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Over the past week, evidence has been mounting of an intense debate in Israeli ruling circles over the launching of air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities in the not too distant future. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barack have reportedly been campaigning inside the cabinet and seeking to overcome resistance within sections of the country’s military and intelligence establishment to a war with Iran.

The internal debate was first made public by prominent journalist Nahum Barnea in Yediot Aharonot on October 28 and was confirmed by the liberal Ha’aretz newspaper last week. While pointing to the dangers of “an eternal war with Tehran,” Ha’aretz columnist Ari Shavit described the government’s decision as “the decision of our generation,” warning: “If Israel acts too late on Iran, the implications could be critical for our survival.”

Israel’s right-wing foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman dismissed the media reports as having no connection to reality, but neither he nor any other cabinet member has ruled out an attack on Iran. Speaking to the BBC yesterday, Defence Minister Barack said he did not “underestimate the nature of the Iranian threat; it is a major threat to the stability of the whole region.” He said Israel believed that harsh sanctions could halt Iran’s nuclear programs, then added that “no options should be removed from the table.”

Israeli President Shimon Peres also warned yesterday that an attack on Iran was becoming increasingly likely. “The possibility of a military attack against Iran is now closer to being applied than the application of a diplomatic option… I don’t think that any decision has been already made, but there is an impression that Iran is getting closer to nuclear weapons,” he told the Israel Hayom newspaper.

The debate in Israel takes place as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) prepares to release a report this week on Iran’s nuclear programs. Aspects of the report have been leaked to the press by unnamed Western diplomats, seeking to prepare the ground for what are likely to be sensationalised commentaries that Iran is building nuclear weapons. One source told the Financial Times yesterday, however, that the report contained “no smoking gun” but only “a gradual and telling accumulation of evidence.”

Iran has repeatedly denied any plans to build an atomic bomb. In a press conference on Saturday, Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi accused the IAEA of succumbing to Western pressure, saying: “Iran has already responded to the alleged studies in 117 pages. We’ve said time and again that these are forgeries similar to faked notes.” He drew attention to the forged documents that were used by the US to claim that Iraq was importing uranium from Niger and to justify the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

It is certainly possible that faked documents are being used to provide a pretext for war against Iran. Much of the IAEA’s “evidence” against Iran comes from American, European and Israeli intelligence agencies. Moreover, it is widely recognised that Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad is actively seeking to sabotage Iran’s nuclear programs through the use of computer viruses and the assassination of key Iranian nuclear scientists.

The release of previous IAEA reports has been preceded by new nuclear “revelations” about Iran and strident criticisms from Washington. In Israel, thinly veiled threats of a military attack on Iran have been used to intensify the pressure on the US and other powers to take stronger diplomatic measures and impose tougher sanctions.

This time, however, the content of the leaks is far more menacing. Two Israeli cabinet members—Benny Begin and Dan Meridor—are apparently opposed to air strikes on Iran but nevertheless bitterly attacked the media and the defence establishment for leaking details of the discussion. Begin described the public debate as “utterly irresponsible” for impeding “the government’s ability to make decisions,” suggesting that an attack on Iran was seriously being considered, rather than being used a diplomatic ploy.

Last Wednesday, the Israeli military test-fired a long-range ballistic missile that has the potential to strike Iran. Less widely reported was an exercise involving Israeli war planes using an airbase on the Italian island of Sardinia, which is specially fitted for training by NATO. Israeli planes used the drills to practice for long-range operations that would be needed to reach Iran. Over the weekend, US Assistant Secretary of State for Political/Military Affairs Andrew Shapiro announced the largest ever joint exercise with Israel. It will involve testing Israel’s capacity to block a ballistic missile attack of the type that Iran might launch in response to air raids on its nuclear facilities.

Several articles in the US media have pointed to concerns in Washington that Israel might unilaterally attack Iran. An American official told CNN over the weekend that in the past the White House had thought it would receive advanced warning of any Israeli military action against Iran, but “now that doesn’t seem so ironclad.” In reality, Israel is completely dependent economically, politically and strategically on the US and would not take action without Washington’s tacit approval at least. Far from being at odds with the US, Israeli plans for attacking Iran are in line with military preparations by the US and Britain that were leaked in British newspapers last week (See “US/Britain prepare for war against Iran”.)

At last weekend’s G20 summit, the US and France both warned of tough action against Iran and underlined their support for Israel. US President Barack Obama highlighted the “continuing threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program” and his agreement with French President Nicholas Sarkozy to maintain “unprecedented pressure” on Iran. For his part, Sarkozy declared: “Iran’s behaviour and this obsessional desire to acquire nuclear military [capability] is in violation of all international rules… If Israel’s existence were threatened, France would not stand idly by.”

Israeli preparations for a war with Iran are not motivated primarily by the “nuclear threat.” It is an open secret that Israel has had its own nuclear weapons for decades and the means to deliver them anywhere in the region. Unlike Iran, Israel has refused to sign the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty or to allow IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities.

While the press constantly refers to the Iranian “threat,” Israel, unlike Iran, has a long record of unprovoked attacks on countries within the region. These included the 1981 air strike on Iraq’s nuclear reactor and a similar attack in 2007 on a Syrian site where the US claimed Syria was building a nuclear reactor. This latter raid was widely viewed as a practice run for air strikes against Iran.

The Israeli political establishment remains intent on maintaining its military advantage over any regional rival, but the current push for air strikes against Iran is driven by the political and economic crisis within the region and Israel itself. The Israeli elite has been deeply concerned by the revolutionary upheavals of the working class in the Middle East and North Africa that have removed or threaten to remove regimes on which the Israeli state has depended for decades. In particular, the uprising in Egypt that led to the replacement of President Hosni Mubarak by an unstable regime resting on the Egyptian military has undermined Israel’s position within the region.

Above all, the Israeli ruling class fears the movement of Israeli workers and youth that resulted in the country’s largest ever protests in September, directed against the government and its policies that have produced a profound social divide between rich and poor. Those protests, which renewed last month, threaten to link up with workers and youth internationally over social inequality and poverty, particularly within the Middle East.

A war by the Netanyahu government against Iran would, at least initially, bury the class issues under an outpouring of chauvinism and racism, and poison relations between workers and young people throughout the Middle East. It must be opposed by the working class in Israel and throughout the region and internationally on the basis of a fight for the United Socialist States of the Middle East.

By Peter Symonds

Peter Symonds is a WSWS.org writer

Medical professionals in Israel are being accused of failing to document and report injuries caused by the ill-treatment and torture of detainees by security personnel in violation of their ethical code.

A report by two Israeli human rights organisations, the Public Committee Against Torture (PCAT) and Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), claims that medical staff are also failing to report suspicion of torture and ill-treatment, returning detainees to their interrogators and passing medical information to interrogators.

The report, Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim, to be published later this month, is based on 100 cases of Palestinian detainees brought to PCAT since 2007. It says: “This report reveals significant evidence arousing the suspicion that many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; that they allow Israeli Security Agency interrogators to use torture; approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total immunity for the torturers.”

Alleged ill-treatment of detainees, some of whose cases are detailed in the 61-page report, includes beatings, being held for long periods in stress positions, hands being tightly tied with plastic cuffs, sleep deprivation and threats. Israel denies torturing or ill-treating prisoners.

Doctors are failing to keep proper medical records of injuries caused during interrogations. The report cites “countless cases wherein individuals testified to injuries inflicted upon them during detention or in interrogation, and yet the medical record from the hospital or the prison service makes no mention of it.”

Without such evidence, the report says, it is very difficult to obtain legal redress for ill-treatment. “Effective documentation of the injury can be a decisive factor in initiating an investigation, in bringing the perpetrators to trial and in ensuring that justice is carried out.”

A medical report should include a description and photograph of the injury, the victim’s account of events and a record of treatment, the report says.

Among the cases it cites is “BA”, arrested in November 2010. In an affidavit he alleged he was beaten, held in stress positions and deprived of sleep. He said he told doctors of his ill-treatment and said he was suffering from severe arm, leg and back pain. His medical record shows that he was seen by doctors but the only comment noted is that the patient had no complaints and was in good overall condition.

Another, “MA”, arrested in June 2008, claimed in an affidavit that his hands were cuffed with tight plastic ties, he was held in kneeling position resting on his fingertips for hours, and his head was slammed into a bench 20 times causing an eye injury. A medical report the following day included a comment from a doctor: “Overall condition satisfactory, heartbeat regular.” A further examination, two weeks later, resulted in doctor’s comment: “Complains of pain in teeth, eyes”. A few days later, a judge referred MA to an eye doctor for treatment with the comment, “Claims he was beaten in the course of his arrest, complains that he does not feel well and complains of blurring in the eyes”.

The report also accuses medics of returning detainees to interrogators following treatment of injuries. This, it says, is in violation of ethical obligations and “also serves as a stamp of approval for the interrogators, who rely on the doctors’ action as having granted medical permission to continue with their practices”.

Among the PCAT/PHR report’s recommendations are clear guidelines regarding the medical treatment of prisoners, investigations of and disciplinary action against staff who violate rules, and protection for whistleblowers.

Israel prohibits torture or “inhuman treatment” during interrogation, although its high court has ruled that physical means of interrogation could be defensible to save lives.

“In Israel it is illegal to abuse inmates, including security prisoners,” said government spokesman Mark Regev. “Guidelines have been passed to the relevant authorities. If years ago the guidelines were not clear, they are today. And if there are allegations of wrongdoing against people in custody, they are investigated thoroughly.”

The ministry of health and prisons service did not respond to requests for comment.

By Harriet Sherwood

3 November 2011

@ The Guardian

Because “Christian” Kenya was reaching out to “Jews”, Muslims had “a responsibility” to act, said a spokesman for al-Shabaab, the Somali jihadist group.

Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, said his country would “make everything available” for Kenya to secure its borders and boost internal security as it continues its incursion into its anarchic neighbour.

There were few details of the surprise deal, which came a month after Kenya’s invasion of Somalia to hunt down the Islamists.

But Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, said: “Kenya’s enemies are Israel’s enemies”.

“We have similar forces planning to bring us down,” he said after meeting Raila Odinga, Kenya’s prime minister, who was visiting Jerusalem. “I see it as an opportunity to strengthen our ties.”

News of the agreement immediately drew fresh threats from al-Shabaab, which has been fighting Somalia’s Western-backed government since 2007.

“We want to tell the Muslim world that we have the same religion, the same faith and the same god,” Mohammed Ali Rage, al-Shabaab’s spokesman, said in a message broadcast on jihadist radio stations.

“It is their responsibility to support their Muslim brothers in Somalia because the Kenyan Christians are seeking support from the Jews in Israel.” Analysts warned that publicly linking Israel to the Kenyan mission threatened to “erode” the broad backing for the offensive among moderate Somalis.

“This move will give [al-Shabaab] room to push the perception that this is not just Kenya fighting for itself, but that it is a coalition of Christian or non-Muslims fighting against Muslims,” said Andrews Atta-Asamoah of the Institute for Security Studies in Nairobi, the Kenyan capital.

“It would have been preferable to delay this, or to accept help covertly.

“Now al-Shabaab will be the beneficiary, it will get more funding, more recruits, and the support that Kenya was getting on the ground will be eroded.”

The deal could also backfire within Kenya, said another Somalia expert in Nairobi.

“There are large numbers of radicalised Muslim youth in Kenya already, and this kind of thing, using megaphone diplomacy to boast that Israel’s behind you, will do no end of harm to trying to contain them,” he said.

But Mr Odinga said that increasing threats “called for more advanced and improved security measures”. Israel gave Kenya logistical help following al-Qaeda attacks on the US embassy in the capital, Nairobi, in 1998.

Four years later, al-Qaeda blew up a hotel on Kenya’s coast popular with Israeli tourists, and tried but failed to shoot down a holiday jet taking off from Mombasa for Tel Aviv.

The news of the fresh Kenyan-Israeli agreement came as Unicef, the UN’s children’s charity, said the number of children killed and wounded in southern Somalia had soared in recent weeks.

Sikander Khan, the agency’s representative for Somalia, said that 24 children were killed and 58 seriously injured in conflict in October – nearly double the number in every other month this year.

By Mike Pflanz

15 November  2011

@ The Telegraph

Following Tunisia’s first fair and free elections on October 27, the Western media responded with a characteristic sense of fear and alarm. For many, it seemed that the ghost of the Islamic menace was back to haunt ‘Western values’ throughout the Arab world. The narrative employed by media outlets was no more than cleverly disguised Islamophobia, masquerading as genuine concern for democracy and the welfare of women and minority groups.

The victory of the Ennahda (meaning Renaissance) Party was all but predictable. Official results showed that the party won more than 41 percent of the vote, providing it with 90 seats in the 217-member new Constituent Assembly, or parliament.

To quell fears of Islamic resurgence, leading party members seemed to direct their message to outsiders (the US and Western powers), rather than the Tunisian people themselves. Ennahda’s Secretary General Hamadi Jebali, slated to be the next prime minister, labored to “reassure secularists and investors, nervous about the prospect of Islamists holding power in one of the Arab world’s most liberal countries, by saying it would not stop tourists wearing bikinis on the beaches nor impose Islamic banking” (BBC, October 26).

Jebali, like the party leader Rachid Ghannouchi, understands well the danger of having Ennahda blacklisted by disgruntled Western allies, whose past conduct in the region is predicated on ostracizing any political entity that dared to challenge their interests. The European Union welcomed the results of the elections, but, of course, the subtle line was one of ‘let’s wait and see.’ Ennahda’s own performance is likely to determine its ability to overcome the difficult, albeit implicit probationary period designated by Western allies in these situations.

“The moderate Islamist Ennahda party is in talks with secular rivals about forming a coalition government,” reported Voice of America on October 28. The patronizing language of ‘moderation’, ‘extremism’ and ‘secularism’ is once again being employed to define the Arab political milieu. These are convenient labels that change according to where Western interests lie. The irony is completed by the fact that former Tunisia president, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and now jailed Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, were once models for both ‘secularism’ and ‘moderation’ from American and European viewpoints.

The Western assessment of Tunisia’s future under an Islamic-led government actually has little to do with bikinis or alcohol. The question is entirely political, and is concerned with Tunisia’s attempt at seeking true sovereignty and independence from western hegemony.

Now that Ennahda has won Tunisia’s elections, and the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt is expected to secure substantial gains in Egypt’s first post-revolution elections in November, a debate is raging around the new political map of the region.

Syria, naturally, is high on the agenda.

The debate is rife with mixed messages. Countries like the US and France, for example, pose as the guarantors of democracy, yet consciously confuse the term with sheer economic interests and military influence. This deliberate moral and political flexibility is what Ed Husain addressed in the Council on Foreign Relations website when he asked, “Is the US better off sticking with Syria’s Assad?”

The subject is meant to be examined entirely from a rigid realpolitik perspective, without allowing any ethical considerations to taint the investigative process. “Therefore, the assumption that a Syrian regime without Assad and the Alawites at the helm would mean an isolated Iran is wishful thinking at best, and uncertain at worse,” he concluded.

It other words, if Western invention in Syria can contribute to Iran’s isolation, then the US would abandon Syria’s Assad in exchange for a more advantageous alternative. While one appreciates such candid, although amoral, analysis, we must remain vigilant of any attempt at confusing the practical and materialist drive behind US and European foreign policy with notions of women’s liberation, minority rights or any other. If Tunisian (or Egyptian, Syrian, Libyan, etc) freedom was a paramount concern for Western powers, they would have isolated the dictators who emasculated and tormented their countries for many years.

Unfortunately, it is Western media that often determines the nature and extent of political discourses relevant to the Arab and Middle East region. Despite their repeated failures, they continue to unleash one offensive after another, creating fears that don’t exist, and exaggerating small events to represent grave phenomena.

One example is James Rosen’s article, “Arab Spring Optimism Gives Way to Fear of Islamic Rise,” which was published on Fox News online (October 28). “From the first stirrings of change in the Middle East nine months ago, optimism at the prospect of 100 million young people rising up to seize their democratic freedoms has been tempered by fear in Western capitals that radical Islamists might also rise up and try to hijack the so-called Arab Spring,” he wrote.

It matters little to the writer that Western powers were in fact filled with nothing but trepidation when the throne of Mubarak – once the US’ most faithful ally in the region – was taken down by millions of Egyptians. Nor is it important to him that it was NATO that hijacked the Libyan uprising (and they attempted to repeat their costly act in Syria). What seems to matter to Rosen is the inflated notion that ‘radical Islamists’ might rise up and hijack the ‘Arab Spring’.

The debate regarding Islam in politics is likely to continue and intensify. Attempts will also be made to heighten or lower Western anxiety regarding the future of the ‘Arab Spring’. This discussion is not concerned with religion or the rights and welfare of Arab people. It is based only on crude political calculations, as demonstrated in an October 27 House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in Washington (as reported in Fox News on October 28).

The Middle East “really worries me,” said Rep. Dan Burton. He asked Secretary of State Hillary Clinton what the Obama administration “plans to do make sure that we don’t have a radical government taking over those places.”

“I think a lot of the leaders are saying the right things and some are saying things that do give pause to us,” she said. “We’re going to do all that we can within our power to basically try to influence outcomes.”

Is any further comment necessary?

By Ramzy Baroud

Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an internationally-syndicated columnist and the editor of PalestineChronicle.com.

 

 

The IAEA report on Iran’s alleged nuclear programme was surrounded by a media frenzy in Israel supporting an attack.

Skimming the newspapers as I rushed to get my children ready for school, I suddenly understood that Israel might actually be preparing for a military attack against Iran. “[United States Secretary of Defence Leon] Panetta Demanded Commitment to Coordinate Action in Iran” read one headline, and “A Bomb at Arm’s Length” read another.

Feeding this hype were a series of military events that had been planned months in advance yet mysteriously coincided with the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. For four days straight all of the major television channels repeatedly showed images of Israel preparing for war.

It began with a report on Israel’s testing of a long-range ballistic missile, which emphasised the missile’s capacity to carry nuclear warheads. This was followed by interviews with pilots who were part of a comprehensive Israeli Air Force drill on long-range attacks carried out at an Italian NATO air base. Archival images of a missile being launched from an Israeli submarine were also shown. Ha’aretz readers were told that the submarine was important because it would enable Israel to carry out a second strike in case of a nuclear war.

These images of offensive arrangements were followed by images of Israel’s defence preparations. On November 3rd, the three major news channels dedicated several minutes of air time to covering a drill simulating an attack on central Israel; these clips showed people being carried on stretchers and soldiers treating casualties who had been hit by chemical weapons. A day later, Ha’aretz reported that the military preparations against Iran had indeed been upgraded.

Iran with nuclear capabilities has been continuously presented as an existential threat to Israel. On October 31, in the opening speech of the Knesset’s winter session Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that a “nuclearised Iran will constitute a serious threat to the Middle East and to the whole world and obviously also a direct and serious threat against us,” adding that Israel’s security conception cannot be based on defence alone but must also include “offensive capabilities which serve as the basis for deterrence.”

Analysts repeatedly mentioned that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and Reuven Barko from Yisrael Hayom even compared Iran to Nazi Germany. One cannot underestimate the impact of this analogy on the collective psyche of Jewish Israelis.

Barko went on to connect Hamlet’s phrase “to be or not to be” to Israel’s current situation, while posing the existing dilemma confronting the State as “to hit or not to hit”. President Shimon Peres claimed that Iran is the only country in the world “that threatens the existence of another country”, but neglected to mention that for generations, the Palestinians have been deprived of their right to self-determination.

On the day when the International Atomic Energy Agency report was finally published practically all Israeli media outlets described it as a “smoking gun”. The report, according to the media, provides concrete evidence that Iran’s nuclear programme is also aimed at producing weapons. Zvi Yechezkeli from Channel Ten described it as “the end of the era of Iranian ambiguousness”, but failed, of course, to remark that Israel’s own ambiguity regarding its nuclear capacities continues unhindered; Roni Daniel from Channel Two declared that “we are relieved” by the report, suggesting that Israel’s claims have now been corroborated and that the report can serve to justify both the imposition of harsher sanctions against Iran and even an attack.

Notwithstanding the endless war mongering, most Israeli commentators claimed that the frenzy was no more than a “nuclear spin”. The majority of political analysts tended to agree that the media campaign, which presented Israel as seriously preparing to attack Iran, was orchestrated just in order to pressure the international community to impose harsher sanctions against Iran. Channel Ten’s Or Heller put it succinctly when he said: “It appears that neither Iran nor the Israeli public is the target of what is going on here, but first and foremost it is the international community, the Americans, the British.”

The commentators also noted that there is wall-to-wall opposition to an Israeli assault, including the US, Europe, Russia and China. Alex Fishman summed up the international sentiment when he wrote: “If someone in Israel thinks that there is a green or a yellow light coming from Washington for a military attack against Iran – this person has no inkling whatsoever of what is going on; the light remains the same, a glaring red.”

The portrayal of Israel as a neighbourhood bully who feigns a rage attack while calling out to his friends to hold him back is not particularly reassuring, however.

After 10 days of media frenzy, Defence Minister Ehud Barak tried to calm the public by saying that “not even 500 people would be killed” in the event of an attack – but he failed to say that there would be no attack.

Yossi Verter from Ha’aretz explained that the media hype serves Barak’s interests. “A successful attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities under his ministerial leadership can rehabilitate his personal status, and help him recover the public’s trust.” Verter cites a leading member of the political system, who claims that “Barak is convinced that only a person of his security stature can lead perhaps the most fateful battle in Israel’s history since the War of Independence.”

Regardless of whether Netanyahu and Barak are already set on launching an assault, the media hype and the portrayal of Iran as constituting an existential threat to Israel surely help to produce the necessary conditions for a military campaign.

What is remarkable about this saber rattling is its abstraction. Not a single analyst noted that entering war is easy but ending it is far more difficult, particularly if on the other side stands a regional power with vast resources and a well-trained military (unlike Hamas or Hezbollah). And, of course, no one really talked about the likelihood of a gory future or what kind of life we were planning for our children. This kind of abstraction makes war palatable, providing a great service to the war machine.

By Neve Gordon

18 November 2011

@ Al Jazeera

Neve Gordon is the author of Israel’s Occupation and can be reached through his website.

Last February Britain’s then defense minister Liam Fox attended a dinner in Tel Aviv with a group described as senior Israelis. Alongside him sat Adam Werritty, a lobbyist whose “improper relations” with the minister would lead eight months later to Fox’s hurried resignation.

According to several reports in the British media the Israelis in attendance at the dinner were representatives of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, while Fox and Werritty were accompanied by Matthew Gould, Britain’s ambassador to Israel. A former British diplomat has now claimed that the topic of discussion that evening was a secret plot to attack Iran.

The official inquiry castigating the UK’s former defence secretary for what has come to be known as a “cash-for-access” scandal appears to have only scratched the surface of what Fox and accomplice Adam Werritty may have been up to when they met for dinner in Tel Aviv.

Little was made of the dinner in the 10-page inquiry report published last month by Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet’s top civil servant.

Instead O’Donnell concentrated on other aspects of Werritty’s behaviour: the 33-year-old friend of Fox’s had presented himself as the minister’s official adviser and jetted around the world with him arranging meetings with businessmen.

The former minister’s allies, seeking to dismiss the gravity of the case against him, have described Werritty as a harmless dreamer. Following his resignation, Fox himself claimed O’Donnell’s report had exonerated him of putting national security at risk.

However, a spate of new concerns raised in the wake of the inquiry challenge both of these assumptions. These include questions about the transparency of the O’Donnell investigation, the extent of Fox and Werritty’s ties to Israel and the unexplained role of Gould.

Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan until 2004, when he turned whistle blower on British and US collusion on torture, said senior British government officials were profoundly disturbed by the O’Donnell inquiry, seeing it as a “white wash.”

Murray himself accused O’Donnell of being “at the most charitable interpretation, economical with the truth.”

Two well-placed contacts alerted Murray to Gould’s central – though largely ignored – role in the Fox-Werritty relationship, he said.

Murray has pieced together evidence that Fox, Werritty and Gould met on at least six occasions over the past two years or so, despite the O’Donnell inquiry claiming they had met only twice. Gould is the only ambassador Fox and Werritty are known to have met together.

In an inexplicable break with British diplomatic and governmental protocol, officials were not present at a single one of the six meetings between the three men. No record was taken of any of the discussions.

Murray, who first made public his concerns on his personal blog, said a source familiar with the O’Donnell inquiry told him the parameters of the investigation were designed to divert attention away from the more damaging aspects of Fox and Werritty’s behaviour.

Subsequently, the foreign office has refused to respond to questions, including from an MP, about the Tel Aviv dinner. Officials will not say who the Israelis were, what was discussed or even who paid for the evening, though under Whitehall rules all hospitality should be declared.

Also unexplained is why Fox rejected requests by his own staff to attend the dinner, and why Werritty was privy to such a high-level meeting when he had no security clearance.

Nonetheless, O’Donnell appeared inadvertently to confirm that Mossad representatives were present at the dinner during questioning from an MP at a meeting of the House of Commons’ Public Administration Committee this week.

Responding to a question about the dinner from opposition MP Paul Flynn, O’Donnell said: “The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State [Fox] had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador [Gould]. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job.”

The real concern among government officials, Murray said, is that Fox, Werritty and Gould were conspiring in a “rogue” foreign policy – opposed to the British government’s stated aims – that was authored by Mossad and Israel’s neoconservative allies in Washington.

This suspicion was partially confirmed by a report in the Guardian last month, as O’Donnell was carrying out his investigation. It cited unnamed government officials saying they were worried that Fox and Werritty had been pursuing what was termed an “alternative” government policy.

Murray said the Tel Aviv dinner was especially significant. His contact with access to O’Donnell’s investigations had told him that the discussion that night focused on ways to ensure Britain assisted in creating favourable diplomatic conditions for an attack on Iran.

Israel is widely believed to favor a military strike on Iran, in an attempt to set back its nuclear program. Israel claims Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian nuclear energy project.

Israel has its own large but undeclared nuclear arsenal and is known to be fearful of losing its nuclear monopoly in the region.

Britain, like many in the international community, including the US government, officially favors imposing sanctions on Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions.

The episode of the Tel Aviv dinner, Murray said, raises “vital concerns about a secret agenda for war at the core of government, comparable to [former British prime minister Tony] Blair’s determination to drive through a war on Iraq.”

The Guardian revealed this month that the defense ministry under Fox had drawn up detailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran, including allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean, as a base from which to launch an attack.

The O’Donnell inquiry has done little to allay many officials’ concerns about the series of strange meetings involving Fox, Werritty and Gould.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, has so far refused opposition demands to hold a full public inquiry into Fox and Werritty’s relationship. And the three men at the centre of the saga have refused to discuss the nature of their ties.

This month revelations surfaced that Werritty had had dealings with other government ministers.

“It is deeply inadequate of the prime minister to continue to refuse to probe this issue further,” said shadow defense spokesman Kevan Jones, in response to the new information.

The British media have cautiously raised the issue of apparent Israeli links to Fox and Werritty.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the pair secretly met the head of the Mossad – possibly at the Tel Aviv dinner, though the paper has not specified where or when the meeting took place.

Last month the Independent on Sunday claimed that Werritty had close ties to the Mossad as well as to “US-backed neocons” plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime. The Mossad were reported to have assumed Werritty was Fox’s “chief of staff.”

In addition, the O’Donnell report revealed that Werritty’s many trips overseas alongside Fox had been funded by at least six donors, three of whom were leading members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

The donations were made to two organisations, Atlantic Bridge and Pargav, that Werritty helped to establish. Werritty apparently used the organizations as a way to gain access to Conservative government ministers, including three in the defense ministry.

The advisory board of Atlantic Bridge, which Werritty founded with Fox, included William Hague, the current foreign minister, Michael Gove, the education minister, and George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Despite Werritty’s apparently well-established connections to the ruling Conservative party, the media coverage has implied at most that he was a lone “rogue operator,” hoping to use his contacts with Fox and other ministers to manipulate British government policy.

Murray, however, raises the more troubling question of whether Werritty was actually given access, through Fox and Gould, to the heart of the British government. Were all three secretly trying to pursue a policy on Iran favored by Israel and its ideological allies in the US?

The answer, according to Murray, may lie in a series of meetings between the three that have slowly come to light since O’Donnell published his findings.

According to the 2,700-word report, Werritty joined Fox on 18 of his official trips overseas, and the pair met another 22 times at the defense ministry, with almost none of their discussions recorded by officials. The Guardian has also reported that Fox’s staff repeatedly warned him off his relationship with Werritty but were overruled.

Despite the serious concerns raised about Werritty by defense ministry staff, Gould, one of the country’s most senior diplomats, appears nonetheless to have cultivated a close relationship with Werritty as well as Fox.

According to Murray’s sources, Gould and Werritty “had been meeting and communicating for years.” The foreign office has refused to answer questions about whether the two had any contacts.

When Murray sent an email request late at night this week for “all communications” between Gould and Werritty, he received a response from the foreign office in less than 90 minutes stating that providing an answer was “likely to exceed the cost limit”.

As well as noting that the answer should have been straightforward unless Gould and Werritty had had a protracted correspondence, Murray wrote on his blog: “The Freedom of Information team in the FCO is not a 24 hour unit. Plainly not only are they hiding the Gould/Werritty correspondence, they are primed and on alert for this cover-up operation.”

O’Donnell’s report mentions a second meeting between the three men, in September 2010. On that occasion, Gould met Fox in what a foreign office spokesman has described as a “pre-posting briefing call” – a sort of high-level induction for ambassadors to acquaint themselves with their new posting.

Werritty was also present, according to O’Donnell, “as an individual with some experience in…the security situation in the Middle East.” His participation at the meeting was “not appropriate,” O’Donnell concluded.

However, Murray said such briefings would never be conducted at ministerial level, and certainly not by the defense minister himself.

He added that a senior official in the defense ministry had alerted him to two other peculiar aspects of the meeting: no officials were present to take notes, as would be expected; and their conversation took place in the ministry’s dining room, not in Fox’s office.

“As someone who worked for many years as a diplomat, I know how these things should work,” Murray said. “So much of this affair simply smells wrong.”

Murray’s queries to the foreign office about this meeting have gone unanswered but have revealed other unexpected details not included in the O’Donnell report.

In a statement in late October, after the report’s publication, a foreign office spokesman said Gould had met Fox and Werritty earlier than previously known – before Gould was appointed ambassador to Israel and when Fox was in opposition as shadow defense minister.

The foreign office has refused to answer questions about this meeting too – including when it occurred and why – or to respond to a parliamentary question on the matter tabled by MP Jeremy Corbyn. All that is known is that it must have taken place before May 2010, when Fox was appointed defense minister.

In replying to Corbyn’s questions, William Hague, the foreign minister, acknowledged yet another meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould – at a private social engagement in the summer of 2010.

Again, the foreign office has refused to answer further questions, including one from Corbyn about who else attended the social engagement.

The trio were also together shortly before the Tel Aviv dinner, when Fox made a speech at the hawkish Herzliya security conference in a session on the strategic threat posed by Iran.

And a sixth meeting has come to light. Fox and Gould were photographed together at a “We believe in Israel” conference in London in May 2011. Werritty was again present.

“That furtive meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould in the MOD dining room [in September 2010], deliberately held away from Fox’s office where it should have taken place, and away from the MOD officials who should have been there, now looks less like briefing and more like plotting,” Murray wrote on his blog about the Ministry of Defense meeting.

Murray said he believed more meetings will surface. During questioning at the Commons’ Public Administration Committee this week, O’Donnell made two references to “meetings” between Gould and Fox before the general election and Fox’s appointment to the post of defence secretary.

Until now, only one such meeting had been admitted by the foreign office.

Murray noted: “A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?”

Both Werritty and Gould are considered to have an expertise on Iran.

Gould was the deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Iran from 2003 to 2005, a role in which he was responsible for coordinating on US policy towards Iran. Next he was moved to the British embassy in Washington at a time when the neoconservatives still held sway in the White House.

Werritty, meanwhile, has travelled frequently to Iran where he has teamed up with opposition groups seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime. On his return from one trip to Iran he was called in by Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service for a debriefing, according to the Independent on Sunday.

Werritty also arranged for Fox to travel with him to Iran in summer 2007, when Fox was shadow defense minister. And he organised a meeting in May 2009 at the British parliament between Fox and an Iranian lobbyist with links to the current regime in Tehran.

The murky dealings between Fox, Werritty and Gould, and the government’s refusal to clarify what took place between them, is evidence, said Murray, that a serious matter is being hidden. His fear, and that of his contacts inside the senior civil service, is that “a neo-con cell of senior [British] ministers and officials” were secretly setting policy in coordination with Israel and the US.

Gould’s unexamined role is of particular concern, as he is still in place in his post in Israel.

Murray has noted that, in appointing Gould, a British Jew, to the ambassadorship in Israel in September last year, the foreign office broke with long-standing policy. No Jewish diplomat has held the post before because of concerns that it might lead to a conflict of interest, or at the very least create the impression of dual loyalty. Similar restrictions have been in place to avoid Catholics holding the post of ambassador to the Vatican.

Given these traditional concerns, Gould was a strange choice. He is a self-declared Zionist who has cultivated an image that led the Forward, the most prominent Jewish newspaper in the US, to describe him recently as “not just an ambassador who’s Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador.”

By Jonathan Cook

25 November 2011

@ Countercurrents.org

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.

 

 

 

Without cordial relations between Pakistan and India, peace in the Asian region would always remain a dream but can never translate into reality. Trade is the only thing on both sides of the border through which both nations could come in close contact. We know that war is not the solution for any problem and we have realized that in sixty and more years, war, exchange of harsh words and blame game have not been good for both countries. The “Trend of Hate” though deeply entrenched in the public of both the countries does not mean we cannot overturn the situation.

An historical move was made when on October 2nd in the meeting of Federal Cabinet of Pakistan, it was decided that “India is the Most Favored Nation (MNF) of Pakistan for Trade”. The decision has come at a time when terrorism in the region has strengthened its hold and the religious fundamentalists love to hate India. Similarly, within India, Hindu fanatic organizations and their followers do not favour amicable relations between India with Pakistan. But the Pakistan’s government led by Pakistan Peoples Party defied all the challenges and told the public on both sides that it was time to switch the “Trend of Hate” into “Trend of Love”.

The decision to declare India MFN was neither simple nor easy for the democratically elected government as it was fighting its war against terrorism in tribal areas and other parts of the country. It is a noteworthy step initiated by Pakistan to enhance bilateral ties between the two countries that had fought two major wars and many minor rifts. The move is a good omen demonstrative of reconciliatory relations between two nuclear-powered neighbours.

Lawmakers, diplomats, businessmen, human rights activists and peace lovers on both sides have welcomed the Pakistani decision expressing hope that it would not only enhance trade between the two countries and the region but also prove a milestone in confidence-building between the two nations as well and pave the road towards resolution of all fundamental conflicts.

Appreciating the government’s decision, Pakistan’s Ambassador in United States Mr. Hussain Haqqani says; “Afghan Transit Trade Agreement & MFN for India are important steps towards reorienting Pakistan from martial to mercantile state”.

Many experts are of the view that Pakistan’s decision of MFN status for India would not only contribute towards enhanced trade relations between the two countries, this important initiative would change the public’s sentiments of hatred for each other and would empower the region ensuring peace in the region.

MNA Ms.Farahnaz Ispahani the Presidential Adviser applauding the decision of her party’s government remarked that we needed peace in the region, the only thing that could encourage trade and thus empower the region, beat terrorism, fight fanaticism and boost Pakistan’s economy. She further said, “It is an historical and long awaited decision that will have a positive impact on our economies and strengthen ties between Pakistan and India.”

For a long time, both the countries have experienced enmity but got nothing out of it. Since 1947, both countries have been at loggerheads, which have bred nothing but poverty, unemployment, terrorism, instability and everlasting catastrophes. Why are we incapable to understand that the division of the Sub-continent was not to fan hate mongering but to live in peace?

What did we reap in the wars of 1948, 1965 and 1971- nothing but loss of lives, fast deteriorating economy and instability of the region.

Public and governments on both sides now should reject the culture of hate, blame game and stand united for the sake of regional peace and security. It is high time that this region is subjected to the much-needed prosperity that only peace and love can guarantee and the day is not far when the whole world would see a happier, progressive and prosperous Asia.

By Riaz Ali Toori

Riaz Ali Toori is a journalist from Parachinar. He can be reached at @RiazToori

 

 

 

The International Labour Organization, an agency of the United Nations, released a report Monday pointing to a disastrous global jobs situation and a “vicious cycle” sending the world economy into a new downturn.

“The next few months will be crucial for avoiding a dramatic downturn in employment and a further significant aggravation of social unrest,” warns the opening editorial to the World of Work report, released ahead of a G20 meeting later this week.

In addition to documenting the employment situation, affecting both advanced and “developing” countries, the reports presents a damning portrait of contemporary world capitalism: growing financialization, declining taxes on the wealthy and corporations, and a collapse in the share of income going to the working class.

Three years after the crash of 2008, “economic growth in major advanced economies has come to a halt and some countries have re-entered recession, notably in Europe,” the ILO notes. “Growth has also slowed down in large emerging and developing countries.”

The vast majority of countries categorized as having advanced economies—mainly in the United States and Europe—have seen a slowdown in employment growth in the most recent quarter, and more than half have seen employment declines. At the same time, about half of those countries categorized as “emerging or developing” have seen declines in employment, including Russia and Mexico.

The advanced economies have 13 million fewer jobs today than in 2007, with the United States (6.7 million) and Spain (2.3 million) accounting for more than half of this figure. Due to the growth in the labor force, to restore pre-crisis employment rates, 27 million jobs would have to be added in advanced countries, and 80 million globally, over the next two years.

The jobs situation is particularly bleak for young people, and this holds true in almost all parts of the world. “Among countries with recently available data, more than one in five youth [aged 15-24], i.e. 20 per cent, were unemployed as of the first quarter of 2011—against total unemployment of 9.6 per cent.”

According to the ILO’s projections, which are predicated on the assumption that there will not be renewed decline in global growth, the global employment rate in advanced countries is not expected to return to pre-crisis levels until far past 2016.

The prospects of a recovery in employment and economic growth are undermined by a number of factors, including a renewed financial crisis in Europe and a turn by governments throughout the world to fiscal austerity. Sharply declining wages for workers, particularly in advanced countries, is leading to a fall-off in consumption.

“In short,” the ILO writes, “there is a vicious cycle of a weaker economy affecting jobs and society, in turn depressing real investment and consumption, thus the economy and so on.”

Any prospect of a return to growth is also undermined by increasingly bitter national conflicts between the different capitalist powers. “While in 2008-2009 there was an attempt to coordinate policies, especially among G20 countries, there is evidence that countries are now acting in isolation,” the report states.

The ILO expresses the hope that governments will institute job-creation programs to resolve the crisis. However, the impossibility of this happening is highlighted by the fact that the report cites the United States as the only major advanced country to advance a “national jobs plan.” In fact, the Obama administration’s proposal, even if enacted in full, would be no more than a drop in the bucket. Since it was announced in September, it has already been scaled down significantly. Whatever is passed will consist largely of tax cuts for corporations.

The economic crisis is, predictably, producing a sharp increase in social discontent. The year 2011 has already seen a significant growth of the class struggle, beginning with the revolutionary upheavals in the Middle East and North Africa. They have since expanded to Europe, Latin America, and the United States, including in the Occupy Wall Street movement that began in September.

According to a metric of “social unrest” based on various indicators, including unemployment, the ILO calculates that 40 percent of the countries surveyed have seen a significant increase in the prospect of unrest. The likelihood of social unrest has increased particularly sharply in advanced countries. Moreover, the majority of countries worldwide reported a collapse of public confidence in national governments.

Dissatisfaction over the availability of quality jobs is over 80 percent in sub-Saharan Africa and over 70 percent in Central and Eastern Europe. It is over 60 percent in the Middle East and North Africa, though significantly higher in some countries, including Egypt.

Anger over the jobs situation is higher than 70 percent in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain—countries that are currently at the center of the European-wide drive to slash social programs and eliminate all previous gains of the working class.

The financialization of the world economy

Global social conditions have deteriorated sharply since the Crash of 2008, precipitated by the collapse of a massive speculative bubble inflated over the previous decade. While the fall of global stock markets led to an immediate decline in the wealth of the financial aristocracy, the actions of governments, led by the United States, have served to quickly reverse this trend.

In addition to documenting global labor conditions, the ILO report includes some important data on the financialization of the world economy, and the parallel process of wealth transfer—both before and after the 2008 crash.

It notes, disapprovingly, that in the aftermath of the crash “countries have increasingly focused on appeasing financial markets” rather than restoring employment, and that this “has often centered on fiscal austerity and how to help the banks—without necessarily reforming the bank practices that led to the crisis, or providing a vision for how the real economy will recover.”

In 2008, the capital share among financial corporations worldwide fell by more than 25 percent, after a decade of steady growth. Only a year later, however, shares were back to pre-crisis levels, a direct product of the various bank bailout schemes.

“On the other hand,” the ILO noted, “the decline in the non-financial sector has been more gradual, but capital shares for this group—which account for 87 percent of employment in advanced countries—continue to decline.”

This has produced what the report refers to as a “paradox”: “The impact of the global economic crisis of 2007-08 on the financial sector was short-lived initially—despite it being at the very origin of the downturn.”

The growth of corporate profits since the crash have accrued largely to financial corporations. Non-financial corporations, moreover, instead of investing have funneled money into the stock market. “In 2009, more than 36 per cent of profits were distributed in terms of dividends, compared with less than 35 per cent in 2007 and less than 29 per cent in 2000…”

This process of financialization is part of a longer-term trend, in which wealth accumulation through speculation has increasingly replaced productive investment. Far from reversing this trend, the economic crisis has only exacerbated it.

At the same time, an ever smaller share of income has gone to the working class. According to the ILO, “the wage share—the share of domestic income that goes to labor—has declined in almost three quarters of the 69 countries for which data is available.” This is also a long-term trend.

In addition to direct infusions of money into the banks, the transfer of wealth to the corporate and financial aristocracy has been facilitated by a tax policy that places an ever greater share of the tax burden on the working class.

Between 2000 and 2008, 43 percent of countries decreased their top income tax rate, while 70 percent of countries decreased their corporate profit tax rate. During the same period, 30 percent of countries increased value added taxes or consumption taxes, which disproportionately target the working class.

Overall, the top personal income tax rate globally fell from 31.4 percent in 2003 to 29.1 percent in 2009. Corporate taxes have fallen from 29.5 percent to 25 percent in the same period.

Again, this trend has only continued since the 2008 crisis. The proportion of government revenue from regressive consumption taxes has increased, while the income and corporate taxes have declined.

The ILO’s policy recommendations, on the other hand, are both grossly insufficient and utterly incapable of realization within the framework of capitalism. In addition to a jobs program, it hopes that governments will cooperate to increase the share of income going to the workers, while placing greater constraints on the financial system.

What the report in fact demonstrates, however, is that any attempt to resolve the crisis in the interests of the working class runs into direct conflict with the capitalist system and the financial aristocracy that controls it.

By Joseph Kishore

Joseph Kishore is a staff writer for WSWS.org

 

Group waging an insurgency against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.

The support for the insurgents comes amid a broader Turkish campaign to undermine Mr. Assad’s government. Turkey is expected to impose sanctions soon on Syria, and it has deepened its support for an umbrella political opposition group known as the Syrian National Council, which announced its formation in Istanbul. But its harboring of leaders in the Free Syrian Army, a militia composed of defectors from the Syrian armed forces, may be its most striking challenge so far to Damascus.

On Wednesday, the group, living in a heavily guarded refugee camp in Turkey, claimed responsibility for killing nine Syrian soldiers, including one uniformed officer, in an attack in restive central Syria.

Turkish officials describe their relationship with the group’s commander, Col. Riad al-As’aad, and the 60 to 70 members living in the “officers’ camp” as purely humanitarian. Turkey’s primary concern, the officials said, is for the physical safety of defectors. When asked specifically about allowing the group to organize military operations while under the protection of Turkey, a Foreign Ministry official said that their only concern was humanitarian protection and that they could not stop them from expressing their views.

“At the time all of these people escaped from Syria, we did not know who was who, it was not written on their heads ‘I am a soldier’ or ‘I am an opposition member,’ ” a Foreign Ministry spokesman said on the condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “We are providing these people with temporary residence on humanitarian grounds, and that will continue.”

At the moment, the group is too small to pose any real challenge to Mr. Assad’s government. But its Turkish support underlines how combustible, and resilient, Syria’s uprising has proven. The country sits at the intersection of influences in the region — with Iran, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Israel — and Turkey’s involvement will be closely watched by Syria’s friends and foes.

“We will fight the regime until it falls and build a new period of stability and safety in Syria,” Colonel As’aad said in an interview arranged by the Turkish Foreign Ministry and conducted in the presence of a Foreign Ministry official. “We are the leaders of the Syrian people and we stand with the Syrian people.”

The interview was held in the office of a local government official, and Colonel As’aad arrived protected by a contingent of 10 heavily armed Turkish soldiers, including one sniper.

The colonel wore a business suit that an official with the Turkish Foreign Ministry said he purchased for him that morning. At the end of the meeting, citing security concerns, the colonel and a ministry official advised that all further contact with his group be channeled through the ministry.

Turkey once viewed its warm ties with Syria as its greatest foreign policy accomplishment, but relations have collapsed over the eight months of antigovernment protests there and a brutal crackdown that the United Nations says has killed more than 3,000 people.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey was personally offended by Mr. Assad’s repeated failure to abide by his assurances that he would undertake sweeping reform. Turkish officials predict that the Assad government may collapse within the next two years.

“This pushes Turkish policy further towards active intervention in Syria,” said Hugh Pope, an analyst with the International Crisis Group. He called Turkey’s apparent relationship with the Free Syrian Army “completely new territory.”

It is clear Turkey feels under threat from what is happening in the Middle East, particularly Syria,” said Mr. Pope, who noted that in past speeches Mr. Erdogan “has spoken of what happens in Syria as an internal affair of Turkey.”

Turkish officials say that their government has not provided weapons or military support to the insurgent group, and that the group has not directly requested such assistance.

Still, Colonel As’aad, who thanked Turkey for its protection, made it clear that he was seeking better weapons, saying that his group could inflict damage on a Syrian leadership that has proven remarkably cohesive.

“We ask the international community to provide us with weapons so that we, as an army, the Free Syrian Army, can protect the people of Syria,” he said. “We are an army, we are in the opposition, and we are prepared for military operations. If the international community provides weapons, we can topple the regime in a very, very short time.”

The words seemed more boast than threat, and with mass pro-government rallies and a crackdown that has, for now, stanched the momentum of antigovernment demonstrations, the Syrian government appears in a stronger position than it did this summer. Though deeply isolated, Syria’s government felt emboldened by the vetoes of Russia and China of a relatively tough United Nations Security Council resolution. Despite predictions otherwise, the military and the security services, in particular, have yet to fracture in the eight months of a grinding, bloody crackdown.

Colonel As’aad said he defected from the military and fled to Turkey after protests erupted in his home village, Ebdeeta, in northern Idlib Province, drawing a government crackdown in which several relatives were killed and his sister’s house was shelled. But he also fled, he said, because “I knew there was greater potential to lead operations in a place in which I was free.”

He said all the residents of the camp where he lives in Turkey are members of the Free Syrian Army. The camp includes a personal assistant and a “media office” staffed by about a half-dozen people. He said the group’s fighters were highly organized, though only armed with weapons they took when they defected or those taken from slain members of Syrian security and pro-government forces. He would not specify the number of fighters, saying only that it was more than 10,000, and he was unwilling to disclose the number of battalions, claiming that the group had 18 “announced” battalions and an unspecified number of secret ones. None of his claims could be independently verified.

“Our strategy for the future is that we will confront the regime in its weak places, and in the next period we hope to acquire weapons so we can be able to face the regime more strongly,” Colonel As’aad said.

Though many analysts contend that defectors’ attacks in Syria appear uncoordinated and local, Colonel As’aad claimed to be in full operational control. He said that he was in charge of planning “full military operations” while leaving smaller clashes and day-to-day decisions up to commanders in the field. Nevertheless, he is in daily contact with the commanders of each battalion, he said, spending hours a day checking e-mail on a laptop connected to one of four telephones — including a satellite phone — provided to him by Syrian expatriates living in the United States, Europe and the Persian Gulf.

Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the emergence of the fledgling group was crucial to the larger question of whether the opposition would stick to peaceful protest, as it largely has, or if it would “go down another path to fighting back.”

“They are organized and they are speaking to people outside,” Mr. Tabler said. “But the question is to what degree are they receiving financial support from people outside, such as individuals in Turkey and Saudi Arabia.”

By LIAM STACK

27 October 2011

@ New York Tines

 

 

It’s a little hard to give a Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at an Occupy meeting. There are mixed feelings that go along with it. First of all, regret that Howard is not here to take part and invigorate it in his particular way, something that would have been the dream of his life, and secondly, excitement that the dream is actually being fulfilled. It’s a dream for which he laid a lot of the groundwork. It would have been the fulfillment of a dream for him to be here with you.

The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it’s spectacular. It’s unprecedented; there’s never been anything like it that I can think of. If the bonds and associations that are being established at these remarkable events can be sustained through a long, hard period ahead — because victories don’t come quickly– this could turn out to be a very significant moment in American history.

The fact that the demonstrations are unprecedented is quite appropriate. It is an unprecedented era — not just this moment — but actually since the 1970s. The 1970s began a major turning point in American history. For centuries, since the country began, it had been a developing society with ups and downs. But the general progress was toward wealth and industrialization and development — even in dark and hope — there was a pretty constant expectation that it’s going to go on like this. That was true even in very dark times.

I’m just old enough to remember the Great Depression. After the first few years, by the mid-1930s, although the situation was objectively much harsher than it is today, the spirit was quite different. There was a sense that we’re going to get out of it, even among unemployed people. It’ll get better. There was a militant labor movement organizing, CIO was organizing. It was getting to the point of sit-down strikes, which are very frightening to the business world. You could see it in the business press at the time. A sit-down strike was just a step before taking over the factory and running it yourself. Also, the New Deal legislations were beginning to come under popular pressure. There was just a sense that somehow we’re going to get out of it.

It’s quite different now. Now there’s kind of a pervasive sense of hopeless, or, I think, despair. I think it’s quite new in American history and it has an objective basis. In the 1930s unemployed “working people” could anticipate realistically that the jobs are going to come back. If you’re a worker in manufacturing today — and the unemployment level in manufacturing today is approximately like the Depression — if current tendencies persist, then those jobs aren’t going to come back. The change took place in the ’70s. There are a lot of reasons for it. One of the underlying reasons, discussed mainly by economic historian Robert Bernard, who has done a lot of work on it, is a falling rate of profit. That, with other factors, led to major changes in the economy — a reversal of the 700 years of progress towards industrialization and development. We turned to a process of deindustrialization and de-development. Of course, manufacturing production continued, but overseas (it’s very profitable, but no good for the workforce). Along with that came a significant shift of the economy from productive enterprise, producing things people need, to financial manipulation. Financialization of the economy really took off at that time.

Before the ’70s, banks were banks. They did what banks are supposed to do in a capitalist economy: take unused funds, like, say, your bank account, and transfer them to some potentially useful purpose, like buying a home or sending your kid to college. There were no financial crises. It was a period of enormous growth; the largest period of growth in American history, or maybe in economic history. It was sustained growth in the ’50s and ’60s and it was egalitarian. So the lowest percentile did as well as the highest percentile. A lot of people moved into reasonable lifestyles — what’s called here “middle class” (working class is what it’s called in other countries).

It was real. The ’60s accelerated it. The activism of the ’60s, after a pretty dismal decade, really civilized the country in lots of ways that are permanent. They’re not changing. The ’70s came along and suddenly there’s sharp change to industrialization and the offshoring of production. The shifting to financial institutions, which grew enormously. Also in the ’50s and ’60s there was the development of what became several decades later the high-tech economy. Computers, Internet, the IT revolution was mostly developed in the ’50 and the ’60s, and substantially in the state sector. It took a couple of decades before it took off, but it was developed then.

The 1970s set off a kind of a vicious cycle that led to a concentration of wealth increasingly in the hands of the financial sector, which doesn’t benefit the economy. Concentration of wealth yields concentration of political power, which, in turn, arrives to legislation that increases and accelerates the cycle. The physical policies such as tax changes, rules of corporate governance, deregulation were essentially bipartisan. Alongside of this began a very sharp rise in the costs of elections, which drives the political parties even deeper than before into the pockets of the corporate sector.

A couple years later started a different process. The parties dissolved, essentially. It used to be if you were a person in Congress and hoped for a position of committee chair or a position of responsibility, you got it mainly through seniority and service. Within a couple of years, you started to have to put money into the party coffers in order to get ahead. That just drove the whole system even deeper into the pockets of the corporate sector and increasingly the financial sector–a tremendous concentration of wealth, mainly in the literally top 1/10th of 1 percent of the population.

Meanwhile, for the general population it began an open period of pretty much stagnation, or decline for the majority. People got by through pretty artificial means — like borrowing, so a lot of debt. Longer working hours for many. There was a period of stagnation and a higher concentration of wealth. The political system began to dissolve. There’s always been a gap between public policy and the public will, but it just grew kind of astronomically. You can see it right now, in fact.

Take a look at what’s happening right now. The big topic in Washington that everyone concentrates on is the deficit. For the public, correctly, the deficit is not much of an issue. The issue is joblessness, not a deficit. Now there’s a deficit commission but no joblessness commission. As far as the deficit is concerned, if you want to pay attention to it, the public has opinions. Take a look at the polls and the public overwhelmingly supports higher taxes on the wealthy, which have declined sharply during this stagnation period, this period of decline. The public wants higher taxes on the wealthy and to preserve the limited social benefits. The outcome of the deficit commission is probably going to be the opposite. Either they’ll reach an agreement, which will be the opposite of what the public wants, or else it will go into kind of an automatic procedure which is going to have those effects. Actually that’s something that’s going to happen very quickly. The deficit commission is going to come up with its decision in a couple of weeks. The Occupy movements could provide a mass base for trying to avert what amounts to a dagger in the heart of the country, and having negative effects.

Without going on with details, what’s being played out for the last 30 years is actually a kind of a nightmare that was anticipated by the classical economists. If you take an Adam Smith, and bother to read Wealth of Nations, you see that he considered the possibility that the merchants and manufacturers in England might decide to do their business abroad, invest abroad and import from abroad. He said they would profit but England would be harmed. He went on to say that the merchants and manufacturers would prefer to operate in their own country, what’s sometimes called a “home bias.” So, as if by an invisible hand, England would be saved the ravage of what’s called “neoliberal globalization.”

That’s a pretty hard passage to miss. In his classic Wealth of Nations, that’s the only occurrence of the phrase “invisible hand.” Maybe England would be saved from neoliberal globalization by an invisible hand. The other great classical economist David Ricardo recognized the same thing and hoped it wouldn’t happen. Kind of a sentimental hope. It didn’t happen for a long time, but it’s happening now. Over the last 30 years that’s exactly what’s underway. For the general population — the 99 percent in the imagery of the Occupy movement –it’s really harsh and it could get worse. This could be a period of irreversible decline. For the 1 percent, or furthermore 1/10th of 1 percent, it’s just fine. They’re at the top, richer and more powerful than ever in controlling the political system and disregarding the public, and if it can continue, then sure why not? This is just what Smith and Ricardo warned about.

So pick Citigroup, for decades one of the most corrupt of the major investment banking corporations. It was repeatedly bailed out by the taxpayer over and over again starting in the early Reagan years and now once again. I won’t run through all the corruption. You probably know it, and it’s astonishing. A couple of years ago they came out with a brochure for investors. They urged investors to put their money in what they call the “plutonomy index.” The world is dividing into a plutonomy, the rich and so on. That’s where the action is. They said their plutonomy index is way outperforming the stock market, so put your money into it. And as for the rest? We set them adrift. We don’t really care about them and we don’t need them. They have to be around to provide a powerful state to protect us and bail us out when we get into trouble, but they essentially have no function. It’s sometimes called these days the “precariat,” people who live a precarious existence at the periphery of society. It’s not the periphery anymore; it’s becoming a very substantial part of the society in the United States and indeed elsewhere.

This is considered a good thing. For example, when Alan Greenspan was still “St. Alan,” hailed by the economics profession as one of the greatest economists of all time (this is before the crash for which he is substantially responsible for), he was testifying to Congress in the Clinton years explaining the wonders of the great economy. He said much of this economy was based on what he called “growing worker insecurity.” If working people are insecure, if they’re “precariat” and living precarious existences, then they’re not going to make demands, they won’t make wages, they won’t get benefits and we can kick them out if we don’t like them, and that’s good for the health of the economy. That’s what’s called a healthy economy technically and he was highly praised for this.

Well, now the world is indeed splitting into a plutonomy and a precariat, again in the imagery of the Occupy movement, the 1 percent and the 99 percent. The plutonomy is where the action is. It could continue like this, and if it does, then this historic reversal that began in the 1970s could become irreversible. That’s where we’re heading. The Occupy movements are the first major popular reaction which could avert this. It’s going to be necessary to face the fact that it’s a long hard struggle. You don’t win victories tomorrow. You have to go on and form structures that will be sustained through hard times and can win major victories. There are a lot of things that can be done.

I mentioned before that in the 1930s one of the most effective actions was a sit-down strike. The reason was very simple: it’s just a step below a takeover of the industry. Through the ’70s, as the decline was setting in, there were some very important events that took place. One was in the late ’70s. In 1977, US Steel decided to close one of its major facilities, Youngstown, Ohio, and instead of just walking away, the workforce and the community decided to get together and buy it from US Steel and hand it over to the workforce to run and turn it into a worker-owned, worker-managed facility. They didn’t win, but with enough popular support they could have won. It was a partial victory because even though they lost it set off other efforts now throughout Ohio and other places.

There’s a scattering of hundreds, maybe thousands, of not-so-small worker owned or partially worker-owned industries which could become worker-managed. That’s the basis for a real revolution. That’s how it takes place. It’s happening here, too. In one of the suburbs of Boston something similar happened. A multi-national decided to shut down a productive, functioning and profitable manufacturing company because it was not profitable enough for them. The workforce and union offered to buy it and take it over and run it themselves, but the multi-national decided to close it down instead probably for reasons of class consciousness. I think they want things like this to happen. If there had been enough popular support, if there had been something like this movement that could have gotten involved, they might have succeeded.

There are other things going on like that. In fact, some of them were major. Not long ago, Obama took over the auto industry. It’s basically owned by the public. There were a number of things that could have been done. One was what was done. It could be reconstituted so it could be handed back to the ownership, or very similar ownership and continue on its traditional path. The other possibility was they could have handed it over to the workforce and turned it into worker-owned, worker-managed major industrial system that’s a major part of the economy and have it produce things that people need. And there’s a lot that we need. We all know or should know that the US is extremely backward globally in high-speed transportation. That’s very serious. It affects people’s lives and it affects the economy. It’s a very serious business.

I have a personal story. I happened to be giving talks in France a couple months ago and ended up in southern France and had to take a train from Avignon in southern France to the airport in Paris and it took two hours. That’s the same distance as Washington to Boston. It’s a scandal. It could be done; we have the capacity to do it, like a skilled workforce. It would have taken a little popular support. That could have been a major change in the economy. Just to make it more surreal, while this option was being avoided, the Obama administration was sending its transportation secretary to Spain to get contracts for developing high-speed rails for the United States. This could have been done right in the Rust Belt, which is being closed down. There’s no economic reason this can’t happen. These are class reasons and the lack of political mobilization.

There are very dangerous developments in the international arena, including two of them which are kind of a shadow that hangs over almost everything we discuss. There are, for the first time to human history, real threats to peace and survival of the species. One has been hanging around since 1945 and it’s kind of a miracle we’ve escaped it and that’s the threat of nuclear weapons. That’s a threat that’s being escalated by the administration and its allies. Something has to be done about that or we’re in real trouble. The other, of course, is environmental catastrophe. Every country in the world is taking at least halting steps toward trying to do something about it. The US is also taking steps, namely to accelerate the threat. The US is now the only country that’s not only not doing something constructive…it’s not climbing on the train. It’s pulling it backwards.

Congress is right now reversing legislation instituted by the Nixon administration. (Nixon was really the last liberal president of the United States, and literally, this shows you what’s been going on!) They’re dismantling the limited measures the Nixon administration took to try to do something about what’s a growing and emerging catastrophe. This is connected with a huge propaganda system, perfectly openly declared by the business world, that it’s all just a liberal hoax. Why pay attention to these scientists? We’re really regressing back to the Medieval period. It’s not a joke. If that’s happening to the most powerful and richest country in history then this crisis is not going to be averted and all of this we’re talking about won’t matter in a generation or two. All of that’s going on right now and something has to be done about it very soon and in a dedicated and sustained way. It’s not going to be easy to succeed. There are going to be barriers, hardships and failures along the way. Unless the process that’s taking place here and around the world, unless that continues to grow and kind of becomes a major social force in the world, the chances for a decent future are not very high.

Q&A

Q: What about corporate personhood and getting the money out of that stream of politics?

A: These are very good things to do, but you can’t do any of these things or anything else unless there’s a very large and active base. If the Occupy movement was the leading force in the country then you could move it forward. Most people don’t know that this is happening or they may know about it and not know what it is. Among those who do know, the polls show there’s a lot of support. But that assigns a task. It’s necessary to get out into the country and get people to understand what this is about and what they can do about and what the consequences are of not doing anything about it.

Corporate personhood is a good point, but pay attention to what it is. We’re supposed to worship the Constitution these days, but the 5th Amendment of the Constitution says no person shall be deprived of rights without due process of law. The founding fathers didn’t mean “person” when they said “person.” For example there were a lot of creatures of flesh and blood who were not persons. The entire indigenous population was not considered persons. They didn’t have any rights. There was a category of creatures called 3/5 human — they weren’t persons and didn’t have rights. Women were not entirely persons, so they didn’t have full rights. A lot of this was somewhat rectified over the years. During the Civil War, the 14th amendment raised the 3/5 to full humans at least in principle, but that was only in principle.

Now over the following years the concept of person was changed by the courts in two ways. One way was to broaden it to include corporations, legal fictions established by the courts and the state. These “persons” later became the management of corporations; the management of corporations became “persons.” Of course, that’s not what the 14th amendment says. It’s also narrowed to undocumented workers. They had to be excluded from the category of persons. That’s happening right now. So legislation like this goes two ways. They defined persons to include corporate persons, which by now have rights beyond human beings, given by the trade agreements and others. They exclude people who flee from Central America where the US devastated their homelands, flee from Mexico because they can’t compete with the US’s highly subsidized agro-business. When NAFTA was passed in 1994, the Clinton administration understood pretty well that it was going to devastate the Mexican economy, so they started militarizing the border. So we’re seeing the consequences. So these people have to be excluded from the category of persons.

So when you talk about personhood, that’s right, but there’s more than one aspect to it. It ought to be pushed forward and it ought to be understood, but that requires a mass base. It requires that the population understands this and is committed to it. It’s easy to think of a lot of things that should be done, but they all have a prerequisite – namely a mass popular base that’s there that’s committed to implementing them.

Q: What about the ruling class in America? How likely is it that they’ll have an open fascist system here?

A: I think it’s very unlikely frankly. They don’t have the force. About a century ago, in the freest countries in the world, Britain and the United Sates at the time, the dominant classes came to understand that they can’t control the population by force any longer. Too much freedom had been won by struggles like these, and they realized it. It’s discussed in their literature. They recognize that they’re going to have to shift their tactics to control of attitudes and beliefs instead of just the cudgel. It can’t do what it used to do. You have to control attitudes and beliefs. In fact that’s when the public relations industry began. It began in the United States and England. The free countries where you had to control beliefs and attitudes, to induce consumerism, to induce passivity, apathy and distraction. It’s a barrier, but it’s a lot easier to overcome than torture and the Gestapo. I don’t think the circumstances are any longer there to institute anything like what we call fascism.

Q: You mentioned earlier that sit-down protests are just a precursor to a takeover of industry. Would you advocate a general strike as a tactic moving forward? Would you ever if asked allow for your voice to relay the democratically chosen will of our nation?

A: You don’t want leaders; you want to do it yourself. We need representation and you should pick it yourselves. It should be recallable representation.

The question of a general strike is like the others. You can think of it as a possible idea at a time when the population is ready for it. We can’t sit here and declare a general strike, obviously. There has to be approval and a willingness to take the risks on the part of a large mass of the population. That takes organization, education and activism. Education doesn’t just mean telling people what to believe. It means learning yourself. There’s a Karl Marx quote: “The task is not just to understand the world but to change it.” There’s a variant of that which should be kept in mind, “If you want to change the world in a certain direction you better try to understand it first.”

Understanding it doesn’t mean listening to a talk or reading a book, though that is helpful. It comes through learning. Learning comes from participation. You learn from others. You learn from the people you’re trying to organize. You have to gain the experience and understanding which will make it possible to maybe implement ideas as a tactic. There’s a long way to go. This doesn’t happen by the flick of a wrist. It happens from a long, dedicated work. I think in many ways the most exciting aspect of the Occupy movements is just the construction of these associations and bonds that are taking place all over. Out of that if they can be sustained can come expansion to a large part of the population that doesn’t know what’s going on. If that can happen, then you can raise questions about tactics like this, which could very well at some point be appropriate.

Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher,cognitive scientist, and activist. He is an Institute Professor and Professor (Emeritus) in the Department of Linguistics & Philosophy at MIT, where he has worked for over 50 years.