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US President Barack Obama pledged Sunday to deliver “non-lethal” supplies to Western-backed anti-government insurgents in Syria. The announcement came as Kofi Annan, due to head a United Nations mission to Damascus, was in Moscow for talks with the Russian government on the crisis in Syria.

Obama’s announcement was made following talks with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the eve of the nuclear security conference taking place Monday and Tuesday in Seoul, South Korea. Turkey has played host to Syrian opposition forces, including the main opposition bloc, the Syrian National Council (SNC), and its military wing, the Free Syrian Army (FSA). The US president stated that he and Erdogan agreed that foreign assistance to these armed opposition groups would aid the transition to a “legitimate government.”

The SNC and the FSA have been promoted in the West as the official representatives of opposition to the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. However, the leaderships of these organizations have little popular backing inside Syria, where there are a large number of disparate and fractious armed groups, including Sunni Islamist fighters.

Backed by the Western powers and the Arab monarchies, especially Washington’s allies in Saudi Arabia and Qatar, these opposition forces have failed to win broad support across Syria, especially in the capital, Damascus, and the main economic hub, Aleppo. Rather, the opposition militants resort to terrorist methods and sectarian violence has allowed Assad to present himself as the defender of stability and the rights of non-Sunni minority groups.

Following Obama’s announcement, White House spokesman Ben Rhodes indicated that “strategic communication” equipment would be provided by the US to opposition forces. “It is important to the opposition as they’re formulating their vision of an inclusive and democratic Syria to have the ability to communicate,” Rhodes told reporters traveling with Obama.

The clear purpose of this type of “non-lethal” materiel is to allow the Syrian opposition to more effectively coordinate its attacks on government forces and institutions. High-tech communications equipment will also enable insurgents operating inside Syria to receive orders from their headquarters in neighboring Turkey and Jordan.

In the event of an international military intervention against Syria, such communication devices will provide the link between fighters on the ground and the warplanes and missiles of foreign armed forces. This would allow a replay of the tactics used during the NATO-led war against Libya last year, when local fighters called in Western air strikes to incinerate the Gaddafi regime’s army.

Obama’s announcement largely undercuts the mission of former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan to Syria before it has started. Annan, who has already held talks with the Assad government on behalf of the UN, is due to leave for Syria this week with a team of international observers to study and report on the conflict.

The stated aims of Annan’s mission—brokering a ceasefire, increasing access to humanitarian aid, and initiating a political dialogue between the government and opposition groups—have been rendered next to impossible by Obama’s declaration that the US is openly backing the opposition.

Other concessions called for in Annan’s plan include a “daily two-hour humanitarian pause” to fighting, the release of prisoners held by both sides, and the removal of restrictions on movement and reporting for foreign journalists inside Syria.

Announcing his mission at a press conference March 16 at the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland, Annan warned against an escalation of the conflict in Syria. “The region is extremely concerned about developments in Syria,” he said. “Their concern goes beyond Syria itself because the crisis can have a serious impact for the whole region if it is not handled effectively.”

Backed by the UN Security Council, Annan’s mission was presented as a compromise measure between the major powers, which are deeply divided over Syria. The United States and its allies in Europe and the Arab League have stoked up the conflict in Syria with the aim of removing President Assad and his Ba’athist regime, as part of a campaign to isolate and weaken Iran, Syria’s principal ally in the region.

This push for regime-change against Syria has been opposed by Russia and China, who view the US-led charge to refashion the energy-rich Middle East as a direct threat to their interests. Russia, in particular, has close economic and security ties to Syria, including billions of dollars in trade and arms deals. The Syrian port of Tartus is home to Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, and Moscow has deployed several warships to the Syrian coast.

The Russian government had presented Annan’s mission as a diplomatic coup for its position. Speaking in Berlin last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that he was “very glad” that the Security Council had backed Annan’s assignment to Syria, adding that it was a sign that the Western powers and the Arab League had “abandoned ultimatums, abandoned threats and have abandoned attempts to address the problem by making unilateral demands.”

Russia has increased pressure on the Syrian regime to come to a compromise with elements of the opposition, with Lavrov telling the Russian parliament last week that Assad had been too slow to implement reforms. In addition, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov recently announced that talks would be held in Moscow with Syrian oppositionists, including the National Coordination Committee, the second largest opposition bloc in Syria.

The US and its allies viewed the mission by Kofi Annan as a means to get Russia and China to back a non-binding Security Council resolution calling for Assad’s forces to withdraw from centers of fighting while monitoring takes place, a measure that Washington hopes will provide breathing room for the divided and beleaguered opposition militants.

Assured of the support of Washington and its allies in Europe and the Middle East, the SNC and FSA show no signs of acceding to Annan’s proposed negotiations. An SNC spokesman refused to endorse the Annan mission, claiming that it would “offer the regime the opportunity to push ahead with its repression.” Rather, the insurgency has taken an increasingly bloody form, with opposition elements employing terrorist methods such as suicide bombings of government buildings, the kidnapping and torture of people associated with the Assad regime, and the assassination of state officials.

The US and its client regimes in the Arab League have a record of sponsoring bogus diplomatic missions to Syria. A previous observer delegation under the authority of the Arab League was shut down in January, after only a few weeks in Syria, when its monitors reported that the Assad regime was facing a well-armed insurrection and that opposition claims of casualties inflicted by government forces were grossly exaggerated. Despite the reduction in the death toll during the Arab League’s presence in Syrian cities, Saudi Arabia and Qatar demanded that the mission be closed down while the Gulf sheikdoms ramped up their support for the anti-Assad forces.

The US government’s promise of so-called “non-lethal” aid throws a lifeline to the armed opposition forces in Syria. Anti-Assad militants in Homs, one of the main centers of opposition to the Syrian regime, were routed by government troops this month, though pockets of armed resistance remain.

By Niall Green

26 March 2012

@ WSWS.org

The political reverberations continue to grow from last Sunday’s US massacre of 16 Afghan civilians, the majority of them children, in Kandahar province. Thursday saw the Taliban breaking off talks with Washington and President Hamid Karzai demanding that US-NATO forces withdraw to their main bases. Together, these actions threaten to leave key elements of the Obama administration’s Afghanistan strategy in tatters.

Popular anger over the killings spilled into the streets again Thursday, with thousands marching in the city of Qalat in Zabul province, near Kandahar, where the massacre took place. The demonstrators carried white flags and chanted slogans against the US-led occupation and demanding that the US soldier accused of slaughtering the Afghan civilians be brought before an Afghan court for trial.

Even larger demonstrations are anticipated Friday, a day that has traditionally seen Afghans stage mass protests after leaving mosques after prayers on the Muslim holy day.

The Pentagon has already quietly spirited the 38-year-old staff sergeant, who is said to have confessed to the killings, out of the country. Military sources said that he had been taken to Kuwait, on the pretext that Afghanistan lacks appropriate pre-trial detention facilities. Military officials have refused until now to release publicly the name of the accused killer.

Under a status of forces agreement dictated by Washington to the regime in Kabul, US troops are given “a status equivalent to that accorded to the administrative and technical staff” of the US Embassy under the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and are deemed immune from any prosecution under Afghan law. Washington is not about to waive this agreement and allow the massacre’s perpetrator to be tried anywhere outside of a US military court.

It is widely expected that the staff sergeant, an 11-year Army veteran and sniper with three tours in Iraq, will face a court martial at his home base, Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. A civilian lawyer from Seattle, Washington, John Henry Browne, revealed Thursday that he had been asked by the alleged killer to represent him in court. The staff sergeant will also have a military lawyer.

The defense of this US military immunity in the Kandahar massacre case has provoked popular anger in Afghanistan. Afghan legislators Thursday called upon Karzai’s US-backed government to refuse to sign a strategic partnership agreement with Washington unless the sergeant is tried in Afghanistan.

“It was the demand of the families of the martyrs of this incident, the people of Kandahar and the people of Afghanistan to try him publicly in Afghanistan,” said Mohammad Naeem Lalai Hamidzai, a Kandahar legislator who is a member of the parliamentary commission charged with investigating the massacre.

This threat to abort the strategic partnership negotiations, which have been going on for a year now, was joined Thursday by a statement from President Karzai calling for the pullback of all US and NATO forces from Afghan villages and into major base facilities. The demand, which followed immediately upon talks between Karzai and US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, was said to be aimed at halting the escalation in Afghan civilian casualties that has accompanied the US military “surge” initiated by the Obama administration in December 2009.

The US occupation operates as a law unto itself and feels in no way bound by the demands of Karzai, who is its puppet.

A key issue in the negotiations over the strategic partnership agreement is Karzai’s demand that the US military halt special forces night raids, which have caused a disproportionate share of civilian casualties and are seen as a humiliation by Afghans forced to endure the breaking down of their doors and the manhandling of their families in the middle of the night. While continuing to talk, the US military has ignored Karzai’s demand, insisting that the night raids are critical to its strategy of hunting down and killing suspected members of the armed resistance.

Significantly, the sergeant accused in the killings was attached to one of the special forces units engaged in “village stabilization operations,” seen by the US military as critical to Washington’s strategy for drawing down US forces. Its key task is the organization of units of the “Afghan Local Police,” a new category of armed forces created in 2010, essentially village-level militias, often under the direction of local strongmen. These militias are supposed to hold areas cleared of resistance by the US offensive. Human rights groups have charged these armed groups with death squad murders, torture and various forms of criminality.

Acceding to Karzai’s latest demand would effectively spell a halt not only to this project, but to all US combat operations in Afghanistan, just as the Pentagon brass is gearing up for a new military offensive in the eastern part of the country, along the Pakistan border.

Karzai himself is in no hurry to see the US and NATO military presence draw to a close. He and his corrupt coterie know that his regime would never survive without the armed protection and funding provided by the US and the other imperialist powers. At the same time, however, he fears that the anger of the Afghanistan people over US war crimes will produce a groundswell of support for the resistance that will also lead to his downfall.

The Obama administration’s so-called “endgame” had been to bleed the armed resistance to US occupation into submission by means of the surge, which brought the US troops deployment in Afghanistan to over 100,000. On that basis, Washington is prepared to draw down occupation forces while working to secure some sort of peace deal, or even a power-sharing agreement, with the Taliban. This would be coupled with a long-term security pact with Kabul that would secure permanent bases in Afghanistan for the US military and the indefinite deployment of thousands of US troops in the guise of “advisers” and “trainers.”

While the administration has pledged to reduce troop levels to 68,000 by September 2012, it has provided no further deadlines for withdrawals between then and the end of 2014, when all “combat forces” are supposed to be out of Afghanistan. The US military high command has opposed setting further reductions, and, as Obama said this week, he is committed to keeping a “robust” force in the country.

Now preliminary talks with the Taliban have apparently broken down, with the Islamist movement issuing a statement saying that “the shaky, erratic and vague standpoint of the Americans” rendered the talks pointless.

The Taliban had set up an office in Qatar and held preliminary meetings with US representatives beginning last January. Talks reportedly centered on a proposed prisoner exchange, which would have traded an American soldier captured in 2009 for Taliban members held at US prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Apparently, Washington attempted to impose conditions upon the talks, such as including in the negotiations representatives of the Karzai regime, which the Taliban considers illegitimate.

While there was no mention in the Taliban statement of the massacre in Kandahar, it may well see it as creating more favorable conditions for resisting the occupation.

The Obama administration and the Pentagon have insisted that last Sunday’s massacre was an aberration that, as Obama put it recently, “does not represent our military”. This war crime is seen in Afghanistan, however, as precisely representative of a decade of killings of civilians and other systematic abuses that are the inevitable product of colonial-style occupation.

It comes after a long string of highly-publicized outrages, including the recent trial of a US Army “kill team” that murdered Afghan civilians and cut off body parts for trophies, the video last January of US Marines urinating on the corpses of slain Afghans and last month’s burning of copies of the Koran at a garbage dump, which triggered nationwide riots that killed at least 30, including six American soldiers.

In another event that calls into serious question the Pentagon’s unfailingly positive view of US progress in Afghanistan, the US military was compelled to acknowledge that it had significantly underestimated the seriousness of an incident that took place Wednesday, when a man drove a truck onto the runway at the Camp Bastion airport in Helmand, just as the plane bringing Defense Secretary Panetta was arriving there.

It has since emerged that the individual driving the truck, which had been stolen from an Afghan soldier, was an Afghan interpreter working for the US-led occupation. He died on Thursday from severe burns suffered when he apparently tried to ignite the vehicle. Pentagon officials admitted Thursday that the interpreter was trying to run down a group of US Marines assigned to meet the aircraft.

The incident underscored both the lack of security in an area supposedly secured by the US surge, as well as the continuing proliferation of so-called green-on-blue violence, the term used by the US military to describe attacks against it by Afghan security forces that are supposedly its allies.

By Bill Van Auken

16 March 2012

@ WSWS.org

The US and Western Europe are in a recession threatening to become a depression as bad as that of the 1930s. Therefore we look to Keynesian policies as the cure, namely stimulate consumption and investment—that is, stimulate growth of the economy. It seemed to work in the past, so why not now? Should not ecological economics and steady-state ideas give way to Keynesian growth economics in view of the present crisis?

Certainly not! Why? Because we no longer live in the empty world of the 1930s — we live in a full world. Furthermore, in the 1930s the goal was full employment and growth was the means to it. Nowadays growth itself has become the goal and the means to it are off-shoring of jobs, automation, mergers, union busting, importing cheap labor, and other employment-cutting policies. The former goal of full employment has been sacrificed to the modern ideology of “growth in share holder value.”

Growth has filled the world with us and our products. I was born in 1938, and in my lifetime world population has tripled. That is unprecedented. But even more unprecedented is the growth in populations of artifacts — “our stuff” — cars, houses, livestock, refrigerators, TVs, cell phones, ships, airplanes, etc. These populations of things have vastly more than tripled. The matter-energy embodied in these living and nonliving populations was extracted from the ecosystem. The matter-energy required to maintain and replace these stocks also comes from the ecosystem. The populations or stocks of all these things have in common that they are what physicists call “dissipative structures” — i.e., their natural tendency, thanks to the entropy law, is to fall apart, to die, to dissipate. The dissipated matter-energy returns to the ecosystem as waste, to be reabsorbed by natural cycles or accumulated as pollution. All these dissipative structures exist in the midst of an entropic throughput of matter-energy that both depletes and pollutes the finite ecosphere of which the economy is a wholly contained subsystem. When the subsystem outgrows the regenerative capacity of the parent system then further growth becomes biophysically impossible.

But long before growth becomes impossible it becomes uneconomic — it begins to cost more than it is worth at the margin. We refer to growth in the economy as “economic growth,” — even after such growth has become uneconomic in the more basic sense of increasing illth faster than wealth. That is where we are now, but we are unable to recognize it.

Why this inability? Partly because our national accounting system, GDP, only measures “economic activity,” not true income, much less welfare. Rather than separate costs from benefits and compare them at the margin we just add up all final goods and services, including anti-bads (without subtracting the bads that made the anti-bad necessary). Also depletion of natural capital and natural services are counted as income, as are financial transactions that are nothing but bets on debts, and then further bets on those bets.

Also since no one wants to buy illth, it has no market price and is often ignored. But illth is a joint product with wealth and is everywhere: nuclear wastes, the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico, gyres of plastic trash in the oceans, the ozone hole, biodiversity loss, climate change from excess carbon in the atmosphere, depleted mines, eroded topsoil, dry wells, exhausting and dangerous labor, exploding debt, etc. Standard economists claim that the solution to poverty is more growth — without ever asking if growth still makes us richer, as it did back when the world was empty and the goal was full employment, rather than growth itself. Or has growth begun to make us poorer in a world that is now too full of us, and all our products, counted or not in GDP?

Does growth now increase illth faster than wealth? This is a threatening question, because if growth has become uneconomic then the solution to poverty becomes sharing now, not growth in the future. Sharing is frequently referred to as “class warfare.” But it is really the alternative to the class warfare that will result from the current uneconomic growth in which the dwindling benefits are privatized to the elite, while the exploding costs are socialized to the poor, the future, and to other species.

Finally, I eagerly submit that even if we limit quantitative physical throughput (growth) it should still be possible to experience qualitative improvement (development) thanks to technological advance and to ethical improvement of our priorities. I think therefore we should urge policies to limit the quantitative growth of throughput, thereby raising resource prices, in order to increase resource efficiency, to force the path of progress from growth to development, from bigger to better, and to stop the present folly of continuing uneconomic growth. A policy of quantitative limits on throughput (cap-auction-trade) will also block the erosion of initial resource savings resulting from efficiency improvements (the rebound effect or Jevons paradox). In addition the auction will raise much revenue and make it possible to tax value added (labor and capital) less because in effect we will have shifted the tax base to resource throughput. Value added is a good, so stop taxing it. Depletion and pollution, the two ends of the throughput, are bads, so tax them. If you are a technological optimist please have the courage of your convictions and join us in advocating policies that give incentive to the resource-saving technologies that you believe are within easy reach. You may be right — I hope you are. Let’s find out. If you turn out to be wrong, there is really no downside, because it was still necessary to limit throughput to avoid uneconomic growth.

By Herman Daly

5 March 2012

@ The Daly News

Herman Daly is an American ecological economist and professor at the School of Public Policy of University of Maryland, College Park in the United States. He was Senior Economist in the Environment Department of the World Bank, where he helped to develop policy guidelines related to sustainable development. He is closely associated with theories of a Steady state economy. He is a recipient of the Right Livelihood Award and the NCSE Lifetime Achievement Award

In a worrying sign for the powers that be in the west the Somali national resistance under the umbrella of Al Shabab has made its first major breakthrough in the northern region of Somalia by bringing into its folds the Islamic Resistance in Puntland. With Al Shabab this past year having unified all the major resistance movement in central and southern Somalia and with talks ongoing between Al Shabab and the reunification movement in the very most northern region of Somaliland it should come as no surprise that the only real news coming out of the World Conference on Somalia recently convened in London would be the announcement of another military “surge” in Somalia, this time of over 50% to almost 20,000 “peacekeepers”.

Like it says in the West Point manuals, when you start losing ( i.e. the insurgents are getting stronger) “send in the Cavalry” as in double your troop strength, which is what has happened this past year with the UN/AU “peacekeepers” in Mogadishu going from 8,000 to almost 20,000. And this doesn’t count the hundreds of tanks and heavy artillery as well as the dozens of helicopter gun ships flying over head protection this “surge” includes.

With lightly armed Al Shabab, ie rifles, machine guns and rocket propelled grenades having to give ground and hit and run the insurgency has entered the strategic stalemate stage with neither side being able to defeat the other.

The problem for the west is that Al Shabab continues to unite more and more Somalis and expand its base of operations. Once it can mount serious attacks in all areas of the former nation of Somalia at once watch out AU, watch out UN, watch out Ethiopia and especially watch out USA next door in AFRICOM’s major new base in Djibouti.

The Somali people have long been a fiercely independent lot and will never accept a foreign occupation be it 20,000 UN/AU troops or 50,000 Ethiopian troops before that.

Al Shabab has spent the last year ending all of the fighting between the various central and southern resistance fighters, with even the “moderates” in the former Union of Islamic Courts (UIC)/Alliance for the Reliberation of Somalia (ARS) removing their white scholars scarfs and replacing them with Al Shabab red.

Now with Al Shabab’s breakthrough in the northern Puntland region it seems the resistance to the western backed military occupation based in Mogadishu has become an even more serious problem for the west and its vassals at the UN/AU, and more “surge” is the order of the day.

“Quagmire”? Kenya has certainly learned it the hard way, invading southern Somali for the first time in Kenyan history last October. All the braggadocio of the Kenyan Army has gone up in smoke as the attempt to capture the Al Shabab lifeline port of Kismayo has been an utter failure.

Today the several thousand Kenyan troops occupying southern Somalia are stuck in the mud, unable to advance and with a daily increase in small scale attacks on their supply lines, finding it hard to stay where they are.

Damn those Al Shabab!, and Damn all those ungrateful Somalis! has become the west’s not so silent lament, no matter the bluff and bluster spewed by Hillary Clinton in London with her regional mafioso chief Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia at her side.

The western “War on Terror” can surge in Somalia to 100,000 AU troops, the lesson never learned is you cannot defeat an entire people. With Al Shabab slowly but steadily spreading its wings south to north across Somalia no cries of “freedom and democracy” can hide the fact that “peacekeepers” and their puppets will one day have to make their escape from Somalia and then what is the west going to do with an Islamic government in power right smack in the middle of the Horn of Africa?

By Thomas C. Mountain

10 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Thomas C. Mountain is the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006. He can be reached at thomascmountain at yahoo dot com

The world of journalism and that of the broader reading public suffered a major loss last week with the death of Anthony Shadid in Syria. Shadid one of the most daring, and daringly honest, journalists in the world succumbed to an asthma attack at the age of 43 last Thursday while on assignment for the New York Times. Before he died he sent this story [“Exile Over, Tunisian Sets Task: Building a Democracy”] which appeared in the NYT 2-18-2012 two days after his death. It is important to discuss and evaluate the story as it reveals the complexity of modern political Islam and upends many current false and bigoted notions being spread in the US and Europe.

The story revolves around the return to Tunis of Said Ferjani, a self educated Islamic politician, who lived in the U.K. for 22 years and is a member of the Ennanah Party — an Islamic political party that won the recent elections in Tunisia after the overthrow of the dictatorial former president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in 2011.

Ferjani sees the task of his party as building a society both democratic and Islamic. “This is our test,” he said. The test, of course, is to see if it is truly possible to create a modern democratic society, even a bourgeois democracy, based on Islamic rather than than secular foundations. Shadid pointed out that the Islamists of Ferjani’s generation (and the Ennanah Party ) are the spiritual descendants of the movements spawned under the aegis of the Muslim Brotherhood- a society founded in 1928 in Egypt by Hassan al-Banne who was inspired both by European fascist movements and the desire to impose Sharia law.

Many Arab secularists and political liberals doubt that so-called “moderate” political Islam, such as is represented by the Ennanah Party, can, given its roots in fascism and Sharia, actually lead the way to a real representative democracy. We shall see, in the course of this article, if their fears are warranted or not.

“I can tell you one thing,” Ferjani is quoted as saying, “we now have a golden opportunity. And in this golden opportunity, I’m not interested in control. I’m interested delivering the best charismatic system, a charismatic democratic system. This is my dream.” It is strange for a Sunni to be using the term “charismatic” as this is a term usually associated with the Shia tradition and a “charismatic” and mystical element that can be found in leaders; it is also associated with fascist ideology.

As a young teenager Ferjani came under the influence his school teacher, Rachid al-Ghannouchi, who went on to become a political activist and the founder of the Ennahda Party. The questions that were discussed by Ghannouchi centered around the theme of Muslim backwardness. Ferjani remembers his teacher asking “What makes us backwards? Is it our destiny to be so?”

At this time these questions were being answered by the Muslim Brotherhood founded by Hassan al-Banna whose ideas had spread beyond Egypt to other Arab countries including Tunisia. Banna was a pan-Arabist and anti-imperialist who build the Brotherhood he founded in 1928 from a small group to a large international organization of 500,000 members. He was assassinated in 1949 at the age of 42 because he opposed violence and denounced terrorism as a way for Muslims to fight imperialism and to further democratic rights.

After Banna’s death Sayyid Qutb rose to prominence in the leadership of the Brotherhood. Originally a man with secular values that did not conflict with Islam he became a radical jihadist in theory after a sojourn in the US (1948-50 he was turned off by the “immodesty” of the women and he hated jazz) and rejecting the secular government in Egypt that resulted from the overthrow of the monarchy (which he approved) by Nasser, who later executed him as a terrorist– although he had only advocated it not engaged in it personally.

Qutb’s faction of the Brotherhood advocates offensive jihad, violence, and eventual world conquest by militant Islam and the universal imposition of Sharia law. World conquest has never worked out for the those who advocate it and Qutb’s version of radical Islam, which was very influential in the ideology of bin Ladin and al-Queda, is a minority viewpoint within the Sunni branch of Islam where it originated (although past and current US policy in the Middle East is making it more popular day by day.)

Despite its rejection by the majority of Muslims it is almost the only version of Islam that the American public is exposed to from the preachings of right wing fundamentalists calling themselves “Christians”, the screechings of talking lunkheads on Fox TV, to the frothy mixture of political opportunism and misinformation bandied about by Rick Santorum and other Republican presidential wannabes.

Over in Tunisia, Ghannouchi and his followers did not adopt Qutb’s extremism and instead argued for an Islam compatible with pluralism and democratic values (a move away from fascism). This did not stop their falling victims to political oppression and in some cases imprisonment, torture and exile. In the late 1980s Ferjani found himself in jail, tortured, and finally forced to flee into exile in London.

London in the 1990s was a hot bed of Islamic thought. Ghannouchi followed Ferjani and there were Muslim exiles from all the Arab countries and of all stripes and Islamic positions. There was also exposure to Western values and ideas. Here was no Chinese wall between western and eastern ideals. Ferjani told Shadid that while all the different exiles were mixing it up they did not all agree. “We know each other. But knowing is one thing, doing things together in every sense— as many may think— is another. In politics, its not that we all agree.” The moral here, I think, is that any attempt to paint political Islam with broad strokes as some kind of monolithic movement threatening the West at every turn, is a gross error.

The NYT report makes an important point, often overlooked by other Western media and especially by conservatives in the US– including the Republican party leaders whose grip on reality is questionable to say the least. The idea of a unified and radically violent political Islam grew out of three sources in the 90s and early 2000s. These were the revolt in Egypt by radical islamists, the the civil war in Algeria, and the rise of Bin Laden. And, the Times points out, Bin Laden’s distorted “Manichaean” world view was the mirror image of “the most vitriolic statements of the Bush administration.”

To place al-Queda and the Bush administration on the same level of ideological putrescence took a lot of courage. This should tell us what is at stake in the 2012 elections. The Republican Party is the standard bearer of Bush’s ideological putrescence and lack of understanding of the world as it really is. For this crypto-fascistic party to take control of the US would be a disaster for the American people and the world taking us down the road to more wars and inviting the growth of radical anti-Western sentiments at the expense of more moderate outlooks. It would be especially disastrous to working people here and abroad whose class interests would be sacrificed for the illusory well being of what has come to be called the 1%.

This article also makes the case for a real moderate Islamic political trend such as the one now heading the governing alliance in Tunisia and led by Ghannouchi who favors democracy and maintains that majority rule is not anti-Islamic as the radicals claim. He also wants more participation by women in the political process and in the Parliament– a very different position from what we see in Saudi Arabia and the Taliban (although the King in S.A. has recently allowed women to participate in municipal elections; but no car driving). “Frankly,” Ferjani told the NYT, “the guy who brought democracy into the Islamic movement is Ghannouchi.” As for resorting to violence, Ghannouchi has publicly said that “Rulers benefit from violence more than their opponents do.”

Ghannouchi, and many others, have evolved away from the rigid stances of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood itself has undergone changes and while many of its positions such as the subordination and separate education of women, since their natures are unlike those of men (this is a little analogous to the Southern Baptist position on women but the Baptists allow for co-education), are unacceptable to progressives, and it now says it is against violence and supports political democracy. However, the Brotherhood is an international muti-tendency organization and still has many militant radical fundamentalists within some of its chapters.

The Brotherhood’s old motto, still in use, “hearing and obeying” is increasing being rejected by the new generation of Islamists. “That’s over,” Tariq Ramadan said (best remembered by Americans as the Islamic scholar barred from visiting the US by the second Bush administration and thus prevented from teaching at that hot bed of radical Islamic thinking Notre Dame University). “The new generation is saying if it’s going to be this, then we’re leaving. You have a new understanding and a new energy.” Ramadan pointed out that this has a lot to do with the contact of the Islamic exiles with Western thought and ideals. The ideology of Islamists is “not just coming from the Middle East anymore. It’s coming from North African countries and from the West. These are new visions and there are new ways of understanding. Now they are bringing these thoughts back to the Middle East.” Ferjani, for example, who left Tunisia an anti-Leftist, returned from London a believer in the economic theories of Karl Marx and a critic of capitalism; views not usually associated with Islamic politics. “Exile,” he remarked, “changed me a lot, profoundly.”

Well, we shall see what the results of the Constituent Assembly are with respect to writing a new constitution for Tunisia. The October election won by Ennahna allows this party to have a major influence now in running the country and in composing the constitution. It is actually ruling in a coalition with two other parties, a center left secular party and a “populist” party set up by a wealthy businessman with alleged ties to the ousted president Ben Ali. Of the 217 people elected three are members of the Tunisian Communist Workers Party so Marxism will be represented in a small way at least. If a real democratic constitution is drawn up it should put to rest the anti-Islamic hysteria in Europe and the US. Time will tell.

By Thomas Riggins

Thomas Riggins is the associate editor of Political Affairs and also writes for the People’s World– both online.

2012 has brought a flood of war talk and aggressive preparations for war on Iran . Indeed, war looms more ominously week by week.

The U.S. , Israel , and the European Union have intensified their economic, political, and diplomatic assault on Iran . They claim it’s needed to force Iran to halt its nuclear enrichment program, which they say is actually aimed at giving Iran the ability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says its program is peaceful and is simply for generating nuclear power.

Sanctions have been imposed aimed at crippling its economy and devastating the lives of millions of Iranians. Several Iranian scientists have been assassinated in the streets of Tehran . U.S. drones illegally fly over Iran , violating its airspace. U.S. carrier strike task forces have twice this year sailed within a few miles of Iran ‘s coast, carrying missiles and dozens of war planes which analysts call “larger and more capable than the entire air force of many American allies.” Every day some provocative new claim is uttered by some politician or pundit in the U.S. or Israel claims that Iran is a grave and immediate nuclear threat or is hatching world-wide terror plots. In these ways, the U.S. and its allies are already waging forms of warfare on Iran .

Meanwhile, they’re openly discussing waging a military war. Foreign Affairs —the premier U.S. imperialist policy journal—has published at least two essays calling for military action: “Time to Attack Iran : Why a Strike Is the Least Bad Option” (January/February 2012) and “Why Obama Should Take Out Iran’s Nuclear Program” ( November 9, 2011 ). On January 25, The New York Times Magazine published a lengthy piece, “Will Israel Attack Iran ?”, laying out the Israeli case for war. Its author, Ronen Bergman, concluded: “After speaking with many senior Israeli leaders and chiefs of the military and the intelligence, I have come to believe that Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012.” The Washington Post reported Defense Secretary “Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June.” (“Is Israel preparing to attack Iran ?” David Ignatius, February 2, 2012 )

Throughout, there have been reports of extremely tense debates within the U.S. ruling class and between the Obama administration and the Israeli government about how to deal with Iran , with one high-level delegation after another shuttling between Washington , DC and Israel ‘s capital Tel Aviv. On Sunday, March 4, President Obama meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu—who will reportedly push him to issue an ultimatum to Iran —either halt your nuclear enrichment program entirely or face attack. All this is taking place against the backdrop of ongoing upheaval in the Middle East , in particular in Syria , where Western military intervention is being intensely discussed.

Faced with a campaign to destabilize, crush, or overthrow its rule, the Islamic Republic of Iran has responded with counter-moves of its own. Iran ‘s military has staged exercises and missile tests, and Iranian generals have stated it would be easy for them to close the Straits of Hormuz, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil supply flows. Other Iranian military officials warn that Iran could strike first if it felt an attack was imminent. Iran ‘s leader Ayatollah Khamenei has declared Iran will refuse to bow to U.S. pressure to end its nuclear program and will strike back against any attacks.

This U.S.-Israel initiated dynamic of threat and counter-threat, move and counter-move has created an escalating trajectory of confrontation and very possibly war in the not distant future.

A Narrative Built on Lies, Half-Truths, Innuendo, and Distortions

A narrative is being created—with each spin of the news cycle—that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons. The New York Times routinely reports that “Western politicians believe Iran is building a nuclear weapons capability,” or that ” Iran ‘s nuclear program has a military objective.” In his interview with NBC’s Matt Lauer broadcast during the Super Bowl, President Obama stated: ” Iran has to stand down on its nuclear weapons program.” He then threatened, “Until they do, I think Israel rightly is going to be very concerned, and we are as well.”

This narrative is built on lies, half-truths, innuendos, and distortions. In reality, top Western politicians know there’s no proof that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons, and that there is no definitive evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. The 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), representing a consensus of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, stated: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” This estimate continues to be upheld as valid, a basic fact that is hardly ever even mentioned in U.S. media coverage or official statements. Nor was this disproved by the oft-cited November 2011 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Officially, Obama and his cabinet also state—at least for the moment—that Iran doesn’t have a bomb and hasn’t decided to pursue one. But nonetheless, the dominant public perception is that Iran is doing something illegal and probably working on a nuclear weapon.

So this fabricated “certainty” that Iran is building nuclear weapons then becomes grist for even wilder threats and fear-mongering. After Israel claimed that Iran was developing missiles with a 6,000-mile range, capable of hitting the U.S. (without a shred of proof and in contradiction to everything known about Iranian capabilities), Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich warned voters in Ohio : “You think about an Iranian nuclear weapon. You think about the dangers, to Cleveland , or to Columbus , or to Cincinnati , or to New York .” Gingrich said, “Remember what it felt like on 9/11 when 3,100 Americans were killed. Now imagine an attack where you add two zeros. And it’s 300,000 dead. Maybe a half-million wounded. This is a real danger.” (“Gingrich Warns of Iranian Nuclear Attack,” New York Times , February 8, 2012 )

The specter of Iranian terror attacks has also been added to this nuclear nightmare stew. On January 31, national intelligence director James Clapper testified to Congress that “Some Iranian officials—probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States .” Recent bomb attacks on Israeli embassies in Georgia , India , and Thailand were blamed on Iran . The day after the explosions in Georgia and India , an opinion piece by the head of the New York Police Department’s intelligence analysis unit in the Wall Street Journal argued that “As the West’s conflict with Iran over its nuclear program heats up, New York City —with its large Jewish population—becomes an increasingly attractive target.” (“The Iranian Threat to New York City ,” Mitchell D. Silber, February 14, 2012 )

No evidence has been produced for these charges. Meanwhile, there is evidence of Israeli and perhaps U.S. involvement in the January 11 assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist (the fifth targeted, the fourth killed in the last several years). An Obama official told NBC News that Israel was supplying the reactionary Iranian group M.E.K. with money, training, and weapons in order to carry out these assassinations.

Background to War Threats: The Clashing Interests of Two Historically Outmoded Forces

Weaving together these distortions, half-truths, speculations, and outright lies paints a picture of Iran as a reckless violator of its legal agreements and international law, a rogue state preventing a peaceful resolution of differences, instead escalating the conflict by refusing to agree to the reasonable demands of the U.S. and its allies.

Most fundamentally, this narrative is designed to obscure the actual nature of the regimes that are clashing—the U.S. and Israel versus Iran—what interests they’re fighting for and what the clash is really all about, as well as what’s driving the dynamic of confrontation and possibly war. Put another way, if Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, and the U.S. and Israel know this, why are they threatening war?

In a nutshell, the U.S. , Britain , and France represent the most militarily, politically, and economically dominant coalition of predatory capitalist-imperialist powers on earth, which together possess thousands of nuclear weapons. Israel is their heavily armed surrogate and enforcer in the Middle East with an estimated 75-200 nukes. Iran , on the other hand, is a much less powerful Third World capitalist state without nuclear weapons. The U.S. can project power thousands of miles from its shores and has nearly 800 military bases around the world; Iran ‘s Navy rarely ventures beyond the Persian Gulf/Arabian Sea area and has no foreign military bases. The U.S. spends 100 times as much on its military as Iran , and has over 2,000 deployed nuclear weapons. Its population is over three times as large as Iran ‘s; its economy is nearly 18 times larger and much more technologically advanced than Iran ‘s.

At bottom, this is a battle by the U.S. and its allies to maintain their dominance over the Middle East and the world. This need is rooted in the core functioning and power of their entire system, which is based on the global exploitation of labor, control and access to key resources and markets, and the military-political control of vast swaths of the globe. Controlling the Middle East has been a key part of the entire structure of U.S. global dominance for the past 60-plus years because together with Central Asia it contains roughly 80 percent of the world’s proven energy reserves. Control of this energy spigot is a key lever on the entire global economy—and on all the other powers that depend on oil and natural gas—from allies in Europe and Japan to rivals Russia and China . The region is a crossroads for global trade and a critical military-strategic pivot.

In short, the U.S. , Israel , Britain , and France are battling for empire and hegemony—not for justice, liberation, or a nuclear-free world.

Why the Islamic Republic Is a Problem for the Empire

Why is Iran such a problem for them? The Islamic Republic of Iran is a reactionary theocracy that may or may not be seeking the ability to build a nuclear weapon—nuclear weapons are extremely dangerous in anyone’s hands!

However, it is definitely not seeking to break out of the framework of or fundamentally challenge the system of global capitalism-imperialism. It is attempting to maintain its hold on power in Iran , expand its influence in the Middle East , and develop relationships with a range of world powers such as Russia , China , Pakistan , and India . Iran is a relatively strong and coherent state with enormous oil wealth. It has strengthened Islamist trends across the region that are clashing with the U.S. It poses a military, political, and ideological challenge and in some ways is an alternative to the whole structure of U.S. control of the Middle East —from the settler-colonial state of Israel to the U.S.-backed network of torturers, tyrants, and potentates from Egypt to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States —on which U.S. control rests.

Add to this the fact that Iran has historically been a huge “prize” for rival empires. It sits on the world’s second largest reserve of natural gas and third largest oil reserve at a time of growing energy competition. It’s located at the crossroads of two key energy routes—the Persian Gulf and the Caspian Sea —and two key regions— Central Asia and the Middle East .

Shortly after the Islamic Republic took power in 1979 with the overthrow of the U.S.-backed Shah (who was a key ally in the region), the U.S. broke and never restored diplomatic relations and has never recognized the Islamic regime, but instead sought to contain, undermine, even overthrow it. In the 1980s the U.S. did this by instigating the eight-year-long bloodbath known as the Iran-Iraq War. During the 1990s, the U.S. attempted to strangle Iran through sanctions and “containment.” As soon as the so-called war on terror was launched in 2001, Iran was named part of the “axis of evil” and slated for regime change via escalating sanctions, covert actions, and threats of war.

What the U.S.-Israeli Nuclear Position Reveals About Their Actual Motives

The U.S.-Israeli position on Iran ‘s nuclear program only makes sense within this context. This crisis has brought more fully into public view U.S.-Israeli insistence that Iran not even or ever have nuclear capacity. The word “capacity” is often used in the media as if it means having a nuclear weapon. But what the U.S. and Israel mean by nuclear “capacity” or “capability” is actually the technological ability to enrich uranium, even for nuclear power plants and for medical purposes, despite the fact that they are given that right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

The answer is because even the possibility that Iran could build a bomb, even if it never did, could change the regional balance of power including the military balance of power—and that’s the core issue driving this clash. ” Iran could be seeking to enhance its influence in the region by creating what some analysts call ‘strategic ambiguity,'” The New York Times acknowledge in a February 24 analysis. “Rather than building a bomb now, Iran may want to increase its power by sowing doubt among other nations about its nuclear ambitions.” (” U.S. Agencies See No Move by Iran to Build a Bomb,” James Risen and Mark Mazzetti)

So the fear is NOT that Iran will simply build a bomb and wipe Israel off the map. The imperialists’ fear is that Iran’s influence in the region—which has already broadened in certain ways due to the rise of Islamic fundamentalism, spiking oil prices, the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, and the rise of new powers globally—will grow further if it is perceived as militarily stronger and less vulnerable to U.S. and/or Israeli attack. This could erode the U.S. grip on the region, including its ability with Israel to attack anyone, anytime, anywhere—including Iran itself.

Nuclear weapons in anyone’s hands are a terrible thing. But the U.S. and Israel are not threatening Iran to eliminate nuclear weapons—they’re threatening Iran to maintain their monopoly of nuclear weapons and military dominance of the region.

This is why negotiations have failed and why the U.S. refused Iran’s 2003 offer to negotiate all outstanding issues in return for recognizing the IRI and its interests in the region, and calling off the dogs of pressure, intervention, and bullying. The U.S. negotiating position to date has been akin to the godfather attempting to force a smaller rival to accept an offer “they can’t refuse”: that Iran essentially forfeit its right to enrich uranium.

To this point, Iran’s clerical rulers have felt this is not an offer they can accept given the fissures in the Iranian ruling class as well as the mass hatred of their oppressive rule (particularly after the uprising following the June 2009 elections). To do so in their view would amount to a public capitulation which could undercut their strength and legitimacy while not ending U.S. hostility, thus threatening to unravel their rule.

The U.S. refusal so far to make any major agreement with the Islamic Republic has also been shaped by the U.S. refusal to do anything which could strengthen the Iranian regime—because its strategic objective all along has been bringing down the regime.

Why Is the Confrontation Accelerating Now?

This confrontation between the “red line” interests of Israel and the U.S. on one side and the Islamic Republic of Iran on the other have also accelerated in the past year because of the profound changes that have shaken the region. This is a key reason the current rise in tensions is much, much more serious than periods of increased U.S.-Iranian tensions in recent decades.

The two key regional developments are first, the U.S. failures—in many senses defeats—in Iraq and Afghanistan , and second, the Arab upheaval. The first has meant that the U.S. has failed in creating reliable bases in the region from which to solidify its dominance, project its power, and, as a part of this, strangle Iran ; instead, Iran has been strengthened by these U.S. failures. The second has meant that the region’s political terrain is shifting rapidly, and in unpredictable ways—with the potential to seriously shake U.S. influence and control and increase Iran’s influence. Iran ‘s insistence on continuing its nuclear program, and the failure of previous U.S.-led efforts to topple or shake the regime, are intensifying these concerns.

Right now Syria , a close ally of Iran , is the focal point. Thousands of Syrians have risen up against the hated Assad regime, which has killed over 6,000 Syrians in attempting to put down the opposition, which is a mixed bag of various political forces. The U.S. and other powers are now attempting to take advantage and take control of this revolt to take down the Assad regime in order to strengthen their position in the region and to weaken Iran .

Efraim Halevel, former director of Israel’s intelligence service Mossad, writes in The New York Times : “The public debate in America and Israel these days is focused obsessively on whether to attack Iran in order to halt its nuclear weapons ambitions; hardly any attention is being paid to how events in Syria could result in a strategic debacle for the Iranian government. Iran ‘s foothold in Syria enables the mullahs in Tehran to pursue their reckless and violent regional policies—and its presence there must be ended.” (” Iran ‘s Achilles’ Heel,” February 7, 2012 )

British author and journalist Patrick Seale called the battle over Syria “a struggle between the United States , on the one hand, and its allies, and its opponents like Russia and China … for regional dominance, who is to be top dog…. [T]his as a concerted attack, assault, on not only Syria , but Iran , as well. You see, Iran , Syria and their ally Hezbollah in Lebanon , that trio, a sort of Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis, has in recent years been the main obstacle to American and Israeli hegemony in the Middle East . And the attempt now is to bring that axis down…. Now, [ U.S. ] ally, Israel , has also suffered recently, in recent years. It tried to crush Hezbollah in 2006, when it went into Lebanon . It tried to crush Hamas in Gaza when it invaded Gaza in 2008, ’09. It feels that the combination of Iran , Syria and Hezbollah has made a dent in its military supremacy in the region. It’s seeking to restore its overall dominance. Now, both these powers, United States and Israel , its ally, believe, I think, that overthrowing the regimes in Tehran and Damascus will allow them to restore their supremacy and come back on top. So that’s what we’re witnessing. It’s a struggle for regional supremacy, regional dominance….” (“A Struggle for Regional Supremacy: Syria Conflict Escalates as World Powers Debate Assad’s Future,” Democracy Now!, February 7, 2012 )

Rising Tensions and a Dangerous Trajectory

War is not a foregone conclusion, and there are indications that the Obama administration is resisting Israel ‘s demand for an immediate ultimatum to Iran . (See “Is Israel Driving the Threat of War?”). Nor is the point that any of the parties simply want war. But the current moves by the U.S. and Israel are ominously similar to the moves by the U.S. leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq .

Iran ‘s continued pursuit of nuclear enrichment impacts and intensifies U.S.-Israeli concerns about its regional influence (including because of the possibility that Iran ‘s nuclear facilities could become more difficult to destroy). For Iran , the threats against it, as well as the dangers the regional upheaval pose for it, increases its perceived need not to back down on the nuclear issue.

So tensions are rising, and the U.S. , Israel , and Iran remain on a collision course, which is very difficult for any to back away from. And there are powerful forces within the ruling class demanding the U.S. not back away. Last week, 12 senators warned Obama in a letter not to engage in negotiations with Tehran unless and until it halted its enrichment program first, and a recent resolution submitted in the Senate demanded the U.S. not accept any policy of “containing” a nuclear Iran, or even allow it to enrich uranium on its own soil. It was in effect, a road map for war. One of its sponsors, Senator Joe Lieberman, stated it was intended “to say clearly and resolutely to Iran : You have only two choices—peacefully negotiate to end your nuclear program or expect a military strike to end that program.”

Martin Indyk, hardline imperialist strategist and former U.S. Ambassador to Israel , writes that events are “spinning out of control.” “As the Obama administration ramps up the sanctions pressure on Iran to accept meaningful curbs on its nuclear program, it is following a strategy of coercive diplomacy that has a fundamental design flaw. Consequently, President Obama is in danger of achieving the opposite of his intention: Iran may well decide that rather than negotiate a compromise, its best choice is actually to cross the nuclear weapons threshold, with fateful consequences for all.” Indyk concludes, “Sadly, the dynamics of the current situation appear to make conflict inevitable. We are now engaged in a three-way game of chicken in which for Khamenei, Netanyahu and even Obama, physical or political survival makes blinking more dangerous than confrontation….” (” Iran Spinning Out of Control,” New York Times , February 29, 2012 )

Nothing Good Can Come from U.S. or Israeli Aggression Against Iran —No War! No Sanctions! No Assassinations! No Intervention!

Iran is capable of exporting terror and it is not impossible that it is pursuing nukes. But there is no evidence of either. And whether or not Iran is working to develop the ability to make a nuclear weapon, this does not justify any U.S. or Israeli military action, which would be a towering crime as well as an illegal and illegitimate war of aggression—a war crime—under the Nuremberg Principles of 1950.

It bears repeating and emphasis: The U.S. and Israel aren’t attacking Iran’s nuclear program to end nuclear weapons; they’re doing it to preserve their regional monopoly on the freedom to threaten the people with these weapons of mass destruction (and whenever U.S. rulers say that “all options are on the table,” that’s exactly what they’re doing). It’s the U.S. and Israel —not Iran —who are the main sources of violence in the Middle East.

The U.S. condemns Iran for being a repressive theocracy. It is a repressive theocracy, but the U.S. isn’t assaulting Iran to liberate Iranians. Look at Iraq , Afghanistan , Libya . All had repressive regimes. Then the U.S. invaded—and made things WORSE by causing enormous death and destruction, imposing new forms of oppression, and fueling religious fundamentalism!

Just what is it the U.S. and Israel are really defending and seeking to preserve? They’re working to preserve U.S. domination over this whole region in service of a global empire of exploitation imposed and maintained by massive violence. And if there’s a debate among them, it’s over how to best pursue that reactionary and criminal aim.

The rulers of the U.S. and Israel realize any attack on Iran could have unpredictable consequences. But they are committed, as they repeatedly state, to keep “all options on the table” when it comes to preserving their global dominance.

By Larry Everest

6 March 2012

@ Countercurrents.org

Larry Everest is a correspondent for Revolution newspaper (revcom.us), where this article first appeared, and author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda (Common Courage, 2004). He can be reached via www.larryeverest.org

The latest atrocities in Afghanistan are just par for the course

The American atrocities in Afghanistan roll on like a drumbeat from hell. With every affront to the human and national dignity of the Afghan people, the corporate media feign shock and quickly conclude that a few bad apples are responsible for U.S. crimes, that it’s all a mistake and misunderstanding, rather than the logical result of a larger crime: America’s attempt to dominate the world by force. But even so, with the highest paid and best trained military in the world – a force equipped with the weapons and communications gear to exercise the highest standards of control known to any military in history – one would think that commanders could keep their troops from making videos of urinating on dead men, or burning holy books, or letting loose homicidal maniacs on helpless villagers.

These three latest atrocities have brought the U.S. occupation the point of crisis – hopefully, a terminal one. But the whole war has been one atrocity after another, from the very beginning, when the high-tech superpower demonstrated the uncanny ability to track down and incinerate whole Afghan wedding parties – not just once, but repeatedly. Quite clearly, to the Americans, these people have never been more than ants on the ground, to be exterminated at will.

The Afghans, including those on the U.S. payroll, repeatedly use the word “disrespect” to describe American behavior. But honest people back here in the belly of the beast know that the more accurate term is racism. The United States cannot help but be a serial abuser of the rights of the people it occupies, especially those who are thought of as non-white, because it is a thoroughly racist nation. A superpower military allows them to act out this characteristic with impunity.

American racism allows its citizens to imagine that they are doing the people of Pakistan a favor, by sending drones to deal death without warning from the skies. The U.S. calls Pakistan an ally, when polls consistently show that its people harbor more hatred and fear of the U.S. than any other people in the world. The Pakistanis know the U.S. long propped up their military dictators, and then threatened to blow the country to Kingdom Come after 9/ll, if the U.S. military wasn’t given free rein. They know they are viewed collectively as less than human by the powers in Washington – and, if they don’t call it racism, we should, because we know our fellow Americans very well.

The U.S. lost any hope of leaving a residual military force in Iraq when it showed the utterly racist disrespect of Iraqis at Abu Ghraib prison, the savage leveling of Fallujah, the massacres in Haditha and so many other places well known to Iraqis, if not the American public, and the slaughter of 17 civilians stuck at a traffic circle in Nisour Square, Baghdad. What people would agree to allow such armed savages to remain in their country if given a choice?

The United States was conceived as an empire built on the labor of Blacks and the land of dead natives, an ever-expanding sphere of exploitation and plunder – energized by an abiding and general racism that is, itself, the main obstacle to establishing a lasting American anti-war movement. But, despite the peace movement’s weaknesses, the people of a world under siege by the Americans will in due time kick them out – because to live under barbarian racists is not a human option.

By Glen Ford

Back Agenda Report executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

London is considered the “capital of capitalism” allowing foreign billionaires to stash tax free income offshore.

London, United Kingdom – Historians tell us that there were two quite distinct British empires – the first an Atlantic empire built on North American colonies and Caribbean possessions and the second an Asian empire, built on control of India and coercive trade with China. These two empires were deeply criminal projects, in the specific sense that they relied heavily on profits from slavery and the sale of narcotics. Empire on the British model was a moneymaking venture, where moral considerations took second place to the lure of super profits.

“Having given up the appearance of empire, the British have sought to reclaim its substance.”

The first British Empire came to an end when the Americans fought a revolutionary war for independence in the 1770s. The second British Empire began to fall apart with Indian independence in 1947. Arab and African nationalism progressively undermined British influence in the years that followed. At some point, perhaps with defeat in Suez in 1956, or when Britain withdrew from its last significant overseas possession, Hong Kong, in 1997, the game was finally up.

Nowadays, if you believe what you’re told by respectable historians and broadcasters, Britain has turned its back on its imperial past and is trying as best it can to make its way as an ordinary nation. The reality is somewhat more complicated. One day, perhaps history will describe a third British Empire, organised around the country’s offshore financial infrastructure and its substantial diplomatic, intelligence and communications resources. Having given up the appearance of empire, the British have sought to reclaim its substance.

Banking on billionaries

Two news stories from last week help us sketch the outlines of this third, offshore empire. On Tuesday, March 20, a Russian banker was shot and seriously wounded outside his flat in Canary Wharf. On Sunday, March 25, the co-treasurer of the Conservative Party resigned after the Sunday Times claimed that he had been soliciting donations to his party from what he thought was a wealth fund based in Liechtenstein. These two apparently unrelated events together tell us quite a lot about contemporary Britain.

The United Kingdom allows foreign residents to hold their funds offshore and only taxes them on money they bring into the country. This approach, a relic from the days of openly declared empire, makes the country a popular place of residence for billionaires from all over the world, from Africa, mainland Europe and India.

Once in London, a sophisticated legal and financial apparatus arranges for foreign funds to be deposited in a network of offshore jurisdictions. In his groundbreaking book, Treasure Islands, Nicholas Shaxson describes London as the centre of a spider web that links to the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the Caribbean. With impressive frugality, the British have reinvented the scattered remnants of formal empire as instruments for serving the needs of global capital.

When the Soviet Union broke up, those who secured control of the privatised Russian economy flocked to London. They had little in the way of a social base in their own country and their position was chronically insecure. They needed a way to channel profits overseas, and London offered them access to a world-class financial centre and favourable tax rates.

The city also gave some of them a public profile outside Russia. In buying Chelsea Football Club and the Evening Standard, Roman Abramovich and Alexander Lebedev respectively have made themselves international figures. Moves against them by opponents back home are thereby made that much more difficult.

The British state does more than provide a hospitable, low-tax jurisdiction and the means to acquire a higher profile abroad. It puts its diplomatic resources at the disposal of favoured foreign residents.

For example, in July 2001, Tony Blair wrote a letter to Romanian Prime Minister Adrian Nastase to support Lakshmi Mittal’s efforts to buy up the state-owned steel company, Sidex. Though Mittal had offices in London, the company making the bid was registered offshore, in the Dutch Antilles. But while Mittal did not employ many people in Britain, or pay much tax there, he did make a significant contribution to the Labour Party.

In May 2001, two months before Blair wrote his letter, the Indian magnate had given them £125,000 ($199,750). It is hardly surprising that Peter Cruddas was happy to talk with financiers from Liechtenstein about donations to the Conservative Party. Donations from foreigners are illegal, but it is a relatively simple matter to set up a company registered in the UK to handle the transaction. Offshore blurs the distinction between domestic and foreign.

Capital of capitalism

All this is part of a much larger imperial project, whose full scale and significance is difficult to appreciate. This is not an empire that advertises itself widely. Indeed, it tries to hide the very fact of its existence. But there is no doubting the ambition. For decades now, Britain’s rulers have sought to make London the capital of global capitalism.

“The third British empire is not an industrial or military superpower. Indeed, it is intensely vulnerable.”

The state has reorganised itself to this end. Privatisation was tested in the UK and then exported around the world. Deregulation brought foreign banks to London. The financial sector, the intelligence establishment and the political parties are committed to a project that the major media can scarcely bring themselves to discuss. Elections become ever more hallucinatory exercises, in which shallow differences in tone and detail obscure a far deeper complicity.

Occasionally, the dynamics of the offshore empire become visible as scandals or sensational crimes. Power struggles cause ripples that can’t be missed. A foreign businessman is shot in the street. The sheer strangeness jolts us for a moment out of our obliviousness. A politician is caught soliciting donations and resigns.

Rupert Murdoch, a significant figure in Britain’s revived imperialism, owns the Sunday Times, the paper that broke the Peter Cruddas story. One faction in the empire is sending a message to another. For a moment what cannot be discussed is mentioned, obliquely, as is the way of empire.

The third British Empire is not an industrial or military superpower. Indeed, it is intensely vulnerable. The United States and the great powers of Europe could do a great deal to hamper it, if they chose to do so.

The empire is a standing temptation to betray the local or the national for the sake of membership of a far more exclusive and elusive entity – an entity whose allure is intimately linked to its tact, its capacity to avoid straightforward description. Empire prospers to the extent that it can exploit, and where possible foster, corruption elsewhere.

Much of the old bombast is gone. There are fewer flags and trumpets. But in other respects, the third empire closely resembles its predecessors. Like them, it must do all it can to prevent effective democracy from breaking out at home, as it profits from tyranny abroad.

The dedication to the needs of global capitalism benefits only a tiny minority of the population. The rest face a future of steepening inequality and shrinking prospects. Besides, as in previous centuries the people at home must pay up when adventures abroad turn expensive.

And like the first two British empires, the current one is a criminal enterprise. But having specialised in slavery and drug trafficking, perhaps the empire’s current, signature crime is tax evasion.

By Dan Hind

28 March 2012

@ Al Jazeera

Dan Hind is a journalist and publisher. He is the author of The Threat to Reason and The Return of the Public. His new ebook on the Occupy movement and deliberative politics, Common Sense: Occupation, Assembly and the Future of Liberty, was published online on March 20.

“Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there … They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.” (Associated Press, February 3)

It’s unfortunate and disturbing that Bradley Manning’s attorneys have chosen to consistently base his legal defense upon the premise that personal problems and shortcomings are what motivated the young man to turn over hundreds of thousands of classified government files to Wikileaks. They should not be presenting him that way any more than Bradley should be tried as a criminal or traitor. He should be hailed as a national hero. Yes, even when the lawyers are talking to the military mind. May as well try to penetrate that mind and find the freest and best person living there. Bradley also wears a military uniform.

Here are Manning’s own words from an online chat: “If you had free reign over classified networks … and you saw incredible things, awful things … things that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC … what would you do? … God knows what happens now. Hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms. … I want people to see the truth … because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public.”

Is the world to believe that these are the words of a disturbed and irrational person? Do not the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Geneva Conventions speak of a higher duty than blind loyalty to one’s government, a duty to report the war crimes of that government?

Below is a listing of some of the things revealed in the State Department cables and Defense Department files and videos. For exposing such embarrassing and less-than-honorable behavior, Bradley Manning of the United States Army and Julian Assange of Wikileaks may spend most of their remaining days in a modern dungeon, much of it while undergoing that particular form of torture known as “solitary confinement”. Indeed, it has been suggested that the mistreatment of Manning has been for the purpose of making him testify against and implicating Assange. Dozens of members of the American media and public officials have called for Julian Assange’s execution or assassination. Under the new National Defense Authorization Act, Assange could well be kidnaped or assassinated. What century are we living in? What world?

It was after seeing American war crimes such as those depicted in the video “Collateral Murder” and documented in the “Iraq War Logs,” made public by Manning and Wikileaks, that the Iraqis refused to exempt US forces from prosecution for future crimes. The video depicts an American helicopter indiscriminately murdering several non-combatants in addition to two Reuters journalists, and the wounding of two little children, while the helicopter pilots cheer the attacks in a Baghdad suburb like it was the Army-Navy game in Philadelphia.

The insistence of the Iraqi government on legal jurisdiction over American soldiers for violations of Iraqi law — something the United States rarely, if ever, accepts in any of the many countries where its military is stationed — forced the Obama administration to pull the remaining American troops from the country.

If Manning had committed war crimes in Iraq instead of exposing them, he would be a free man today, as are the many hundreds/thousands of American soldiers guilty of truly loathsome crimes in cities like Haditha, Fallujah, and other places whose names will live in infamy in the land of ancient Mesopotamia.

Besides playing a role in writing finis to the awful Iraq war, the Wikileaks disclosures helped to spark the Arab Spring, beginning in Tunisia.

When people in Tunisia read or heard of US Embassy cables revealing the extensive corruption and decadence of the extended ruling family there — one long and detailed cable being titled: “CORRUPTION IN TUNISIA: WHAT’S YOURS IS MINE” — how Washington’s support of Tunisian President Ben Ali was not really strong, and that the US would not support the regime in the event of a popular uprising, they took to the streets.

Here is a sample of some of the other Wikileaks revelations that make the people of the world wiser:

>> In 2009 Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano became the new head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which plays the leading role in the investigation of whether Iran is developing nuclear weapons or is working only on peaceful civilian nuclear energy projects. A US embassy cable of October 2009 said Amano “took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded the [American] ambassador on several occasions that … he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.”

>> Russia refuted US claims that Iran has missiles that could target Europe.

>> The British government’s official inquiry into how it got involved in the Iraq War was deeply compromised by the government’s pledge to protect the Bush administration in the course of the inquiry.

>> A discussion between Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and American Gen. David H. Petraeus in which Saleh indicated he would cover up the US role in missile strikes against al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen. “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” Saleh told Petraeus.

>> The US embassy in Madrid has had serious points of friction with the Spanish government and civil society: a) trying to get the criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of killing a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad during a 2003 unprovoked US tank shelling of the hotel where he and other journalists were staying; b )torture cases brought by a Spanish NGO against six senior Bush administration officials, including former attorney general Alberto Gonzales; c) a Spanish government investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; d) a probe by a Spanish court into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for American extraordinary rendition (= torture) flights; e )continual criticism of the Iraq war by Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, who eventually withdrew Spanish troops.

>> State Department officials at the United Nations, as well as US diplomats in various embassies, were assigned to gather as much of the following information as possible about UN officials, including Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, permanent security council representatives, senior UN staff, and foreign diplomats: e-mail and website addresses, internet user names and passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer account numbers, work schedules, and biometric data. US diplomats at the embassy in Asunción, Paraguay were asked to obtain dates, times and telephone numbers of calls received and placed by foreign diplomats from China, Iran and the Latin American leftist states of Cuba, Venezuela and Bolivia. US diplomats in Romania, Hungary and Slovenia were instructed to provide biometric information on “current and emerging leaders and advisers” as well as information about “corruption” and information about leaders’ health and “vulnerability”. The UN directive also specifically asked for “biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats”. A similar cable to embassies in the Great Lakes region of Africa said biometric data included DNA, as well as iris scans and fingerprints.

>> A special “Iran observer” in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku reported on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff, Mohammed Ali Jafari, allegedly got into a heated argument with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and slapped him in the face because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of the press.

>> The State Department, virtually alone in the Western Hemisphere, did not unequivocally condemn a June 28, 2009 military coup in Honduras, even though an embassy cable declared: “there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court and National Congress conspired on June 28 in what constituted an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch”. US support of the coup government has been unwavering ever since.

>> The leadership of the Swedish Social Democratic Party — neutral, pacifist, and liberal Sweden, so the long-standing myth goes — visited the US embassy in Stockholm and asked for advice on how best to sell the war in Afghanistan to a skeptical Swedish public, asking if the US could arrange for a member of the Afghan government to come visit Sweden and talk up NATO’s humanitarian efforts on behalf of Afghan children, and so forth. [For some years now Sweden has been, in all but name, a member of NATO and the persecutor of Julian Assange, the latter to please a certain Western power.]

>> The US pushed to influence Swedish wiretapping laws so communication passing through the Scandinavian country could be intercepted. The American interest was clear: Eighty per cent of all the internet traffic from Russia travels through Sweden.

>> President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy told US embassy officials in Brussels in January 2010 that no one in Europe believed in Afghanistan anymore. He said Europe was going along in deference to the United States and that there must be results in 2010, or “Afghanistan is over for Europe.”

>> Iraqi officials saw Saudi Arabia, not Iran, as the biggest threat to the integrity and cohesion of their fledgling democratic state. The Iraqi leaders were keen to assure their American patrons that they could easily “manage” the Iranians, who wanted stability; but that the Saudis wanted a “weak and fractured” Iraq, and were even “fomenting terrorism that would destabilize the government”. The Saudi King, moreover, wanted a US military strike on Iran.

>> Saudi Arabia in 2007 threatened to pull out of a Texas oil refinery investment unless the US government intervened to stop Saudi Aramco from being sued in US courts for alleged oil price fixing. The deputy Saudi oil minister said that he wanted the US to grant Saudi Arabia sovereign immunity from lawsuits

>> Saudi donors were the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, the Afghan Taliban, and Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Pfizer, the world’s largest pharmaceutical company, hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the Nigerian attorney general in order to persuade him to drop legal action over a controversial 1996 drug trial involving children with meningitis.

>> Oil giant Shell claimed to have “inserted staff” and fully infiltrated Nigeria’s government.

>> The Obama administration renewed military ties with Indonesia in spite of serious concerns expressed by American diplomats about the Indonesian military’s activities in the province of West Papua, expressing fears that the Indonesian government’s neglect, rampant corruption and human rights abuses were stoking unrest in the region.

US officials collaborated with Lebanon’s defense minister to spy on, and allow Israel to potentially attack, Hezbollah in the weeks that preceded a violent May 2008 military confrontation in Beirut.

>> Gabon president Omar Bongo allegedly pocketed millions in embezzled funds from central African states, channeling some of it to French political parties in support of Nicolas Sarkozy.

>> Cables from the US embassy in Caracas in 2006 asked the US Secretary of State to warn President Hugo Chávez against a Venezuelan military intervention to defend the Cuban revolution in the eventuality of an American invasion after Castro’s death.

>> The United States was concerned that the leftist Latin American television network, Telesur, headquartered in Venezuela, would collaborate with al Jazeera of Qatar, whose coverage of the Iraq War had gotten under the skin of the Bush administration.

>> The Vatican told the United States it wanted to undermine the influence of Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez in Latin America because of concerns about the deterioration of Catholic power there. It feared that Chávez was seriously damaging relations between the Catholic church and the state by identifying the church hierarchy in Venezuela as part of the privileged class.

>> The Holy See welcomed President Obama’s new outreach to Cuba and hoped for further steps soon, perhaps to include prison visits for the wives of the Cuban Five. Better US-Cuba ties would deprive Hugo Chávez of one of his favorite screeds and could help restrain him in the region.

>> The wonderful world of diplomats: In 2010, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton the question of visas for two wives of members of the “Cuban Five”. “Brown requested that the wives (who have previously been refused visas to visit the U.S.) be granted visas so that they could visit their husbands in prison. … Our subsequent queries to Number 10 indicate that Brown made this request as a result of a commitment that he had made to UK trade unionists, who form part of the Labour Party’s core constituency. Now that the request has been made, Brown does not intend to pursue this matter further. There is no USG action required.”

>> UK Officials concealed from Parliament how the US was allowed to bring cluster bombs onto British soil in defiance of a treaty banning the housing of such weapons.

>> A cable was sent by an official at the US Interests Section in Havana in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned Movement conference. He noted that he was actively looking for “human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess”. [Presumably to be used to weaken support for Cuba amongst the member nations at the conference.]

>> Most of the men sent to Guantánamo prison were innocent people or low-level operatives; many of the innocent individuals were sold to the US for bounty.

DynCorp, a powerful American defense contracting firm that claims almost $2 billion per year in revenue from US tax dollars, threw a “boy-play” party for Afghan police recruits. (Yes, it’s what you think.)

>> Even though the Bush and Obama Administrations repeatedly maintained publicly that there was no official count of civilian casualties, the Iraq and Afghanistan War Logs showed that this claim was untrue.

>> Known Egyptian torturers received training at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

>> The United States put great pressure on the Haitian government to not go ahead with various projects, with no regard for the welfare of the Haitian people. A 2005 cable stressed continued US insistence that all efforts must be made to keep former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide, whom the United States had overthrown the previous year, from returning to Haiti or influencing the political process. In 2006, Washington’s target was President René Préval for his agreeing to a deal with Venezuela to join Caracas’s Caribbean oil alliance, PetroCaribe, under which Haiti would buy oil from Venezuela, paying only 60 percent up front with the remainder payable over twenty-five years at 1 percent interest. And in 2009, the State Department backed American corporate opposition to an increase in the minimum wage for Haitian workers, the poorest paid in the Western Hemisphere.

>> The United States used threats, spying, and more to try to get its way at the crucial 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen.

>> Mahmoud Abbas, president of The Palestinian National Authority, and head of the Fatah movement, turned to Israel for help in attacking Hamas in Gaza in 2007.

>> The British government trained a Bangladeshi paramilitary force condemned by human rights organisations as a “government death squad”.

>> A US military order directed American forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis.

>> The US was involved in the Australian government’s 2006 campaign to oust Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare.

>> A 2009 US cable said that police brutality in Egypt against common criminals was routine and pervasive, the police using force to extract confessions from criminals on a daily basis.

>> US diplomats pressured the German government to stifle the prosecution of CIA operatives who abducted and tortured Khalid El-Masri, a German citizen. [El-Masri was kidnaped by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia on December 31, 2003. He was flown to a torture center in Afghanistan, where he was beaten, starved, and sodomized. The US government released him on a hilltop in Albania five months later without money or the means to go home.]

>> 2005 cable re “widespread severe torture” by India, the widely-renowned “world’s largest democracy”: The International Committee of the Red Cross reported: “The continued ill-treatment of detainees, despite longstanding ICRC-GOI [Government of India] dialogue, have led the ICRC to conclude that New Delhi condones torture.” Washington was briefed on this matter by the ICRC years ago. What did the United States, one of the world’s leading practitioners and teachers of torture in the past century, do about it? American leaders, including the present ones, continued to speak warmly of “the world’s largest democracy”; as if torture and one of the worst rates of poverty and child malnutrition in the world do not contradict the very idea of democracy.

>> The United States overturned a ban on training the Indonesian Kopassus army special forces — despite the Kopassus’s long history of arbitrary detention, torture and murder — after the Indonesian President threatened to derail President Obama’s trip to the country in November 2010.

>> Since at least 2006 the United States has been funding political opposition groups in Syria, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country.

By William Blum

6 March 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

It was not supposed to end this way. Until recently, the leadership succession of the Chinese Communist party was thought to be on track. Vice-President Xi Jinping and executive vice-premier Li Keqiang will become the general secretary of the CCP and the premier of the State Council (China’s cabinet), respectively. The Politburo standing committee, the party’s supreme policy-making body, will add seven other new members. One of them was to be Mr Bo Xilai, the party chief of Chongqing.

The surprising announcement last week of Mr Bo’s ousting upended his highly publicised quest for a seat on the Politburo standing committee. His ignominious exit from power drew loud cheers from many quarters. Liberals applauded Mr Bo’s demise because his “singing red” campaign, which featured mass singing of songs popular during Mao Zedong’s rule, brought back memories of ultra-leftist madness. Cautious and uptight officials heaved a sigh of relief. They abhorred Mr Bo because he was a cynical self-promoter who broke the party’s taboo against publicly campaigning for one of the highest offices in the land. Mr Bo frightened them because he was rather good at playing a different game: instead of quietly and humbly working the corridors of the party establishment, he built up a charismatic public image and forced the party’s hand. Private entrepreneurs celebrated Mr Bo’s downfall too, because they felt deeply threatened by his populist rhetoric and by the use of questionable legal methods in the seizure of the assets of businessmen during Chongqing’s high-profile crackdown on organised crime.

Given the controversy surrounding Mr Bo’s thinly disguised political ambition and unorthodox tactics, it is easy to treat his fall as political morality play. That would be a mistake. What this episode has revealed is far more important than the political folly of one individual, however unpleasant he might be.

For the party, Mr Bo the political entrepreneur may be gone, but the trouble caused by his rise and departure is far from over. For one thing, the Bo incident has revealed the deep rift within China’s top leadership over the distribution of power and the future direction of the party. By openly challenging the party’s long-established rules on personnel promotion, Mr Bo showed that he – and many others in the party’s hierarchy – will no longer abide by such rules, which they view as biased in favour of risk-averse and colourless bureaucrats. For the moment, the party establishment has won a decisive battle against such insurgents. But the existing system of distributing power among rival factions through an opaque arrangement is sure to antagonise ambitious and risk-taking players such as Mr Bo in the future when they feel they are short-changed by the system. Should such resentments intensify, the cherished elite unity, the glue that has held the party together since the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, would be eroded, endangering the party’s survival.

That Mr Bo could easily galvanise public opinion with his leftist populist rhetoric and antics should give the party another cause for concern. Chinese leaders have long thought they had banished the ghost of Mao, the only communist leader capable of rallying the masses to terrorise the party. Mr Bo’s remarkably effective campaign to tap into popular resentment at inequality and corruption suggests that, as long as the party’s policies perpetuate crony capitalism, future political entrepreneurs in his mode will come along and exploit widespread social discontent to further their personal ambitions. If anything, the most important lesson to be learnt by the party is not how to prevent the rise of another Mao-like figure, but that it must address the underlying socioeconomic conditions that brew leftist-populist radicalism. In practice, this requires undertaking liberal economic and political reforms to make China a more just and democratic society.

The only silver lining in this whole drama is that Chinese society has shown its maturity and asserted its influence. If it could, the party would have kept its dirty linen safely hidden inside the closet. But in the age of the information revolution and of unprecedented public vigilance, it no longer can. Even before the attempted defection of Wang Lijun, Mr Bo’s police chief and right-hand man in Chongqing, in early February, the Chinese media were engaged in a spirited debate on Mr Bo’s much-hyped “Chongqing model”. Many liberal voices questioned its achievements, legitimacy, and sustainability. When Mr Wang briefly sought asylum in the American consulate in Chengdu a month ago, public sentiment against Mr Bo exploded in cyberspace. Ordinary Chinese citizens were justifiably indignant that one of their top officials (Mr Wang had vice-ministerial rank) could perpetrate such a treasonous act. They were even more outraged that, 35 years after the end of the Cultural Revolution, political intrigue reminiscent of the infamous Lin Biao affair (when Mao’s designated successor tried to flee to the Soviet Union in 1971) could again dominate the national conversation and that they had little say in choosing their rulers.

In this perfect political storm, Mr Bo’s fate was sealed. The question now is whether the party can turn this debacle into an opportunity for change.

By Minxin Pei

18 March 2012

@ Financial Times

The writer is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna College