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The military strategy unveiled by President Barack Obama Thursday keeps massive spending on the US war machine largely intact, while shifting its focus decisively toward China.

Obama made an unprecedented appearance at the Pentagon Thursday, marking the first time that a US president has personally participated in the presentation of such a defense strategic guidance document, which presents in broad strokes the priorities and direction for the US armed forces.

In presenting the document, entitled “Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defense,” Obama insisted that the US military budget would remain higher than those of the next 10 military powers combined. Preemptively responding to right-wing claims he was “cutting” military spending, he pointed out, “The growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow.”

The guidance calls for a fundamental re-orientation of American military power toward the Asia-Pacific region, while affirming its commitment to maintaining US military control over the oil-rich Persian Gulf. “All trends are shifting to the Pacific,” stressed Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. “Our strategic challenges will largely emanate out of the Pacific region.”

In its blunt and provocative portrayal of China as an enemy, the document reflects the steady buildup toward a confrontation over dominance of the Asia Pacific region, the scene of the world’s greatest economic growth.

The guidance document asserts that “US economic and security interests are inextricably linked to developments” in this region and, while Washington will continue its interventions in the Middle East and elsewhere across the globe, “we will of necessity rebalance toward the Asia-Pacific region.” [emphasis in original].

The document stresses US efforts to forge a series of military alliances ranging from Japan and South Korea to the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam, while singling out India for the role of an “anchor” for US security interests in the Indian Ocean region.

“The growth of China’s military power,” the document warns, “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”

In a section entitled “Project power despite Anti-Access/Area Denial Challenges,” the guidance document lumps together China and Iran as countries that “will continue to pursue asymmetric means to counter our power projection capabilities,” citing “electronic and cyber warfare, ballistic and cruise missiles, advanced air defenses, mining and other methods.” The Pentagon has grown increasingly concerned over China’s development of torpedoes capable of attacking US aircraft carriers, which were previously seen as impregnable means of deploying massive US military power off China’s shores.

The document also includes multiple assertions of US determination to uphold the “free flow of goods” and “access to the global commons,” which are primarily thinly veiled references to Washington’s increasingly bellicose intervention in regional disputes over the South China Sea.

In surrounding himself with the uniformed members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as well as civilian Pentagon officials, Obama was undoubtedly attempting to cast himself as a hands-on commander-in-chief and to insulate himself from criticism from the Republican right. Republican presidential candidates, leading Republican members of Congress and sections of the right-wing media all seized upon the document’s budgetary implications, portraying them as a gutting of the American military.

The strategic guidance represents nothing of the sort. As Obama himself boasted, the administration’s proposal to trim around $450 billion in projected expenditures over the next ten years will still leave the Pentagon’s base budget higher than the last one implemented by the George W. Bush administration.

The cuts being proposed by the Obama administration are not to the current budget, but rather to the projected spending over the next decade, which factored in an assumed steady increase in funding for Washington’s bloated armed forces. The past decade, dominated by the “global war on terror” and the simultaneous wars and occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, saw military spending in the US soar by more than 80 percent. The plan being implemented by Obama will maintain military spending at this unprecedentedly high level, even as the White House and the US Congress prepare to take a meat ax to core social programs and benefits, including Medicare and Social Security.

Media reports on the presentation of the strategic review have included claims that the document unveiled Thursday represented Obama putting his “personal stamp” on US military policy. This is even more absurd than the claims about crippling budget cuts. The outline presented in the strategic guidance has been worked out within the US armed forces command and the military-industrial complex, with Obama serving as little more than a political spokesman for these powerful interests.

In its broad outlines, the guidance presents proposals that are remarkably similar to those pushed by Bush’s first defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who entered the Pentagon pushing for a “revolution” in military policy. Like Rumsfeld’s proposals, the guidance presented Thursday advocates streamlining the ground forces, particularly the Army, while relying more heavily on Special Operations troops and hi-tech weaponry, including unmanned attack drones.

While the document provides no specific numbers relating to budgets and manpower, it has been reported that with the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq and the drawdown from Afghanistan, the Army’s ranks will be thinned from the current 570,000 to 490,000. Similar reductions in force are reportedly in store for the Marine Corps, meaning that tens of thousands of troops returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will be thrown onto America’s long unemployment lines.

While undoubtedly the senior brass in the Army and Marines are chafing at these cuts, their concerns are outweighed by powerful corporate interests that are pleased with the guidance’s promise of continued spending on a new stealth bomber, submarines, star wars technology and other air and sea weapons systems that are seen as the most efficient means of aggressively projecting US military might. During Thursday’s press conference, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta directly addressed these interests, declaring the Pentagon’s commitment to “preserving the health and viability of the nation’s defense industrial base.”

In his appearance at the Pentagon, Obama repeated his assertion that, based on the withdrawal from Iraq and the minimal troop reductions in Afghanistan, “the tides of war are receding.”

On the contrary, the defense strategic guidance demonstrates that US imperialism remains committed to the use of armed force to assert its hegemony over the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia, even as it gears up its war machine for an armed confrontation with China.

Giving a cynical tip of the hat to the “Arab Spring”, the guidance affirms US reliance on the despotic monarchies of the Gulf Cooperation Council in preparing for a military confrontation with Iran.

Defense Secretary Panetta provided a glimpse of what is on the horizon, assuring the assembled media that the US military is prepared to wage “a land war in Korea” while simultaneously defeating Iran in a confrontation over the Straits of Hormuz.

China issued a strong reaction to the defense guidance document. “China must make the US realize that its rise cannot be stopped,” Global Times, a state-run Chinese newspaper declared. Insisting that Beijing must not “give up its peripheral security,” the paper added that “China needs to enhance its long-distance military attack ability and develop more ways to threaten US territory in order to gradually push outward the front line of its ‘game’ with America.”

Confronting the relative decline of American capitalism and the rise of China, Washington is turning toward the reckless use of military might to defend its position of global dominance, threatening a conflagration that would eclipse the wars of the past decade.

By Bill Van Auken

7 January 2012

WSWS.org

The Pentagon document, “Sustaining US Global Leadership: Priorities for 21st Century Defence,” represents a major reorientation of the US military forces globally, particularly toward the Asia-Pacific region. It insisted that China’s military expansion “must be accompanied by greater clarity of its strategic intentions in order to avoid causing friction in the region.”

In fact, China is under threat by the US. Through Obama’s efforts to strengthen alliances with Japan, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines, as well as build new partnerships with India, Indonesia and Vietnam—not to mention the US-led occupation of Afghanistan on China’s western flank—Beijing is being encircled on every front.

China has increased military spending by an estimated 200 percent over the past decade. But the US military still dwarfs that of China on any indicator, from spending (six times bigger) to the size of its nuclear arsenal (35 times larger), and maintains a vast technological superiority in virtually every field.

The initial official Chinese response to the Pentagon document was cautious. The state-owned Xinhua news agency called on the US to “abstain from flexing its muscle.” At the same time, it stated that “if fulfilled with a positive attitude and free from a Cold War-style zero-sum mentality,” the new US strategy “would not only be conducive to regional stability and prosperity, but be good for China, which needs a peaceful environment to continue its economic development.”

Chinese Defence ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng was more critical, declaring on Monday that “the accusations levelled at China by the US in this document are totally baseless.” He hoped the US would “deal with China and the Chinese military in an objective and rational way, be careful in its words and actions, and do more that is beneficial to the development of relations between the two countries and their militaries.”

Writing in the People’s Liberation Daily on Tuesday, Major General Luo Yuan bluntly warned that the US was targetting China. “Casting our eyes around, we can see that the United States has been bolstering its five major military alliances in the Asia-Pacific region, and is adjusting the positioning of its five major military base clusters, while also seeking more entry rights for military bases around China. Who can believe that you are not directing this at China?” he asked.

The differing responses reflect a debate in Beijing that intensified after last year’s NATO intervention in Libya, which caused losses of billions of dollars of Chinese investment in that country. One camp advocates a continuation of the present cautious policy of avoiding a confrontation with the US. The second calls for a shift to a more aggressive policy to defend China’s growing economic and strategic interests around the world.

Those advocating a low-key approach argue that China is in no position to challenge the US. Their concerns reflect the vulnerability of the Chinese economy, which is heavily dependent upon the advanced Western countries for investment, technology and markets, and would be severely disrupted by any open confrontation with Washington.

In a commentary in China Newsweek on January 3, academic Zheng Yongnian warned against “a new Cold War” with the US and its allies, in particular over North Korea. He argued that such a confrontation would be “very unfavourable to China” because China was no match for the US, whose international dominance “is all-dimensional, including in politics, economy and military, whereas China’s is still predominantly economical.”

Zheng indicated that China could weather a new Cold War, explaining: “If East Asia is divided into two blocs, with China losing the space in the east, it must strive to expand into the west. This scenario is not only possible, but has already begun, which is to develop ties with Arab countries.” However, he argued that the best option for China was to cooperate with the US, in line with Beijing’s chosen “road to integrate into the West-dominated international community” since its rapprochement with America in the 1970s.

The critics of Beijing’s present policy of a “peaceful rise” point to the impact that US aggression has already had on China’s investments and carefully cultivated diplomatic influence. The US not only supported the ousting of the Libyan regime but is now threatening Iran, upon which China relies as a major source of oil. In South East Asia, the Obama administration has encouraged the Philippines and Vietnam to assert their claims in the South China Sea against China’s and undermined China’s influence in regional bodies.

Dai Xu, a researcher at Peking University’s Chinese Centre of Strategic Studies, argued in the Global Times last week that China “must draw a line.” He argued against the stance of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping who advocated that the country “keep a low profile,” focus on economic development and avoid joining or forming alliances or any international grouping.

Dai is known for his 2009 book, C-shaped Encirclement, which warned that the US was seeking to contain China in the Asia-Pacific. Now he is calling for an end to appeasement with the US, pointing to the supposed historical lessons of the Song Dynasty 1,000 years ago. It faced a military threat from the nomadic kingdoms to the north and responded by offering concessions and abandoning military preparedness, only to be annihilated.

In his Global Times article, Dai said the US had “a clear roadmap and timetable to ‘conquer’ the world,” stretching from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, with the ultimate aim of taking on China and Russia. In the face of the escalating US threat against Iran, which could lead to a war involving America, Israel and Russia, Dai called for China to prepare accordingly.

The debate highlights the fact that the Chinese ruling elite has little room to manoeuvre. “Cooperation” with the US would mean making concessions to Washington’s economic demands, such as revaluing the yuan, which in turn would bankrupt sections of Chinese industry and foment wider social unrest.

Washington’s aggressive stance against China has strengthened the position of those who advocate an end to appeasement, which in turn heightens the danger of war.

By John Chan

13 January 2012

@ WSWS.org

As the blade of blame is being directed against the CIA and Mossad for orchestrating the brutal assassination of the 32-year-old Iranian scientist in broad daylight in Tehran on Wednesday morning, the duo have preferred to feign ignorance as to the identity of the main perpetrator of the crime.

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told reporters on Thursday.

Also, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said the US had nothing to do with the assassination.

“We were not involved in any way — in any way — with regards to the assassination that took place [in Iran],” he said. “I’m not sure of who was involved…But I can tell you one thing: the United States was not involved in that kind of effort. That’s not what the United States does.”

The US is not the only party which has chosen to be in denial.

Israeli President Shimon Peres also denied on Thursday that Israel was involved in the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientist. In an interview with CNN, Peres was asked if Israel was involved in the nuclear assassination, to which he answered: “Not to the best of my knowledge.”

“I know that it is fashionable that whatever wrong happens in Iran, it is the United States and Israel. There is nothing new in this approach,” said Peres.

What kind of answer would the viewers expect from Peres to such a naive question? The question is indeed as unwise in substance as the answer given by Peres.

In order to find out who really killed the Iranian scientist, one needs to put together the factual pieces.

Just two days after Iran sentenced to death CIA operative of Iranian descent Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, two unidentified men on a motorcycle attached a magnetic bomb onto the car of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a senior official at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, and detonated it on Wednesday, killing the young scientist and his driver.

It does not seem unreasonable to say that there was a link between the two incidents.

And in comes a third party e.g. Britain which bears as equal responsibility for the crime as the other two. British Middle East minister Alistair Burt has recently visited Israel and demanded all nations intensify pressure on Tehran to stall its nuclear program. Proudly he announced that “a few weeks ago the British government imposed tough new financial restrictions against Iran. These new sanctions make it illegal for any financial institution in the United Kingdom to have any dealings with any institution in Iran. They are the toughest of their kind. And we will build on them, getting others to follow suit.”

A close friend of Israel, Mr. Burt described the Iranian nuclear program as “the major issue at the top of our shared agenda,” saying that Israel can serve as a partner in a common cause against a regime dangerously loose.”

Lavishing pearls of British wisdom on the audience while speaking at Bar-Ilan University’s Feldman International Conference Center, Mr. Burt said Iran “does not just threaten Israel,” and sycophantically described Israel as the “bastion for stability in the region.”

Also contributing to the shared agenda of Israel and Britain in nuclear assassinations and sabotage activities in Iran is the remark of the Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz who said on Tuesday in an address to a closed Knesset committee that Iran should expect more “unnatural” events in 2012.

While the hawks in Washington have already declared a nuclear war on Iran in a metaphoric sense i.e. the assassination of the Iranian nuclear scientists, some of them avail themselves of a kind of literature in their reference to the nuclear assassinations which indicates the abyss of human degeneration. An impetuous example of this was reflected in a video circulated on the internet in which Rick Santorum, who is a sad excuse for a human being and a politically bankrupt White House aspirant, has unfeelingly described the assassination of Iranian scientists as “wonderful.”

“On occasion, scientists working on the nuclear program in Iran turn up dead. I think that’s a wonderful thing, candidly,” said Rick Santorum addressing an election campaign in Greenville, South Carolina.

He added that, “I think we should send a very clear message that if you are a scientist from Russia, North Korea, or from Iran and you are going to work on a nuclear program to develop a bomb for Iran, you are not safe.”

There are times when one wonders how on earth all these politically, ethically and intellectually Lilliputian-minded people have turned up together in this world.

All these facts aside, examples for the animosity of the UK, US and Israel towards the Islamic Republic are legion. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the myriad crimes orchestrated, funded and carried out by the trio.

There is no doubt that the recent assassination has caused a lot of intellectual anguish, emotional pain and political wrath in Iran.

In a stern warning, Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, lashed out at the United States and Israel for orchestrating the assassination of Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan. In a message of condolence to his family, Ayatollah Khamenei said the assassination was carried out under the unholy auspices of the CIA and Mossad.

“This act of cowardice, whose perpetrators and architects will never dare to confess to their foul and appalling crime or assume responsibility for it, has been engineered and funded by the CIA and Mossad [spy] services,” he said, adding, “The assassination shows that the global arrogance spearheaded by the US and Zionism has arrived at an impasse in their encounter with the determined, devout, and progressive nation of Islamic Iran.”

Central to the circle of the prime suspects in the nuclear assassinations is the IAEA itself. About two weeks ago, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan had reportedly met the agency inspectors.

Isn’t it strange that the nuclear scientist was killed only two weeks after his meeting with the IAEA inspectors?

Another point which actually strengthens the speculation is that the names and identities of Iranian nuclear scientists who have so far been assassinated have been published in the list of sanctions issued by the IAEA.

Israel Defense Forces’ Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Benny Gantz has said, Iran should be expecting more “unnatural” events in 2012.

Iran is certainly prepared for the worst but the enemies of the Islamic Republic should for their part await devastating consequences of colossal proportions if they wish to persevere in their path of mischief.

By Dr. Ismail Salami

13 January 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Dr. Ismail Salami is an Iranian writer, Middle East expert, Iranologist and lexicographer. He writes extensively on the US and Middle East issues and his articles have been translated into a number of languages.

Attacks on both local and international journalists across Iraq have not stopped to this day

Baghdad, Iraq – Iraq has been one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists since 2003.

While scores of newspapers and media outlets blossomed across Baghdad following the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime in the spring of 2003, the media renaissance was also met with attacks on both local and international journalists across the country – that have not stopped to this day.

Iraq was the deadliest country in the world for journalists every year from 2003 to 2008, the third deadliest in 2009, and the second deadliest in 2010 and 2011, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

CPJ documents 150 journalists killed in Iraq since 2003, a number, as high as it is, which pales in comparison to that logged by the group Brussels Tribunal (BT).

Logging the name, date, incident description, and source when available, BT reports that 341 Iraqi journalists and media workers have been killed since the invasion.

Adding to the overt physical risks from a dangerous security situation and threats of kidnapping, Iraqi journalists have told Al Jazeera that they now face threats from the Iraqi government itself, led by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Adnan Hussein, the editor-in-chief and deputy director of Iraq’s Al-Mada newspaper, one of the largest in the country, wrote an article about then-Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari in 2006.

“I mentioned that he talked too much, so I received an email from one of his supporters,” Hussein explained at his office in Baghdad. “The email said: ‘If you are in Baghdad we will kill you and throw you in the garbage like the dogs’.”

“So how is our situation?” Hussein asked. “Certainly we are afraid. I give you this example, and it still exists today.”

Atmosphere of fear

On September 8, 2011, Iraqi journalist Hadi al-Mahdi was shot in his Baghdad home by assailants using pistols with silencers. Mahdi had hosted a thrice-weekly radio show covering social and political issues, including government corruption, bribery and sectarianism.

On his Facebook page, Mahdi had regularly organised pro-democracy demonstrations and publicised threats he had received. Having become afraid for his safety, two months before his murder, Mahdi had stepped down from his radio show.

“The killing of Hadi Mahdi created an atmosphere of fear,” Hussein said of the death of his colleague.

He explained that the Maliki government claimed to have recently passed a law that provided greater protections to Iraqi journalists, but that instead “the law limits our work and does not guarantee our rights”.

“Journalists here are now working in the streets naked,” he said. “They have no rights and no protections. Journalists cannot work and cover what needs to be covered because they are too exposed.”

One of Hussein’s colleagues recently accused an Iraqi military spokesman of being a hypocrite in one of his columns, and the spokesman filed a lawsuit against their paper for $6m compensation.

“I returned to Iraq one year ago [after working as the Managing Editor of Asharq Alawsat newspaper in London] to find a bad situation, because of the political situation,” Hussein concluded. “But now I feel it will worsen. The Iraqi government is not operating within any rules.”

Oday Hattem, Chairman of Iraq’s Society for Defending Press Freedom, agrees.

Hattem, who was arrested twice by Saddam Hussein’s regime for publishing articles that offended the government, knows first-hand about media repression.

“There is no freedom to work in journalism here – if we compare the journalism in Iraq with the West,” Hattem told Al Jazeera.

The large number of media outlets available in the country today, “does not necessarily mean there is freedom of the press, because every paper or TV channel belongs to a political party”, he said.

Hattem believes the laws of journalism from Saddam’s era continue to prevent Iraqi journalists from criticising the government, and the fact that religious parties each have their own militia means they, too, are not to be criticised.

According to Hattem, if a journalists reports critically “that means this journalist will lose his life”.

Like Hussein, Hattem sees the situation worsening on all fronts.

“The political and freedom of speech situations are both descending,” he said. “Maliki launched an attack on freedom of speech in February 2010, when he arrested tens of journalists and human rights activists after the beginning of demonstrations in Baghdad.”

US President Barack Obama, during a December 12, 2011, press conference with Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, had nothing but high praise for the state of press freedom in Maliki’s Iraq:

So we’re partnering to strengthen the institutions upon which Iraq’s democracy depends – free elections, a vibrant press, a strong civil society, professional police and law enforcement that uphold the rule of law, an independent judiciary that delivers justice fairly, and transparent institutions that serve all Iraqis.

Three days later, Iraq’s Society for Defending Press Freedom filed an appeal with Iraq’s High Federal Court against Maliki’s government and its “Journalists Rights Law”, which the group said contradicted four articles from Iraq’s constitution.

Like most Iraqi journalists Al Jazeera spoke with, Hattem also received threats through what he said were “departments of the government”.

“I have had to change my address several times, and in 2008, my six-year-old daughter was kidnapped,” he explained.

Hattem received a death threat in February 2011 which caused him to leave the country for 30 days, “and a lot of my colleagues have left journalism because they have received threats from Shia parties and their militias”.

“In November 2011, there was another attempt to kidnap my daughter from in front of school,” Hattem said, adding that Maliki and his government are “controlling the media more now than even under Saddam”.

“After 2003, we hoped for full freedom of the press as it is in the west,” he added. “But the US does not want Iraq to be a democratic country. The spine of democracy is freedom of the press, but since 2003, the US forces never lifted a finger to stop violations against the press and freedom of journalists.”

‘You will be arrested or assassinated’

Yasser Faisal from Fallujah has worked as a freelance cameraman for Reuters since 2002, both in and out of Iraq.

He feels that working as a journalist in Iraq today is more difficult than it was under Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“If you want to search for the truth about something and this thing is against the interests of the government, you will be either arrested or assassinated,” he told Al Jazeera.

Faisal said, after the withdrawal of US forces, “the situation has become even more dangerous” because “there are no international organisations or laws that can protect you, so you can only work if you have contacts or relations with the Iraqi army or police”.

He points to the fact that, like every other journalist Al Jazeera spoke with, any time Iraqi security forces are around, journalists are not allowed to take pictures or film, and censorship even within hospitals is alive and well.

Of the new law that supposedly protects Iraqi journalists, Faisal said simply, “it is not effective”.

Ibrahim al-Jassim, a reporter for the Al Masar satellite channel in Iraq, also pointed to the militia of the political parties as part of the problem Iraqi journalists face.

“We have many difficulties here,” he said, while standing nearby Baghdad’s busy Saadoun Street. “These are all dependent on the security situation.”

Jassim believes that the targeting of Iraqi journalists is happening “because of the Iraqi political parties not wanting the truth out. Our job is to seek the truth, and nobody here wants the truth to come out”.

A 2011 report by Human Rights Watch on Freedom of Expression in Iraq confirms this: “In 2010, Iraq remained one of the most dangerous countries in the world to work as a journalist. Extremists and unknown assailants continue to kill media workers and bomb their bureaus…”

Many difficulties

Ahmed Rehayma, office director at the Society for Defending Press Freedom in Iraq again points to the government for the root of the current problems facing Iraqi journalists.

“This pressure from the government has happened to all of us,” he explained. “It’s a fact we cannot deny.”

Of his reporting for the Azzam newspaper up until four months ago, he said that he always pursued the truth, but that the government is “most certainly putting up obstacles”.

He pointed to a story he wrote on how bomb detection devices used by the Iraqi military at checkpoints don’t really work.

“The Ministry of Interior tried to make me look like a troublemaker for doing this story,” he explained. “They stopped us on that story.”

Rehayma told of another instance where he was reporting on a fire and an Iraqi policeman made him delete his photos, and then became physically abusive.

“We know plenty of journalists who have horrible stories,” he said. “We see Maliki consolidating power and this concerns us, as it will make things hard for the media. Our media is in trouble now.”

By Dahr Jamail

10 January 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Dahr Jamail is an American journalist who is best known as one of the few unembedded journalists to report extensively from Iraq during the 2003 Iraq invasion. He spent eight months in Iraq, between 2003 to 2005, and presented his stories on his website, entitled Dahr Jamail’s MidEast Dispatches. Jamail writes for the Inter Press Service news agency, among other outlets. He has been a frequent guest on Democracy Now!. Jamail is the recipient of the 2008 The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Follow Dahr Jamail on Twitter: @DahrJamail

Rogozin, Russia’s former Permanent Representative to NATO, told officers of the Aerospace Forces in the restricted area of Krasnoznamensk that no matter what type of political system Russia has the western military bloc will not change their views.

“No matter what Russia may be – imperial, communist or democratic – they see us with the same eyes as they did in the previous centuries,” he said.

The same attitude applies to Germany, Rogozin says, the largest and most successful economy in the European Union.

“The relationship with Germany also remains complicated, because they still fear it,” he said. “The Germans have no more than battalions in the NATO army, which does not exist in fact but unites national forces for certain operations.”

The Germans are not allowed to form even a brigade for a particular operation. They still fear the Germans, he added.

This week, President Dmitry Medvedev appointed Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s envoy to NATO since 2008, deputy prime minister in charge of the defense complex.

­NATO’s outdated principles

Rogozin went on to explain how NATO still conducts its business under the outdated principles first laid down by NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay, who held the post from 1952 til 1957.

“NATO continues to live by the principles set down by NATO Secretary General Lord Ismay: ‘America in, Germany under and Russia outside,’” Rogozin said. “This means control over German militarism; they understand…that the Germans may always develop into a force, which  will consolidate Europe around itself,” he said.

Indeed, many in Germany have been calling for the creation of a European army that will eventually replace NATO, which many observers believe has overstayed its welcome.

“The long term goal is the establishment of a European army under full parliamentary control,” German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle told an audience last year at the Munich Security Conference, noting that the German government “wants to advance along this path.”

Meanwhile, according to Rogozin, America asserts its military presence on the continent by any means possible, while Russia is held at a distance.

“America must be represented in Europe by hook or by crook,” he said.  “Russia must be held at a distance – and the farther the better.”

This warped formula forces Russia into the position where it must keep a watchful eye on what is happening behind the scenes of US-led military bloc.

“Hence the mission of Russian diplomats, military diplomats and intelligence officers is the opposite: they must be inside all the time and prevent the Americans from being alone with the Europeans,” he said.

Commenting on the highly controversial US missile defense system, which is being constructed just miles from the Russian border, Rogozin gave a grim account of the system, and what it means for much of Europe: “NATO has no such technologies or experience, they do not understand what is going on and they do not understand that NATO, the European allies of America, are nothing but a shield and a lamb to slaughter,” he said.

Rogozin, who is known for his straightforward speaking, ridiculed the Romanians for allowing components of the missile defense system on their territory, saying that they will have no control over it.

“We have scrutinized the agreement the Americans have signed with the Romanians [on the deployment of US interceptor missiles in Romania in the construction of the European missile defense],” the former NATO envoy said. “The Romanians may think they are important interception missile operators but even the base commander, a Romanian serviceman, has the right to enter only the lobby.”

He (the Romanian base commander) will never visit the control station for a very simple reason that the base is American, not  NATO, Rogozin added.

The Deputy Prime Minister believes that the United States has convinced the Europeans that they need constant US involvement in their affairs.

“The Americans invented a story that Europe cannot do without them,” Rogozin said. The result of such a relationship is less than beneficial for Europe.

What this means for Europe is that they have become “hostages and targets of a retaliation attack,” without even having access to the American technologies.”.

Rogozin found tremendous irony in the situation, since it was the contributions of the all the western countries that allowed for the development of such systems, which remain, nevertheless, under American control.

“The American strategy, including that within NATO, is based on the absolute technological superiority in the Western world and on European monetary contributions to the US defense sector, which are spent on the development of these systems,” he concluded.

26 December 2011

@ rt.com

But my agnostic friends also deserve a shout-out. Because even though they weren’t sure whether their prayers could do any good, they were in there with me throughout all the same, doing everything they could think of to help out too, as far as I’m concerned doing just as good of a job honoring God’s commands that we look after each-other as everyone else did, even though they’re not even sure whether God exists or not!

However, it’s the prayers I want to talk about.

Because although my Muslim and Jewish friends didn’t feel it necessary to clarify exactly which God they were praying to because everyone of us knows we pray to the same one. Many of my Christian friends — respectfully, kindly and to my mind tragically — felt they needed to assure me they were praying to the God of Abraham rather than to Jesus, because they thought I’d be offended otherwise.

And as far as I am concerned, that’s mostly because Muslims for the last thousand years have consistently failed to live up to either the commands of the Quran or the example of Muhammad regarding interfaith relations, and thereby have warped the development of both major world religions, leading up to the growing and unnecessary conflict we see developing between Islam and Christianity today.

Frankly, it’s gotten so bad between us all that I even have to clarify my admission that I have great Jewish and Christian friends. Because extremist Muslims and extremist non-Muslims alike will tell me I can’t because the Quran says Muslims shouldn’t be friends with Jews or Christians.

The verse they’re talking about is 5:51, which many translate as if it says, “O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and Christians for friends (awliyaa). They are friends one to another. He among you who taketh them for friends is (one) of them. Lo! Allah guideth not wrongdoing folk.”

But they do so in woeful ignorance of the real meaning of the word awliyaa, because it doesn’t mean “friend” at all. It’s actually something much closer to “protector,” “helper” or “guardian.” It is from a family of words that mean “leader” or even “crown.”

In ancient times, a person’s awliyaa was an important role more akin to a modern day power of attorney. In that context, the command isn’t against having friends among Jews or Christians, it’s against putting our destiny into their hands: something that remains good advice to Muslims today.

But the way that command is willfully mis-translated by conflict seeking Muslims and non-Muslims alike speaks not just to how far we’ve all stepped off the path to peace God’s prophets promote, but also how easy it would be for us to step back on if we’re willing to listen.

In simplest terms, the question we have to ask ourselves is this: Does God care so much which team we play for, or does he care more about how we play the game?

Muslim/Christian religious chauvinism’s not new, and it’s not one-sided. In his “Narnia Chronicles,” C.S. Lewis, one of my favorite Christian writers, wrote about a “false-God-follower” who, when he met the character Lewis thought represented the true God, was told: “I take to me the services which thou hast done to Tash [the false God] … if any man swear by him and keep his oath for the oath’s sake, it is by me that he has truly sworn, though he know it not, and it is I who reward him.”

The thing is, in that series, the Calormen –who worshipped Tash– obviously played to the worst anti-Arab stereotypes, demonstrating that Lewis wasn’t immune to prejudice, but he made an important point about faith, which he clarified:

“I think that every prayer which is sincerely made even to a false god, or to a very imperfectly conceived true God, is accepted by the true God and that Christ saves many who do not think they know him. For He is (dimly) present in the good side of the inferior teachers they follow. In the parable of the Sheep and Goats those who are saved do not seem to know that they have served Christ.”

And regardless of his prejudices, Lewis is certainly far kinder than many current Christian theologians, who seem quite prepared to consign even the best Muslims to eternal damnation. More importantly though, he’s also completely in line with the teachings and behavior of Muhammad, Abraham, Moses, David and the Christ, among others, alike.

Because Muhammad liked Christians! And he liked and respected Jews and Judaism, too. (If you’re interested, Google “Mukhayriq” and the Constitution of Medina.) His uncle Waraqah, the first person who declared his prophethood, likely remained a Christian til the day he died! What he didn’t like was Christians and Jews who said one thing and did another, but he disliked Muslims who did that even more.

But more important from an Islamic perspective than his personal feelings were the way he treated Christians, and the promises he made them. The biggest theological difference between Islam and Christianity has to be belief in the Trinity, and that’s the main doctrinal point the Quran takes issue with: few Christians today recall that belief in the Trinity wasn’t even part of Christianity until the fourth century A.D., or realize that today’s Muslims are likely much closer to the beliefs the earliest Christians held dear than today’s Christians are.

But belief in the Trinity was taking hold among Christians at the time of Muhammad, and he had to deal with many Christians who not only believed that God could be Three as well as One, but also the belief that Jesus was God as well. Did he condemn them or abuse them for it? Absolutely not!

In fact, when the Christians of Najran came to Medina to debate theology, they quite respectfully asked permission to leave the city to worship the Christ. And even more respectfully, Muhammad told them they didn’t have to leave the city at all, and invited them to use his own mosque for their worship! Because Muhammad knew that even though their belief was wrong, it was sincere, and like C.S. Lewis, among many others, he too knew that all good prayers and good deeds go to the same good place and the same good purpose, regardless of how much we know about it. And when they left Medina — still Christians — he promised them Muslim protection for their freedom of religion forever.

I often pose “dogmatic” believers a simple question: If I raised my children on a desert island, with no other influence but mine, to believe God wanted nothing more than for them to paint their bellies blue, and if they died with blue-tinged abdomens, would God punish my children or me? You’d be surprised how many figure out some way to justify God punishing us all.

Muhammad, on the other hand, didn’t care so much about doctrinal purity. In fact, there’s a Christian monastery that’s been at the foot of Mount Sinai for the last 1,500 years, which cherishes a document that was dictated by Muhammad and transcribed by Ali (whom Shiite Muslims also revere) that promises Muslim protection for Christians and for Christianity, a promise they made binding on all Muslims everywhere till the end of time.

“This is a message from Muhammad ibn Abdullah, as a covenant to those who adopt Christianity, near and far, we are with them. Verily I, the servants, the helpers, and my followers defend them, because Christians are my citizens; and by Allah! I hold out against anything that displeases them.

No compulsion is to be on them. Neither are their judges to be removed from their jobs nor their monks from their monasteries.

No one is to destroy a house of their religion, to damage it, or to carry anything from it to the Muslims’ houses. Should anyone take any of these, he would spoil God’s covenant and disobey His Prophet. Verily, they are my allies and have my secure charter against all that they hate.

No one is to force them to travel or to oblige them to fight. The Muslims are to fight for them. If a female Christian is married to a Muslim, it is not to take place without her approval. She is not to be prevented from visiting her church to pray.

Their churches are to be respected. They are neither to be prevented from repairing them nor the sacredness of their covenants. No one of the nation (Muslims) is to disobey the covenant till the Last Day (the end of the world).”

Muslims in Nigeria, Egypt, Iraq, Pakistan, Indonesia and Malaysia in particular should take note.

Now, I think the reason why believers find themselves in conflict with other believers so often is a simple one: The one belief everyone shares, but that divides us from one another regardless, is that we’re right about what we believe and we think it matters.

But how much do we know about exactly what Abraham, Isaac and Ishmael believed about God, beyond believing God was One and, as such, above believer’s polytheistic playing-one-God-against-another manipulations? Did Moses think God’s covenant was only with the children of Israel, or did David think Jerusalem’s Temple was for Jews and Jews alone? Did Jesus need to indoctrinate either Samaritans or Roman Centurions before he served them? The answer to all those questions is a resounding “NO!” if you take the time to find out the answers for yourself.

And I think it’s incredibly important that we all do so and soon. Not only does the belief that God cares WHAT we believe more than what we do about it divide us unnecessarily, it is also the belief that sits at the heart of the religious radicalism that’s currently plaguing us all.

Thinking God cares more about your team jersey, about whether you play for the Saints or the Cardinals, the Servants or the Crusaders, than whether you play by the rules He’s set out is

They all sound equally crazy to me.

But I’m Muslim, and so I ask all my Muslim brothers and sisters around the world, and especially those who think they can or should abuse, mistreat or even kill non-Muslims: Does Allah really care so much what we believe, so much that He doesn’t care what we do? Al-Baqarah 177 says otherwise:

It is not righteousness that ye turn your faces to the East and the West; but righteous is he who believeth in the Lord and the Last Day and the angels and the Scripture and the Prophets; and giveth his wealth, for love of Him, to kinsfolk and to orphans and the needy and the wayfarer and to those who ask, and who sets slaves free; and who observeth proper worship and payeth the poor what they are due. And those who keep their treaty when they make one, and the patient in tribulation and adversity and time of stress. Such are they who are sincere. Such are the God fearing.

Because honestly? I think thinking YOU can make God do something; like let YOU into Heaven no matter what YOU do because of what YOU believe, makes YOU bigger than God — at least in your own mind — and that’s the biggest sin in Islam!

So what’s my bottom-line? Heaven can be as big as God wants it to be, even big enough for everyone if He chooses to make it so, and I think it’s my agnostic friends who so far have the best of it.

Because by not trying to put God into a box of their own making by way of their own believing they show God the most respect of all of us, regardless of their uncertainties, which quite frankly are mostly the fault of us “true-believers” because of the awful things we’ve done purportedly on God’s behalf anyways.

We Muslims and Christians and other believers, on the other hand, are well on our way to making earth a living Hell for all of us by pretending otherwise. We should put that sort of self-serving, short-sighted believing behind us, before it’s too late for all of us.

Ameen.

Dr. David Liepert

Muslim Author, Leader, Spokesperson, Host of “The Optimistic Muslim” on webtalkradio.net

Posted: 1/21/12 01:08 PM ET

Assad’s popularity, Arab League observers, US military involvement: all distorted in the west’s propaganda war

Suppose a respectable opinion poll found that most Syrians are in favour of Bashar al-Assad remaining as president, would that not be major news? Especially as the finding would go against the dominant narrative about the Syrian crisis, and the media considers the unexpected more newsworthy than the obvious.

Alas, not in every case. When coverage of an unfolding drama ceases to be fair and turns into a propaganda weapon, inconvenient facts get suppressed. So it is with the results of a recent YouGov Siraj poll on Syria commissioned by The Doha Debates, funded by the Qatar Foundation. Qatar’s royal family has taken one of the most hawkish lines against Assad – the emir has just called for Arab troops to intervene – so it was good that The Doha Debates published the poll on its website. The pity is that it was ignored by almost all media outlets in every western country whose government has called for Assad to go.

The key finding was that while most Arabs outside Syria feel the president should resign, attitudes in the country are different. Some 55% of Syrians want Assad to stay, motivated by fear of civil war – a spectre that is not theoretical as it is for those who live outside Syria’s borders. What is less good news for the Assad regime is that the poll also found that half the Syrians who accept him staying in power believe he must usher in free elections in the near future. Assad claims he is about to do that, a point he has repeated in his latest speeches. But it is vital that he publishes the election law as soon as possible, permits political parties and makes a commitment to allow independent monitors to watch the poll.

Biased media coverage also continues to distort the Arab League’s observer mission in Syria. When the league endorsed a no-fly zone in Libya last spring, there was high praise in the west for its action. Its decision to mediate in Syria was less welcome to western governments, and to high-profile Syrian opposition groups, who increasingly support a military rather than a political solution. So the league’s move was promptly called into doubt by western leaders, and most western media echoed the line. Attacks were launched on the credentials of the mission’s Sudanese chairman. Criticisms of the mission’s performance by one of its 165 members were headlined. Demands were made that the mission pull out in favour of UN intervention.

The critics presumably feared that the Arab observers would report that armed violence is no longer confined to the regime’s forces, and the image of peaceful protests brutally suppressed by army and police is false. Homs and a few other Syrian cities are becoming like Beirut in the 1980s or Sarajevo in the 1990s, with battles between militias raging across sectarian and ethnic fault lines.

As for foreign military intervention, it has already started. It is not following the Libyan pattern since Russia and China are furious at the west’s deception in the security council last year. They will not accept a new United Nations resolution that allows any use of force. The model is an older one, going back to the era of the cold war, before “humanitarian intervention” and the “responsibility to protect” were developed and often misused. Remember Ronald Reagan’s support for the Contras, whom he armed and trained to try to topple Nicaragua’s Sandinistas from bases in Honduras? For Honduras read Turkey, the safe haven where the so-called Free Syrian Army has set up.

Here too western media silence is dramatic. No reporters have followed up on a significant recent article by Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer who now writes for the American Conservative – a magazine that criticises the American military-industrial complex from a non-neocon position on the lines of Ron Paul, who came second in last week’s New Hampshire Republican primary. Giraldi states that Turkey, a Nato member, has become Washington’s proxy and that unmarked Nato warplanes have been arriving at Iskenderum, near the Syrian border, delivering Libyan volunteers and weapons seized from the late Muammar Gaddafi’s arsenal. “French and British special forces trainers are on the ground,” he writes, “assisting the Syrian rebels, while the CIA and US Spec Ops are providing communications equipment and intelligence to assist the rebel cause, enabling the fighters to avoid concentrations of Syrian soldiers …”

As the danger of full-scale war increases, Arab League foreign ministers are preparing to meet in Cairo this weekend to discuss the future of their Syrian mission. No doubt there will be western media reports highlighting remarks by those ministers who feel the mission has “lost credibility”, “been duped by the regime” or “failed to stop the violence”. Counter-arguments will be played down or suppressed.

In spite of the provocations from all sides the league should stand its ground. Its mission in Syria has seen peaceful demonstrations both for and against the regime. It has witnessed, and in some cases suffered from, violence by opposing forces. But it has not yet had enough time or a large enough team to talk to a comprehensive range of Syrian actors and then come up with a clear set of recommendations. Above all, it has not even started to fulfil that part of its mandate requiring it to help produce a dialogue between the regime and its critics. The mission needs to stay in Syria and not be bullied out.

By Jonathan Steele

17 January 2012

@ guardian.co.uk

“Israel has no foreign policy, only a domestic policy,” Henry Kissinger once remarked.

This has probably been more or less true of every country since the advent of democracy. Yet in Israel, this seems even truer. (Ironically, it could almost be said that the US has no foreign policy, only an Israeli domestic policy.)

In order to understand our foreign policy, we have to look in the mirror. Who are we? What is our society like?

IN A classical sketch, well known to every veteran Israeli, two Arabs stand on the sea shore, looking at a boat full of Russian Jewish pioneers rowing towards them. “May your house be destroyed!” they curse.

Next, the same two figures, this time Russian Jewish pioneers, stand on the same spot, launching Russian curses at a boat full of Yemenite immigrants.

Next, the two are Yemenites cursing German Jewish refugees fleeing from the Nazis. Then, two German Jews cursing Moroccan arrivals. When it first appeared, that was the last scene. But now, one can add two Moroccans cursing the immigrants from Soviet Russia, then two Russians cursing the latest arrivals: Ethiopian Jews.

That may also be true for every immigrant country, from the United States to Australia. Every new wave of immigrants is greeted by the scorn, contempt and even open hostility of those who came before them. When I was a child in the early 1930s, I frequently heard people shouting at my parents “Go back to Hitler!”

Still, the dominant myth was that of the “melting pot”. All immigrants would be thrown into the same pot and cleansed of their “foreign” traits, emerging as a uniform new nation without any traces of their origin.

THIS MYTH died some decades ago. Israel is now a kind of federation of several major demographic-cultural blocs which dominate our social and political life.

Who are they? There are (1) the old Ashkenazim (Jews of European origin); (2) the Oriental (or “Sephardi”) Jews; (3) the religious (partly Ashkenazi, partly Oriental); (4) the “Russians”, immigrants from all the countries of the former Soviet union; and (5) the Palestinian-Arab citizens, who did not come from anywhere.

This is, of course, a schematic presentation. None of the blocs is completely homogeneous. Each bloc has several sub blocs, some blocs overlap, there is some intermarriage, but on the whole, the picture is accurate. Gender plays no role in this division.

The political scene almost exactly mirrors these divisions. The Labor party was, in its heyday, the main instrument of Ashkenazi power. Its remnants, together with Kadima and Meretz, are still Ashkenazi. Avigdor Lieberman’s Israel Beytenu consists mainly of Russians. There are three or four religious parties. Then there are two exclusively Arab parties, and the Communist party, which is mainly Arab, too. The Likud represents the bulk of the Orientals, though almost all its leaders are Ashkenazim.

The relationship between the blocs is often strained. Just now, the whole country is in an uproar because in Kiryat Malakhi, a southern town with mainly Oriental inhabitants, house owners have signed a commitment not to sell apartments to Ethiopians, while the Rabbi of Safed, a northern town of mainly Orthodox Jews, has forbidden his flock to rent apartments to Arabs.

But apart from the rift between the Jews and the Arabs, the main problem is the resentment of the Orientals, the Russians and the religious against what they call “the Ashkenazi elite”.

SINCE THEY were the first to arrive, long before the establishment of the state, Ashkenazim control most of the centers of power – social, political, economic, cultural et al. Generally, they belong to the more affluent part of society, while the Orientals, the Orthodox, the Russians and the Arabs generally belong to the lower socio-economic strata.

The Orientals have deep grudges against the Ashkenazim. They believe – not without justification – that they have been humiliated and discriminated against from their first day in the country, and still are, though quite a number of them have reached high economic and political positions. The other day, a top director of one of the foremost financial institutions caused a scandal when he accused the “Whites” (i.e. Ashkenazim) of dominating all the banks, the courts and the media. He was promptly fired, which caused another scandal.

The Likud came to power in 1977, dethroning Labor. With short interruptions, It has been in power ever since. Yet most Likud members still feel that the Ashkenazim rule Israel, leaving them far behind. Now, 34 years later, the dark wave of anti-democratic legislation pushed by Likud deputies is being justified by the slogan “We must start to rule!”

The scene reminds me of a building site surrounded by a wooden fence. The canny contractor has left some holes in the fence, so that curious passers-by can look in. In our society, all the other blocs feel like outsiders looking through the holes, full of envy for the Ashkenazi “elite” inside, who have all the good things. They hate everything they connect with this “elite”: the Supreme Court, the media, the human rights organizations, and especially the peace camp. All these are called “leftist”, a word curiously enough identified with the “elite”.

HOW HAS “peace” become associated with the dominant and domineering Ashkenazim?

That is one of the great tragedies of our country.

Jews have lived for many centuries in the Muslim world. There they never experienced the terrible things committed in Europe by Christian anti-Semitism. Muslim-Jewish animosity started only a century ago, with the advent of Zionism, and for obvious reasons.

When the Jews from Muslim countries started to arrive en masse in Israel, they were steeped in Arab culture. But here they were received by a society that held everything Arab in total contempt. Their Arab culture was “primitive”, while real culture was European. Furthermore, they were identified with the murderous Muslims. So the immigrants were required to shed their own culture and traditions, their accent, their memories, their music. In order to show how thoroughly Israeli they had become, they also had to hate Arabs.

It is, of course, a world-wide phenomenon that in multi-national countries, the most downtrodden class of the dominant nation is also the most radical nationalist foe of the minority nations. Belonging to the superior nation is often the only source of pride left to them. The result is frequently virulent racism and xenophobia.

This is one of the reasons why the Orientals were attracted to the Likud, for whom the rejection of peace and the hatred of Arabs are supreme virtues. Also, having been in opposition for ages, the Likud was seen as representing those who were “outside”, fighting those who were “inside”. This is still the case.

The case of the “Russians” is different. They grew up in a society that despised democracy, admired strong leaders. The “whites”, Russians and Ukrainians, despised and hated the “dark” peoples of the south – Armenians, Georgians, Tatars, Uzbeks and such. (I once invented a formula: “Bolshevism minus Marxism equals Fascism”.)

When the Russian Jews came to join us, they brought with them a virulent nationalism, a complete disinterest in democracy and an automatic hatred of Arabs. They cannot understand why we allowed them to stay here at all. When, this week, a lady deputy (though “lady” may be euphemistic) from St. Petersburg poured a glass of water on the head of an Arab deputy from the Labor party, nobody was very surprised. (Somebody quipped: “a Good Arab is a wet Arab”). For Lieberman’s followers, Peace is a dirty word, and so is Democracy.

For religious people of all shades – from the ultra-Orthodox to the National-Religious settlers, there is no problem at all. From the crib on, they learn that Jews are the Chosen People; that the Almighty personally promised us this country; that the Goyim – including the Arabs – are just inferior human beings.

It may be said, quite rightly, that I generalize. I do, just to simplify matters. There are indeed a lot of Orientals, especially of the younger generation, who are repelled by the ultra-nationalism of the Likud, the more so as the neo-liberalism of Binyamin Netanyahu (which Shimon Peres once called “swinish capitalism”) is in direct contradiction to the basic interests of their community. There are also a lot of decent, liberal, peace-loving religious people. (Yeshayahu Leibovitz comes to mind.) Some Russians are gradually leaving their self-imposed ghetto. But these are small minorities in their communities. The bulk of the three blocs – Oriental, Russian and religious – are united in their opposition to peace, and at best indifferent to democracy.

All these together constitute the right-wing, anti-peace coalition that is governing Israel now. The problem is not just a question of politics. It is much more profound – and much more daunting.

SOME PEOPLE blame us, the democratic peace movement, for not recognizing the problem early enough, and not doing enough to attract the members of the various blocs to the ideals of peace and democracy. Also, it is said, we did not show that social justice is inseparably connected with democracy and peace.

I must accept my share of the blame for this failure, though I might point out that I tried to make the connection right from the beginning. I asked my friends to concentrate our efforts on the Oriental community, remind them of the glories of the Muslim-Jewish “golden Age” in Spain, of the huge mutual impact of Jewish and Muslim scientists, poets and religious thinkers throughout the ages.

A few days ago, I was invited to give a lecture to the faculty and students of Ben-Gurion University in Beer Sheva. I described the situation more or less along the same lines. The first question from the large audience, which consisted of Jews – both Orientals and Ashkenazim, and Arabs – especially Bedouins was: “So what hope is there? Faced with this reality, how can the peace forces win?”

I told them that I put my trust in the new generation. Last summer’s huge social protest movement, which erupted quite suddenly and swept [“along”?] hundreds of thousands, showed that yes, it can happen here. The movement united Ashkenazim and Orientals. Tent cities sprang up in Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva, all over the place.

Our first job is to break the barriers between the blocs, change reality, create a new Israeli society. We need blockbusters.

Yes, it is a daunting job. But I believe it can be done.

By Uri Avnery

23 January, 2012

Gush Shalom

Uri Avnery is an Israeli writer and founder of the Gush Shalom peace movement. Avnery sat in the Knesset from 1965–74 and 1979–81

“It is pretty exciting,” said another young American soldier in Iraq. “We are going down in the history books, you might say.” (Washington Post, December 18, 2011)

Ah yes, the history books, the multi-volume leather-bound set of “The Greatest Destructions of One Country by Another.” The newest volume can relate, with numerous graphic photos, how the modern, educated, advanced nation of Iraq was reduced to a quasi failed state; how the Americans, beginning in 1991, bombed for 12 years, with one dubious excuse or another; then invaded, then occupied, overthrew the government, tortured without inhibition, killed wantonly, … how the people of that unhappy land lost everything — their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women’s rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives … More than half the population either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile … The air, soil, water, blood, and genes drenched with depleted uranium … the most awful birth defects … unexploded cluster bombs lying anywhere in wait for children to pick them up … a river of blood running alongside the Euphrates and Tigris … through a country that may never be put back together again.

“It is a common refrain among war-weary Iraqis that things were better before the U.S.-led invasion in 2003,” reported the Washington Post on May 5, 2007.

No matter … drum roll, please … Stand tall American GI hero! And don’t even think of ever apologizing or paying any reparations. Iraq is forced by Washington to continue paying reparations to Kuwait for Iraq’s invasion in 1990 (an invasion instigated in no small measure by the United States). And — deep breath here! — Vietnam has been compensating the United States. Since 1997 Hanoi has been paying off about $145 million in debts left by the defeated South Vietnamese government for American food and infrastructure aid. Thus, Hanoi is reimbursing the United States for part of the cost of the war waged against it. (William Blum, Rogue State, p.304) How much will the United States pay the people of Iraq?

On December 14, at the Fort Bragg, North Carolina military base, Barack Obama stood before an audience of soldiers to speak about the Iraq war. It was a moment in which the president of the United States found it within his heart and soul — as well as within his oft-praised (supposed) intellect — to proclaim:

This is an extraordinary achievement, nearly nine years in the making. And today, we remember everything that you did to make it possible. … Years from now, your legacy will endure. In the names of your fallen comrades etched on headstones at Arlington, and the quiet memorials across our country. In the whispered words of admiration as you march in parades, and in the freedom of our children and grandchildren. … So God bless you all, God bless your families, and God bless the United States of America. … You have earned your place in history because you sacrificed so much for people you have never met.

Does Mr. Obama, the Peace Laureate, believe the words that come out of his mouth?

Barack H. Obama believes only in being the President of the United States. It is the only strong belief the man holds.

Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part VI

>> If the US really believed in 2002-3 that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction why did they send in more than 100,000 troops, who were certain to be annihilated?

>> In a letter released August 17, 2006, 21 former generals and high ranking national security officials called on President George W. Bush to reverse course and embrace a new area of negotiation with Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. The group told reporters Bush’s “hard line” policies had undermined national security and made America less safe.

Throughout most of the 20th century, the Catholic Church in Latin America taught its flocks of the poor that there was no need to do battle with the ruling elite because the poor would get their just rewards in the afterlife.

>> The US overthrew the Sandinistas in Nicaragua because the Sandinistas “intended to create a country where there was only a colony before.” — Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan writer

>> “[George W.] Bush said last week that part of the purpose of the Indonesia trip ‘is to make sure that the people who are suspicious of our country understand our motives are pure’.” (Washington Post, October 22, 2003)

>> “Wars may be aberrant experiences in the lives of most human individuals, but some nations are serial aggressors. American society is unique in having been formed almost wholly by processes of aggression against external and internal Others.” — The Black Commentator, June 8, 2006

>> President Obama should accompany the military people when they inform parents that their child has died in the latest of America’s never-ending wars. And maybe ask George W. to come along as well.

>> During the Vietnam War some University of Michigan students created a brouhaha when they threatened to napalm a puppy dog on the steps of a campus building. The uproar of indignation at their cruelty was heard nationwide. Of course, when the time came they didn’t do it, having successfully made the point that people cared more about napalming a dog than they did about napalming people.

>> “It’s a lie and an illusion that we have an inefficient government. This government is only inefficient if you think its job is, as stated in the Constitution, ‘to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.’ These objectives are beyond our government’s talents only because they are beyond its intentions.” — Michael Ventura

>> “Get some new lawyers” – US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook when he told her he was informed that the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999 (which Albright championed) was illegal under international law.

The two countries of the world, along with the United States, which have the greatest national obsession with baseball are two of the main targets of US foreign policy: Venezuela and Cuba.

>> The Cuban Five case: This is the first case in American history of alleged spying and espionage without a single page from a secret document. The government never presented any evidence of a stolen official document or any attempt to steal an official document. This is the first spy case without secrets from the government. (Read more)

>> “If a bomb is deliberately dropped on a house or a vehicle on the grounds that a ‘suspected terrorist’ is inside, the resulting deaths of women and children may not be intentional. But neither are they accidental. The proper description is ‘inevitable’. So if an action will inevitably kill innocent people, it is as immoral as a deliberate attack on civilians.” — Howard Zinn

>> “The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Saturday to impose limited sanctions on North Korea for its recent missile tests, and demanded that the reclusive communist nation suspend its ballistic missile program.” (Associated Press, July 15, 2006) … Internet commentator: “Test some missiles that land harmlessly in the ocean? Unanimous condemnation. Fire some missiles at targets on land, kill hundreds of people, and destroy hundreds of civilian targets including power plants, airports, roads, bridges, TV stations, etc., all in violation of the Geneva Convention? Hey, no problem.”

>> For some nine years, American B-52 bombers relentlessly dropped tons of ordnance on a southeast Asian country (Vietnam) that still cultivated rice fields using draft animals.

>> “The messianism of American foreign policy is a remarkable thing. When Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks it seems like Khrushchev reporting to the party congress: ‘The whole world is marching triumphantly toward democracy but some rogue states prefer to stay aside from that road, etc. etc’.” — Natalia Narochnitskaya, vice chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament. (Washington Post, April 3, 2006)

>> Washington … Propagandistan

>> The bulldozer, driven by an Israeli army soldier on assignment to demolish a home, rolled over Rachel Corrie, who was 23 years old. She had taken a nonviolent position for human rights; she lost her life as a result. But she was rarely praised in the same US media outlets that had gone into raptures over the image of a solitary unarmed man standing in front of Chinese tanks at the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre. — Norman Solomon

>> American sovereignty hasn’t faced a legitimate foreign threat to its existence since the British in 1812.

>> There are two major patterns in foreign policy: the rule of force or the rule of law. On February 8, 1819 the US decided, after a very long debate in the House, to reject the rule of law in foreign policy. The vote was 100 to 70 against requiring the Congress to approve illegal invasions of other countries or peoples. This pertained to the “Seminole War”, actually the invasion of Florida. Since then every president has had the right to “defend America”, code words for the use of force against whomever he chooses. — Kelly Gelgering

Happy New Year. Here’s what to look forward to.

JANUARY 22: Congress passes a law requiring that all persons arrested in anti-war demonstrations be sterilized. House Speaker John Boehner declares it is “God’s will”. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says she supports the law but that she has some reservation because there’s no provision for a right of appeal.

FEBRUARY 15: Ron Paul assassinated by man named Oswald Harvey.

FEBRUARY 18: Oswald Harvey, while in solitary confinement and guarded round the clock by 1200 policemen and the entire 3rd Army Brigade, is killed by man named Ruby Jackson.

FEBRUARY 26: Ruby Jackson suddenly dies in prison of a rare Asian disease heretofore unknown in the Western Hemisphere.

MARCH 6: US President Hopey Changey announces new draconian sanctions against Iran, Syria, North Korea, Pakistan, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba, declaring that they all possess weapons of mass destruction, are an imminent threat to the United States, have close ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, are aiding Islamic terrorists in Somalia, were involved in 9-11, played a role in the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the attack on Pearl Harbor, do not believe in God or American Exceptionalism, and are all “really bad guys”.

APRIL 1: Military forces overthrow Evo Morales in Bolivia. US State Department decries the loss of democracy.

APRIL 2: US recognizes the new Bolivian military junta, sells it 100 jet fighters and 200 tanks.

APRIL 3: Revolution breaks out in Bolivia endangering the military junta; 40,000 American marines are sent to La Paz to quell the uprising.

APRIL 8: Dick Cheney announces from his hospital bed that the United States has finally discovered caches of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq — “So all those doubters can now just go ‘F’ themselves.” The former vice-president, however, refuses to provide any details of the find because, he says, to do so might reveal intelligence sources or methods.

APRIL 10: ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, General Electric, General Motors, AT&T, Ford, and IBM merge to form “Free Enterprise, Inc.”

APRIL 16: Free Enterprise, Inc. seeks to purchase Guatemala and Haiti. Citigroup refuses to sell.

APRIL 18: Free Enterprise, Inc. purchases Citigroup.

MAY 5: The Democratic Party changes its name to the Republican Lite Party, and announces the opening of a joint bank account with the Republicans so that corporate lobbyists need make out only one check. In celebration of the change the new party calls for eliminating the sales tax on yachts.

MAY 11: China claims to have shot down an American spy plane over the center of China. State Department categorically denies the story.

MAY 12: State Department admits that an American plane may have “inadvertently” strayed 2,000 miles into China, but denies that it was a spy plane.

MAY 13: State Department admits that the plane may have been a spy plane but denies that it was piloted by a US government employee.

MAY 14: State Department admits that the pilot was a civilian employee of a Defense Department contractor but denies that China exists.

JUNE 11: Homeland Security announces plan to collect the DNA at birth of every child born in the United States.

JULY 1: The air in Los Angeles reaches so bad a pollution level that the rich begin to hire undocumented workers to breathe for them.

AUGUST 6: The Justice Department announces that six people have been arrested in New York in connection with a plan to bomb the United Nations, the Empire State Building, the Times Square subway station, Madison Square Garden, and Lincoln Center.

AUGUST 7: Charges are dropped against four of “The New York Six” when it is determined that they are FBI agents.

AUGUST 16: At a major demonstration in Washington, the Tea Party demands an end to all government expenditures. They also warn Congress not to touch Social Security or Medicare.

AUGUST 26: Texas executes a 16-year-old girl for having an abortion and a 12-year-old boy for possession of marijuana.

SEPTEMBER 3: The Labor Department announces that Labor Day will become a celebration of America’s gratitude to its corporations, a day dedicated to the memory of J.P. Morgan and Pinkerton strike breakers killed in the line of duty.

SEPTEMBER 12: The draft is reinstated for males and females, ages 16 to 45. Those who are missing a limb or are blind can apply for non-combat roles.

SEPTEMBER 14: Riots breaks out in 24 American cities in protest of the new draft. 200,000 American troops are brought home from Afghanistan, Iraq, and 25 other countries to put down the riots.

SEPTEMBER 28: The Tea Party calls for giving embryos the vote.

OCTOBER 19: Cops the world over form a new association, Policemen’s International Governing Society. PIGS announces that its first goal will be to mount a campaign against the notion that a person is innocent until proven guilty, in those countries where the quaint notion still dwells.

NOVEMBER 8: The turnout for the US presidential election is 9.6%. The voting ballots are all imprinted: “From one person, one vote, to one dollar, one vote.” The winner is “None of the above”.

NOVEMBER 11: US prison population reaches 2.5 million. It is determined that at least 70 percent of the prisoners would not have been incarcerated a century ago, for the acts they committed were then not criminal violations.

DECEMBER 3: Supreme Court rules that police may search anyone if they have reasonable grounds for believing that the person has pockets.

DECEMBER 16: The Occupy Movement sets up a tent on the White House lawn. An hour later a missile fired from a drone leaves but a thin wisp of smoke.

By William Blum

4 January 2012

Killinghope.org

William Blum is the author of: Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2, Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower, West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir, Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

The PLO report noted that in 2011 alone the government of the Zionist state approved the construction of another 26,837 settlement units across the Occupied Palestinian Territories, including 1,664 housing units in and around Occupied Jerusalem; almost 4,000 acres of land belonging to Palestinians have been confiscated by Israel; 495 houses have been demolished; and 18,764 olive and fruit trees have been uprooted.

With regards to Jerusalem, the report records that the establishment of the Shu’fat military checkpoint by the Israelis, which separates Jerusalem from the Shu’fat refugee camp, has resulted in the isolation of more than 60,000 Palestinians living in the camp and the areas around it. This is part of what the compilers of the report confirm is Israel’s Judaisation policy, as was the closure of the Magharba Gate Bridge which leads to Al Aqsa Mosque.

Illegal Jewish settlers, claims the PLO report, have committed a series of “terrorist” attacks on mosques throughout 2011, which escalated in December with arson attacks on the Okasha Mosque in West Jerusalem, the Nour Mosque in the village of Burqa in Ramallah, and the Ali Ibn Abi Talib Mosque in the village of Bruqin village in Salfit. Settlers also, the report notes, wrote racist slogans on the Sahaba Mosque in Bani Naim in Hebron and violated the sanctity of the St. John the Baptist Orthodox Church near the River Jordan.

Also in December, Jewish settlers set fire to at least 12 Palestinian vehicles across the occupied West Bank and confiscated around 500 acres of Palestinian land to expand their illegal settlements near Jenin and Bethlehem.

By Middle East Monitor

30 December 2011

Middleeastmonitor.org.uk