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What is Washington’s solution for the rising power of China? The answer might be to involve China in a nuclear war with India.

The staging of the fake death of Osama bin Laden in a commando raid that violated Pakistan’s sovereignty was sold to President Obama by the military/security complex as a way to boost Obama’s standing in the polls.

The raid succeeded in raising Obama’s approval ratings. But its real purpose was to target Pakistan and to show Pakistan that the US was contemplating invading Pakistan in order to make Pakistan pay for allegedly hiding bin Laden next door to Pakistan’s military academy. The neocon — and increasingly the US military — position is that the Taliban can’t be conquered unless NATO widens the war theater to Pakistan, where the Taliban allegedly has sanctuaries protected by the Pakistan government, which takes American money but doesn’t do Washington’s bidding.

Pakistan got the threat message and ran to China. On May 17, Pakistan’s prime minister Yousaf Raza Gilani, as he departed for China, declared China to be Pakistan’s “best and most trusted friend.” China has built a port for Pakistan at Gwadar, which is close to the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz. The port might become a Chinese naval base on the Arabian Sea.

Raza Rumi reported in the Pakistan Tribune (June 4) that at a recent lecture at Pakistan’s National Defense University, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, asked the military officers whether the biggest threat to Pakistan came from within, from India, or from the US. A majority of the officers said that the US was the biggest threat to Pakistan.

China, concerned with India, the other Asian giant that is rising, is willing to ally with Pakistan. Moreover, China doesn’t want Americans on its border, which is where they would be should Pakistan become another American battleground.

Therefore, China showed its displeasure with the US threat to Pakistan, and advised Washington to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty, adding that any attack on Pakistan would be considered an attack on China. I do not think China’s ultimatum was reported in the US press, but it was widely reported in India’s press. India is concerned that China has stepped up to Pakistan’s defense.

The Chinese ultimatum is important, because it is a WWI or WWII level of ultimatum. With this level of commitment of China to Pakistan, Washington will now seek a way to maneuver itself out of the confrontation and to substitute India.

The US has been fawning all over India, cultivating India in the most shameful ways, including the sacrifice of Americans’ jobs. Recently, there have been massive US weapons sales to India, US-India military cooperation agreements, and joint military exercises.

Washington figures that the Indians, who were gullible for centuries about the British, will be gullible about the “shining city on the hill” that is “bringing freedom and democracy to the world” by smashing, killing, and destroying. Like the British and France’s Sarkozy, Indian political leaders will find themselves doing Washington’s will. By the time India and China realize that they have been maneuvered into mutual destruction by the Americans, it will be too late for either to back down.

With China and India eliminated, that leaves only Russia, which is already ringed by US missile bases and isolated from Europe by NATO, which now includes former constituent parts of the Soviet Empire. A large percentage of gullible Russian youth admires the US for its “freedom” (little do they know) and hates the “authoritarian” Russian state, which they regard as a continuation of the old Soviet state. These “internationalized Russians” will side with Washington, more or less forcing Moscow into surrender.

As the rest of the world, with the exception of parts of South America, is already part of the American Empire, Russia’s surrender will let the US focus its military might on South America. Chavez will be overthrown, and if others do not fall into line, more examples will be made.

The only way the American Empire can be stopped is for China and Russia to realize their danger and to form an unbreakable alliance that reassures India, breaks off Germany from NATO and defends Iran.

Otherwise, the American Empire will prevail over the entire world. The US dollar will become the only currency, and therefore be spared exchange-rate depreciation from debt monetization.

Gold and silver will become forbidden possessions, as will guns and a number of books, including the US Constitution.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury in the Reagan Administration, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Senior Research Fellow in the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University. He is the author or coauthor of nine books and has testified before committees of Congress on thirty occasions.

 

06 June, 2011
Countercurrents.org

 

 

Deepak Tripathi is a British historian, journalist and researcher who specializes in South and West Asia affairs, terrorism and the United States foreign policy. He was born into a political family in Unnao, the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. His grandfather, Pandit Vishwambhar Dayal Tripathi, was a prominent leader in the Indian independence movement and Member of the Constituent Assembly and later the Indian Parliament.

Deepak Tripathi worked with BBC for almost 23 years and ended up his cooperation with the British broadcaster in 2000. During these years, he served as a South Asia specialist and correspondent, Afghanistan correspondent and Syria , Nepal , Pakistan , India and Sri Lanka reporter. He has also been a BBC News and World Service Radio News producer.

Tripathi is a Member of the Political Studies Association and the Commonwealth Journalists Association.

His articles and commentaries on the international issues have appeared on Counterpunch, Foreign Policy Journal, Al-Ahram Weekly, Z Magazine and History News Network.

Deepak has authored several books including “Breeding Ground: Afghanistan and the Origins of Islamist Terrorism”, “Overcoming the Bush Legacy in Iraq and Afghanistan ” and “Dialectics of the Afghanistan Conflict: How the country became a terrorist haven.”

What follows is the complete text of my in-depth interview with Deepak Tripathi on the recent revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa, the civil war in Libya and the popular uprising in Bahrain .

Kourosh Ziabari: Do you consider the chained, continuous revolutions in the Arab world a result of pan-Arabist, nationalistic sentiments of the peoples of region who rose up? Well, the dictatorial regimes of the region have been ruling for so many decades, but the people in these countries revolted against them quite suddenly and unexpectedly. Has the economic factor been the main contributor to the emergence of Middle East revolutions? Was it all about paying a tribute to Mohamed Bouazizi that turned violent and became a set of revolutions ?

Deepak Tripathi: You have raised an important question. The answer is somewhat complex. Of course, from Libya to Bahrain there are similarities on the surface: repressive regimes, closed societies, ruling cliques imposing their will on the masses. Then there is the Orientalist syndrome in the West that Edward Said depicted so brilliantly in his book “Orientalism.” It is the tendency to lump all Muslims and other people in the East into one basket, and seeing them as exotic, but inferior, people who must be educated in western ways, and exploited. This is where lies the basic mistake, and it has proved disastrous.

The recent uprisings across the Arab world display two different currents. The bigger picture is that of people rising against pro-United States dictators, in Tunisia , Egypt , Yemen , Bahrain . On the other hand, we see Libya and Syria , which are not pro-US. Many in the populations of these countries are fed up and can take no more. They want to breath fresh air. Now, in an ideal world the people of each country should be allowed to choose their own destiny without outside interference, but that is not the case in the real world. Western interference is a major cause of resentment in many countries in the region.

Having said this, I believe each popular uprising has its roots in local conditions and causes. In Egypt , it was a people’s revolution, of men and women, young and old, Muslim and Christian. They succeeded in overthrowing Hosni Mubarak and his party, but the future is by no means certain; the United States , with allies, continues its interference. America has considerable power because of the huge aid it gives to the Egyptian military every year. So we will have to see what transpires in Egypt . Tunisia , which started all this, is the same – how do long-oppressed people ensure that the system changes to their liking, not just a few faces? In other places, too, things are far from certain. In Bahrain, where the pro-US Sunni ruling family, representing one-third of the population at most, is engaged in the brutal suppression of Shi‘a majority – nearly two-thirds of the population. In Bahrain, it is oil that drives Western policy of support for the ruling family; in Libya, too, oil drives policy, but there Britain, France and Italy, and to lesser extent the Obama administration in the United States, are supporting the anti-Gaddafi forces, because Gaddafi is too independent, too unpredictable. In Syria , oil is not a factor – perhaps one of the reasons why the Western response has so far been limited to condemnations and warnings. And the Yemeni president is America ‘s surrogate; Yemen is vital for the security of Saudi Arabia , America ‘s strongest ally after Israel and the most reliable oil supplier.

The last part of your question concerns the Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi, street vendor who set himself on fire after being harassed by corrupt police. Bouazizi certainly touched million and millions of people right across the region, because they could easily identify with his harassment and humiliation .

KZ: As you may admit, Bahrain has one of the blackest human rights records in the Persian Gulf region. Its longstanding tradition of suppressing the Shiites, persecuting the bloggers and journalists , incarcerating and torturing the political activists attest to the fact that despite being a close ally of the United States, Bahrain is not a democratic country based on American-championed values. Why does the United States support such a repressive regime? Does the United States consider Bahrain a proxy to confront the hegemony of Iran in the region ?

DT: Countering Iran is certainly the major factor behind US support for Bahrain , and explains the muted references from Washington to the brutality of Bahraini security forces – and let’s not forget many are foreign soldiers – and more recently Saudi forces who have entered the Emirate. The tactics used against peaceful demonstrators in Bahrain in recent weeks and months are some of the worst kind. How many countries are there in which hospitals are raided by security police and doctors treating wounded people are threatened?

As you know, Bahrain is a member of the Gulf cooperation Council, dominated by Saudi Arabia , and is there to prevent Iranian and Shiite influence spreading in the region. Bahrain is also the base of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is so important for America ‘s strategy in the Gulf and the Middle East at large .

KZ: Do you agree with a military intervention in Libya ? We already know that the Gaddafi regime, before the authorization of no-fly zone over Libya by the Security Council, had massacred scores of unarmed and innocent civilians in air-strikes on different cities of the country . Is a NATO-led military expedition necessary to preclude the killing of civilians? What’s your prediction for the future of the civil war which is taking place in Libya ?

DT: The Gaddafi regime, no doubt, has been repressive over the last forty years, and I am very critical of its human rights record. It is Britain , France , Italy and the United States that have been swinging like a large pendulum: vehemently opposed to Gaddafi for decades, then friends with Gaddafi, and now enemies again.

I have several misgivings about the NATO military operation in Libya . My first and most serious objection is that NATO has gone far beyond the remit approved in the UN Security Council 1973, which authorized “all necessary measures” to protect civilians and civilian-populated areas, excluding foreign occupation forces on any part of the territory of Libya . Legal scholars have pointed out that “all necessary measures” means starting with peaceful means to resolve what seems to be a tribal civil war between pro- and anti-Gaddafi forces. In this respect, Libya is quite different from Egypt , where tens of millions of people from all sections of society rebelled against the Mubarak regime. Second, NATO military planes are now hitting government targets far from opposition-controlled areas. Tripoli and Gaddafi’s own compound have been bombed. This was not envisaged in the Security Council Resolution 1973. Regime change was not part of it. I think these are serious violations of the UN authorization. Third, NATO aircraft are now operating as if they were the air force of the anti-Gaddafi forces; British, French and Italian ‘military advisers’ have been deployed in Libya; and there is talk of sending troops. This is taking sides, and goes beyond protecting civilians. Worst of all, we now have confirmed reports that NATO planes are bombing and killing people on their own side, the anti-Gaddafi side; collateral damage in Western euphemism. Fourth, and this is very serious, the West is being highly selective in picking on an oil-rich country for military action, while its friends, Bahrain and Yemen , willfully repress their populations. I fear we will see a long war in Libya .

KZ: Many political commentators believe that whoever assumes power in Egypt following the establishment of new constitution and formation of new government will be less friendly to Israel than the regime of Hosni Mubarak was. The same analysts believe that the new government in Egypt will be necessarily less hostile to Iran compared with the Hosni Mubarak’s regime. Do you agree with them? What’s your take on that ?

DT: The climate in the Middle East has undergone a dramatic change following the Egyptian Revolution. Its effects go far beyond Egypt ‘s borders, and these effects will be long term. The people of Egypt and beyond yearn for democracy, human rights and dignity, but they are not going to be blind supporters of American policy. There will be all kinds of pressures, warnings, threats against the Egyptian military from the West that would like to indirectly control the peoples of the region. I hope that the military does not give in to these American-Israeli tactics. I believe that the ‘new Egypt’ – if it is allowed to choose its future path – will lead to a new climate that will mean better relations with Iran, Palestinians, and will be a force for good overall.

KZ: Answering to a question regarding the recent air-strikes on Libya , the White House spokesman Jay Carney said that it is not a U.S. policy to bring about regime change in Libya . It’s already clear to the international community that Gaddafi is a merciless terrorist. He massacred more than 6,500 citizens during the first three weeks of civil war in Libya . Why don’t the United States and its allies want to take action to change the regime of Gaddafi while they did the same with regards to Iraq and Afghanistan in a situation that they didn’t have any compelling excuse to do so? Is it all about American and European interests in Libya ‘s oil sector which is guaranteed by the Gaddafi regime?

DT: I have elaborated on the lack of consistency in Western policy, and the real factors behind Western and allied actions showing blatant disregard for universal human rights. Their actions amount to double standards wherever it suits them. They are not about democracy and human rights at all. Look at the reign of terror and torture under the ‘war on terror’ that President George W Bush waged, and that President Obama continues in Afghanistan , Pakistan and elsewhere.

KZ: Saudi Arabia was among the Arab countries which was somewhat encompassed by the wave of 2010-2011 protests of the Middle East and North Africa; however, it seems that strangulation and oppression , implicitly endorsed by the United States, is so intense that the people don’t have enough backbone and courage to rise up against the government and demand fundamental changes and reformations in the political structure of their country. Will the United States , as the most strategic partner of Saudi Arabia , allow the implementation of sociopolitical reforms in the structure the Saudi government? Will the sporadic movements of the Saudi people bear fruit ?

DT: Saudi Arabia is a closed society, in many ways that the Soviet Union was before 1985, when Mikhail Gorbachev became the General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party. It took just six years for the Soviet state to collapse after the USSR began to open up. Communication and free movement are very difficult, if not impossible for the ordinary citizen, in such societies; and news of unrest does not readily reach the world. We know that Saudi citizens nevertheless do find ways to express their opposition, but they are crushed with brute force. Remember, Saudi Arabia ‘s security forces are among the best equipped in the Middle East , supplied by the Americans. They use these means to coerce their population. Despite all this, social discontent simmers under the surface. Failure to open up Saudi society and give the people their basic rights could have serious consequences.

KZ: Do you agree with the idea that the Middle East revolutions , specially the popular uprisings in Bahrain , Yemen , Jordan and Egypt , will be of Iran ‘s interests? Does the destabilization of U.S.-backed Arab regimes in the region empower Iran politically, strategically ?

DT: According to the Oxford English Dictionary, to which I subscribe, a revolution in the political context is “forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system.” Uprising is an “act of resistance or rebellion” to achieve that end. It is important not to confuse the meaning of the two terms. In the late twentieth century, what happened in 1979 in Iran was a revolution; and between 1989 and 1991 there were revolutions in what was then the Soviet bloc. In the new century in recent months, Egypt has had a revolution, in the sense that a dictator and his ruling party that had a monopoly over power, have fallen. What replaces it is not certain yet. We will have to see until after the elections at least.

Bahrain , Yemen , Jordan , Syria , perhaps Libya , are all experiencing rebellions of one kind or another. How it all ends in each case – we will have to wait and see. As of now, the ruling structures in these countries are shaking; they may be collapsing; but they are still there. Equally important, what impact does it all have on the Palestinian struggle will have to be seen.

In the wider geopolitical context, these events do indicate that the United States is losing its grip over the region. In fact, America had been losing its grip for some years. It is just that the military occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan and America ‘s militaristic foreign policy may have given the opposite appearance to those who fail to look beyond the immediate.

If the people of each country can decide how their country should be run, it would be a good thing. I find the idea that a big power far and away can dictate to others anywhere most objectionable. And I don’t see the events in West Asia as a victory for one country or another. The tide of history is going in its own inevitable direction; popular movements are making huge waves and contributing to that tide of history. The final outcome is not yet certain, so the struggle will need to go on.

KZ: What will be the implications of the Middle East revolutions for the Israeli regime? Will Israel suffer from the change of government in Egypt and the fundamental political reforms which are going to happen in Jordan ?

DT: I have alluded to these matters in my previous replies. I will summarize my answer here. What is happening in the Middle East at present is going to limit Israel ‘s scope for arbitrary conduct. The overthrow of the Mubarak regime in Egypt has been a huge setback to Israel , because frankly Mubarak was acting like an American and Israeli surrogate to continue the occupation of Palestinian territories, and in the broader interests of Western policy in the Middle East . In Jordan , as elsewhere, change looks inevitable, though I hesitate to predict what form it will take. I think it is never a good idea to underestimate the big players’ capacity for manipulation and deceit. In a sense, the West learned the lesson very quickly in Egypt , where it was slow to act during the anti-Mubarak protests. Eventually it dumped Mubarak when it realized he was a too big liability to carry, and then picked Libya and Syria to reestablish its pro-democracy credentials. The West, in the guise of NATO, has switched to a pro-democracy posture by siding with the anti-Gaddafi forces in Libya and with the opposition to Bashar al-Assad in Syria . But that makes Western policy in Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , and Yemen even more inconsistent, if not hypocritical .

By Kourosh Ziabari

06 June, 2011
Countercurrents.org

 

 

 

WASHINGTON, June 6 (UPI) — When a joint session of the U.S. Congress gave Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu 29 standing ovations — four more than U.S. President Barack Obama received for his last State of the Union message — there was little doubt that Israel is an integral part of the American body politic. It was a hard-line speech by an Israeli on the right of the Israeli spectrum that firmly rejected Obama’s proposal for Middle East peace: The pre-1967 war frontier with minor land swaps for both sides.

It was also a demonstration of why the United States cannot continue to pose as a “valid interlocutor” between Israelis and Palestinians. And why former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine, quit as Obama’s peace negotiator after two years of long-distance commuting between the Mideast and the United States.

Former six-term U.S. Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., but more recently a Green Party candidate, told Iran’s “Press TV” she was required to sign, “as were all members of Congress, pledges of support for the military superiority of Israel and for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.” She also claimed her final term in Congress came to an end after the American Israel Public Affairs Committee “funneled money into the campaign of her Democratic Party primary opponent, Hank Johnson.

McKinney’s interview to Press TV came on the eve of the annual AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington May 22. It was widely published over the Arab world.

AIPAC, with 100,000 members, is arguably the most powerful lobby in Washington and doesn’t have to register as a foreign agent.

The joke on Capitol Hill is that Israel doesn’t have to lobby because it’s the 51st state. Which Arab governments assume anyway.

With the new merger of the Palestinian authority and Hamas, dedicated to the destruction of Israel, along with civil wars in Libya, Syria and Yemen, as well as the growing influence of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the “Arab Spring” didn’t even last till summer. Reasons enough for Netanyahu to conclude Israel has at least two more years to continue consolidating Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Complacency didn’t last long. The Syrian dictatorship, after killing more than 1,000 of its own people in countrywide anti-regime, pro-democracy demonstrations, organized Palestinian refugees to mark the 44th anniversary of the Arab defeat in the Six Day War by “peacefully” penetrating Israeli defenses on the Golan Heights. Several hundred showed up and ignored Israeli warnings to back off.

Israeli gunfire killed 22, wounded 350. This was clearly a Syrian attempt to detract world attention from its 8-week-long, bloody repression of anti-regime demonstrations. Foreign reporters were kept out but Twitter messages and cellphone news coverage kept the story center stage.

 

In the West Bank, Palestinians marked the 1967 war’s Nakba Day (“catastrophic setback”) by demonstrating up and down the separation wall; dozens were injured.

And Netanyahu faced an ugly low upon his return from a U.S. high.

The man who ran Israel’s formidable Mossad for eight years is criticizing Netanyahu for ignoring the 2002 Saudi Arabia peace plan — to which all 22 Arab governments subscribed. Israel was to withdraw to the pre-1967 war frontier with minor rectifications on either side. And all Arab governments agreed that in return they would recognize Israel diplomatically and commercially.

This, essentially, was the plan that Obama dusted off and Netanyahu shelved.

But ex-Mossad chief Meir Dagan is a dagger in Netanyahu’s body politic. And Dagan isn’t alone. Several former intelligence chiefs are lined up with Dagan. They also know first-hand how anxious Netanyahu is to detract from Palestinian pressure for their own state in the West Bank and Gaza — by bombing Iran’s nuclear installations.

As Dagan put it, “This would mean regional war and in that case you would give Iran the best possible reason to continue its nuclear program.”

And the regional challenge that Israel would then face, said the spy chief, “would be impossible.” He and his intel colleagues know that Iran has formidable asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities — from Bahrain, homeport for the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet, with a local population that is two-thirds Shiite, many of them pro-Iran, to the Hormuz Strait, Qatari and Saudi oil terminals, and Hezbollah and Hamas rockets and missiles.

Dagan, Yuval Diskin, head of Shin Bet, the internal security agency, and Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, the military chief of staff, all stepped down this year, And Dugan made clear he and his retiring colleagues served as a brake on the gung-ho Bibi Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak.

According to Israeli media reports, a week before retiring, Dagan tried to send a message to the Israeli public to warn about Netanyahu’s plans for an attack on Iran. But military censorship blocked any reporting of Dagan’s views. He was no sooner officially retired than he evaded the censors.

Haaretz front-paged a commentary by Ari Shavit that said, “It’s not the Iranians nor the Palestinians who are keeping Dagan awake at night, but Israel’s leadership.”

Dagan appeared on stage at Tel Aviv University last week, where he told Shavit he is deeply worried about the next turn of the Palestinian wheel at the U.N. General Assembly in New York next September. This is when the Palestinians will request recognition of a Palestinian state with its pre-1967 war borders.

The vote is expected to be unanimous — other than two dissenters: The United States and Israel.

 

This is when Dagan expects Netanyahu to attack Iran. By going public now, he hopes to put the kibosh on the well-rehearsed plan.

Israeli media added other intelligence names against the prime minister, e.g., Amos Yadlin, also retiring as head of military intelligence.

Dagan is no wooly-headed liberal, reported The New York Times. He was first appointed by super hawk Ariel Sharon. He served under three prime ministers and was reappointed twice.

He is credited with major intel operations that destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007 and organized the successful assassination of key Hezbollah operatives who were planning to kill Israelis.

Dagan detractors — and there are many in the ranks of the governing coalition — accuse him of grandstanding as he prepares a political debut. But by law, after serving as a top spy chief, he has to wait three years before entering the political arena.

6 June, 2011

 

 

 

 

Muammar Gaddafi remains hunkered down in Tripoli, ever defiant despite the the heaviest bombing of NATO’s three-month campaign. But outside Libya, the talk has moved on from war to the business opportunities offered by a post-Gaddafi Libya.

It’s hard to envision a booming Libyan economy with the country’s communication infrastructure shattered by bombs and its oil fields abandoned and idle. Yet economists and investors say that as an intensifying NATO campaign brings Gaddafi’s 42-year rule closer to its end, a bright future lies ahead — with Libya’s mammoth energy reserves capable of financing a postwar development program strong enough to serve as a growth engine for the region. “Libya has $250 billion in foreign-exchange reserves, and it can just keep on tapping into foreign currency because of its oil sales,” says Jacob Kolster, North Africa director for the African Development Bank. “The potential is huge.” (Read about what mediating in Libya could cost Medvedev.)

Gaddafi’s Libya is hardly poor, with few of the problems that beset neighboring Egypt, where about 40% of people live on about $2.50 or less a day. The average Libyan household income is more than $14,000 a year, according to U.N. statistics, and the literacy rate is about 86%.

Assuming that Libyans can find an inclusive political consensus that minimizes the risk of an Iraq-style insurgency after Gaddafi goes, Libya’s natural wealth and educated population positions it for a massive boom — if peace, stability and a business-friendly government can be established, all of which are big ifs. The country retains considerable sovereign wealth, even if much of it is currently frozen abroad at the moment. And international energy companies that have suspended their Libya operations as a result of the conflict plan to return as soon as sufficient security has been restored to begin pumping oil again. (Read “Death, Prison or Exile: Gaddafi Is Out of Options.”)

Even the war damage could, ironically, drive economic growth through the massive investment that will be needed to replace bombed-out communications infrastructure, airports and buildings. “We will need to build virtually anew the entire modern infrastructure,” Kolster told TIME in Lisbon, where hundreds of investors and bankers are gathered this week for the African Development Bank’s annual meetings. Libya is one of the 53 African members of the bank, which is headquartered in Tunis, and manages about $67 billion in capital.

The investment stakes in Libya, say the African bankers who are meeting in Lisbon — where neither the regime nor the rebels have sent representatives — are not focused on the country’s energy contracts, most of which are already accounted for. Instead, the opportunities lie in developing other potential industries. There is no tourist development along Libya’s hundreds of miles of pristine Mediterranean coastline, a short hop from Europe. And thousands of square miles of arable land lie relatively undeveloped.

Libya itself already holds major investments throughout Africa, including a chain of luxury hotels owned by Gaddafi’s regime in Mali, Sudan and elsewhere. Gaddafi’s successor will be pressed by the banking community to privatize those hotels, perhaps selling them to foreign partners. “There’s a drastic reshuffling of the decks,” says Papa Madiaw Ndiaye, CEO of Advanced Finance & Investment Group, a private-equity company in Dakar, Senegal, which invests in projects across Africa. “It’s a chance for new people to get into these countries and bring in a whole new energy.”

 

 

9 June 2011

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared on March 25, 2011 “ that there are 3 repressive regimes in the Middle East that must be condemned “ Syria, Libya and Iran. Why is the U.S. targeting these particular countries?

The progressive political movement must avoid being just an echo and a justification of Pentagon war policy, especially whenever any developing country is in the cross hairs of a U.S. attack.

Consider: isn’t Israel a criminally repressive regime against the Palestinian population? Aren’t Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Jordan, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan repressive regimes, military dictatorships and/or corrupt monarchies? All of these brutally repressive regimes have killed of thousands of their own population and could not survive one day without decades of U.S. military, economic, diplomatic and political support. Is the U.S., with the largest prison population in the world and more weapons than the rest of the world put together, a repressive regime? It is the source of repression, destabilization, dictatorships and wars.

It is within this context that progressives must view the demonstrations that have been taking place for two months against the Bashir Assad government in Syria. The regime has both acknowledged that reforms are essential and responded with force. The actual character and the social forces involved in these demonstrations remains unclear, as does the political direction of the Syrian opposition.

The events in Syria are connected to the social explosion shaking the Arab world. Washington and all the old regimes tied to it in the region are trying desperately to manage and contain this still unfolding mass upheaval into channels that do not threaten their domination of the region.

The attitude of the U.S. government towards these upheavals has varied widely. When the U.S. supports the government, it takes a hands-off or even a hostile approach to the uprising, as in Bahrain and Yemen. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia made every effort to save the Saleh dictatorship in the face of a massive uprising. But when the country has taken an independent course from that desired by the U.S., Washington supports peoples genuine grievances with intense military, political, diplomatic support, new sanctions, sabotage teams, covert actions and extensive media coverage. All focused to further destabilize and inflame the situation.

The corporate media and the U.S. State Department give the impression that most of Syria has taken to the streets against Assad. Unlike her benign attitude toward the monarchy in Bahrain, and the 32 year dictatorship in Yemen, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton constantly criticizes and attacks the Syrian government. Anyone trying to understand the developments in that region has to ask, “Why the difference?”

It is clear that the U.S. and its allies are trying to use these protests in Syria to their own advantage. This has nothing to do with any demands raised by Syrian workers, who are suffering from an austerity plan imposed by the International Monetary Fund in 2006. Despite the difficulties for many Syrian workers, many Middle East pundits, even those from the establishment, admit that the Syrian government has a strong base of support in the population.

More than 6,000 aerial sorties and 3,700 U.S./NATO bombings of Libya has clarified where imperialism stands regarding that country. But Syria is also targeted by imperialism, even if it is not yet the target of U.S.-NATO air force. Decades of Zionist occupation of Syrian land has put Syria on the front line, and Damascus has supported and is currently supporting the Palestinian resistance and its refusal to recognize the Zionist occupation. The imperialists also condemn Syria’s assistance to Hezbollah in their struggle to end the Israeli occupation of Lebanon and they condemn Syria’s strategic alliance with Iran. The NATO Powers want to stamp out all support for any form of resistance to their domination and make these countries again, as captives of Western imperialism, mere day laborers for multi-national corporations.

Wikileaks exposes U.S. role

An article entitled “U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition Groups” by Craig Whitlock (Washington Post, April 18) described in great detail the information contained in U.S. diplomatic cables that Wikileaks had sent to news agencies around the world and posted on its web site. The article summarizes what these State Department cables reveal about the secret funding of Syrian political opposition groups, including the beaming of anti-government programming into the country via satellite television.

The article describes the U.S.-funded efforts as part of a “long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashir al-Assad.” These efforts began under President George W. Bush. They continued under President Barack Obama, even though Obama claimed to be rebuilding relations with Syria and posted an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in six years.

It is not difficult to see why the U.S. and its clients in the region, including Israel and the corrupt dependent monarchies of Jordan, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, want to see “regime change” in Syria.

Syria is one of the few Arab states that have no relations with Israel. Several Palestinian resistance organizations have offices-in-exile in Syria, including Hamas. Syria has been allied closely with Iran and with Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Syrian state represents contradictory forces. It has at times tried to defend the gains won in the anti-colonial struggles and upheavals by the Arab masses in 1960s and 1970s. But the regime in Syria has also harshly repressed efforts of mass movements based in Lebanon and Syria that wanted to take the struggle further in the mid-1970s.

Years of U.S. sanctions and past destabilization efforts have also had a cumulative effect. The state apparatus, facing the real threat of outside intervention, has acted conservatively to avoid change.

Syria has also had to provide for more than 500,000 Palestinian refugees and their descendants for the past 63 years. Unlike in Lebanon and Jordan, Palestinians in Syria have access to health care, education and housing.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq stimulated sectarian violence, which created the refugee crisis and displaced more than 25 percent of the Iraqi population. More than 1.5 million of these Iraqi refugees have flooded into Syria. This was a huge influx for a country with a population in 2006 of 18 million.

The unexpected arrival of these Iraqi refugees has had a dramatic impact on the infrastructure, on guaranteed free elementary and high schools, on free health care, on housing availability and other areas of the economy. It has led to a rise in costs across the board. The prices of foodstuffs and basic goods have gone up by 30 percent, property prices by 40 percent and housing rentals by 150 percent. (Middle East Institute, Dec. 10, 2010 report on Refugee Cooperation) The regime’s acceptance of IMF demands also increased inequalities and suffering among Syria’s workers and poor.

The diverse nationalities, religions and cultural groupings in Syria and especially its workers and poor have every right to raise demands of the regime. But just as the other peoples of the region, what the Syrians need most is an end to constant, unrelenting U.S. intervention.

Antiwar activists, trade union and community activists and progressives fighting for social justice must take a firm stand against all forms of U.S. and European intervention in Syria and against all countries in the region.

International Action Center

c/o Solidarity Center

55 W 17th St Suite 5CNew York, NY 10011 212-633-6646

<tel:212-633-6646>

Source:

http://iacenter.org/nafricamideast/syria060811

International Action Center – iacenter.org <http://www.iacenter.org/>

 

Governorates- Academic, religious and jurist personalities on Wednesday condemned the brutal massacre perpetrated by the armed terrorist gangs in Jisr al-Shoughor against police and security men which claimed the lives of 120 security personnel and policemen.

The jurists considered the acts of killing and mutilation as terrorist crimes, warning of the moral and psychological harm such crimes may cause to the families of the martyrs and people.

“Those heinous crimes must be punished with all means because they are considered as crimes against the state internal security… The state should use all means to protect citizens and maintain the country’s security and stability,” Dr. Issa Makhoul, Professor of the Faculty of Law at Damascus University said in a statement to SANA.

Dr. Adib Akil, Head of Sociology Department at Damascus University said the body mutilation was existed throughout history, adding “mutilation comes from a number of reasons including the malice, hatred of some terrorists to feed sedition and instigation.”

“The purpose of those heinous acts is to harm the state dignity, threat social and national security and destabilize the country where the terrorists started to target the most difficult link, which means members of the army and security personnel,” Dr. Akil said.

In Aleppo, Mufti of the northern Syrian city Mahmoud Akkam underlined that those crimes are inhuman, saying “bloodshed and targeting the properties are prohibited in Islam… our prophet Mohammad prohibited killing the innocents.”

For his part, Professor of the psychological Hygiene at Aleppo University Mohamad Abdullah described the behavior of those who carried out the massacres and acts of mutilation as unsociable behavior or anti-sociable personality.

JISR AL-SHUGHOUR, IDLEB- The Syrian TV broadcast photos of the brutal massacres perpetrated by organized armed terrorist groups against the civilians and the army, police and security forces groups in Jisr al-Shughour in the province of Idleb.

Members of the terrorist groups used government cars and military uniform to commit their crimes of killing, terrifying people and sabotaging

They filmed themselves committing vandalism acts to manipulate the photos and videos and distort the reputation of the army.

The terrorists attacked police and security centers as well as other governmental and private institutions, violated the streets, neighborhoods and houses and used rooftops to sniper and shoot at citizens and security forces.

The criminal groups didn’t stop there. They also set up ambushes for police and security forces, mutilated the bodies of some martyrs and threw the bodies of others into the Orontes River, in addition to putting barriers on the roads and terrifying people.

The groups members also kidnapped a number of the martyrs’ bodies and buried them in the ground to later promote them as if they are mass graves with the help of the channels they are working with in inciting against Syria.

The citizens in Jisr al-Shughour called for the help of the army and security forces to enter the city and protect them and their children against the crimes of those terrorist groups and punish them severely.

The number of the martyrs of police and security members exceeded 120 until Monday evening, who were killed at the hands of the armed terrorist groups in Jisr al-Shughour.

The injured members of the security forces who were attacked on Monday by armed terrorist groups in Jisr al-Shughour narrated the details of the attack.

One of the wounded security members, Murad Qadour, said “At ten o’clock and a half we were subjected to a surprise attack by armed terrorist groups and I was shot in my right foot, then I was hospitalized to Idleb Hospital at seven pm…Later, I was moved to Aleppo Hospital and my health condition is stable now…I stress that I will sacrifice my soul for the sake of my motherland and its leader.”

Another injured security member, Ahmad Ali, said “We moved to support our colleagues in Jisr al-Shughour as they were surrounded by armed terrorists…We passed through a road between the mountains where we were ambushed by armed groups and they opened fire on us.

Ali added “A number of the security members were martyred by the fire of the gunmen who were using various types of weapons such as the snipers, machineguns and rifles,” indicating that a number of the bodies were mutilated.

An injured security member, Hassan Dalou, said “We were ambushed by terrorist groups on the road between the mountains while we were in the way to support our colleagues who were cordoned off by armed terrorist groups in Jisr al-Shoghour and they opened fire on us.

Dalou affirmed that a huge number of the security members were injured and martyred, denying the news broadcast by the channels of instigation and sedition.

He indicated that the citizens of the area know the truth and they know that what the instigation channels broadcast are lies and fabrications as the task of the security forces is to protect the citizens from the armed groups.

Injured security member, Ja’afar Taher Mahmoud, said “The armed groups displaced some of citizens from their houses to booby-trap them and to prepare an ambush,” indicating that he and his colleagues thought that those who were in the houses and farms were peasants and they were surprised as they opened fire on them from four directions.

For their part, a number of Idleb citizens stressed that the members of the army and security forces are their brothers and those who attack them are conspiring against Syria, condemning the massacres perpetrated by the armed terrorist groups in Jisr al-Shoghour as 120 members of the military, security and police forces were martyred

Citizen, Abu Mohammad, said that the terrorist groups mutilated the bodies of the martyrs and buried a huge number of them behind the security detachment as they killed them to say later that they found a mass grave and to convey this news to the biased satellite channels which instigate against Syria.

 

Wednesday 08-06-2011

 

How is fabricated news exploited to propagate incitement and Zionist schemes?

On the 20th of the past March, the Syrian opposition activist, Mamoun Al-Homsi (a former Syrian MP), declared news that “upon the statement of eye witnesses, who were doctors treating those wounded during the clashes in the Amawi Mosque several days earlier, some of the wounded persons had a Lebanese accent and belonged to Hizbullah.” Commenting on this claim, Robert Danin, using the name Robert Dani this time, wrote in an inaccurate, “accented”, and informal Arabic: “Such talk is true. I’ve learned that three weeks ago; 1,500 mercenary fighters of Hizbullah arrived in Syria to support basher Al-Assad.”

Not only did Robert Dani (or Danin) post this “news” on the wall of the page entitled “Freedom for Syria’s People – We Deserve to Live in Dignity”, but also he “did a further virtue” by reporting what the Kuwaiti “Al-Siyasa(the Politics)” Newspaper had written concerning the same topic, in addition to mentioning what other Arabic newspapers, fed by the American-Zionist stream, had written. Such steps represented an attempt to confirm his “information” that he had made up in the beginning of the discussion of this topic.

What’s funny about this is that the group administration (Freedom for Syria – We Deserve to Live in Dignity) was quite interested in Mr. Robert Dani’s news, whereby the group administrator’s comment bore an obvious exclamation “Shit! Now Bashar needs Hizbullah! Why doesn’t he get the army’s help? Is he afraid of a military coup?”

So, Robert Danin’s news has affected the group owners and maybe its members too. This, in fact, shows the significance of the dangerous, provocative role this person is performing amid the groups he shares, not to forget these groups’ concentration on the issue of the current turbulences in Syria.

This “adherer” to the freedom of the Syrian people is frankly an antagonist of the Arabic Nation and its issues. Also, he is one of the propagators of the Zionist points of view as regards the regional issues. And this is, in actually, apparent through his academic writings and the political, security, and intelligence roles he’s performed throughout his carrier record.

So who’s Robert Danin?

Having monitored the position this person has held throughout his life, we can provide the following information about him:

Danin has been a former American consul in Al-Quds (Jerusalem), a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Strategic Planning Affairs of the “Israeli”-Arabic negotiations, a Head of the “Israeli”-Palestinian Department of the American National Security Council, a chief representative of the Quartet of Mideast and North Africa mediators, and a Head of the Foreign Ministry Political Committee of the Middle East Issues.

What catches your interest is that Danin has also been a researcher of the US State Department Intelligence Unit, and he has been a researcher of the Washington Institute for Near East Policies.

As for the most conspicuous diplomatic mission that Danin has undertaken has been the Head of Mission at the Office of Quartet Representative (Tony Blair), the Eni Enrico Mattei Senior Fellow for Middle East and Africa Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Currently he works as a major researcher at the Foreign Relations Council in Washington. Moreover, the “Israeli Haaretz” Newspaper has described him as one of the key personalities of the “Peace Team” in the Middle East.

Among Danin’s “virtues” was the mentioning of his name in a “Wikileaks” cable published by “Haaretz” Newspaper, whereby he reported racial sayings by one of the commanders of the Zionist Labor Party, Isaac Hertzog, against the leader of the Labor Party at that time, Amir Peretz, since the latter is an Eastern Jewish. However, the Hebrew media means reported Danin’s denial regarding this topic, whereby he said he had never heard any talk from Hertzog against the (Moroccan) Jews or any criticism against Amir Peretz.

So far, this has been the published information concerning Robert Danin. Still, tracking him on the internet, particularly on the Social Network Facebook, will unveil that Robert Danin’s (or Dani’s) social network doesn’t show a lot of “friends”. For instance, he’s got only ten friends, two of whom are Americans, whereas the others are “Israelis”; one of these Americans works for the American Military and belongs to “the American military Channel”.

In fact, the access into this Channel is limited for the militants assigned internet tasks.

How many roles does Robert Danin play on the stage of incidents? And which “bargain” has directed him towards the anti-regime Syrian pages to stir riot against the regime through the Social Network Facebook? Why has he briefed his formal-life name, Robert Danin, into Robert Dani that appears on the Network Facebook? In regard to the ill-willed security roles he’s been performing through his “Facebook life” which bears heaps of provocation, riots incitement, and rumors propagation, it seems probable he’s avoiding imposing the burdens of these roles on his diplomatic life (which isn’t honorable anyway); is it so?

These questions are subject for research and follow-up. Nevertheless, greater questions may be posed concerning the roles the American Intelligence plays as to targeting the forces of resistance and withstanding, as to provoking peoples against these forces, and as to attempting to set these forces up.

In brief, some of our Nation’s people have been driven by personalities as Robert Danin and other sly Americans and Zionist intelligence and security officials. Some of our Nation’s people are lured and driven by the West and are working for the sake of the Western interests – even if this means great division of our countries and deprivation of the power factors we own. Such fact has inflicted injuries upon all of us. Hereupon, we can’t pose the question regarding how those people do so without their realization of the embedded purposes in these Westerners’ moves. If we pose this question, then it will remind us of our past injuries, which is something we wish to avoid.

 

Al-Intiqad

Tuesday 07-06-2011

 

 

US and its allies assist will be using neoliberal economic policies to make sure new Arab governments stay in line.

  08 June, 2011

In many Arab countries, especially Egypt, the World Bank makes sure that the country’s wealth is in the hands of the governing elite [GALLO/GETTY]

For decades during the Cold War, the rhetoric of US and Western European imperial power was one of promoting democracy around the world. Indeed, as the Soviet model became attractive to many countries in Asia and Africa (not to mention Latin America) ridding themselves of the yoke of West European colonialism, the US system of apartheid, known as Jim Crow Laws or racial segregation, was less than a shining example for people who just liberated themselves from European racial supremacy that was used to justify colonial rule. As is well known, it is this that prompted the United States to begin the road to end its apartheid system, signaled by the famous legal case of “Brown vs the Board of Education” in 1954, which set the stage to desegregate schools in the American South.

But as US action around the world aimed at eliminating the recently won right to self-determination for the peoples of Asia and Africa under the guise of “Western democracy” fighting “totalitarian communism”, which left a trail of millions murdered by the US and its allies (starting with Korea and moving to the Congo, to Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and from Guatemala to Brazil to Argentina, Uruguay, El Salvador, and Chile, to Southern Africa and the Middle East), the cruel US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan in the last decade have hardly changed this anti-democratic trend. Yet two important victories are always touted by supporters of US foreign policy on the democratic front: namely, the fall of the Soviet Union and the ensuing “democratisation” of Eastern Europe, and the end of Apartheid in South Africa. The US hopes that its policies in both places will guide it to achieve similar ends for those uprisings of the Arab world that it cannot crush.

Profits and impoverishment

The people of the Eastern bloc wanted to maintain all the economic gains of the Communist period while calling for democratisation. The US, however, sold them the illusion of “Western democracy” as a cover for their massive US-imposed impoverishment and the dismantling of the entire structure of social welfare of which they had been beneficiaries for decades. Thus in a few short years, and through what Naomi Klein has dubbed the “Shock Doctrine”, Russia went from a country which had less than 2 million people living under the international poverty level to one with 74 million people languishing in poverty. Poland and Bulgaria followed suit. As billionaires increased and the margin of profit for US corporations skyrocketed in the former Eastern bloc, with the help of illustrious imperial organisations like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the US, under international pressure, moved steadily to conclude a deal to end political apartheid in South Africa.

If the people of the Eastern bloc had to sacrifice their welfare states and their livelihoods in exchange for the outright pillage of their countries by Mafia-style capitalism, the people of South Africa were sold political “democracy” in exchange for the intensification of economic apartheid and the complete surrender of the country’s economic sovereignty. While the business class became infinitesimally more racially diverse (as its US precedent pretended to do since the 1970s), the impoverished classes remained racially uniform. Today’s South Africa is so saddled by debt and is signatory to so many economic agreements and protocols, that it can neither redistribute the racialised private property of the country (protected by its constitution), anymore that it can provide wage increases under its obligations to the IMF, which insists on wage “restraint”. The massive racialised poverty of the country has only deepened its economic apartheid under the cover of the “end” of political apartheid.

In the Middle East, the Oslo agreements, signed around the same time that US-style democracy was being imposed on Eastern Europe and South Africa, were even worse. The Palestinian Authority moved (under US and Israeli instructions) to demobilise Palestinian civil society, which was enormously strengthened during the first intifada. Western-funded non-governmental organisations appeared on the scene in force. The NGOs co-opted the intelligentsia, the technocracy, and most of all erstwhile activists into the service of a Western agenda that rendered these foreign NGOs the new local “civil society”, while Western governments financed the corrupt Palestinian Authority that continued to collabourate with the Israeli occupation. Poverty reigned supreme in much of the West Bank and all of Gaza and continues to destroy the lives of Palestinians there. Iraq, meanwhile, was being also transformed from its reduction to the stone age by US bombs into a US-imposed mafia-style “democracy” while the entire welfare benefits that existed under Saddam were withdrawn. Iraqi oil was handed over to American corporations in the ongoing American pillage and destruction of that country.

Other Arab countries, especially Egypt, were being flooded with Western-funded NGOs as the IMF and the World Bank were ensuring that local wealth is firmly in the hands of international capital and a small, local, subservient business class that supports the local dictatorships. A large number of women and labour activists, human rights and political activists, minority rights and peasants rights activists were no longer to be found defending the poor and the oppressed among whom they lived, but were now found on the payroll of these Western-funded NGOs, masquerading as civil society. While this demobilisation of Arab civil society ultimately failed to forestall popular Egyptian and Tunisian rage against two of the most corrupt regimes of post-independence Asia and Africa (or even Latin America), the US and its Saudi and Qatari allies are devising a new economic package to “support” the recent uprisings, especially Egypt’s larger and much more important economy.

Strengthening the rich

We got wind of US magnanimity early on. Indeed on the first day of the ouster of Mubarak, whom the Obama administration supported till his very last day in office (and beyond), the New York Times reported that “the White House and the State Department were already discussing setting aside new funds to bolster the rise of secular political parties.”A few days later, on 17 February, 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared “I’m pleased to announce today that we will be reprogramming $150 million for Egypt to put ourselves in a position to support our transition there and assist with their economic recovery,” she told reporters. “These funds will give us flexibility to respond to Egyptian needs moving forward.” A month later on March 16, Clinton declared on behalf of the US government that “we also think there are economic reforms that are necessary to help the Egyptian people have good jobs, to find employment, to realise their own dreams. And so on both of those tracks – the political reform and the economic reform – we want to be helpful.”

Indeed preparations ” to be helpful” were completed by the Obama administration and its European and Saudi-Qatari allies by May 19, the date Obama delivered his speech. He declared:

First, we’ve asked the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund to present a plan at next week’s G8 summit for what needs to be done to stabilise and modernise the economies of Tunisia and Egypt. Together, we must help them recover from the disruptions of their democratic upheaval, and support the governments that will be elected later this year. And we are urging other countries to help Egypt and Tunisia meet its near-term financial needs.

If this was not enough, Obama offered a laughable gimmick to ease the $35 billion debts of Mubarak’s Egypt on the Egyptian people by “relieving”post-Mubarak Egypt “of up to $1 billion in debt and work with our Egyptian partners to invest these resources to foster growth and entrepreneurship.”But relief of $1 billion must be countered with help to indebt Egypt further. So Obama, in the same breath and without irony, declares, “we will help Egypt regain access to markets by guaranteeing $1 billion in borrowing that is needed to finance infrastructure and job creation…we’re working with Congress to create Enterprise Funds to invest in Tunisia and Egypt.”

As the impoverishment of Eastern Europe created massive wealth for new local elites and their US and Western European corporate masters, Obama asserts that America’s financial assistance “will be modeled on funds that supported the transitions in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), a US government finance institution, will soon launch a $2 billion facility to support private investment across the region. And we will work with the allies to refocus the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development so that it provides the same support for democratic transitions and economic modernisation in the Middle East and North Africa as it has in Europe.” But this is not all, the United States will also “launch a comprehensive Trade and Investment Partnership Initiative in the Middle East and North Africa.” Recognising that Saudi and American avarice was such that all oil profits have found themselves pumping the European and American economies since the 1970s to the detriment of the region itself which languished under IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies (cuts in subsidies and wage decreases for the poor, increase of subsidies for the rich, restricting the rights of the working class, ending protectionism and selling the country off to international capital, raising food prices), causing the ongoing upheavals, Obama now wants a portion of the oil profits to be reinvested within the Arab world. He explained that

We will work with the EU to facilitate more trade within the region, build on existing agreements to promote integration with US and European markets, and open the door for those countries who adopt high standards of reform and trade liberalisation to construct a regional trade arrangement. And just as EU membership served as an incentive for reform in Europe, so should the vision of a modern and prosperous economy create a powerful force for reform in the Middle East and North Africa.

Obama along with France and Britain moved quickly. At the end of May, leaders of the Group of 8 wealthiest industrialised nations pledged to send billions of dollars in aid to Egypt and Tunisia. France’s Sarkozy declared that “he hoped the total aid package would eventually reach $40 billion, including $10 billion from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait”. Meanwhile, Qatar has been talking to oil-rich Gulf partners about a new plan to create a Middle East Development Bank to support Arab states in transitions to democracy. Its plan has been inspired, according to newspaper reports, by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development “that helped to rebuild the economies and societies of eastern bloc countries at the end of the cold war.” The projected Middle Eastern development bank reportedly envisages tens of billions of dollars of yearly lending for political transitions. Qatar is seeking the support of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates for the initiative. Indeed the Saudis had already made a $4 billion grant to the Egyptians and the IMF just announced a $3 billion loan to the country. Yet, Youssef Boutros-Ghali, Mubarak’s finance minister, who had been lauded by none other than the IMF as a most efficient finance minister, and who was named in 2008 by the IMF itself as chairman of its International Monetary and Financial Committee, has fled the country and was just sentenced to 30 years in prison by an Egyptian court on corruption charges. A week before the fall of Mubarak last February and before his flight from the country, Boutros-Ghali resigned his IMF position. But the IMF is not deterred. Its “help” to Egypt will continue unhindered by such trivial matters. Moreover, as part of the effort to crush the popular demonstrations and the demands for democratisation in Jordan, Saudi Arabia also granted $400 million “to support Jordan’s economy and ease its budget deficit”. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council (recently dubbed the Gulf Counter-revolutionary Club) had also extended, a few weeks earlier, an invitation for the only two surviving monarchies outside the Gulf, Jordan and Morocco, to join as members.

Neutralising the poor

But if the US deal in Eastern Europe was to impoverish the majority of people under the cover of democracy so that US businesses can pillage their economies, and if its deal in South Africa was about safeguarding and maintaining the same level of racialised pillage of the country by South Africa’s whites and the international business partners also under the cover of democracy, what is the form of political-economic exchange being transacted in the Arab world?

Clearly in countries where the US-Saudi counterrevolutions have triumphed, the aim is to maintain the same level of imperial pillage led by the US while pacifying the mobilised population and strengthening local elites (Bahrain, Oman, and Jordan are the primary examples here) or rescue the retinue of collapsing dictatorships (whether allies of the US or not) to lead regime transition and resume their partnership with the US politically and economically (Libya, Yemen, and even Syria are primary examples). But what about Egypt and Tunisia where a substantial number of the entourage of the overthrown regimes are also targeted by the uprisings for their corruption and complicity in the violence unleashed by the anciens regimes? It is there where the US-Saudi axis wants to focus its efforts.

Business elites who miraculously escaped formal charges in Egypt, and they are legion, have expressed much concern about demonstrations and strikes disrupting the economy (and their profits). Billionaire Naguib Sawiris, who fancies himself a supporter, if not a leader, of the uprising, and whose father and brothers were also transformed into billionaires in a few short years after they partnered with USAID during Sadat’s “infitah”or “open door” policy, and especially following the US invasion of the region in 1990/91, along with many other “honest” businessmen and women are ready to carry the torch for the US in “democratic” Egypt as they had done faithfully under Mubarak. Sawiris founded a new political party and now refuses to join the ongoing Friday demonstrations, which, he claims, are weakening the economy. He recently declared that “it was wrong to accuse all of the country’s businessmen of wrongdoing,”insisting that “many are honorable people who helped create jobs for Egyptians”. The US and Obama have also been celebrating young business executives like the naive Stockholm Syndrome sufferer Wael Ghonim (Stockholm Syndrome is the only acceptable excuse for Ghonim’s spending the majority of his famous TV interview crying and defending, rather than condemning, his secret police interrogators). Ghonim was touring the US speaking to international bankers as well as to World Bank economists, as a “leader” of the Egyptian uprising at the behest of the Google corporation itself.

But most Egyptians and Tunisians, unlike East Europeans under Communist rule, are poor already. As the main form of apartheid that rules Egyptians and Tunisians, unlike their South African black and poor counterparts under political Apartheid, is an economic and class apartheid, what then would granting US-style democracy to them be in exchange for?

The answer is simple. There is an increasing understanding among US policy makers that the US should ride the democratic wave in the region in those countries where it cannot crush it, and that in doing so, it should create political conditions that would maintain the continued imperial pillage of their economies at the same rate as before and not threaten them. Saudi money followed by American money and IMF and World Bank plans and funds are all geared to supporting the business elites and the foreign-funded NGOs to bring down the newly mobilised civil society by using the same neoliberal language of structural adjustment pushed by the IMF since the late 1970s. Indeed, Obama and his business associates are now claiming that it is the imposition of more neoliberal economic policies that is the main revolutionary demand of the people in Egypt and Tunisia, if not the entire Arab world, and which the West is lovingly heeding. That it is these same imperial policies, which were imposed on Poland by the IMF (and produced Solidarnosc in 1980), and ultimately led to the fall of the Soviet Union, as they marched onwards to impoverish the entire globe, with special attention to Africa, the Arab World, and Latin America, is glossed over as socialist whining. In this sense, the US will ensure that the same imperial economic policies imposed by international capital and adopted by Mubarak and Ben Ali will not only be maintained, but will be intensified under the cover of democracy.

Moves to limit economic protests and labour strikes are ongoing in Egypt and Tunisia. Once elections are held to bring about a new class of servants of the new order, we will hear that all economic demands should be considered “counterrevolutionary”and should be prosecuted for attempting to “weaken” if not “destroy” the new “democracy”. If, as is becoming more apparent, the US strikes alliances with local Islamist parties, we might even hear that economic protests and opposition to neoliberal imperial economic policies are “against Islam.” The US-imposed “democracy” to come, assuming even a semblance of it will be instituted, is precisely engineered to keep the poor down and to delegitimise all their economic demands. The exchange that the US hopes to achieve by imposing some form of liberal political order on Egypt and Tunisia is indeed more, not less, imperial pillage of their economies and of the livelihoods of their poor classes, who are the large majority of the population. The ultimate US aim then is to hijack the successful uprisings against the existing regimes under the cover of democracy for the benefit of the very same local and international business elites in power under Mubarak and Ben Ali. How successful the US and its local allies will be will depend on the Egyptian and Tunisian peoples.

Joseph Massad is Associate Professor for Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University in New York.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.

 

 

 

09 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

In the 1960s, economist Arthur Okum began calculated America’s Misery Index by adding the unemployment and inflation rates for a sense of public pain or lack of it in good times.

In May, it hit a record high exceeding 25, surpassing the earlier June 1980 21.98 top, based on how both measures were then calculated, not today’s methodology, manipulated to hide painful truths.

At issue is:

— over 22% unemployment, including discouraged workers and the so-called “birth-death model” estimate of net non-reported jobs from new businesses minus losses from ones no longer operating; during hard times, painful truths are hidden by creating non-existent jobs out of whole cloth instead of subtracting them to reflect fewer, not additional new businesses;

— double digit inflation, including soaring food, energy, healthcare, college tuition, and other costs omitted or understated in core figures;

— rising poverty, more than one in seven affected according to way understated Census Bureau figures, using threshold measures developed 40 years earlier

— record numbers on food stamps;

— record measures of food insecurity – Feeding America.org reporting one in six American facing hunger;

— predicted record 2011 numbers of home foreclosures, estimated at 1.2 million after one million lost last year;

— record homelessness numbers up to 3.5 million on any given night, needing refuge wherever they can find it or face life on city streets; and

— other measures of worsening conditions during a Main Street depression, affecting Europe, Japan and elsewhere like America.

Economic recovery? Explain how to millions unemployed or underemployed, foreclosed homeowners, bankrupt business owners, impoverished legions, and many others food insecure at a time US and European leaders enforce austerity when massive social stimulus is needed.

Across Europe, large deficits and public debt crises are spreading, an Economist April 29 article highlighting “a moment….when events spiral out of control. As panic sets in, bond yields lurch sickeningly upwards and fear spreads to shares and currencies.”

It happened in September 2008, a decade earlier when Russia defaulted, and similar past events. “When the unthinkable becomes the inevitable,” contagion and panic follow like a tsunami sweeping away everything in its path.

Numerous European countries are deeply troubled, notably Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, entrapped in debt, locked in a Eurozone straightjacket. Perhaps heading for default, they’ve inflicted painful austerity on working households, rallying them en masse in protest.

On May 30, financial expert and investor safety advocate Martin Weiss said:

“Never before have I seen so many threats to your safety and wealth converging in one time and place,” citing:

— deteriorating bank safety, evident from increasing failures and other systemic risk measures;

— a deepening housing market depression with no end in sight;

— a worsening European sovereign debt crisis; and

— most worrisome, the contagion spreading to America.

According to Weiss:

“If you thought the debt crisis of 2008-2009 was a harrowing experience, wait till you see what’s coming next.” Last time, corporations were affected. Sovereign states are getting hammered now, including America.

On May 16, the Global Europe Anticipation Bulletin (GEAB) headlined, “Global systemic crisis: Confirmation of a Major Alert for the second half of 2011 – Explosive fusion of world geopolitical dislocation and the global economic financial crisis,” saying:

As it predicted in February 2008, GEAB again believes conditions now suggest a later in the year “explosive fusion….(a worldwide) geopolitical dislocation on the one hand and (a) global economic and financial crisis on the other.”

Combined they show major economic trauma coming, extinguishing economic recovery hopes, notably in debt entrapped America, “represent(ing) the end of an era (in which the) dollar was the currency of the United States and the rest of the world’s problem.”

Ahead, it’s becoming “the main threat weighing on the rest of the world” and America. Summer 2011 “will confirm that the Federal Reserve has lost its bet: the US economy has, in fact, never left the ‘Very Great Depression which it entered in 2008 despite” massive money creation.

As a result, interest rates will rise. Government deficits will explode. Economic decline will intensify. Equity valuations will decline. The dollar will behave erratically “before suddenly losing 30% of its value” as earlier predicted.

At the same time, “Euroland,” BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) and “commodity producers will rapidly strengthen their cooperation while launching a final attempt to salvage” the remnants of Bretton Woods and a US/UK dominated world.

“(I)t’s unrealistic to imagine (Obama) who has shown no major international stature so far, proving himself” statesmanlike enough to take risks ahead of the 2012 election cycle.

Under his leadership, America “is completely in dreamland. Whilst the country has reached unsustainable levels of debt, (its leaders) have made this topic an election issue.”

Moreover, America today is seen as the “sick man of the world in which any sign of weakness or serious inconsistency can trigger uncontrolled panic.”

In addition, the combination of “(c)razy central bankers, world leaders without a roadmap, economies at risk, inflation rising, currencies in trouble, frenzied commodities, uncontrolled Western debt, (high unemployment), (and) stressed societies” leaves little doubt about looming trouble ahead as early as second half 2011.

A Final Comment

In late May, Gerald Celente highlighted “the most trend-significant story” getting little or no coverage in Western media reports. The combination of weather, economic, and geopolitical events portend “far-reaching and disastrous” socioeconomic consequences.

“Farming, shipping, seafood, food supplies and petroleum refining will be among the foreseeable casualties, accompanied by massive population displacement. But the ensuing chain reaction (inflation, shortages, unemployment, etc.) will claim many other victims,” so far unquantifiable.

Middle East and European protests “signaled a major turning point, (an unstoppable) “Off With Their Heads” mega-trend, America’s media don’t notice or explain.

Celente calls the European bailouts failures, creating higher unemployment, more debt, draconian austerity, and “a wholesale sell-off of valuable public resources,” asset-stripping national wealth to enrich bankers, producing painful consequences.

As a result, “(e)conomic conditions will continue to deteriorate for most European nations. The worse they get, the louder and more heated the protests….” Repressive crackdowns will follow, producing greater protests this summer into 2012 and beyond as conditions worsen.

However, a potential wild card deserves watching – one or more terror strikes likely derailing angry protesters temporarily, uniting them behind national security issues, the way 9/11 worked.

More worrisome is a possible major false flag, even a nuclear one targeting a US and/or Western European city. If so, all bets are off short term, but sooner or later unmet needs will take precedence, perhaps when hungry people blame Washington for their misery and react angrily for help. It bears watching and may happen sooner than expected.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/

08 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

S. 968: Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011 (PROTECT IP) was introduced by Senator Patrick Leahy (D. VT) and nine other senators on May 12. It is a smoke screen to introduce new censorship provisions that violate First Amendment freedoms, without which all others are at risk in USA. Reported to committee on May 26, it was placed on the Senate calendar for a floor vote yet to occur.

If enacted, PROTECT IP will give federal authorities “unprecedented power to attack the Internet’s domain name system (DNS),” by: forcing ISPs and search engines to redirect or reject user attempts to reach certain cites; and vaguely call DNS servers “server(s) or other mechanism(s) used to provide the Internet protocol addresses associated with a domain name.” This definition endangers other technologies, including operating systems, email and web clients, routers, and others able to provide IP addresses when given domain names like traditional DNS servers.

Calling PROTECT IP “COICA Redux,” EFF’s Abigail Phillips explained differences between both measures, expressing grave concerns about the new one, saying:

It includes “a private right of action for intellectual property owners (as well as government to) seek injunctions against websites (allegedly) ‘dedicated to infringing activities’ in addition to court orders against third parties providing services to those sites.”

Its language also adds new third-party provider categories, including “interactive computer services” and “servers of sponsored links,” requiring they no longer serve targeted sites.

Moreover, “new language no longer requires explicit action on the part of domain name registries and registrars,” but still covers unauthorized domain name system server operators.

In addition, the measure requires government or private plaintiffs to identify infringing persons or entities before action is taken against a domain name. Nonetheless, doing so falls far short of protecting speech with plenty of wiggle room to violate it.

As a result, Phillips called PROTECT IP “no improvement on COICA.” Moreover, in many ways it’s worse, and may produce defensive countermeasures, including establishing alternative servers with total Internet access, creating possible new security vulnerabilities.

Currently, Senator Ron Wyden (D. OR) placed a hold on S. 968, providing concerned Internet users time to email, call, and/or write their congressional representatives, expressing opposition to this repressive act, essential to stop.

PROTECT IP A Continuation Of COICA

In fact it was Senator Patrick Leahy himself on september 20, 2010 introduced S. 3804: Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA) was introduced by . Its purpose was to destroy Internet freedom one domain at a time, by requiring their registrars/registries, ISPs, DNS (domain name system) providers, and others to block users from reaching certain websites.

If passed, COICA would have let Washington suppress free speech and block access to non-infringing material, inflicting enormous constitutional damage by requiring all Internet communication providers (including ISPs, Facebook, Twitter, Skype, and others) to rebuild their systems, giving Washington backdoor access to everyone’s Internet’s communications.

On November 18, 2010, COICA was reported to committee, then stalled without coming to the Senate floor for a vote.

Final ACTA Text Ready

An October 2007 global measure, overriding national sovereignty, also threatens Net Neutrality, consumer privacy, and civil liberties. Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), secret negotiations seek to subvert them, ostensibly to protect copyrighted intellectual property, including films, photos, and songs. ACTA remains a work in progress, but developments going forward bear watching, especially if a global agreement is reached.

On May 27, the Foundation for Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) said the European Commission published a “final” ACTA text with few changes from its last known version. Since introduced, Western media, especially America’s, have reported virtually nothing about this destructive measure, those backing it wish to enact with little or no public disclosure, let alone input over something this important.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/