupling effect has disappeared globally, and energy use and GDP growth have moved in tandem. In 2010, greenhouse gas emissions actually grew faster than GDP. So we’re moving in the wrong direction, and accelerating.

Could we still have economic growth while transitioning to renewable energy? Perhaps, but renewables typically have high up-front investment requirements. Once one has a solar panel up and running, one gets very low-cost energy, but buying and installing the panel is quite expensive—and for the world that’s problematic at a time when investment capital and credit are scarce. So, as regular oil and coal grow more costly, countries are often motivated to solve their energy supply problems simply by digging deeper into their resource base for lower-grade fossil fuels, such as tar sands, which just make the climate problem worse.

This dynamic is only likely to change when we finally get to the point where we are concerned less about short-term economic growth than about our longer-term survival prospects. But by then it may be too late to avert catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

Here’s the bitter irony: we are postponing serious climate action for the sake of immediate economic growth. But with a flood here, a drought there; with a famine here, a mass migration there, we soon arrive at a place where economic growth is unachievable in any case.

Nobody expected much from the Durban talks. Thanks to the US and China, the negotiations fully lived down to their expectations. It’s past time for these nations to wake up and realize that even their short-term growth strategy is doomed to failure. It may be too late by now to avert serious climate impacts, but the world can still benefit by abandoning its pointless and counterproductive quest for growth at any cost.

By Richard Heinberg

10 December 2011

Post Carbon Institute

Richard Heinberg is Senior Fellow-in-Residence at Post Carbon Institute. He is the author of ten books, including The Party’s Over, Peak Everything, and the soon-to-be-released The End of Growth. He is widely regarded as one of the world’s most effective communicators of the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels.

“Violence begets violence. Hatred begets hatred. And terrorism begets terrorism. A white ambassador said that y’all, not a black militant (Ambassador to Iraq , Edward Peck). Not a reverend who preaches about racism. An ambassador whose eyes are wide open and who is trying to get us to wake up and move away from this dangerous precipice upon which we are now poised…”

(Jeremiah Wright, September 16, 2001 )

Prophets fare poorly in their own country, yet countries would do well to hearken to their prophets. Scorn, ridicule, and innuendo attend their pronouncements as the righteous defend their actions as logical, existential and necessary. Jeremiah Wright suffered such scorn and mockery because he understood the consequences of revenge on the innocent and the defenceless, justified by whatever inane discourse. Wright spoke truth to power that Sunday after 9/11 and the righteous cried to heaven condemning him to perdition for defaming America, for even suggesting that revenge for the sake of revenge is the motivation of the arch fiend against the Almighty, the foulest, most ignorant, most amoral rational for action.

Prophets anticipate truth; they review a nation’s past history and can predict its future. Witness America ‘s past as the Reverend Wright did that Sunday morning, and what America is doing now repeats its ugliness. Wright said this about America ‘s past:

He pointed out, a white man, an ambassador, he pointed out that what Malcolm X said when he was silenced by Elijah Mohammad was in fact true, he said Americas chickens, are coming home to roost.”

“We took this country by terror away from the Sioux, the Apache, Arikara, the Comanche, the Arapaho, the Navajo. Terrorism.

“We took Africans away from their country to build our way of ease and kept them enslaved and living in fear. Terrorism.

“We bombed Grenada and killed innocent civilians, babies, non-military personnel.

“We bombed the black civilian community of Panama with stealth bombers and killed unarmed teenage and toddlers, pregnant mothers and hard working fathers.

“We bombed Qaddafi’s home, and killed his child. Blessed are they who bash your children’s head against the rock. (See Psalm 137 to understand how the righteous take revenge against the innocent and defenceless.)

“We bombed Iraq . We killed unarmed civilians trying to make a living. We bombed a plant in Sudan to pay back for the attack on our embassy, killed hundreds of hard working people, mothers and fathers who left home to go that day not knowing that they’d never get back home.

“We bombed Hiroshima . We bombed Nagasaki , and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon and we never batted an eye.

“Kids playing in the playground. Mothers picking up children after school. Civilians, not soldiers, people just trying to make it day by day.

“We have supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans, and now we are indignant because the stuff that we have done overseas is now brought right back into our own front yards. America ‘s chickens are coming home to roost.

That was the Sunday after 9/11, 2001 when Wright quoted Ambassador Peck. But even that list of America’s atrocities is not complete as Mark Twain would attest in his recounting of the massacre of the Moro’s at the turn of the last century 1900 and our disastrous foray into Vietnam when we lost 58,000 American soldiers and killed millions of Vietnamese and Cambodians.

This is the America that exists now: we preach righteousness, but lie with impunity; declare God’s mission to bring freedom to the mid-east, then decimate the women and children, the old and infirm as necessary collateral damage; proclaim the existence of Weapons of Mass destruction, then massively destroy a nation’s infrastructure, steal its natural resources, take control of its government replacing it with a favoured puppet; and then write the history to extol our righteousness while defaming the defenceless people decimated. Wright knew.

Perhaps our President might hearken back to a time when principles mattered, when truth mattered, when might did not make right, when the souls and hearts of people mattered, when justice and equality mattered not deceit and dominance over all. When did America become a dictatorial empire manipulated by an elite few using the Presidency like some houseboy to do their bidding? When did the founding documents get trashed, mocked and ridiculed as weak, worthless, and obsolete? When did the American people vote to become the dominant empire in the world? What interests of the people demand that this nation establish military bases in about 140 nations around the world then threaten the nations of the world with pre emptive slaughter should they dare to embark on economic or military equality with the United States ? How do the actions implicit in these questions reflect a nation based on the rule of law, on justice for all its citizens, on equity of rights and recognition of rights, on the morals inherent in the Bill of Rights and the ideals enunciated in the Declaration of Independence?

Let’s say it loud and clear, the America of our founding fathers no longer exists; America is owned in mind and pocket book by those who have purchased our representatives, propagate their news through the corporate controlled media, determine the receivers of our tax dollars salvaging those who wrought havoc with our economy, write the legislation that controls the American people orchestrated through the largest conglomerate of a police state ever assembled, Homeland Security, and in its final nail in the coffin of human rights has legislated the abolishment of habeas corpus and rule of law by installing the draconian National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA 2012). This act in the words of Jonathan Turley, expert in constitutional law ( December 21, 2011 on C-Span, gives dictatorial power to the President:

President Obama has just stated a policy that he can have any American citizen killed without any charge, without any review, except his own . If he’s satisfied that you are a terrorist, he says that he can kill you anywhere in the world including in the United States .

Two of his aides just … reaffirmed they believe that American citizens can be killed on the order of the President anywhere including the United States.

You’ve now got a president who says that he can kill you on his own discretion. He can jail you indefinitely on his own discretion

I don’t think the Framers ever anticipated that [the American people would be so apathetic]. They assumed that people would hold their liberties close, and that they wouldn’t relax…

This is the President that rejected the Reverend Wright’s prophecy, that capitulated to his new masters who demanded that he repudiate him, that now elevates himself to the role of Judge, Jury and executioner, the role that used to be played by the Sheriffs of the old segregated south when they turned a blind eye to those dragging a slave to the hanging tree. Indeed, we have turned back in time to that denunciated by a real leader of men, a man born into slavery, Frederick Douglass, when he described the America he lived in just before the Civil War:

What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelly to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade, and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States , at this very hour.

Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

The American people are now in Douglass’ shoes; they have been put on notice that any pathological employee of Homeland Security, of the armed forces of the United State, of our local police and National Guard, can suspect a citizen of associating or being engaged somehow with “terrorists,” can be arrested, interrogated, imprisoned indefinitely, without charge, without review except his own. The America Douglass so graphically describes existed up through the 100 years of segregation until the Civil Rights movement of 1954 got under way. We’ve had a modicum of equality for the past 50 years brought on by national movements that made clear to the government that they were elected to serve the people, not arrest them.

But let it also be said that the America Douglass describes, the one grounded in “bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy,” still exists outclassing its past a hundred fold. Our savagery knows no bounds: we decimate people wantonly throughout the world as Dresden, the fire-bombing of Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Vietnam, the sanctions against Iraq, the illegal invasion of Iraq, the unqualified military support we provide to the Zionist government in Israel against a defenceless people, the abominable use of drones against the people of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the continuing development of weapons of mass savagery and our willingness to develop further atomic weapons graphically illustrates.

The numbers slaughtered in this review is in the millions–not all dressed in combat fatigues. The numbers of the defenceless and the innocent outstrips those trained to kill. All of those slaughtered happened outside the United States and every son and daughter, mother and father, sister and brother, aunt and uncle, grandfather and grandmother felt the pain of loss that was to our forces a “body count.” “Revenge is mine sayeth the Lord.” “Violence begets violence, hatred begets hatred, terrorism begets terrorism,” so rings the prophetic knell of the Reverend Wright to his congregation one of whom happened to be our current President Barack Obama. Would that he had listened, for if any man was ever elected to the office of President to change the world, this was the man and he has failed.

By William A. Cook

26 December 2011

Countercurrents.org

William A. Cook is a Professor of English at the University of La Verne in southern California. He writes frequently for Internet publications including The Palestine Chronicle, MWC News, Atlantic Free Press, Pacific Free Press, Countercurrents, Counterpunch, World Prout Assembly, Dissident Voice, and Information Clearing House among others. His books include Tracking Deception: Bush Mid-East policy, The Rape of Palestine, The Chronicles of Nefaria, a novella, and the forthcoming The Plight of the Palestinians. He can be reached at wcook@laverne.edu or www.drwilliamacook.com

A longer headline would have added the words because of President Obama’s grovelling for Jewish campaign funding and votes.

On 19 December, in the Jewish Daily Forward, Josh Nathan-Kazis wrote this:

“Top-level Jewish fundraisers from President Obama’s 2008 campaign are sticking with the president in 2012.

“Despite reports that President Obama faces a loss of Jewish funders due to his Middle East policy, analysis of a list of elite bundlers from his 2008 race shows no defections among the president’s top Jewish supporters in 2012.”

That’s not good news for the would-be presidents on the Republican side who are grovelling for Jewish campaign funds and votes.

On the same day, in what the BBC’s Barbara Plett called “a highly unusual move”, all the regional and political groupings on the UN Security Council sharply criticised Israeli settlement activities. They said in their statements that “continued settlement building threatened the chances of a future Palestinian state.” They also expressed dismay at rising settler violence. (“They” were the envoys representing the European Union, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Arab Group and a loose coalition of emerging states known as IBSA).

It was UK Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant who read the statement of the EU group.

“Israel’s continuing announcements to accelerate the construction of settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, including East Jerusalem, (1000 new housing units tendered for last week), send a devastating message. We believe that Israel’s security and the realisation of the Palestinians’ right to statehood are not opposing goals. On the contrary they are mutually reinforcing objectives. But they will not be achieved while settlement building and settler violence continues.”

As Barbara Plett noted,

“Despite the unanimity of views, the envoys did not try to draft a single Security Council statement because they knew the US would veto it.” She also noted that the Obama administration’s stance was that “anything to do with Israeli-Palestinian peace talks belongs in a US-led bilateral process, not at the UN.”

It could be said, and I do say, that such criticism of Israel’s settlement activities is 44 years too late. So what, really, is its significance?

My answer is in three parts.

The first is that it’s a strong indication of America’s growing isolation because of the Obama administration’s unconditional support for Zionism’s monster child.

The second, related, is that it seems to confirm what I have been saying and writing for several months – that behind closed doors almost all of the governments of the world, European governments in particular, are more than fed up with Israel’s contempt for and defiance of international law.

The third is that the governments of most of the member states of the UN have come to terms with the fact that Zionism’s assertion that a Palestinian state on the West Bank including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip could and would pose a threat to Israel’s existence is propaganda nonsense of the highest order. (This, of course, is only of academic interest because the two-state solution has long been dead if not yet buried).

When I am thinking about Obama’s grovelling, my memory recalls a comment made to me by Dr. Hajo Meyer, the passionate anti-Zionist Nazi holocaust survivor and author of An Ethical Tradition Betrayed, The End of Judaism.

We had shared a platform in London and over breakfast the following morning I asked him a question. I said: “Hajo, you’re well into your eighties and you are being vilified by Zionism’s verbal hit-men for your efforts to unmask the Zionist monster. Why are you continuing with your truth-telling? Why don’t you sit back in peace and quiet and enjoy what’s left of your life?”

He replied with nine little words. “The first person I see every morning is me,” meaning “I have to live with myself.”

It’s more than reasonable to assume that Obama looks in the mirror from time to time. I wonder if he can live with himself.

Footnote: My comments on Israel’s response

Israel’s response as delivered by Karean Peretz, spokeswoman for Israel’s UN Mission, included this: “The main obstacle to peace, has been, and remains, the Palestinians’ claim to the so-called right of return and its refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state,”

That, too, is Zionist propaganda nonsense of the highest order.

Israel is not a Jewish state. How could it be when about a quarter of its citizens are Arabs and mainly Muslims? Israel could only be a Jewish state after it had resorted to a final round of ethnic cleansing. Israel is a Zionist state.

Because Arafat kept them informed through a secret channel, Israel’s leaders have long known that in the event of a two-state solution, the PLO was reluctantly reconciled to the reality of the right of return being confined to the territory of the Palestinian state, which would mean that only about 100,000 refugees would be able to return, with the rest having to accept financial compensation for the loss, theft, of their land and rights.

As I explain in my book Zionism, The Real Enemy of the Jews, when they decided they had no choice but to be pragmatic, Arafat and his leadership colleagues took a degree of comfort from two hopes. One was that all Palestinian refugees everywhere could and would have a Palestinian passport. The other was that if there was a two-state solution, it could evolve over one or two generations into one state for all – i.e. because in peace and partnership enough Israeli Jews would say something like “We don’t need two states”. In the event of a one-state solution coming about by mutual consent, it was assumed on the Palestinian side at leadership level that, over time, all Palestinians who wanted to return would be able to return. So in theory the two-state solution was not necessarily the end-game on the right of return.

By Alan Hart

23 December 2011

Alanhart.net

Alan Hart is a former ITN and BBC Panorama foreign correspondent. He is author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews. He blogs at http://www.alanhart.net and tweets via http://twitter.com/alanauthor

Prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi described the protests in Bahrain as a “sectarian” revolution by Shiites against the Sunnis.

Prominent Muslim cleric Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi described the protests in Bahrain as a “sectarian” revolution by Shiites against the Sunnis. Al-Qaradawi has strongly criticized the opposition movement in Bahrain, which he considered to be very different from the protest movements in Egypt, Tunisia and Libya.

Al-Qaradawi stressed that the “revolution of Bahrain is quite different from those in Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen, adding that” what is happening in Bahrain is a sectarian revolution, while the rest of the four revolutions were staged by the people against the unjust rulers. The Egyptian-born cleric explained that the Egyptian people came out from all classes and sects, Muslims and Christians, both young and old, men and women, liberals and conservatives.

“I mean all the Egyptian people, all the Tunisian people, all the Libyan people, as well as the Yemeni people, while in Bahrain we see a sectarian revolution,” he conveyed.

Al-Qaradawi stated that when the Sunnis in Bahrain understtod the protests have a sectarian character, hundreds of thousands of them participated in the rally, which took place near Al-Fateh Mosque in Manama.

Sheikh Qaradawi was one of the first clerics who supported the protest movements of the Tunisian people and strongly supported the Egyptian revolution to end the rule of Mubarak. He also issued a fatwa allowing to kill Libyan Leader Moammar Gaddafi for abusing for years his own people.

20 March 2011

@ Al Bawaba

“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living in society, they create for themselves, in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” Frederic Bastiat, French thinker (1801-1850).

The U.S. and its allies are preparing for aggression against the Syria as part of the U.S.-Israel destabilisation agenda in the region. The pretext is, as usual; the “protection of civilians” and installing of Western-style “democracy”. But in reality, nothing could be further from the truth. The aim is to topple the current Syrian government and replace it with a puppet government subservient to U.S.-Israel Zionist interests.

It should be note that because of Syria’s support for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance to Israel’s terror and Syria’s ties with Iran, the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad deemed a ”threat” to U.S. and Israel interests. Hence, a Syrian regime subservient to U.S.-Israel dictates is vital to isolate Iran and ignores Israel’s Zionist expansion.

The ongoing foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs is a reminder of the recent criminal foreign interference in Libya, which began with the imposition of a “no-fly” zone over Libya that was an illegal military invasion of Libya. Media reports show that the U.S. and Israel have hired Saudi and Lebanese elements to foment unrest in Syria and create a rift between the government and the Syrian people based on sectarian divisions.

The demonization campaign by the U.S. and its allies to delegitimize the Syrian government is similar to the demonization campaign that was carried out in Libya. On 25 November 2011, the Arab League – a collection of illegitimate despots controlled by Saudi Arabia and other Gulf oil fiefdoms – suspended Syria’s membership in the Arab League and called for economic and diplomatic sanctions against the nation of Syria. Like Libya, the suspension of Syria from the Arab league provides the U.S. and its allies with a fig-leaf to attack Syria and wage war against another Muslim nation.

The Arab League has a long history of betrayal and has become irrelevant. “ It is Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that have helped hijack the League. The GCC is comprised of the Arabian Gulf petro-sheikhdoms of the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Saudi Arabia. None of these countries are model states, let alone democracies. Their U.S.-installed leaders have betrayed the Palestinians, helped attack Iraq, support Israel against Lebanon, demolished Libya, and now they conspire against Syria and its regional allies”. He added; “[The Arab League] has been hijacked and serves Washington and its NATO allies instead of any genuinely Arab interests”. Like the GCC, the Arab league is a tool of U.S. imperialism. Its shameful act against Syria (a rehearsal of its shameful act against Libya) is an act of war against another Arab nation.

The most shameful of all of this is the role of the U.S.-backed Arab despots lead by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. It is ironic that these despots are motivated by concern for human rights and democracy in Syria. Decades of repression, embezzlement of the peoples’ wealth and resources by these despotic regimes led to high levels of inequality and corruption. Despite their wealth, they remain backwards indulging in Western decadence and turning away from Islam as a way of life. They espouse and practise an extremist (Islamic) sect that is destroying Islam as a great religion. They are unelected, illegitimate rulers and do not tolerate any opposition to their tyrannical rule.

Saudi Arabia, of course, is the world’s most repressive regime. It is also the U.S. closest ally. It is an absolute monarchy which sees freedom and human rights as a threat to its corrupt ruling class. Ordinary Saudi women are excluded from employment, which is very high (40%) among young men and women. Saudi Arabia’s so-called “anti-terror” law criminalises dissent as “terrorist crimes” and allows for long detention of people without charge. Dissent in Saudi Arabia is dealt with brutally. On 21 November 2011, Saudi troops opened fire on a peaceful demonstration in Qatif in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province, killing more than four demonstrators and injuring more. Saudi rulers don’t even tolerate dissent in their neighbouring countries.

In March 2011, Saudi forces invaded Bahrain and brutally crushed pro-democracy protesters. The invasion was encouraged and supported by the U.S. administration. The recent report by the King of Bahrain appointed commission, Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry (BICI) was an orchestrated whitewash designed to enforce the rule of the despotic monarchy. Nevertheless the report found “systematic abuses of human rights” during the government attacks on pro-democracy protests. The 500-page report outlines various abuses committed by King Hamad Bin Isa al-Khalifa’s despotic regime. According to the report, detainees – including medical staff whose only crimes were to treat injured protesters – were tortured and sexually abused. The report was immediately buried by Western media before it saw daylight.

Step by step, the Libyan model is being implemented in Syria. On 28 November, the UN – the right arm of U.S. imperialism – accused Syrian forces of “crimes against humanity” in their defence of the Syrian nation against Western-sponsored armed gangs and terrorists. The so-called ‘UN Human Rights Council’ report is entirely based on lies fabricated by expatriates in London, Paris and Washington. While the report accuses the government of “committed atrocities”, the report has completely omitted the death and torture of thousands of Syrians, including soldiers and police by the armed gangs. The report main purpose is to demonise the Syrian government and justify Western armed aggression. The report was immediately disseminated by Western propaganda organs, including the BBC, CNN, Fox News, Al-Jazeera and the print media led by the Murdoch Press.

The report was a carbon copy of the UN reports on Iraq and Libya before they were invaded and destroyed by the U.S.-NATO militaries. The same pack of lies that were used to justify U.S barbaric aggression against Iraq has been recycled against Syria. The report is a prelude to a U.S.-NATO aggression against Syria. Where was the UN Human Rights Council when the U.S. perpetrated genocide in Iraq? It is evident that the UN is playing the role of a facilitator of Western-perpetrated war crimes. Disinformation is important and effective in manipulating public opinion and creating an atmosphere of war.

While the UN is busy manipulating world’s public opinions on behalf of U.S.-NATO armies, British Prime Minister David Cameron and the Qatari despot, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani, pledged to support (i.e., shipment of arms and money) the Syrian “opposition groups” in an attempt to shore up “democracy”. Of course, David Cameron and the Qatari despot love for democracy is evident in their violent destruction of Libya. Today, Libya is a mirror image of Iraq, looted, ruined and mired in violence. Tens of thousands of Libyans (and Africans) have been murdered, thousands are languishing in torturous prisons and a third of the population is displaced.

Still blood-thirsty, French President Nicolas Sarkozy has called for the creation of a secure “humanitarian zone” to protect civilians similar to the Libyan “humanitarian zone” where thousands of innocent civilians were murdered by U.S.-NATO armies. The pretext of “human rights” to justify war of aggression has been around since the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Germany. The German Nazis used the pretexts of “protecting civilians” to justify military invasions and violence. Indeed, since the early 1990s, the world has witnessing the rise and rise of Anglo-American fascism invading and terrorising defenceless nations and leaving them in complete ruin on the pretext of “protecting civilians”.

According to the Turkish daily newspaper, Milliyet (28 November 2011): “France sent its military training forces to Turkey and Lebanon to coach the so-called Free [Syrian] Army — a group of defectors operating out of Turkey and Lebanon — in an effort to wage war against Syria”. Foreign mercenaries have been pouring through the border with Lebanon. As mentioned earlier, they are armed and financed by the CIA, Britain’s MI6, Israel’s Mossad, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

It is important to remember that, the armed insurrection – financed and armed by the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Israel, Lebanon and Jordan – against the Syrian government has been confined to smaller cities and towns along the borders with Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. (For more, see my Target Syria ). The overwhelming majority of Syrians support President Bashar al-Assad, particularly in major population centres, such as Damascus, Latakia and Aleppo . Recent pro-government demonstrations in these major cities have attracted millions of al-Assad supporters.

Meanwhile, Turkey is exploiting the violence to serve Turkey’s and NATO imperialist interests. Turkey has been promoting the creation of “a buffer zone” in Syria to train and arm the so-called “Syrian resistance” to the Syrian government. In its flagrant interfere in Syrian domestic affairs, Turkey has sponsored several conferences aimed at building an opposition to the Syrian government and Turkey was instrumental in creating the so-called Syrian National Council (SNC), a fractious coalition of expatriates and armed extremists. Their leaders have already indicated that they will cut Syria’s ties with Iran and with the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements once they are in a position of “power” in Syria. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal , the SCN spokesman , “Burhan Ghalioun, was forced (and there is no other explanation for it) to come clean about the nature of the payback required of the Syrian opposition by its US, Turkish, Gulf, and European supporters”, observed Ibrahim al-Amin , editor-in-chief of al-Akhbar news. Large quantities of weapons have been smuggled into Syria from Turkey to foment civil war in the country. Turkey is even contemplating an invasion of Syria if Ankara receives the green light from Washington. Turkey is not interfering in Syria’s internal affairs because “White Turks” suddenly began to care about human rights and democracy in the Arab World, Turkey’s interference is self-serving and on behalf of U.S.-Israel Zionist interests.

Turkey pretends to be an even-handed “mediator” in the region, a “bridge” between the West and Muslim nations. In reality, White Turks are subservient to Western imperialism and have been performing the role of an imperialist proxy since the rise of Kamal Ataturk. While Turkey prides itself of being a Muslim nation, Turkey espouses a Western-oriented “Calvinist Islam”, which clearly conflicts with Islamic principles. Turkey’s decades-long relationship with the Zionist state of Israel and Turkey’s participation in U.S.-NATO (Turkey is a NATO member) wars against Muslim nations are anti-Islam. Indeed, many ordinary Turks have condemned Turkey’s role in the U.S.-NATO destruction of Libya and the mass murder of Libyan civilians. Furthermore, Turkey’s decision to allow the U.S.-NATO to deploy nuclear missiles “shield” on its soil that is directly aimed at Iran and other Muslim nations is an outright hypocrisy and a betrayal of Islam.

Turkey’s recent posturing as a champion of Palestine is an opportunistic rhetoric designed for domestic and regional consumption. If White Turks really care about human rights, they will end Turkey’s cooperation with Israel and impose economic sanction against the Zionist state. White Turks should be concern about human rights in their own backyard. The Arabs should and must reject Turkey’s new role as a gendarme on behalf of imperialism and Zionism.

U.S. interference in the affairs of sovereign nations, including Arab nation is well-documented. The U.S. is the greatest enemy of democracy, human rights and international law. Regarding democracy, U.S. ruling class prefers what Hillary Clinton called: “The kind of democracy that we want to see”. The kind of democracy in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Iran under the torturer Shah Reza Behlavi, Egypt under the tyrannical Mubarak and Chile under the fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet. In fact, it would be very difficult to name a single murderous dictator that was not (put in power) financed and armed by the U.S. and its allies. The U.S. has long love affairs with murderous dictators and fascists.

Furthermore, U.S. agencies and think-tanks, such as the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), George Soros’ Open Society Institute (OSI), the National Democratic Institute (NDI) and many more are directly involved in financing opposition groups in the Arab world and beyond. The New York Times (14 April 2011) revealed, “ a number of the groups and individuals directly involved in the revolts and reforms sweeping the [Middle east], including the April 6 Youth Movement in Egypt, the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights and grass-roots activists like Entsar Qadhi, a youth leader in Yemen, received training and financing from groups like the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, a non-profit human rights organization based in Washington”. In Syria, NED is directly involved in financing the armed insurrection in Syria through its partner, the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies, an anti-Syrian government organisation. In the case of Egypt, the U.S. supported the Mubarak regime to the end. Once Mubarak was ousted, the U.S. switched sides and has begun promoting divisions and sectarianism. At the same time, the U.S. continues to work with its faithful client, the Egyptian Army to manipulate the “revolution” to serve U.S.-Israel Zionist interests. However, if regime change cannot be achieved through what is so-called “colour revolution” and economic sanctions, the U.S. uses military intervention (illegal aggression) to achieve its goal. It happened in Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya and it is closing on Syria.

Finally, Syria is not a perfect country. Like in every country, Syria has internal oppositions of several parties. T hey are against violence and foreign interference in their country’s affairs. The Syrian people want real reforms – economic and political reforms – that serve their interests. The Syrian people have suffered greatly in the last decade. As a result of economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and more than 2 million Iraqi refugees, the Syrian economy has stagnated and living conditions have deteriorated. The Syrian people don’t want U.S.-sponsored regime change. An opinion poll conducted in March 2009 revealed that more than two-thirds of the Syrian population viewed the U.S. unfavourably. The decision to change the current Syrian government and political system remains in the hands of the Syrian people.

With powerful forces gathered against them, the Syrian people are facing violent aggression to destroy and plunder their nation. There is no excuse to remain on the sideline, complicit in war crimes and crimes against humanity. The struggle to uphold international law and oppose aggression must continue.

By Ghali Hassan

8 December 2011

Countercurrents.org

Ghali Hassan is an independent political analyst living in Australia.