Just International

Bahrain Or Bust? Pakistan Should Think Twice Before Meddling In The Middle East.

 

From the April 11‚ 2011‚ issue

Joseph Eid / AFP

Less than three weeks after Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) forces, led by Saudi Arabia, entered Bahrain to aid the anti-democracy crackdown there, dignitaries from both oil-rich kingdoms did their separate rounds in Pakistan. The royal houses of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain are nervous, and they need Pakistan’s mercenaries, and—if necessary—military muscle to shore them up.

This is a remarkable turn of events for Asif Ali Zardari, who had been trying since he was elected president in 2008 to secure Saudi oil on sweetheart terms. He had been unsuccessful in his efforts because the Sunni Saudis view his leadership with some degree of skepticism. It also doesn’t help that Zardari, a Shia, is big on improving relations with Shia Tehran. Riyadh now appears inclined to export oil on terms that better suit cash-strapped Islamabad. Manama, too, wants to play ball. It wants increased defense cooperation and has pledged to prioritize Pakistan’s hopes for a free-trade agreement with the GCC in return. But Zardari and his Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, should fight the urge to get mired in the Middle East.

Pakistan already has a presence in Bahrain: a battalion of the Azad Kashmir Regiment was deployed there over a year ago to train local troops, and retired officers from our Navy and Army are part of their security forces. Media estimates put the number of Pakistanis serving in Bahrain’s security establishment at about 10,000. Their removal has been a key demand of protesters in the kingdom. Last month in Islamabad, Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani reportedly assured Bahrain’s foreign minister, Sheikh Khaled bin Ahmed al-Khalifa, that Pakistan would offer more retired manpower to help quell the uprising against Bahrain’s Sunni rulers by its Shia majority. Gilani’s spokesman was unable to confirm the pledge.

Islamabad’s support to the tottering regime in Manama is not ideal. “It’s like our version of Blackwater,” says Talat Masood, a former Pakistan Army general, referring to Bahrain’s recruitment drive in Pakistan. “We’re doing [in Bahrain] exactly what we have been opposing here,” he says. Pakistan, he maintains, has no business in trying to suppress a democratic, people’s movement in another country. Short-term economic gains cannot be the only prism through which Pakistan views its national interests, he says.

Pakistan has a long history of military involvement and training in the Arab world. Its pilots flew warplanes in the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict, and volunteered for the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Involvement in Bahrain’s current strife would not be the first time that Pakistan has used its military might to thwart an Arab uprising against an Arab regime. In 1970, future military dictator Gen. Zia-ul-Haq, then head of the Pakistani military training mission in Jordan, led his soldiers to intervene on the side of Amman to quash a Palestinian challenge to its rule.

Some Bahraini opposition groups have called on the U.S. to intervene to get the GCC troops out of their country, fearing it could become a battleground in a Saudi-Iranian battle for regional supremacy. They stress that they share no real affinity with the theocratic regime in Shia-majority Iran, while noting that a number of Bahraini Sunni Muslims have also come out in the streets to call for greater reforms. Pakistani involvement, therefore, could result in it being embroiled in a proxy war, with serious implications for its own security interests.

The issue of Iran is important, but there’s a deeper issue, according to author Noam Chomsky. “By historical and geographical accident, the main concentration of global energy resources is in the northern Gulf region, which is predominantly Shia,” he told Newsweek Pakistan. Bahrain, he points out, neighbors eastern Saudi Arabia, where most of the latter’s oil is. “Western planners have long been concerned that a tacit Shia alliance might take shape with enormous control over the world’s energy resources, and perhaps not be reliably obedient to the U.S.”

Bahrain, which like Pakistan was designated a major non-NATO ally by the George W. Bush presidency, is home to the Fifth Fleet. It is the primary U.S. base in the region and allows Washington to ensure the free flow of oil through the Gulf, while keeping checks on Iran. Chomsky believes that Pakistani presence in Bahrain can be seen as part of a U.S.-backed alliance to safeguard Western access to the region’s oil.

“The U.S. has counted on Pakistan to help control the Arab world and safeguard Arab rulers from their own populations,” says Chomsky. “Pakistan was one of the ‘cops on the beat’ that the Nixon administration had in mind when outlining their doctrine for controlling the Arab world,” he says. Pakistan has such “severe internal problems” that it may not be able to play this role even if asked to. But the real reason that Pakistan should avoid this role is so that it can stand on the right side of history, alongside those who are fighting for democracy.

To comment on this article, email letters@newsweek.pk

 

 

U.S. Secretly Backed Syrian Opposition Groups, Cables Released By Wikileaks Show

 

, Sunday, April 17, 11:01 PM

The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.

The London-based satellite channel, Barada TV, began broadcasting in April 2009 but has ramped up operations to cover the mass protests in Syria as part of a long-standing campaign to overthrow the country’s autocratic leader, Bashar al-Assad. Human rights groups say scores of people have been killed by Assad’s security forces since the demonstrations began March 18; Syria has blamed the violence on “armed gangs.”

Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified U.S. diplomatic cables show that the State Department has funneled as much as $6 million to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria. The channel is named after the Barada River, which courses through the heart of Damascus, the Syrian capital.

The U.S. money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W. Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005. The financial backing has continued under President Obama, even as his administration sought to rebuild relations with Assad. In January, the White House posted an ambassador to Damascus for the first time in six years.

The cables, provided by the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, show that U.S. Embassy officials in Damascus became worried in 2009 when they learned that Syrian intelligence agents were raising questions about U.S. programs. Some embassy officials suggested that the State Department reconsider its involvement, arguing that it could put the Obama administration’s rapprochement with Damascus at risk.

Syrian authorities “would undoubtedly view any U.S. funds going to illegal political groups as tantamount to supporting regime change,” read an April 2009 cable signed by the top-ranking U.S. diplomat in Damascus at the time. “A reassessment of current U.S.-sponsored programming that supports anti-[government] factions, both inside and outside Syria, may prove productive,” the cable said.

It is unclear whether the State Department is still funding Syrian opposition groups, but the cables indicate money was set aside at least through September 2010. While some of that money has also supported programs and dissidents inside Syria, The Washington Post is withholding certain names and program details at the request of the State Department, which said disclosure could endanger the recipients’ personal safety.

Syria, a police state, has been ruled by Assad since 2000, when he took power after his father’s death. Although the White House has condemned the killing of protesters in Syria, it has not explicitly called for his ouster.

The State Department declined to comment on the authenticity of the cables or answer questions about its funding of Barada TV.

Tamara Wittes, a deputy assistant secretary of state who oversees the democracy and human rights portfolio in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, said the State Department does not endorse political parties or movements.

“We back a set of principles,” she said. “There are a lot of organizations in Syria and other countries that are seeking changes from their government. That’s an agenda that we believe in and we’re going to support.”

The State Department often funds programs around the world that promote democratic ideals and human rights, but it usually draws the line at giving money to political opposition groups.

In February 2006, when relations with Damascus were at a nadir, the Bush administration announced that it would award $5 million in grants to “accelerate the work of reformers in Syria.”

But no dissidents inside Syria were willing to take the money, for fear it would lead to their arrest or execution for treason, according to a 2006 cable from the U.S. Embassy, which reported that “no bona fide opposition member will be courageous enough to accept funding.”

Around the same time, Syrian exiles in Europe founded the Movement for Justice and Development. The group, which is banned in Syria, openly advocates for Assad’s removal. U.S. cables describe its leaders as “liberal, moderate Islamists” who are former members of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Barada TV

It is unclear when the group began to receive U.S. funds, but cables show U.S. officials in 2007 raised the idea of helping to start an anti-Assad satellite channel.

People involved with the group and with Barada TV, however, would not acknowledge taking money from the U.S. government.

“I’m not aware of anything like that,” Malik al-Abdeh, Barada TV’s news director, said in a brief telephone interview from London.

Abdeh said the channel receives money from “independent Syrian businessmen” whom he declined to name. He also said there was no connection between Barada TV and the Movement for Justice and Development, although he confirmed that he serves on the political group’s board. The board is chaired by his brother, Anas.

“If your purpose is to smear Barada TV, I don’t want to continue this conversation,” Malik al-Abdeh said. “That’s all I’m going to give you.”

Other dissidents said that Barada TV has a growing audience in Syria but that its viewer share is tiny compared with other independent satellite news channels such as al-Jazeera and BBC Arabic. Although Barada TV broadcasts 24 hours a day, many of its programs are reruns. Some of the mainstay shows are “Towards Change,” a panel discussion about current events, and “First Step,” a program produced by a Syrian dissident group based in the United States.

Ausama Monajed, another Syrian exile in London, said he used to work as a producer for Barada TV and as media relations director for the Movement for Justice and Development but has not been “active” in either job for about a year. He said he now devotes all his energy to the Syrian revolutionary movement, distributing videos and protest updates to journalists.

He said he “could not confirm” any U.S. government support for the satellite channel, because he was not involved with its finances. “I didn’t receive a penny myself,” he said.

Several U.S. diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State Department funneled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit. According to its Web site, the council sponsors projects in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America to promote the “fundamental elements of stable societies.”

The council’s founder and president, James Prince, is a former congressional staff member and investment adviser for PricewaterhouseCoopers. Reached by telephone, Prince acknowledged that the council administers a grant from the Middle East Partnership Initiative but said that it was not “Syria-specific.”

Prince said he was “familiar with” Barada TV and the Syrian exile group in London, but he declined to comment further, saying he did not have approval from his board of directors. “We don’t really talk about anything like that,” he said.

The April 2009 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Damascus states that the Democracy Council received $6.3 million from the State Department to run a Syria-related program called the “Civil Society Strengthening Initiative.” That program is described as “a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners” to produce, among other things, “various broadcast concepts.” Other cables make clear that one of those concepts was Barada TV.

U.S. allocations

Edgar Vasquez, a State Department spokesman, said the Middle East Partnership Initiative has allocated $7.5 million for Syrian programs since 2005. A cable from the embassy in Damascus, however, pegged a much higher total — about $12 million — between 2005 and 2010.

The cables report persistent fears among U.S. diplomats that Syrian state security agents had uncovered the money trail from Washington.

A September 2009 cable reported that Syrian agents had interrogated a number of people about “MEPI operations in particular,” a reference to the Middle East Partnership Initiative.

“It is unclear to what extent [Syrian] intelligence services understand how USG money enters Syria and through which proxy organizations,” the cable stated, referring to funding from the U.S. government. “What is clear, however, is that security agents are increasingly focused on this issue.”

U.S. diplomats also warned that Syrian agents may have “penetrated” the Movement for Justice and Development by intercepting its communications.

A June 2009 cable listed the concerns under the heading “MJD: A Leaky Boat?” It reported that the group was “seeking to expand its base in Syria” but had been “initially lax in its security, often speaking about highly sensitive material on open lines.”

The cable cited evidence that the Syrian intelligence service was aware of the connection between the London exile group and the Democracy Council in Los Angeles. As a result, embassy officials fretted that the entire Syria assistance program had been compromised.

“Reporting in other channels suggest the Syrian [Mukhabarat] may already have penetrated the MJD and is using the MJD contacts to track U.S. democracy programming,” the cable stated. “If the [Syrian government] does know, but has chosen not to intervene openly, it raises the possibility that the [government] may be mounting a campaign to entrap democracy activists.”

whitlockc@washpost.com

 

 

Saudi Arabia Did Not Make Up For Libyan Oil

 

16 April, 2011
Earlywarn.blogspot.com

The OPEC MOMR came out late yesterday, but it adds to the picture from the IEA report mentioned yesterday morning. In particular, I can now present revised graphs for total liquid fuel production. Here’s the last three year view (not zero scaled):

Note that the rise that’s been going in since last fall has now been abruptly interrupted by the Libyan situation, and total oil production has fallen by about 0.5mbd. This is about 0.6% of global production, but given that the world economy has been growing rapidly and needing about another 0.5mbd/month, the shortfall over what would have happened in a counterfactual world with no Middle Eastern unrest is more like 1.2% of global production.

In terms of the price production picture, this has put us much more into territory akin to the 2005-2008 oil shock:

We can put the situation almost entirely down to two things: the fact that Libyan production has plummeted, and that Saudi Arabia has made no significant move to compensate. In fact, Saudi Arabia slowed down production increases that it had been making in prior months. First, here’s all the Libyan data currently available:

So the world has abruptly lost something like 1.3mbd of oil production between mid February and March. Now there were a lot of news reports in the business press at the time this was first happening that Saudi Arabia was going to make up the difference. For example, according to Reuters at the time:

Saudi Arabia has increased its oil production to more than 9 million barrels per day (bpd) to compensate for disruption to Libyan output, an industry source familiar with the kingdom’s production told Reuters on Friday.

“We have started producing over 9 million barrels per day (bpd). We have a lot of production capacity,” the source said, but said he could not say when the change had taken place.

Oil prices spiked to a 2-1/2 year peak of nearly $120 a barrel on Thursday, stoked by concern the wave of revolutionary unrest gripping world No.12 oil exporter Libya could spread to big oil producing countries in the Middle East.

A report out of Washington by industry publication Energy Intelligence late on Thursday said Saudi Arabia had made the change quietly to try to avoid stoking regional tensions.

“The Saudi move has not been announced publicly, most likely because of the political sensitivities in the region and the internal dynamics of OPEC,” Energy Intelligence wrote.

Now that the stats are out, we can see that this was total bull. Will that fact be all over the business press? My bet is you’ll have to read some obscure blog called Early Warning to find out what really happened. First off, here’s all the Saudi production data I have (not zero scaled to better show changes):

Indeed Saudi production has increased to around 9mbd, but the timing makes it clear this has nothing to do with Libya. For better comparison, I have put both the Libyan and Saudi averages on the same graph (only since 2005), with the scales adjusted to allow easy comparison. In particular, note that the size of the units on both scales is the same, so similar vertical moves in both curves mean the same amount of oil, but the Saudi scale (left hand scale) has been shifted to put the Saudi curve next to the Libyan one (right scale):

I have circled the March data in each case. You can see what was going on. The Saudis were slowly increasing their production from last fall through February, presumably in response to growing global demand and rising prices. But then, in March, when Libyan production went into freefall, they put on the brakes and did almost nothing to make up for the shortage.

The burning question is: why? Back in 2006, when their production started to gradually decline from 9.5mbd even as global oil prices were in the worst spike since the 1970s, I was an advocate of the view that the decline was largely involuntary: they’d never produced more than 9.5mbd, they’d underinvested for decades, and some of their big fields were getting very tired (particular northern Ghawar and Abqaiq) and they were starting a big rash of new projects and ramping up their rig counts at the same time.

I see current events differently. The reduction in late 2008 was clearly voluntary to support prices in the face of the great recession. There’s no new projects announced, and the rig count hasn’t taken off. So my take is that the failure to increase production to compensate for Libya is deliberate. We can only speculate, but my guess is that, having watched how the west has helped to ease Mubarak and Ben-Ali out of power and is intervening in Libya to the same end, the Saudi regime is in no mood to care about our desire for more oil. Instead, they are very much in the mood to build as large a war chest as possible with which to appease their own population, strengthen their defense measures, etc.

So, instead of Saudi production increasing to compensate for Libya, total world production decreased, and oil prices went up sharply to enforce the necessary conservation on the world’s oil consumers.

If you want further evidence, I note that on February 24th, I wrote a post suggesting, based on my reading of press coverage, that perhaps the Saudis were not planning on increasing production. Looking at the spread of Saudi grades of oil to Brent prices. I said:

The real tell will come in a couple of weeks when we see what happens to these discounts once the Libyan situation comes out in the data. Will Brent spike while the prices of these Saudi grades languish, since after all, it’s only the light sweet stuff that’s in short supply?

Here’s my guess. When multiple major news sources run apparently independent stories at the same time, all propagating the same plausible but completely false line, I get suspicious and cynical. I think we are seeing the effect of someone’s (rather successful) P.R. push. Someone, probably the Saudis, wants us to think that Saudi production can’t be substituted for Libyan, and it isn’t their fault. If that’s true, then I hypothesize:

>> Saudi production is not going to increase in response to the Libyan cutoff, or not enough, anyway

>> Prices for Saudi grades of oil are going to spike in a very similar manner to Brent

So, here’s the latest data on the discount of the three Saudi grades of oil, to Brent (with a seven week moving average applied to reduce noise):

You can see that these discounts have actually fallen sharply in recent weeks to levels usually seen only in the depths of recessions when the Saudis are trying to raise prices. So rather than trying to flood the market with their oil to help supplies post Libya, the Saudis are ramping back and extracting every dollar they can get.

 

 

 

Don’t Cut Entitlements-Cut The Military

16 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

I seems that this President has turned his back on everything he touted during his campaign. Yet, as mature individuals we should have expected it…after all he’s a politician and most politicians lie through their teeth, right? You must remember, closing Guantanamo, having a more “transparent” government, working for peace in the Mid-East, talking to Iran, etc., etc., etc.

I hate to shatter anyone’s bubble, but he hasn’t done anything except reward the perpetrators of the Wall Street crash, expand the War in Afghanistan and move it over to Pakistan to boot. We still have troops in Iraq and we are considering putting troops in Libya where we have no national interests at all. Funny what that “Commander-in-Chief” title can lead you to do.

Yes, since the Congress declared “The Global War on Terror”, the executive branch has almost unlimited resources and power. “Hail Caesar!” I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little bit tired of him moving our military around the World like he’s playing some kind of chess game. You can bet that the military personnel are getting a little sick of it too.

I found out that the reason we are so down on Iran is because they are the sworn enemy of Saudi Arabia. Gee, I didn’t know that. I should have figured it out. When the Saudi’s sent troops into Bahrain to put down a popular movement against the princes of the oilfields, it became quite clear that America is certainly for freedom in the Mid-East, but only in certain parts. We supply Saudi Arabia with 3.5 Billion dollars of military equipment every year. Do they pay for it? Let me guess…no. Between Egypt, Israel, and Saudi Arabia we give them more that 10.5 Billions of dollars in military hardware.

We have a situation where we spend more on our military than all the other nations on Earth combined. We are doing it today, and what are our fearless leaders talking about in Congress? How to reduce the average Americans entitlements! They have absolutely no qualms about spending more than half the tax dollars they get, but want to cut programs that American taxpayers put money into! If what I heard tonight is true, 40 cents of every tax dollar received goes to finance the debt. If that’s true, between financing the debt and paying for our military, that only leaves 10 cents of every dollar to actually spend. Is it any wonder why we are going bankrupt?

How about Libya? Who the F**K authorized us into that war? Just what are the people of the U.S. going to gain from it? The U.S. has a new toy called AFRICOM and they want to use it. Some say that Somalia, Yemen and Sudan will be next. Just what is going on and why aren’t Americans screaming their fool heads off?

Look, I didn’t use any big words and everything I’ve said here can be easily verified. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this nation is in a fatal spiral of debt that will eventually have us go the way of the Soviet Union. Where are all the lefties? Where are the people that don’t want Medicare and Social Security cut? Why isn’t there uproar over our out of control military spending? Do you realize the two largest air forces are the U.S.Airforce and secondly the U.S. Navy? Did you know that it takes approximately 50 Billion dollars to operate one nuclear powered aircraft carrier and we have eleven of them? There are two nations; Italy and Spain the closest to us in numbers have 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_by_country

So why do we have so many carriers? Just what real good are they doing? Off the coast of Somalia American and other nations ships are routinely captured by pirates in fast boats. How do you hide a two football field long tanker from an aircraft carrier? Doesn’t this make you sit up and say WTF?

We’re fighting a war in Afghanistan to root out what the U.S. admits are only 50-100 al Qaida. The average cost of having one set of boots on the ground there for a year is One Million Dollars http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=114294746 , just what are we doing? Opium production there has risen 400% since the U.S. landed troops there. Some sources say it is now over 6000 metric tons yearly. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6239734.stm There are entire families addicted to the stuff. War is hell and opium makes it less so. If we gave them a democracy (which isn’t the real mission there) they wouldn’t know what to do with it. Between depleted uranium and opium, the Afghani’s will never forget us.

Forget about the class war here in America where the top 1% of the population owns almost 40% of the wealth and the other 19% together with the1% hold 83% of the nation’s wealth, leaving the bottom 80% of us with a whopping 7% of the total wealth. Never mind that the middle class has seen wages fall steadily over the last two decades while the upper 10% have had a 13% increase. Don’t tax the rich! According to the GOP that will mean that they can’t hire anyone. (What …like an extra maid or butler?)

So when are we going to do something about it? Obama, with his minions from Goldman Sacks aren’t going to break the status quo. Anyway, he’s Commander-in-Chief! I say do something. If things progress the way they are, we will have the largest armed forces in the world, but they will all be mothballed. (And maybe that’s a good thing). The government wants to cut everything under the sun, but the military is sacrosanct. It’s about time we brought the subject up loud enough for these cowards in Washington to hear us. Don’t you think?

Timgatto@hotmail.com

 

 

Depleted Uranium Used In Libya

 

 

15 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

NATO aircraft are routinely equipped with anti-armor missiles fitted with depleted uranium war heads. It has been widely reported that NATO has fired hundreds of anti-armor missiles in many parts of Libya, including in the immediate environs of the Libyan capital Tripoli. This means that thousands of kilos of depleted uranium have been used in Libya in the past weeks.

Depleted uranium, or D.U., ignites when it strikes armored vehicles. Ignition causes D.U. to break down to a microscopic powder, measured in microns or millionths of an inch. Upon impact D.U. creates a fireball in many cases that rises hundreds of feet into the atmosphere where the wind helps spread it over large areas.

D.U. is a very dangerous, long term poison. It is radioactive and when ingested internally causes a host of problems to its victim. It is nonspecific and generational in impact, meaning that it does not distinguish between friend or foe and the damage it does goes on for generations into the future.

Large quantities of D.U. were used during the attack on Iraq in 1991 and the invasion of Iraq in 2003. The damage done by D.U. to the Iraqi population is well documented and continuing.

The use of D.U. constitutes a war crime and crime against humanity, just as poison gas and dumdum bullets were designated in their time. The Libyan people are the latest victims of this western inflicted plague.

Irradiate the Libyan people to save the Libyan people? How else could you describe the NATO attack on Libya?

Thomas C. Mountain

Asmara, Eritrea

thomascmountain at yahoo dot com

In a previous life Thomas C. Mountain was the editor of the Ambedkar Journal and is presently the only independent western journalist in the Horn of Africa, living and reporting from Eritrea since 2006

 

 

 

 

Libya’s Great Man-Made River

15 April, 2011

Countercurrents.org

A previous article explained that America’s led NATO war on Libya was long-planned. All military interventions require months of preparation, including:

— strategy and conflict objectives;

— enlisting coalition partners;

— selecting targets;

— promoting political and public support;

— deploying troops;

— in Libya, recruiting, funding, and arming so-called rebels; and

— post-conflict imperial plans.

Washington wants one despot replaced with another, a useful puppet to salute and obey orders, not independent-minded ones like Gaddafi who went along most often but not always on all issues, some major enough to want him ousted. An important overlooked one is discussed below.

Other objectives are to colonize Libya, balkanize it like Yugoslavia and Iraq, prevent democracy from emerging, privatize its state enterprises, exploit its people, establish new Pentagon bases, and control its oil, gas and other resources, a key one getting little attention – Libya’s Great Man-Made River (GMMR).

The Nubian Sandstone Aquifer System (NSAS) lies beneath four North African countries – Chad, Egypt, Sudan and Libya, called the world’s largest fossil water system because it’s ancient and non-renewable. In fact, the Qur’an’s (Koran) Surah 2, Verse 74 says:

“For among rocks there are some from which rivers gush forth; others there are which when split asunder send forth water.”

In fact, three major aquifers lie beneath the Sahara, NSAS the largest, containing an estimated 375,000 cubic km of water.

Covering two million square km, it’s an ocean of water beneath the desert for irrigation, human consumption, development, and other uses. At 2007 consumption rates, it could last 1,000 years. Gaddafi calls NSAS the “Eighth Wonder of the World.” Its web site says it’s the largest global underground network of pipes and aqueducts, consisting of:

— over 1,300 wells;

— 7 million miles of pre-stressed steel wire to strengthen 12-foot diameter pipes;

— 3,500 km of pipeline covering an area equal to Western Europe;

— four pipelines – two east and two west, connecting with links north; and

— thousands of miles of roads between and connecting its various lines and infrastructure, supplying 6.5 million cubic meters of fresh water daily to Libyans and others in the region. Extracting water at a depth of from 1,600 – 2,500 feet, the system purifies and supplies it mainly to populated coastal cities.

Conceived in the late 1960s, feasibility studies were conducted in 1974. Construction then began in 1984, divided in five phases, each largely separate, then combined into an integrated system. Funded by Gaddafi without loans from other nations or Western banks, the project cost $25 billion so far.

Inaugurated in August 1991, phase I provides two million daily cubic meters of water along a 1,200 km pipeline from As-Sarir and Tazerbo to Benghazi and Sirt, via the Ajdabiya reservoir. Phase II delivers one million daily cubic meters from the Fezzan region to the fertile Jeffara plain in the Western coastal belt, also supplying Tripoli.

Phase III is in two parts. Its first adds an additional 1.68 million cubic meters daily through another 700 km of pipeline and pumping stations. It also supplies 138,000 more cubic meters daily to Tobruk and the coast from a new Al-Jaghboub wellfield through another 500 km of pipeline.

The final phases involve extending the distribution network by pipelines linking the Ajjabiya reservoir to Tobruk, then connecting Eastern and Western systems at Sirt into a single integrated network. When fully operational, Gaddafi hopes to make the desert as green as Libya’s flag.

The project is owned by the Great Man-Made River (GMMR) Authority, funded by Gaddafi’s government as explained above. However, with war raging, the system is jeopardized as well as Gaddafi’s dream to turn the desert green.

On April 3, AFP headlined, “Libya warns of disaster if ‘Great Man-Made River’ hit,” saying:

If GMMR is bombed, it could cause a “human and environmental disaster.” Libya has three underground pipeline systems, for oil, gas, and water. If one is hit, the others are affected, potentially disastrously. According to project manager Abdelmajid Gahoud:

“If part of the infrastructure is damaged, the whole thing is affected and the massive escape of water could cause a catastrophe,” depriving millions of Libyans of fresh water, 70% of 6.5 people for human consumption, irrigation, and other purposes.

Moreover, if Gaddafi is ousted, the enterprise will be privatized, making water unaffordable for many, perhaps most Libyans. In other words, neoliberal control will exploit it for maximum profits.

A Final Comment

On April 13, Ellen Brown’s Truthout article headlined, “Libya: All About Oil, or All About Banking?” raised an important easily overlooked issue, saying:

“Libyan rebels took time out from their rebellion in March to create their own central bank (the Central Bank of Benghazi),” suggesting others with sophisticated know-how had it on the shelf ready to go months earlier.

A previous article quoted General Wesley Clark’s book, “Winning Modern Wars,” saying Pentagon sources told him two months after 9/11 that war plans were being prepared against Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya.

“What do these seven countries have in common,” asked Brown? None (as well as Afghanistan) are “listed among the 56 member banks of the Bank for International Settlements.”

It’s the central bank for central bankers, a banking boss of bosses accountable to no government, privately owned by its members, the most powerful with most influence.

Outliers, of course, put “them outside (its) long regulatory arm.” Months before America attacked Iraq, Saddam Hussein began selling oil in Euros, not dollars, threatening its reserve currency and petrodollar dominance. Gaddafi “made a similarly bold move,” an initiative toward replacing the dollar with “the gold dinar,” hoping for “a united African continent (under) this single currency.”

Many Arab and African countries endorsed the idea, but not America or the West, “French President Nicolas Sarkozy calling (Gaddafi) a threat to the financial security of mankind.” He wasn’t deterred.

Moreover, “the Central Bank of Libya is 100% State owned.” In other words, it creates its own money, the Libyan Dinar, interest free to be used for productive economic growth, not profits and bonuses for predatory bankers.

As a result, imperial Washington, Britain and France included Libya on their “globalist (hit list to integrate it into) its hive of compliant nations,” at the expense of its own internal interests. They include oil and gas development, projects to make the desert green, as well as providing free education, healthcare, and other essential social services from oil revenues and Central Bank of Libya created money.

“So, is this new war all about oil or all about banking,” asked Brown? “Maybe both – and water as well,” noting that with “energy, water and ample (interest-free) credit to develop the infrastructure to access them, a nation can be free (from) foreign creditors,” especially predatory Western ones, entrapping countries in debt for greater profits.

Perhaps that was Saddam’s real threat, now Gaddafi’s and other nations on the Pentagon’s hit list.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

 

French Veil Controversy: Muslim rethinking of Islam is overdue

 

 

The Mullah and the torch-bearer

Hail from the same stock;

They give light to others,

And themselves are in the dark.

(Bulleh Shah, Sufi, revolutionary and poet)

The shrill opposition of many ‘Muslims’ to the French ban on the face veil has only reinforced my conviction that a thorough reform, indeed nothing less than a complete paradigm shift, in the ways in which ‘Muslims’ understand Islam is more than overdue. My point is simple: ‘Muslims’, by and large, are guilty of equating their own historically-produced and conventionally-understood readings of Islam as equivalent to and wholly synonymous with Islam itself or the Divine Will per se. Since these understandings are humanly produced, and, hence, necessarily flawed and limited, to insist that these represent ‘true’ Islam or the Divine Will itself is to be guilty of the cardinal sin of shirk or ‘associationism’. Such a claim is, in effect (even if this is not the perceived intention), tantamount to equating humans with God by equating God’s word with human, and therefore, necessarily flawed, understandings of it.

At the outset, let me clarify that although I am convinced that the face veil has no sanction whatsoever in the Quran and I agree that it is extremely debilitating and degrading for women, I am not convinced that banning it by law is the best way to reform the custom out of existence. That said, I also insist, contrary to what many ‘Muslim’ critics of the French ban argue, that banning the veil is not tantamount to an attack on Islam, although it may be an assault on ‘Muslim’ communal sentiments that seem, in this case, to be premised on the visible degradation of ‘Muslim’ women. To claim, as, for instance, the ignorant mullahs of Deoband recently did (in an appeal to the Government of India to sever ties with France) that the face veil is an integral part of Islamic belief is wholly erroneous. This ridiculous argument only reflects the general tendency, pointed out earlier, of ‘Muslims’, led by their ignoramus mullahs, daring to equate their own fallible and humanly-conditioned understandings of Islam with Islam or the Divine Will per se.

It would be obvious to anyone reading the Quran that nowhere does it specify that ‘Muslim’ women should wear a specific sort of dress. Neither does it state that women should cover their faces. It is true that the Quran lays down certain principles of modesty in dressing, but it does not specify precisely what people should wear, this being left to personal discretion and open to variation depending on local custom. Such principles apply both to males and females, and are not specific to females alone. Unlike what the mullahs urge, based on rules that they have themselves devised, the Quran does not insist that ‘Muslim’ women must be wrapped up in black sacks. To insist that this is compulsory uniform for Muslim women is to be guilty of inventing rules and restrictions that have no Quranic warrant. To impose such rules in the name of Islam is a crime, for it is tantamount to claim to know the Quran better than The One whose word it is believed to be.

To insist, as the mullahs do, on a trap-like medieval Arab dress for women that effectively subjects them to enforced domesticity and abject subservience to men reflects another painful reality of conventional ‘Muslim’ (mis-)understandings of Islam: the notion that Arab culture is somehow integral to Islam and inseparable from it. Hence, the widespread belief that Arabs are more ‘authentic’ ‘Muslim’s than we are, that Arabs are superior to non-Arab ‘Muslims’ (hence the prohibition on Arab women marrying non-Arab men in some schools of fiqh), that the Arab Syeds have special privileges and deserve particular honour, that Arabic mosque architecture is more ‘Islamic’ than other styles, that Arab dates are more ‘holy’ than non-Arab dates, that Arabic is the language spoken in heaven, and so on.

Arab cultural supremacism has played havoc with the notion, so integral to the Quran, of Islam as the universal faith—as the faith not just of the Prophet Muhammad but, indeed, that of all the other prophets of God, whom God has sent to every people, only few of whom were possibly conversant in Arabic, prayed and preached in that language or called their faith by the particular Arabic term ‘Islam’ ( I suppose that if they used any term to define their ‘Islam’, it would have been in their own languages and would have conveyed the same sense as what ‘Islam’ means in Arabic, i.e. submission to God). To privilege Arabic culture in the manner that many ‘Muslims’, including those hollering for the face veil, do is surely a form of cultural idolatry (defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘extreme admiration, love, or reverence for something or someone’) that has no warrant in the Quran whatsoever.

 

By conflating Islam with Arabic culture, and, on that basis, insisting that the face-veil is normative for all ‘Muslim’ women and for all time, the mullahs and their ignorant followers effectively declare that to be ‘Muslim’ one must conform to, or at least privilege, seventh century Arabic cultural practices and norms. In making this audacious claim that freezes lived Islam into a fixed cultural mould and renders it incapable of adjusting to new cultural contexts, the ignorant mullahs are completely unmindful of the immense practical difficulties as well as psychological traumas that their ridiculous pronouncements produce for non-Arab ‘Muslims’, who happen to form the vast majority of the world’s ‘Muslim’ population.

Much has been written about the shameless hypocrisy of many ‘Muslim’ men, brainwashed by their ignorant and scheming clerics, in insisting on rules of ‘modesty’, including in matters of dress, for ‘Muslim’ women while conveniently ignoring that modesty, as the Quran suggests, is for both the genders to observe. I do not wish to revisit that debate here, but only want to point to the blatant double-standards of the champions of the face veil. Women, they insist, based on some (probably fabricated) hadith reports (and NOT the Quran), is wholly awrah, something to be concealed fully and hidden from public gaze, allegedly because women are by definition, by their very biology as it were, sources of temptation and fitnah (strife). Even their voices, they quote another hadith as declaring, are awrah, and so no woman should speak to an unrelated man. The justfication the mullahs proffer for this horrendously misogynist prohibition is that women are supposedly so sexually stimulating that if men not just see their faces but even so much as hear their voices, they would be thrown into the throes of sexual excitement. And that would cause the entire edifice of ‘morality’ to come tumbling down.

Those who have read the Quran (without the lenses supplied by the mullahs) will know that there is nothing in the Quran that sanctions this perspective. If men are so weak and so sexually charged that the mere sound of a woman’s voice will drive them astray by exciting their sexual desires, why should women be punished for the sexual obsession of men? The Quran (and logic, too) insists that no one shall bear the burdens of the sins of others. That being the case, why must women be punished—hidden behind veils, locked up in their homes,  denied access to the public sphere, left economically and educationally completely deprived and therefore utterly dependent on sexually-frustrated men—just because men are supposedly unable to control their over-charged  libidos? To force women to pay for the sins of men is certainly unjust by every reasonable standard. It definitely contradicts the clear Quranic declaration: ‘No soul bears the sins of another soul. Every human being is responsible for his own works.’ (53: 38-39). But will the mullahs, wedded to their own created interpretations of Islam instead of to the Quran, listen to the voice of reason?

Anyone who travels in the Middle-East, the supposed ‘heartland of Islam’, will be confronted by the gross violation of the above-mentioned Quranic dictum on a massive scale. He or she will be faced with the frightening spectacle of women forced to hide behind black sheets, their faces completely invisible, because, the mullahs have declared, this is how women must ‘preserve’ their modesty. On the other hand, ‘Muslim’ men will dress as they please, in as revealing and as immodest a manner as they like, including in the latest Western fashions. (It is a different matter that many Middle-Eastern women sport the skimpiest of mini-skirts and even the most tantalising belly-dance costumes under their burqas, and that vast numbers of of them, as in Iran, so I hear, simply itch to throw off the veils that have been forced on them by the mullahs—such is the hypocrisy these gendered dress codes necessarily generate).

The fact that women, and not just men, have sexual desires and that they, too, could be sexually excited seeing ‘strange’ men, does not seem to matter a whit to the mullahs, who dare not impose on ‘Muslim’ men the same harsh rules they can on women. If the absurd logic of the mullahs, that the mere sight or voice of a woman is bound to sexually excite men and set off fitnah on an uncontrollable scale, and that, therefore, the former must be silenced by compulsory veiling (not just of the body, including the face, but of the voice, too), is to be taken to its logical culmination, let them order men, the guilty gender, to be locked up in their homes rather than punish women for men’s crimes.

The neurotic (there seems no better word for it) obsession of the mullahs and their blind followers with the constant policing of ‘Muslim’ women constantly reinforces the deeply-rooted notion that women are simply tantalizing sexual objects and that men constantly obsess about sex. In this way, this discourse completely over-sexualises men as well as women. This has become so ingrained in the general ‘Muslim’ psyche as to be transformed into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Curiously, this notion is wholly absent in the Quran, but fully present in the Hadith and in other humanly-crafted texts (which are replete with misogynist narrations that completely defy and contradict Quranic logic), which the mullahs in effect privilege over God’s word by insisting that the Quran can only be read in the light of their pronouncements.

The un-Quranic notion of women as simply sexual beings pervades ‘Muslim’ cultures and societies worldwide, making for all sorts of enormities: the inability of ‘Muslim’ men and women to relate to each other sensibly, or even to see each other in other than just sexual terms. It leads to an enormous and painfully exaggerated obsession with sex on the part of men. The more women are ‘sexualised’ by being perceived as sexual beings and subjected to all sorts of ridiculous restrictions on that account, the more men’s obsession with sex mounts, producing a completely neurotic personality. The more women are denied access to the public sphere, together with chances of normal, non-sexual interaction with men, the greater the inability to conceive of the possibility of interaction between the genders in anything but sexual terms.

This accounts, in large measure, for the general impression of ‘Muslim’ men as sexually-frustrated and sex-obsessed creatures. That is not to say, of course, that this is a specifically ‘Muslim’ issue, hypersexuality being glorified in many non-‘Muslim’ cultures, too.  I admit this is a somewhat exaggerated stereotype. Yet, all stereotypes, to gain acceptance, must contain at least a grain of truth. Denied any opportunity for interacting on even a non-sexual level with women, ‘Muslim’ men, the mullahs insist, must inhabit an entirely male public space. That, in turn, leads to all sorts of complications and frustrations, including unhappy marriages that women find themselves trapped in because ‘Muslim’ men are trained to perceive women as sexual beings and are generally rendered incapable conceiving marriage as an egalitarian relationship between two equals based on reciprocity.

In their dogged commitment to the fiercely patriarchal and misogynist laws that they have themselves generated and falsely attributed to the Quran and God, the mullahs and their ignorant blind followers simply do not care what havoc they have created and continue to insist on creating. And if any one dares to challenge them, calling them back to the Quran and appealing to them to desist from passing off their ideas and rules as the word of God, they quickly pounce on him or her as a ‘heretic’ and impute all sorts of false motives. That being the case, the prospects for reasoned debate on the women’s question in ‘Muslim’ societies remains, as ever, an almost impossible one.

 

Syria Sans Emergency Law No Different

 

 

Experts say human rights unlikely to improve as laws that are equally dreaded remain in place.

Hugh Macleod and a reporter in Syria Last Modified: 20 Apr 2011 19:12

Pro-democracy protests across several cities have shaken the Syrian regime [EPA]

Syrian authorities may have decided to lift the dreaded emergency laws in force in the country since the ruling Baath Party took power in 1963, but experts and analysts say the move will do little to improve human rights.

According to them, many of the draconian charges on which opponents of the regime are routinely imprisoned exist either within the Penal Code itself or as special laws or articles in the constitution, and courtesy them, Syria would continue to be run as a virtual police state.

Click here for more in-depth coverage of Syria

“There are 15 branches of security in Syria and all of them will remain immune from prosecution, even after emergency laws are lifted. The security services are above the law,” said Haithem Maleh, a former judge and veteran human rights campaigner, imprisoned many times in Syria for his work.

The lifting of emergency laws has been a major demand of the month-long unprecedented protest movement against the regime.

Shaken by the protests, Bashar al-Assad, the president, pledged a few days ago to lift the laws. And on Tuesday, the Syrian cabinet approved the move.

It was initially thought the authorities would bring in a new set of draconian laws to replace the emergency laws.

But according to a leading Syrian newspaper owned by the president’s brother-in-law, no new anti-terrorism law is on the anvil.

The existing criminal laws of Syria’s Penal Code have been deemed sufficient to counter the threat of terrorism, said an article in Al Watan newspaper, owned by Syria’s most powerful businessman, Rami Makhlouf, on Wednesday.

“What will be issued by the President of the Republic will not be a law for combatting terrorism only that to lift the state of emergency,” said the paper, quoting an anonymous senior official. “The special articles contained in the Syrian Penal Code related to terrorism are sufficient.”

What is deemed sufficient by the authorities should ring the alarm bells for ordinary Syrians.

Immunity intact

In 2008 President Assad extended immunity from prosecution to all branches of Syria’s security services under a presidential decree which will remain unaffected by the lifting of emergency laws.

Maleh said separate security services played overlapping roles as domestic policemen.

“We’ve had recent cases of air force intelligence arresting 100 people on charges of corruption. Army and air force intelligence should work only on military matters. They have no right to interfere in civilian life.”

Radwan Ziadeh, Director of the Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies and a visiting scholar at the Carr Centre for Human Rights at Harvard University, said emergency laws could be lifted without security services losing any of their iron grip over the country.

“They are trying to give everything they can but without touching the foundations of the totalitarian regime,” said Ziadeh. “What Syria needs is a new constitution that makes a clear explanation of executive, judicial and legislative powers. Now they are all mixed up in the powers of the president.”

The lifting of emergency laws would not mean an end to the arrest of political opponents, said Ziadeh, pointing out that it was under criminal laws, not emergency laws, that member of the Damascus Declaration, the first unified opposition movement in Syria, were jailed in 2005.

Key signatories of the Declaration were jailed for up to five years on charges including “weakening national sentiment”, “belonging to a secret society” and “spreading false news”.

All of the charges refer to Syria being “at war or expecting a war”, but rather than being articles of the emergency laws – whose half century extension officials regularly justify because of Israel’s occupation of the Syrian Golan Heights – the charges are inside the Penal Code and so will be unaffected when emergency laws are lifted.

Also unaffected will be Law 49, making membership of the Muslim Brotherhood a crime punishable by death, and certain articles of Syria’s Constitution – written in 1973, a decade after the declaration of emergency law – such as Article 8 which gives the Baath Party the right to be “the leading party of state and society”.

A law protecting the Baath Party revolution, passed in 1965, will also be unchanged by the lifting of emergency laws, meaning citizens can still be imprisoned on charges of “working against the goals of the revolution”.

The legal right of the Baath Party Regional Command to nominate candidates for president also remains unchanged.

Little relief

Sami Moubayed, a Syrian historian and editor of Forward magazine, argued that without comprehensive political and economic reforms, the lifting of emergency laws would do little to meet the demands of protesters.

“Lifting emergency laws without increasing economic prospects is absolutely useless. There also needs to be a political solution: An end to one party rule, political freedom and a strong and serious campaign against corruption.”

Moubayed said he believed a law allowing multi-party politics in Syria for the first time under Baath Party rule would come into force ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections, due to be held in May but likely to be postponed until September.  But he cautioned over-expectations of dramatic change.

“The Party’s Law will make no real difference until 2015. No party this year will have time to mount a real challenge to the Baath Party, which has some 1.5 million members,” he said.

For at least one protester in Baniyas, taking to the street on Tuesday night after news broke of the cabinet decision to lift emergency laws, the concession was too little too late.

“It wasn’t the government who lifted the emergency law, it was the people,” he said. “According to the emergency law the security forces are not justified in using massive force against people, but they do. They were shooting before it was lifted and they were shooting after it was lifted.”

Source: Al Jazeera

The #Video4Change Community Honors Mohammed Nabbous

 | March 25th, 2011

As many of you are aware, Mohammed Nabbous, or Mo, as he was known to many of those following his video stream and commentary on social media about events in Libya, was killed by sniper fire in Benghazi on Saturday, March 19th. If you’re not yet familiar with Mohammed’s work, I encourage you to read these remembrances of him on Global Voices Online and  The Washington Post‘s BlogPost.

It’s the first time, that I can remember,  a citizen journalist’s work has been discussed at length in the mainstream media without the focus being about the veracity of the content. In part, this is due to some direct relationships with Mohammed among  mainstream outlets’ like NPR and CNN. He had become a respected source on the ground.

We got in touch with several of our #video4change community members via Twitter to ask them about Mohammed’s reporting, how it impacted their understanding of the situation in Libya, and to reflect on how real risks  are faced by those documenting human rights abuses. Thanks to my colleague Mari Moneymaker who manages our Twitter feed ( @witnessorg) for reaching out to our interviewees.

We’re sharing just three perspectives below. We hope that you’ll share your own thoughts with us in the comments below about Mohammad’s work and perhaps shed some light on other brave citizens like him operating elsewhere.

A Perspective from Inside Libya

The first interview is with a self-described citizen journalist based in Tripoli who, for security reasons, can only be identified by the Twitter handle  @ChangeInLibya. They said, “Things are very tough here right now and the city is still under Gaddafi’s control, so to protect myself I have taken every possible measure to hide my real identity.”

When and how did you become aware of Mo’s work? I started my twitter account on the 11th of February. Back then, we had no way of getting information from Libya besides video uploads (from mobile phones) and phone calls. When Mo made his Livestream account on the 20th of February or so (after Benghazi rebelled against Gaddafi and was liberated), he managed to combine the two means together. I was immediately interested in his work and started following the Livestream channel whenever I could.

What was unique about Mohammed’s reporting? Could his methods/ style be replicated elsewhere? Mohammed had a very unique style of reporting. He had a calm and reassuring voice, he knew how to express himself and above all his English was adequate and he could convey the message in both English and Arabic, to all of his on-line followers. I think his style can very well be replicated, but it takes a lot of dedication to come close to Mohammed. I hope that someone will be able to continue Mohammed’s work in Benghazi though, that is the only way Mohammed would have wanted us to honour him.

What image or video that Mohammed recorded stood out for you as a human rights activist? One of the first videos Mohammed recorded (embedded below and recorded February 19, 2011). This video spread all over the world, and was seen on every media channel abroad and by millions of people. This video brought widespread attention to the Libyan issue, and made people interested in our story. This is what made Mohammed a hero for many of us working hard here in Libya.

 

A View from the United States

 

Our second interview was with Kendra Kellogg, founder of the E-Advocate Network ( @eadvocate). Kendra creates offline and online projects to support change agents who use citizen media. She also researches the use of social media for human rights.

When and how did you become aware of Mo’s work? I began archiving citizen media from the Middle East in June of 2009 to analyze meta-data patterns. I focus on under-reported or misrepresented human rights violations that may scale to a crime against humanity. In the week before the UN decision, Libya was such a situation. I began tracking down all sources. I found Mo around March 14th.

What was unique about Mohammed’s reporting? Could his methods/ style be replicated elsewhere? His long stretches of video and his voice were the keys that allowed critical context. Mo was the consistent voice who ran towards the bullets and showed the world that “these are innocent civilians.”  In the final week of Mo’s life, he captured what Gaddafi did not want the international community to understand. Gaddafi’s militia was dropping bombs on family homes. This military tactic is a crime against humanity and the militia was closing in on Benghazi. Gaddafi had proclaimed he was waging a “civil war” against his own country. Gaddafi’s framing of the war like this successfully focused international media attention to the front line of armed “rebels.” The truth is that the front lines were now trying to protect communities from overwhelming and indiscriminate military force. Here is a video that illustrates this last point:

What message do you take away from Mohammed’s reporting as a human rights activist? Mo’s innovation was driven by his determination to find, document and express the truth about human rights violations in his country, and fight for the freedom. What I have found since researching the citizen media of many uprisings since 2009, is that humanity’s natural sense of human rights is coupled with a natural instinct to document their abuses. It’s an instinct that is built on faith in our fellow mankind. Mo had such a strong belief that if the rest of Libya knew the truth of the initial violations in Benghazi, they would respond with their hearts and rise up for justice. He was right. In the last weeks of his life, he believed that if the world knew the truth, we would respond with our hearts. He was right. With each innovation, each video there is a profound belief in humanity and love for mankind. He died for it.

Observations from a Concerned Citizen

Our third interview is with the citizen activist who goes by the handle  @Lissnup. She originally joined Twitter to “follow and support events in Iran in June 2009,” and expanded her sphere of interest by following economic, political and financial links from Iran around the globe. This work inevitably led to much information dealing with Human Rights concerns, and she pays particular attention to that field. As well as being very vocal and active on the internet, lissnup is a pacifist, and founded the Global Freedom Movement at the end of 2009, to act as a loose network linking activists worldwide, after hooking up with people in other countries with similar ideals on Facebook and Twitter.

How and when did you become aware of Mo’s work? As news of protest movements in different countries has emerged I have systematically searched for solid sources of information both on the ground and outside the relevant country. My interest is to monitor events, offer assistance and support wherever possible, and to help amplify important messages for local activists.  I found Mo through @ShababLibya, who I was following after joining a Facebook page supporting Libya protests just ahead of Feb 17th.

What was particularly useful about Mohammed’s reporting? Could his methods/ style be replicated elsewhere? One important aspect of Mo’s great appeal was his insistence on confirming all reported stories and establishing facts, at a time when there were so many conflicting reports flying around, including regime propaganda, and for a time also there were hardly any foreign news journalists in Libya. I don’t speak Arabic so having news from the scene in English was another massive benefit. Otherwise you are constantly struggling to translate video, and the delay means most news is out of date by the time it gets translated.

Mo had a combination of learned skills which could be replicated: technical knowledge of how to record, process and publish video; an understanding of the better principles of news reporting; respect for protecting the identities of fellow activists; and a great command of the English language. What is harder to replicate is his passion, but from what I have seen this is an abundant resource not only in Libya but across the region!

What image or message from Libya stood out for you as a human rights activist? That’s a hard one, it’s still all going on, with new memorable images and quotes continue to reach us each day. I was particularly touched by a quote which I read (and tweeted) recently from a Telegraph article:

The wrecked war plane erupted in a ball of flames, heightening the sense of fear. But the first American to walk clear – tall and with a moustache – need not have worried. He held up his hands in submission and tried his best to surrender, calling out “OK, OK” to the advancing crowd. But his parachute had delivered him safely into a field of sheep, deep in rebel-held territory. “I hugged him and said don’t be scared we are your friends,” said Younis Amruni, 27, one of the first on the scene.

The plane crash story was made even more memorable for me by the tale of 22-year-old Hamdi Ahmed Abdulati, who had his leg amputated after coming under fire from the coalition rescue helicopter sent to retrieve the 2-man crew from the downed fighter jet. Clearly the entire incident was a tragic mistake. His father Mohammad had also sustained injuries from bullet wounds. I felt so bad for them, especially the son.

Yet other Libyans who were in the area at the same time sent a message of thanks to the coalition for their help and support. I can’t imagine a more gracious response in those circumstances. It tells me that we are dealing with a nation of Mo Nabbouses.

Do you incorporate safety and security protocols into your work or do you share tips with your Twitter followers? Yes! I am constantly reviewing safety and security for online activists, and I gather and distribute information to help protesters. I also get descriptive diagrams or other useful information. Last month, I needed to draw attention again to the need to protect protesters who were shown in photographs or video. From dealing with Iran, I’d learned the hard way that it is best to blur or obscure faces otherwise the protesters become easy targets for brutal oppressive regimes. I got some awesome help from WITNESS, including useful links, which I am still using and sharing around the world. I also got a few messages from contacts in the media asking for more information about the issue, and I was really thrilled with their positive reaction. I guess I had assumed they would only ever want crisp images, but the few I heard from impressed me by seeing the need to prioritise people’s safety.

Category: In the News, Video for Change | Tags: @changeinlibya, @eadvocate, @lissnup, Benghazi, citizen journalism, citizen media, Libya, Mohammed Nabbous, online safety, video4change, war footage | 6 comments | Share:

 

Is the World Too Big to Fail? The Contours of Global Order

 

Thursday 21 April 2011

 

The democracy uprising in the Arab world has been a spectacular display of courage, dedication, and commitment by popular forces — coinciding, fortuitously, with a remarkable uprising of tens of thousands in support of working people and democracy in Madison, Wisconsin, and other U.S. cities. If the trajectories of revolt in Cairo and Madison intersected, however, they were headed in opposite directions: in Cairo toward gaining elementary rights denied by the dictatorship, in Madison towards defending rights that had been won in long and hard struggles and are now under severe attack.

Each is a microcosm of tendencies in global society, following varied courses. There are sure to be far-reaching consequences of what is taking place both in the decaying industrial heartland of the richest and most powerful country in human history, and in what President Dwight Eisenhower called “the most strategically important area in the world” — “a stupendous source of strategic power” and “probably the richest economic prize in the world in the field of foreign investment,” in the words of the State Department in the 1940s, a prize that the U.S. intended to keep for itself and its allies in the unfolding New World Order of that day.

Despite all the changes since, there is every reason to suppose that today’s policy-makers basically adhere to the judgment of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s influential advisor A.A. Berle that control of the incomparable energy reserves of the Middle East would yield “substantial control of the world.” And correspondingly, that loss of control would threaten the project of global dominance that was clearly articulated during World War II, and that has been sustained in the face of major changes in world order since that day.

From the outset of the war in 1939, Washington anticipated that it would end with the U.S. in a position of overwhelming power. High-level State Department officials and foreign policy specialists met through the wartime years to lay out plans for the postwar world. They delineated a “Grand Area” that the U.S. was to dominate, including the Western hemisphere, the Far East, and the former British empire, with its Middle East energy resources. As Russia began to grind down Nazi armies after Stalingrad, Grand Area goals extended to as much of Eurasia as possible, at least its economic core in Western Europe. Within the Grand Area, the U.S. would maintain “unquestioned power,” with “military and economic supremacy,” while ensuring the “limitation of any exercise of sovereignty” by states that might interfere with its global designs. The careful wartime plans were soon implemented.

It was always recognized that Europe might choose to follow an independent course. NATO was partially intended to counter this threat. As soon as the official pretext for NATO dissolved in 1989, NATO was expanded to the East in violation of verbal pledges to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev. It has since become a U.S.-run intervention force, with far-ranging scope, spelled out by NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, who informed a NATO conference that “NATO troops have to guard pipelines that transport oil and gas that is directed for the West,” and more generally to protect sea routes used by tankers and other “crucial infrastructure” of the energy system.

Grand Area doctrines clearly license military intervention at will. That conclusion was articulated clearly by the Clinton administration, which declared that the U.S. has the right to use military force to ensure “uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies, and strategic resources,” and must maintain huge military forces “forward deployed” in Europe and Asia “in order to shape people’s opinions about us” and “to shape events that will affect our livelihood and our security.”

The same principles governed the invasion of Iraq. As the U.S. failure to impose its will in Iraq was becoming unmistakable, the actual goals of the invasion could no longer be concealed behind pretty rhetoric. In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors. Two months later, President Bush informed Congress that he would reject legislation that might limit the permanent stationing of U.S. Armed Forces in Iraq or “United States control of the oil resources of Iraq” — demands that the U.S. had to abandon shortly after in the face of Iraqi resistance.

In Tunisia and Egypt, the recent popular uprisings have won impressive victories, but as the Carnegie Endowment reported, while names have changed, the regimes remain: “A change in ruling elites and system of governance is still a distant goal.” The report discusses internal barriers to democracy, but ignores the external ones, which as always are significant.

The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world. To understand why, it is only necessary to look at the studies of Arab opinion conducted by U.S. polling agencies. Though barely reported, they are certainly known to planners. They reveal that by overwhelming majorities, Arabs regard the U.S. and Israel as the major threats they face: the U.S. is so regarded by 90% of Egyptians, in the region generally by over 75%. Some Arabs regard Iran as a threat: 10%. Opposition to U.S. policy is so strong that a majority believes that security would be improved if Iran had nuclear weapons — in Egypt, 80%. Other figures are similar. If public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it, along with its allies, undermining fundamental principles of global dominance.

The Invisible Hand of Power

Support for democracy is the province of ideologists and propagandists. In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm. The evidence is overwhelming that democracy is supported insofar as it contributes to social and economic objectives, a conclusion reluctantly conceded by the more serious scholarship.

Elite contempt for democracy was revealed dramatically in the reaction to the WikiLeaks exposures. Those that received most attention, with euphoric commentary, were cables reporting that Arabs support the U.S. stand on Iran. The reference was to the ruling dictators. The attitudes of the public were unmentioned. The guiding principle was articulated clearly by Carnegie Endowment Middle East specialist Marwan Muasher, formerly a high official of the Jordanian government: “There is nothing wrong, everything is under control.” In short, if the dictators support us, what else could matter?

The Muasher doctrine is rational and venerable. To mention just one case that is highly relevant today, in internal discussion in 1958, president Eisenhower expressed concern about “the campaign of hatred” against us in the Arab world, not by governments, but by the people. The National Security Council (NSC) explained that there is a perception in the Arab world that the U.S. supports dictatorships and blocks democracy and development so as to ensure control over the resources of the region. Furthermore, the perception is basically accurate, the NSC concluded, and that is what we should be doing, relying on the Muasher doctrine. Pentagon studies conducted after 9/11 confirmed that the same holds today.

It is normal for the victors to consign history to the trash can, and for victims to take it seriously. Perhaps a few brief observations on this important matter may be useful. Today is not the first occasion when Egypt and the U.S. are facing similar problems, and moving in opposite directions. That was also true in the early nineteenth century.

Economic historians have argued that Egypt was well-placed to undertake rapid economic development at the same time that the U.S. was. Both had rich agriculture, including cotton, the fuel of the early industrial revolution — though unlike Egypt, the U.S. had to develop cotton production and a work force by conquest, extermination, and slavery, with consequences that are evident right now in the reservations for the survivors and the prisons that have rapidly expanded since the Reagan years to house the superfluous population left by deindustrialization.

One fundamental difference was that the U.S. had gained independence and was therefore free to ignore the prescriptions of economic theory, delivered at the time by Adam Smith in terms rather like those preached to developing societies today. Smith urged the liberated colonies to produce primary products for export and to import superior British manufactures, and certainly not to attempt to monopolize crucial goods, particularly cotton. Any other path, Smith warned, “would retard instead of accelerating the further increase in the value of their annual produce, and would obstruct instead of promoting the progress of their country towards real wealth and greatness.”

Having gained their independence, the colonies were free to ignore his advice and to follow England’s course of independent state-guided development, with high tariffs to protect industry from British exports, first textiles, later steel and others, and to adopt numerous other devices to accelerate industrial development. The independent Republic also sought to gain a monopoly of cotton so as to “place all other nations at our feet,” particularly the British enemy, as the Jacksonian presidents announced when conquering Texas and half of Mexico.

For Egypt, a comparable course was barred by British power. Lord Palmerston declared that “no ideas of fairness [toward Egypt] ought to stand in the way of such great and paramount interests” of Britain as preserving its economic and political hegemony, expressing his “hate” for the “ignorant barbarian” Muhammed Ali who dared to seek an independent course, and deploying Britain’s fleet and financial power to terminate Egypt’s quest for independence and economic development.

After World War II, when the U.S. displaced Britain as global hegemon, Washington adopted the same stand, making it clear that the U.S. would provide no aid to Egypt unless it adhered to the standard rules for the weak — which the U.S. continued to violate, imposing high tariffs to bar Egyptian cotton and causing a debilitating dollar shortage. The usual interpretation of market principles.

It is small wonder that the “campaign of hatred” against the U.S. that concerned Eisenhower was based on the recognition that the U.S. supports dictators and blocks democracy and development, as do its allies.

In Adam Smith’s defense, it should be added that he recognized what would happen if Britain followed the rules of sound economics, now called “neoliberalism.” He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. But he felt that they would be guided by a home bias, so as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality.

The passage is hard to miss. It is the one occurrence of the famous phrase “invisible hand” in The Wealth of Nations. The other leading founder of classical economics, David Ricardo, drew similar conclusions, hoping that home bias would lead men of property to “be satisfied with the low rate of profits in their own country, rather than seek a more advantageous employment for their wealth in foreign nations,” feelings that, he added, “I should be sorry to see weakened.” Their predictions aside, the instincts of the classical economists were sound.

The Iranian and Chinese “Threats”

The democracy uprising in the Arab world is sometimes compared to Eastern Europe in 1989, but on dubious grounds. In 1989, the democracy uprising was tolerated by the Russians, and supported by western power in accord with standard doctrine: it plainly conformed to economic and strategic objectives, and was therefore a noble achievement, greatly honored, unlike the struggles at the same time “to defend the people’s fundamental human rights” in Central America, in the words of the assassinated Archbishop of El Salvador, one of the hundreds of thousands of victims of the military forces armed and trained by Washington. There was no Gorbachev in the West throughout these horrendous years, and there is none today. And Western power remains hostile to democracy in the Arab world for good reasons.

Grand Area doctrines continue to apply to contemporary crises and confrontations. In Western policy-making circles and political commentary the Iranian threat is considered to pose the greatest danger to world order and hence must be the primary focus of U.S. foreign policy, with Europe trailing along politely.

What exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided by the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence. Reporting on global security last year, they make it clear that the threat is not military. Iran’s military spending is “relatively low compared to the rest of the region,” they conclude. Its military doctrine is strictly “defensive, designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” Iran has only “a limited capability to project force beyond its borders.” With regard to the nuclear option, “Iran’s nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy.” All quotes.

The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it hardly outranks U.S. allies in that regard. But the threat lies elsewhere, and is ominous indeed. One element is Iran’s potential deterrent capacity, an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that might interfere with U.S. freedom of action in the region. It is glaringly obvious why Iran would seek a deterrent capacity; a look at the military bases and nuclear forces in the region suffices to explain.

Seven years ago, Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld wrote that “The world has witnessed how the United States attacked Iraq for, as it turned out, no reason at all. Had the Iranians not tried to build nuclear weapons, they would be crazy,” particularly when they are under constant threat of attack in violation of the UN Charter. Whether they are doing so remains an open question, but perhaps so.

But Iran’s threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence in neighboring countries, the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence emphasize, and in this way to “destabilize” the region (in the technical terms of foreign policy discourse). The U.S. invasion and military occupation of Iran’s neighbors is “stabilization.” Iran’s efforts to extend its influence to them are “destabilization,” hence plainly illegitimate.

Such usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace was properly using the term “stability” in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve “stability” in Chile it was necessary to “destabilize” the country (by overthrowing the elected government of Salvador Allende and installing the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet). Other concerns about Iran are equally interesting to explore, but perhaps this is enough to reveal the guiding principles and their status in imperial culture.  As Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s planners emphasized at the dawn of the contemporary world system, the U.S. cannot tolerate “any exercise of sovereignty” that interferes with its global designs.

The U.S. and Europe are united in punishing Iran for its threat to stability, but it is useful to recall how isolated they are. The nonaligned countries have vigorously supported Iran’s right to enrich uranium. In the region, Arab public opinion even strongly favors Iranian nuclear weapons. The major regional power, Turkey, voted against the latest U.S.-initiated sanctions motion in the Security Council, along with Brazil, the most admired country of the South. Their disobedience led to sharp censure, not for the first time: Turkey had been bitterly condemned in 2003 when the government followed the will of 95% of the population and refused to participate in the invasion of Iraq, thus demonstrating its weak grasp of democracy, western-style.

After its Security Council misdeed last year, Turkey was warned by Obama’s top diplomat on European affairs, Philip Gordon, that it must “demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West.” A scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations asked, “How do we keep the Turks in their lane?” — following orders like good democrats. Brazil’s Lula was admonished in a New York Times headline that his effort with Turkey to provide a solution to the uranium enrichment issue outside of the framework of U.S. power was a “Spot on Brazilian Leader’s Legacy.” In brief, do what we say, or else.

An interesting sidelight, effectively suppressed, is that the Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal was approved in advance by Obama, presumably on the assumption that it would fail, providing an ideological weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the approval turned to censure, and Washington rammed through a Security Council resolution so weak that China readily signed — and is now chastised for living up to the letter of the resolution but not Washington’s unilateral directives — in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, for example.

While the U.S. can tolerate Turkish disobedience, though with dismay, China is harder to ignore. The press warns that “China’s investors and traders are now filling a vacuum in Iran as businesses from many other nations, especially in Europe, pull out,” and in particular, is expanding its dominant role in Iran’s energy industries. Washington is reacting with a touch of desperation. The State Department warned China that if it wants to be accepted in the international community — a technical term referring to the U.S. and whoever happens to agree with it — then it must not “skirt and evade international responsibilities, [which] are clear”: namely, follow U.S. orders. China is unlikely to be impressed.

There is also much concern about the growing Chinese military threat. A recent Pentagon study warned that China’s military budget is approaching “one-fifth of what the Pentagon spent to operate and carry out the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” a fraction of the U.S. military budget, of course. China’s expansion of military forces might “deny the ability of American warships to operate in international waters off its coast,” the New York Times added.

 

Off the coast of China, that is; it has yet to be proposed that the U.S. should eliminate military forces that deny the Caribbean to Chinese warships. China’s lack of understanding of rules of international civility is illustrated further by its objections to plans for the advanced nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George Washington to join naval exercises a few miles off China’s coast, with alleged capacity to strike Beijing.

In contrast, the West understands that such U.S. operations are all undertaken to defend stability and its own security. The liberal New Republic expresses its concern that “China sent ten warships through international waters just off the Japanese island of Okinawa.” That is indeed a provocation — unlike the fact, unmentioned, that Washington has converted the island into a major military base in defiance of vehement protests by the people of Okinawa. That is not a provocation, on the standard principle that we own the world.

Deep-seated imperial doctrine aside, there is good reason for China’s neighbors to be concerned about its growing military and commercial power. And though Arab opinion supports an Iranian nuclear weapons program, we certainly should not do so. The foreign policy literature is full of proposals as to how to counter the threat. One obvious way is rarely discussed: work to establish a nuclear-weapons-free zone (NWFZ) in the region. The issue arose (again) at the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference at United Nations headquarters last May. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, called for negotiations on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the U.S., at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

International support is so overwhelming that Obama formally agreed. It is a fine idea, Washington informed the conference, but not now. Furthermore, the U.S. made clear that Israel must be exempted: no proposal can call for Israel’s nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency or for the release of information about “Israeli nuclear facilities and activities.” So much for this method of dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat.

Privatizing the Planet

While Grand Area doctrine still prevails, the capacity to implement it has declined. The peak of U.S. power was after World War II, when it had literally half the world’s wealth. But that naturally declined, as other industrial economies recovered from the devastation of the war and decolonization took its agonizing course. By the early 1970s, the U.S. share of global wealth had declined to about 25%, and the industrial world had become tripolar: North America, Europe, and East Asia (then Japan-based).

 

There was also a sharp change in the U.S. economy in the 1970s, towards financialization and export of production. A variety of factors converged to create a vicious cycle of radical concentration of wealth, primarily in the top fraction of 1% of the population — mostly CEOs, hedge-fund managers, and the like. That leads to the concentration of political power, hence state policies to increase economic concentration: fiscal policies, rules of corporate governance, deregulation, and much more. Meanwhile the costs of electoral campaigns skyrocketed, driving the parties into the pockets of concentrated capital, increasingly financial: the Republicans reflexively, the Democrats — by now what used to be moderate Republicans — not far behind.

 

Elections have become a charade, run by the public relations industry. After his 2008 victory, Obama won an award from the industry for the best marketing campaign of the year. Executives were euphoric. In the business press they explained that they had been marketing candidates like other commodities since Ronald Reagan, but 2008 was their greatest achievement and would change the style in corporate boardrooms. The 2012 election is expected to cost $2 billion, mostly in corporate funding. Small wonder that Obama is selecting business leaders for top positions. The public is angry and frustrated, but as long as the Muasher principle prevails, that doesn’t matter.

While wealth and power have narrowly concentrated, for most of the population real incomes have stagnated and people have been getting by with increased work hours, debt, and asset inflation, regularly destroyed by the financial crises that began as the regulatory apparatus was dismantled starting in the 1980s.

None of this is problematic for the very wealthy, who benefit from a government insurance policy called “too big to fail.” The banks and investment firms can make risky transactions, with rich rewards, and when the system inevitably crashes, they can run to the nanny state for a taxpayer bailout, clutching their copies of Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.

That has been the regular process since the Reagan years, each crisis more extreme than the last — for the public population, that is. Right now, real unemployment is at Depression levels for much of the population, while Goldman Sachs, one of the main architects of the current crisis, is richer than ever. It has just quietly announced $17.5 billion in compensation for last year, with CEO Lloyd Blankfein receiving a $12.6 million bonus while his base salary more than triples.

It wouldn’t do to focus attention on such facts as these. Accordingly, propaganda must seek to blame others, in the past few months, public sector workers, their fat salaries, exorbitant pensions, and so on: all fantasy, on the model of Reaganite imagery of black mothers being driven in their limousines to pick up welfare checks — and other models that need not be mentioned. We all must tighten our belts; almost all, that is.

Teachers are a particularly good target, as part of the deliberate effort to destroy the public education system from kindergarten through the universities by privatization — again, good for the wealthy, but a disaster for the population, as well as the long-term health of the economy, but that is one of the externalities that is put to the side insofar as market principles prevail.

Another fine target, always, is immigrants. That has been true throughout U.S. history, even more so at times of economic crisis, exacerbated now by a sense that our country is being taken away from us: the white population will soon become a minority. One can understand the anger of aggrieved individuals, but the cruelty of the policy is shocking.

Who are the immigrants targeted? In Eastern Massachusetts, where I live, many are Mayans fleeing genocide in the Guatemalan highlands carried out by Reagan’s favorite killers. Others are Mexican victims of Clinton’s NAFTA, one of those rare government agreements that managed to harm working people in all three of the participating countries. As NAFTA was rammed through Congress over popular objection in 1994, Clinton also initiated the militarization of the U.S.-Mexican border, previously fairly open. It was understood that Mexican campesinos cannot compete with highly subsidized U.S. agribusiness, and that Mexican businesses would not survive competition with U.S. multinationals, which must be granted “national treatment” under the mislabeled free trade agreements, a privilege granted only to corporate persons, not those of flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, these measures led to a flood of desperate refugees, and to rising anti-immigrant hysteria by the victims of state-corporate policies at home.

Much the same appears to be happening in Europe, where racism is probably more rampant than in the U.S. One can only watch with wonder as Italy complains about the flow of refugees from Libya, the scene of the first post-World War I genocide, in the now-liberated East, at the hands of Italy’s Fascist government. Or when France, still today the main protector of the brutal dictatorships in its former colonies, manages to overlook its hideous atrocities in Africa, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy warns grimly of the “flood of immigrants” and Marine Le Pen objects that he is doing nothing to prevent it. I need not mention Belgium, which may win the prize for what Adam Smith called “the savage injustice of the Europeans.”

The rise of neo-fascist parties in much of Europe would be a frightening phenomenon even if we were not to recall what happened on the continent in the recent past. Just imagine the reaction if Jews were being expelled from France to misery and oppression, and then witness the non-reaction when that is happening to Roma, also victims of the Holocaust and Europe’s most brutalized population.

In Hungary, the neo-fascist party Jobbik gained 17% of the vote in national elections, perhaps unsurprising when three-quarters of the population feels that they are worse off than under Communist rule. We might be relieved that in Austria the ultra-right Jörg Haider won only 10% of the vote in 2008 — were it not for the fact that the new Freedom Party, outflanking him from the far right, won more than 17%. It is chilling to recall that, in 1928, the Nazis won less than 3% of the vote in Germany.

In England the British National Party and the English Defence League, on the ultra-racist right, are major forces. (What is happening in Holland you know all too well.) In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin’s lament that immigrants are destroying the country was a runaway best-seller, while Chancellor Angela Merkel, though condemning the book, declared that multiculturalism had “utterly failed”: the Turks imported to do the dirty work in Germany are failing to become blond and blue-eyed, true Aryans.

Those with a sense of irony may recall that Benjamin Franklin, one of the leading figures of the Enlightenment, warned that the newly liberated colonies should be wary of allowing Germans to immigrate, because they were too swarthy; Swedes as well. Into the twentieth century, ludicrous myths of Anglo-Saxon purity were common in the U.S., including among presidents and other leading figures. Racism in the literary culture has been a rank obscenity; far worse in practice, needless to say. It is much easier to eradicate polio than this horrifying plague, which regularly becomes more virulent in times of economic distress.

I do not want to end without mentioning another externality that is dismissed in market systems: the fate of the species. Systemic risk in the financial system can be remedied by the taxpayer, but no one will come to the rescue if the environment is destroyed. That it must be destroyed is close to an institutional imperative. Business leaders who are conducting propaganda campaigns to convince the population that anthropogenic global warming is a liberal hoax understand full well how grave is the threat, but they must maximize short-term profit and market share. If they don’t, someone else will.

This vicious cycle could well turn out to be lethal. To see how grave the danger is, simply have a look at the new Congress in the U.S., propelled into power by business funding and propaganda. Almost all are climate deniers. They have already begun to cut funding for measures that might mitigate environmental catastrophe. Worse, some are true believers; for example, the new head of a subcommittee on the environment who explained that global warming cannot be a problem because God promised Noah that there will not be another flood.

If such things were happening in some small and remote country, we might laugh. Not when they are happening in the richest and most powerful country in the world. And before we laugh, we might also bear in mind that the current economic crisis is traceable in no small measure to the fanatic faith in such dogmas as the efficient market hypothesis, and in general to what Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz, 15 years ago, called the “religion” that markets know best — which prevented the central bank and the economics profession from taking notice of an $8 trillion housing bubble that had no basis at all in economic fundamentals, and that devastated the economy when it burst.

All of this, and much more, can proceed as long as the Muashar doctrine prevails. As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.

This was adapted from a speech that Chomsky gave in March in Amsterdam.

Copyright 2011 Noam Chomsky