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DAMASCUS, (SANA)– The authorities concerned confiscated a large number of highly advanced communication means and satellite devices found with the armed terrorist groups and the members working with the seditious and instigative TV channels targeting Syria.

The first group of the confiscated devices included handheld two-way simplex system communication devices operating in the very high and ultrahigh frequency (VHF/UHF) ranges.

The devices were confiscated in a number of tension areas as they were used to ensure communication between the terrorists and criminals and organize the course of their movement to carry out attacks against the law enforcement personnel.

The devices operate by wireless scanning of the frequency ranges to pick up the calls of the security and law enforcement forces and monitor the movement of their personnel.

The second group included Thuraya satellite mobile phone sets which were used for satellite communication among the terrorists and those who work with them and between them and the misleading satellite TV channels and the external sides.

SIM cards for the Thuraya phones, charged through Arab and foreign providers, were used by the terrorists to avoid the monitoring of the authorities.

With the development of the crisis, various advanced generations of these devices appeared, such as Thuraya mobile phones powered by AB internet, which allows the possibility of connecting these devices to the internet via computer and transmitting text documents, photos and videos via satellite at high speed.

These devices were illegally infiltrated across the border from Arab countries and foreign developed countries and parties, on top the U.S.A. and Israel.

The information found in these devices included the phone numbers of all the misleading satellite channels- al-Jazeera, al-Arabiya, BBC, France 24 and others- and the phone numbers of Arab and foreign personalities involved in the events, in addition to tendentious and biased messages stored in advance.

The third group included Iridium satellite devices operated by the U.S. military satellite communication network made up of 66 satellites covering the globe which provides audio and data transfer services of different advanced generations.

The devices were used by the terrorists and agents during the events.

The group also comprised Iridium satellite phone accessories, which are antenna placed on the vehicle’s surface and connected to a phone inside the car via a cable since most satellite communication devices need Line-of -Sight between the phone and the satellite.

The fourth group included the global Inmarsat mobile communication satellite systems which operate by directing concentrated radiations towards certain points on the earth to provide voice and digital calls, videos and internet services with high accuracy and speed.

Such systems are used by the UN organizations and the embassies in Syria. There has been an increase in the number of these systems which are being imported to Qatar in unusual quantities before and during the events, which raised several question marks.

 

The fifth group seized a bulk which, after technical examination, was found to be a kind of an Israeli-made antenna operating on very special frequency ranges for satellite communication, which is part of an integrated satellite communication system using a network of US military satellites to provide high speed internet services to transfer data.

Unlike the previously mentioned communication systems, these systems are not commercially marketed as they require the authorization and approval of the Ministry of Defense in the manufacturing countries. The existence of these devices in Syria indicates the clear involvement of these countries; particularly that diplomats and politicians from these countries have announced intention to back the terrorists in Syria with advanced internet and communication systems.

The sixth group included radios with advanced audio players that were used by the armed terrorist groups and saboteurs to create chaos and confusion. These devices store audio clips including recorded slogans and sounds to be replayed during the gatherings near the mosques and in the crowded markets to film them as anti-government protests.

Most of these equipment and advanced devices are illegal and prohibited since they have been used without getting license from the General Telecommunications Establishment. The use of these systems and devices violate the regulating rules and legislations which guarantee that such use must not affect the security of Syria or undermine the state’s position and those responsible for possessing, importing and illegally investing them should be held accountable, as it is the case in any country in the world.

These devices can be classified, according to the circumstances Syria is going through, the places where they were seized, the sides which communicated through them and the purposes for which they were used to transfer information, fabricate events and plot to undermine the country’s position and security, as falling under the crime of espionage and treason.

The high cost of the seized satellite systems in terms of the equipment or the subscription confirms the big financial support provided to the terrorist and criminal groups and the involvement of some instigative satellite channels in providing these equipment.

Cellular coverage on the borders with neighboring countries has also been exploited by the terrorist groups to ensure cell phone calls and internet services benefiting from the coverage of neighboring countries, which reached between 30 and 50 km in a flagrant violation of agreements signed between Syria and these countries which set the limits of the overlapping coverage area between 1 and 3 km.

This violation can be put within the plan of some of these countries in supporting the terrorists in Syria during the events through raising the signal levels to maximum limits.

Authorities clash with terrorists.. One Policeman and a Teacher Martyred in Idelb

Idleb, (SANA)- Policeman Mohammad Katran was martyred Tuesday at the industrial area in Idleb after two gunmen on motorbike shot fires at him.

A source in Idleb said martyr Katran was mending his car at the industrial city when the two gunmen shot fire at him and escaped.

Meanwhile, the Engineering Units in Idleb dismantled an explosive device near Kfar Roma town while two other bombs exploded, injuring 4 law enforcement members.

A source at the Police Department stated that the competent authorities clashed with an armed terrorist group in the same town, arresting terrorist Hisham Digheim.

It added that another armed group killed teacher Mohammad Shahada while he was crossing Sirmin town last night.

1,180 Detainees Involved in Events in Syria Released

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – 1,180 detainees who are involved in the recent events in Syria and didn’t commit murder was released on Tuesday.

553 detainees involved in the events were released on November 5th on occasion of Eid al-Adha

Russian Foreign Ministry: Moscow Informed Syrian Opposition about its Stance in Rejection of any Foreign Interference

MOSCOW,(SANA)- Russian Foreign Ministry said that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov received on Tuesday a delegation of the Syrian opposition abroad which is currently in Moscow upon an invitation by the Russian Society for Solidarity and Cooperation with Nations of Asia and Africa.

In a press statement, the Ministry added that the delegation was informed about Russia’s stance which calls for adhering to a constructive stance to overcome the issues raised in Syria today, implementing reforms that would serve the interests of all the Syrians, and preventing the foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs.

In its statement, the Ministry indicated that the Russian side clearly called upon all the Syrian opposition groups, which reject violence as a means for achieving political goals, to immediately participate in the Arab League’s initiative on settling the internal Syrian crisis through launching dialogue between the Syrian authorities and the opposition.

Umakhanov Calls for Starting Dialogue between Syrian Government and Opposition

Deputy Chairman of the Federation Council of Russia Ilyas Umakhanov stressed the need for a peaceful internal dialogue in Syria.

Umakhanov’s remarks came during the council’s meeting with representatives of the Syrian opposition abroad.

He added that the talks dealt with the situation in Syria, peaceful cooperation and means of holding a wide internal dialgoue with the support of the Syrian society, ending violence and avoiding escalating the confrontation in the country.

Umakhanov reiterated the need for stoping the killing, in refrence to the armed groups that have commited illegal and terrorist acts.

He said that the situation in Syria should be solved peacefully without any foreign interference, adding that Russia is interested in initiating dialogue between the Syrian authority and the opposition.

Umakhanov highlighted the strong economic and military cooperation between Syria and Russia, indicating that the Russian leadership, the Russian public opinion and the Council’s members are carefully monitoring what is happening in Syria.

Bogdanov Stresses that Overcoming Crisis in Syria without any Foreign Interference

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov called for exerting more efforts to implement the Arab League initiative and achieve a political settlement in Syria through ending all forms of violence and starting an open dialogue between the Syrian government and the opposition.

Bogdanov’s statment came during his meeting with Syria’s Ambassador in Moscow on Tuesday at which the situation in Syria was discussed.

Bogdanov stressed Russia’s stance which calls for overcoming the internal crisis by the Syrians themselves through dialogue and reforms without any foreign interference.

Iran, Algeria and Iraq Reiterate Rejection of Foreign Interference in Syria’s Internal Affairs

TEHRAN, (SANA) – Iran and Algeria on Tuesday Reiterated rejection of any foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs, underlining the importance of resolving the problems that are facing the country through dialogue.

Iranian media said Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi affirmed in a phone call with Algerian counterpart Mourad Medelci the importance of Syria’s position in the region.

He stressed the importance of holding more consultations to find the required ground for solving the problems in Syria with the concentration on confronting foreign interference along with achieving reforms in the country.

Salehi said that the current situation in Syria and along with the matter of a foreign interference could be solved in the framework of the political regime in Syria.

For his part, the Algerian Minister highlighted Syria’s role in the region, stressing the importance of consultations and solving problems through dialogue.

Iraqi Government Stresses Rejection of Economic Sanctions on Syria

The Iraqi Government stressed on Tuesday its rejection of imposing economic sanctions on Syria and internationalizing the Syrian crisis.

The Iraqi Government Spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, reiterated in a statement that the Iraqi Cabinet stressed during its meeting today that the Arab League’s resolution on suspending the membership of Syria does not solve the Syrian crisis.

According to AFP, al-Dabbagh expressed his government’s concern over the repercussions of the situation in Syria on the security and interests of Iraq and the region.

Earlier, Ali al-Dabbagh described the voting process on the AL resolution as “unacceptable and double-standard”, calling on the Arab League to be the place where problems are solved.

National Committee Assigned to Preparing a New Constitution Holds 3rd Meeting

 

 

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-The national Committee assigned to preparing a new constitution for Syria held today its 3rd meeting headed by Chairman Mazhar al-Anbari in Damascus.

The committee discussed the basic principles of the new constitution that deal with the political and constitutional system, economic, social and political domains related to the State of Law, plurality, electoral system, local administration, independence of judiciary and other basic principles.

During the last two meetings, the Committee held discussions on some visions and suggestions to regulate the work mechanism of the Committee and formulate a new constitution.

Syrian People Continue Protests against AL Decision against Syria

DAMASCUS, (SANA) – Syrian people continued on Tuesday their protests against the Arab League decision on suspending the membership of Syria.

Outside the Arab League Office in Damascus, hundreds of Syrian people gathered to express their rejection of the decision, highlighting their support to the independent national decision.

“We came here today to tell the Arab League that the resolution is categorically rejected by the Syrian people, and it will never weaken Syria; rather it will increase the Syrian people’s resolve to be committed to their Syrian identity, Arabism and leadership,” a protester told SANA reporter.

At the Umayyad Square, Syrian ladies, who cut their hair, resumed, for the second consecutive day, their open sit-in in rejection of the AL resolution.

A lady who cut her hair told SANA, “What we did is an old Arab tradition that women used to do to show disrespect of men. Today we did that to show that we, as Arab women, are ashamed to have such an Arab stance which contributed to issuing the resolution against Syria.”

In the cities of al-Bab and Manbej in Aleppo province, tens of thousands of people gathered to express their condemnation of the AL resolution and their rejection of foreign interference in Syria’s internal affairs.

The people stressed the importance of national dialogue, pointing out that the Syrian people took to the street immediately after the Arab League resolution was announced to send a message to those who want to ignite sedition among the unified Syrian people.

They reiterated their support to the comprehensive reform process and independent national decision to preserve the sovereignty of Syria.

Arab Student Organizations Condemn AL Decision

The Arab student organizations at Damascus University issued a statement condemning the decision of the Arab League to suspend Syria’s delegation’s participation in its meetings and stressing their standing by the steadfast Syrian people and the Syrian leadership to foil the conspiracy against Syria.

They described the decision as “irresponsible, saying with this decision the Arab League poses new dangers to the Arab national security and provides the appropriate cover to the colonialist powers seeking to fragment the Arab world, loot its resources and undermine the unity of its people and land.

The Arab organizations affirmed that Syria agreed on the AL Initiative and adhered to it from the first moment as it has also announced its cooperation with any sincere Arab effort.

They said that the decision came to put an end to the joint Arab action through the Arab League’s deviation from its main objective in that “instead of being an arbiter in the conspiracy against Syria, it has acted as an adversary from the start and turned blind eyes to all the painful facts and events that took place in Syria.”

“In its latest illegal decision which violated the AL Charter, the Arab League confirms that it has become a hostage to a group of reactionary powers implementing a foreign agenda to undermine Syria’s steadfastness and its noble pan-Arab principles of defending the Resistance and the Arab Right,” the organizations concluded.

Al-Shaar: Police and Security Apparatus Determined to Arrest Armed Terrorist Groups

DAMASCUS, (SANA)-Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar said that the law enforcement and securtiy members are intensifying their efforts to arrest the armed terrorist groups who perpetrate acts of sabotage, loot private and public properties and kill innocents.

Meeting officers and students at Basel al-Assad Academy for police sciences, al-Shaar underlined that Syria recognizes the volume of conspiracy to which it is exposed due to its siding with resistance and its support to the Arab causes.

He added that the misleading media campaign and the fabricated news againstt Syria aim at producing an unrealistic image about Syria and creating a negative stance at the Arab and international public opinion.

Gulf Cooperation Council Considers Holding Urgent Summit to Deal with Syrian Crisis Futile

RIYADH, (SANA) – The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) said on Tuesday that holding an urgent Arab summit at this time is futile, a stance reflecting the lack of proper consideration of the dangers facing Arab joint action.

In a statement, Secretary General of the Council Abdul Latif al-Zayyani said that the GCC affirms support and commitment to the Arab League’s resolution regarding the Syrian crisis.

Syria called on Sunday for holding an urgent Arab summit to deal with the Syrian crisis and consider its negative repercussions on the Arab situation.

 

Surrounded by the Turkish veteran member of NATO in the north, the Israeli NATO partner and the navy fleets of the member states patrolling the Mediterranean in the west, the alliance’s Jordanian partner in the south, and in the east hosting a NATO mission in Iraq, which is expected to develop into the 12th Arab partner, and lonely swimming in a sea of the Arab and Israel strategic allies of the United States, the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad stands as the Yugoslavia of the Middle East, that has to join the expansion southward of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as well as the “new world order” engineered by the U.S. unipolar power, kicked out as the odd regional number, or join Iraq and Libya in being bombed down to the medieval ages.

Following its latest military success in opening the Libyan gate to Africa, the U.S. – led NATO seems about to recruit its 13th Arab “partner,” thus paving the way for the United States to move its Africom HQ from Germany to the continent after removing the Gaddafi regime, which opposed both this move and the French – led Mediterranean Union (MU), a removal that is in itself, for all realpolitic reasons, a threatening warning to the neighboring Algeria to soften its opposition to both Africa hosting Africom and NATO expanding southward and to drop off whatever reservations it still has to the revival of the MU, which lost its Egyptian co-chair with President Nicolas Sarkozy with the removal of former president Hosni Mubarak from power in Cairo.

The U.S. and NATO are poised now to shift focus from Arab North Africa to the Arab Levant to deal with the last Syrian obstacle to their regional hegemony. The U.S. administration of President Barak Obama seems now determined to make or break with the al-Assad regime, distancing itself from decades long policy of crisis management pursued by predecessor U.S. administrations vis-à-vis Syria, which stands now in the Middle East as former Yugoslavia stood in the wake of the collapse of the former Soviet Union when a series of ethnic and religious wars wrecked it, creating from its wreckage several new states, until the Serbian core of the Yugoslav union was bombed by NATO in 1999 to make Serbia now a hopeful member of the alliance.

However international and regional strategic geopolitical factors are turning Syria into a border red line that might either herald a new era of multipolar world order, which puts an end to the U.S. unipolar order, if the U.S. led alliance fails to change the Syrian regime, or completes a U.S. – NATO total regional hegemony that would preclude such a long awaited outcome, if it succeeds:

* Internally, the infrastructure of the state is strong, the military, security, diplomatic and political ruling establishment stands coherent, unified and potent, and economically the state is not burdened with foreign debt and is self-sufficient in oil, food and consumer products. Imposing a complete suffocating economic and diplomatic siege on the country seems impossible. What is more important politically is the fact that the pluralistic diversity of the large Syrian religious and sectarian minorities deprives the major and better organized Islamist opposition of the Muslim Brotherhood of the leading role it enjoys in the protests of what has been termed the “Arab Spring” in Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen.

* Contrary to western analyses, which expect the change of regimes by the “Arab Spring” to be a motivating drive for a similar change in Syria, the changes were bad examples for Syrians. The destruction of the infrastructure of the state, especially in Iraq and Libya, and leaving their national decision making to NATO and U.S., at least out gratefulness to their roles in the change, is not viewed by the overwhelming majority of the Syrians, including the mainstream opposition inside the country, as an acceptable and feasible price for change and reform. The Arab Egyptian veteran and internationally prominent journalist, Mohammed Hassanein Heikal, in an interview with the Qatar based Aljazeera satellite TV Arabic channel, cited these bad Iraqi and Libyan examples as alienating the Syrian middle class in major city centers away from supporting the protests demanding change of regime; he even accused Aljazeera of “incitement” against the Syrian regime of al-Assad.

* This overall internal situation continues to deter outside intervention on the one hand and on the other explains why the opposition has so far failed to launch even one protest of the type that moved out millions of people to the streets as was and is the case in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen, especially in major population centers like the capital Damascus, Aleppo, both which are home to about ten million people.

* Moreover, the resort of a minority of Islamists to arms allegedly to defend the protesters has backfired, alienating the public in general, the minorities in particular, and highlighting their external sources of funds and arming, thus vindicating the regime’s accusation of the existence of an outside “conspiracy,” but more importantly diverting the media spotlight away from the peaceful protests, weakening these protests by driving away more people from joining them out of fear for personal safety as proved by the dwindling numbers of protesters, and dragging the opposition into a field of struggle where the regime is definitely the strongest at least in the absence of external military intervention that is not forthcoming in any foreseeable future, a fact that was confirmed in the Libyan capital Tripoli on October 31 by NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen: “NATO has no intention (to intervene) whatsoever. I can completely rule that out,” Reuters quoted him as saying.

* Geopolitically, it is true that western powers after WW1 succeeded in cutting historical Syria to its present day size, but Syrian pan-Arab ideology and influence is still up to historic Syria, and is still consistent with what the late Princeton scholar Philip K. Hitti called (quoted by Robert D. Kaplan in Foreign Policy on April 21, 2011) “Greater Syria” — the historical antecedent of the modern republic – “the largest small country on the map, microscopic in size but cosmic in influence,” encompassing in its geography, at the confluence of Europe, Asia, and Africa, “the history of the civilized world in a miniature form”. Kaplan commented: “This is not an exaggeration, and because it is not, the current unrest in Syria is far more important than unrest we have seen anywhere in the Middle East.” The change of the regime in Syria will not bring security and stability to the region; on the contrary, it will open a regional Pandora box. Syrian President al-Assad was very well aware of this geopolitical reality when he told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph recently in a weekend interview that Syria “is the (region’s) fault line, and if you play with the ground, you will cause an earthquake”.

* The regional repercussions of a sectarian civil war in Syria are a deterrent factor against both militarization of pro-reform peaceful protests and foreign military intervention in support thereof. Therefore, when NATO and the U.S. pressure or encourage their regional allies in Turkey and the GCC Arab countries to foment Sunni sectarian strife in the Syrian ally of Shiite Iran as a prelude to civil war, their only pretext for military intervention, they are in fact playing with a regional fire that will not save neither the perpetrators nor the “vital” interests of their NATO-U.S. sponsors.

* Regionally, Iran’s possible loss of its Syrian bridge to the Mediterranean, while its routes to the strategic sea could easily be closed via the Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait, the Red sea and the Suez Canal by the fifth and sixth U.S. fleets as well as the by fleets of the NATO member states and Israel, and pro- U.S. governments overlooking these sea lanes, is an Iranian red line the trespassing of which could create a situation fraught with potential risks of regional war eruption.

* Regionally also, less a U.S. – NATO decision to go to an all out war on Iran and Syria, military intervention in Syria would not be on the agenda unless guarantees are in place that Israel will be out of reach of expected Iranian and Syrian retaliation.

* The timing of the U.S. – NATO shift of focus on Syria coincides with a deadlocked Palestinian – Israeli peace process and the failure of Barak Obama administration to deliver on its promises to its Arab allies, thus alienating the most moderate among them, namely Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who is still being pushed to a collision course with the American sponsor of the process by the U.S. – led international campaign against his overdue bid to secure the recognition of Palestine as a full member of the United Nations.

The failure of the U.S. peace mediator applies more counterproductively to the Syrian – Israeli peace making. Al-Assad regime came to power in a coup d’etat with the precise aim of engaging the U.S. – sponsored peace process in the Middle East. More than forty years later the United States has yet to deliver. This failure erodes the influence of the moderate pro-U.S. Arabs, stands as the biggest obstacle to building a U.S. – Arab – Israeli front against Iran, which is an American and Israeli regional priority, and adds ammunition and forces to the Syrian protagonist. Abbas’ reconciliation accord with the Syrian – based Hamas is a good example to ponder in this context; another is the Palestinian leader’s latest pronounced option of dissolving the self-ruled Palestinian Authority under Israeli military occupation, which would be a death blow to the Arab – Israeli peace process.

* This failure of the U.S. “sponsorship” was a major contributing factor to the changes of the “Arab Spring” in a chain of pro-U.S. Arab regimes in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen. However this failure vindicates Syria’s “resistance” ideology, justifies its strategic defensive coordination with Iran, reinforces the popular support for both countries in the region, and gives credibility to the argument of the regime in Damascus that the U.S. and NATO are fueling Syrian protests in the name of change and reform, but in fact exploiting these protests to “change the regime” and replace it with one that is more willing to accept the Israeli – U.S. dictates for peace making.

* The scheduled withdrawal of U.S. combat forces from Iraq by the end of the year is another regional adverse factor against military intervention in Syria. This withdrawal is leaving Iraq unquestionably under a pro – Iran ruling regime. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was on record in opposing regime change in Syria precisely because of the Iranian influence. Iraq is now overtly replacing Turkey as a strategic depth for its Syrian western neighbor, providing a strategic link between the allies in Damascus and Tehran, after Turkey’s U-turn on its “strategic cooperation” with Syria, its U-turn on its nine-year old “zero problem based relations” with Arab and Islamic neighbors, and its subscription to NATO and U.S. plans for Syria as a member and ally respectively.

* Internationally, the latest Russian and Chinese vetoes at the UN Security Council is indication enough that the U.S. – NATO endeavor to change the Syrian regime has trespassed another red line. Loosing its navy facilities in Syria would leave Russia out of the Mediterranean Sea and render it a U.S. – NATO lake. China whose competitive edge in Africa is being challenged following the change of regime in Libya would view the fall of Syria to become a U.S. – NATO launching ground against Iran as a real threat to its similarly competitive partnership with Iran. Chasing Beijing also out of Iran will render the emerging Chinese economic giant at the mercy of NATO partners if they succeed in securing their control over Iran and Syria because such a control will secure also their control of both strategic oil reserves in the Middle East and central Asia. This is absolutely a Chinese red line.

* Diplomatically, U.S. – NATO plans of military intervention in Syria has been denied any cover of United Nations legitimacy by the Russian and Chinese vetoes. Legitimacy of the Arab League is still lacking; freezing the membership of a member state, like was the case with Libya, needs consensus, which is not forthcoming.

TWO OPTIONS

This is the geopolitical strategic context in which the Syrian pro-democracy transformation is desperately trying to survive the U.S. – NATO undemocratic means of coercing Syria into compliance. Both mainstream opposition inside the country and the ruling regime are almost in consensus on reforms and fundamental changes that will move Syria to what is being now termed as “the second republic” through dialogue.

Both this opposition and the regime are on record against the militarization of the peaceful popular protests demanding reform and change and more adamantly against foreign intervention whatever form it takes, but both are seeking internal national unity as well as foreign support for a package of reforms inclusive of lifting the martial law, limiting the role of intelligence arms of the state to national security, empowering the civil society, curbing political and economic corruption, political pluralism, competitive elections, changing party, electoral and media laws, balancing the executive – legislative power, promoting judiciary and rule of law, and more importantly ending the constitutional Baath Party monopoly of power. Carnegie Endowment in its “Reform in Syria: Steering between the Chinese Model and Regime Change” of July 2006 proposed most of the reforms. In less than six months, President al-Assad has already issued successive presidential decrees enacting all these reforms.

However the U.S. – NATO axis of “the responsibility to protect” advocates are persistent on creating facts on the ground that would empower them for foreign intervention and place them in a position to trade their support of this reform package internally in exchange externally for Syrian foreign policy agenda, which has nurtured during four decades of al-Assad rule a network of regional and international alliances that enabled Syria to maintain a defense option in its 44-year old struggle to liberate the Israeli – occupied Syrian Golan Heights and to stand steadfast against dictating conditions on Damascus to make peace with Israel on Israeli terms.

These adverse factors leave the U.S. and NATO with two options:

First pressuring NATO member, Turkey, to discard its nine-year old “zero-problem based relations” with its regional neighbors to what Liam Stack described in the New York Times on October 27 as “hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency … amid a broader Turkish campaign to undermine Mr. Assad’s government” in its southern Syrian neighbor, which is the same reason why Turkey has been for years waging military incursions into Iraq and why Ankara was on the brink of war with Syria late in 1990s.

Second, to escalate the militarization of the peaceful protests. On August 14, 2011, Israel’s Debka Intelligence news reported that developments in Syria point to a full-fledged armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist “freedom fighters” covertly supported, trained and equipped by foreign powers. According to Israeli intelligence sources: NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are drawing up plans … to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers … The delivery of weapons to the rebels is to be implemented “overland, namely through Turkey and under Turkish army protection … According to Israeli sources, which remain to be verified, NATO and the Turkish High command, also contemplate the development of a “jihad” involving the recruitment of thousands of Islamist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of the enlistment of Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war … Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria!

The editorial board opinion of The Washington Post on September 28, 2011 had a foresight: “The appearance of such forces is not to be welcomed, even by those hoping for an end to the Assad regime.”

However, the U.S. and NATO seem now in a race against time in pursuing exactly that goal through those two options to preclude the implementation of the Syrian package of reforms, until the ruling regime is coerced into compliance to trade their support of these reforms for the current Syrian foreign policy agenda.

But because the Syrian foreign policy, like the foreign policy of all countries, serves the internal prerogatives in the first place, which is in the Syrian case the liberation of Syria’s Israeli-occupied lands, Syria is not expected to comply. Therefore the Syrian “resistance” continues, and the regional conflict as well.

Nick Cohen wrote in The Jewish Chronicle on August 30 this year: “Syria is a story that cries out for coverage. But it is not receiving the play it deserves.” Cohen was and is still right, but he has yet to address Syria from a completely different approach.

By Nicola Nasser

Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist based in Bir Zeit, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories. nassernicola@ymail.com

Since Sep. 11, I often hear Americans indignantly calling for a reformed and progressive Islam even though it is unimaginable that they would call for certain changes within Judaism, for example. Thomas Friedman has called for a war “within Islam,” and has written plenty on the subject. But who cares what Thomas Friedman has to say.

Calls for reform within Islam ignore the fact that there has been a reformist and progressive Islam that dates back to the 1950s and 1960s: it was the Islam that was promoted and supported by Egypt’s Nasser regime.

Back then and for much of the Cold War, there was a civil war within Islam: Saudi Arabia and the other pro-American dictatorships of the Middle East supported and promoted a reactionary and conservative Islam defined by the standards of Wahhabism—one of the most intolerant and exclusionary religious movements in Islam.

Nasser, on the other hand, promoted a very different Islam. His was an Islam that supported gender equality and promoted women and fought obscurantism. Nasser used Egypt’s foremost religious institution, the al-Azhar, through his ally, cleric Mahmud Shaltut, to push for a reformed and enlightened Islam.

It was under Nasser that al-Azhar opened its doors to women, and ended the takfir (declaration of infidelity) of Shiites by the highest religious establishment.

Shaltut and Nasser never made the distinction between Sunnis and Shiites (it is unthinkable that Nasser would ever speak in such language given he avoided any sectarian language about Muslims and Christians). But Nasser did not have only Saudi Arabia and its wealth against him: He also had to contend with the US and Western governments.

In the service of Israel and taking into account Cold War interests, the US supported the reactionary version of Islam and the creation of Muslim organizations backed by Saudi Arabia because it was more worried about communism and leftism.

The US fought fiercely against Nasser’s progressive Islam because it was in the same camp with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies who promoted conservative values and doctrine.

It was in the context of this war between the two Islams that the violent groups emerged. Nasser marginalized and even expelled those fanatic clerics of the Muslim Brotherhood who would later inspire Al-Qa`idah and other such groups. All those reactionary clerics who did not subscribe to the progressive views and interpretations of Shaltut fled Egypt and were hosted by Gulf monarchies who hired them as educators, advisors, clerics, and TV personalities (in the case of Yusuf Al-Qaradawi in Qatar for example).

Many of those reactionary clerics were instrumental in setting up constitutions (Hasan Turabi advised several of the Gulf states) and in injecting Islamic laws (or conservative interpretations of Islamic laws) into their body politics and society.

This war went on for years, and Nasser scored big in this battle: some new republics and old ones (Libya, Syria, and Iraq) were influenced by Nasser. Even Syrian Muslim Brotherhood leader Mustafa Sibai was on the defensive and wrote a book titled “The Socialism of Islam.” The Ikhwan were made to look like apologists for a dead order. Nasser (accurately) associated that Islam with its sponsor: Saudi Arabia. It was the Islam that serves colonialism, he argued.

But Nasser died in 1970. Sadat (with an eye on Washington), released all the Islamist extremists from jail and unleashed them on Egyptian college campuses. This gave rise to the most militant clerics: people like Aymad Dhawahiri and Umar Abdurrahman. Sadat (and his Saudi allies) wanted the Islamists to go after the leftists and the Arab nationalists. Secularism was dealt a severe blow: its towering and most credible sponsor, Nasser, was dead. (Of course, Nasser could—and should—have gone further in his secular advocacy but he was constrained by virtue of the religious one-upmanship that his enemies were engaged in and by virtue of deep conservative religiosity in Egyptian society).

After the 1970s, we entered into the Saudi era and it translated into a victory for reactionary Islam. That Islam received another boost in the 1980s, when the US devoted billions and weapons to sponsor it in Afghanistan. The rest is distorted history.

By As’ad AbuKhalil

11 November 2011

@ alakhbar english

I have been arguing with some friends in the Middle East. Some wonder about my decision to go against Arab opposition groups even before they have a chance to reach power. I remind people that the Baath Party was an opposition group, and it too promised freedom and justice and even the liberation of Palestine.

We should not wait for the gallows to be mounted in order to express fierce opposition to opposition groups that have exhibited various signs of intolerance, deception, and subservience to reactionary forces. This applies to different opposition groups throughout the region.

It should be stated at the outset that no Arab regime deserves support – all of them lack electoral legitimacy, and all have violated the rights of their people. And all have failed in the larger issue of standing up to Israel and its occupation and war crimes. Furthermore, not a single Arab regime is free of corruption. But opposition to all Arab regimes without exception, should not lead one to endorse all Arab opposition groups without exception.

Many Arab opposition groups have been nothing but tools for some Arab governments. The Syrian Baathist regime, for example, used to sponsor its own version of Iraqi opposition groups, while Iraq did the same with some Syrian opposition groups.

Moreover, Gulf money has tainted more than one Arab opposition group. The case of the NATO-backed transitional council in Libya, the NTC, is now too fresh in our mind: the massacres and war crimes that have already been committed by the NTC justify opposition to it, even before it seized power.

It has proven itself to be unqualified to fit into the paradigm of new Arab governments based on the rule of law and freedom. This tool of NATO has even inexplicably requested the extension of the NATO mandate, when the latter justified its mission by reference to a UN Security Council resolution that spoke about defending civilians from the Gaddafi regime.

The Gaddafi regime fell, and Gaddafi was sodomized, tortured, and killed, but the Council that promised to bring democracy to Libya still wanted NATO to defend it – from its critics presumably.

Many opposition groups in the present-day Arab world are mere tools of tyrannical Arab governments. The Syrian Muslim Brotherhood has been close to Saudi Arabia for more than a decade, while the Libyan Transitional Council has been supported and armed by Qatar. An-Nahda’s leader, Rashid Ghannoushi, inaugurated his electoral victory with a visit to Qatar.

In other words, some Arab opposition groups may promise democracy and rule of law, while they carry the agenda of a sponsoring tyrannical government. The role of Saudi Arabia and Qatar is not hidden from the formation of the Syrian National Council. And the “president” of the Syrian Monitor of Human Rights – based in London and probably the most cited source on news on Syria in the world – Rami Abdul-Rahman, told the mouthpiece of Prince Salman, Ash-Sharq Al-Awsat: “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques is the most influential Arab leader in the Syrian street, more than any other Arab leader, for he enjoys the love and appreciation from sections of the Syrian street.”

That a president of a human rights council could be a fan of the Saudi King and its propaganda sheets, tells volumes about the political orientations of this group.

No, we should not wait until several Arab opposition groups reach power before we go after them. The writings on the wall are clear: some of those groups are intolerant, sectarian and carry reactionary agendas. It is our duty, if we truly care about the welfare of the Syrian or Libyan or Tunisian people, to speak out against those opposition groups who promise to take the people from one form of tyranny to another.

There are worrisome signs on Arab horizons – the Arab counter-revolutionary forces are regrouping and trying to hijack what began as genuinely popular movements. There is a danger that the Arab counter-revolution replaces one tyrannical regime with one that is both tyrannical and subservient to its own agenda. We can’t afford to stay silent: not about the tyranny of the current regimes, nor the tyrannies that are being prepared by the GCC to prevail in the Arab world.

By As’ad AbuKhalil

3 November 2011

@ alakhbar english

Not yet 30, Evan Knappenberger has already lived several lives.  His story destroys the U.S. government’s case against whistleblower Bradley Manning, exposes the toxic mix of fraud and incompetence that creates U.S. war policies, and highlights the damage so often done to soldiers who come home without visible injuries.

Knappenberger, seen in this video , was trained as an “intelligence analyst” at the U.S. Army’s Intelligence Training Center at Fort Huachuca, Arizona in 2003 and 2004, the same school attended by Bradley Manning.  In April of this year, the PBS show Frontline , responding to an article Knappenberger had published, flew him to Los Angeles on a private jet, and interviewed him for four hours.

Knappenberger told Frontline that he, like Manning, had had access to the U.S. government’s SIPRNet database when he had been in Iraq.  Knappenberger told Frontline that 1,400 U.S. government agencies put their information on SIPRNet, and that 2 million employees were given access to it.  SIPRNet has secret blogs, secret discussions, and its own secret Google search engine.  At one point, the Pentagon encouraged gambling on SIPRNet on the likelihood of future terrorist attacks.  Knappenberger also pointed out that the United States had given the Iraqi Army access to the database, knowing full well that many members of the Iraqi Army were also on the U.S. target list as enemies fighting U.S. troops.

Knappenberger was in Iraq in 2006, but said he believes the practice of sharing SIPRNet with the Iraqi Army began in 2005.  The U.S. Army ran cables to laptops in Iraqi command posts, and gave each post a CPOF (command post of the future) super computer.  Each Iraqi command post had access to everything Bradley Manning allegedly leaked to Wikileaks.  At some point in 2006, the U.S. Army decided to get serious about security by assigning two U.S. soldiers with security clearances to guard each site.  Each soldier was on guard for 12 hours and off for 12.  Another step taken to boost security was the creation of passwords to access SIPRNet, but because no one could remember the passwords they were written on sticky notes and stuck to the backs of the computers.  Knappenberger says he had the password on the back of his computer and has read that every computer in Manning’s unit had it too.

So, Knappenberger related this kind of information to Frontline for four hours and says that for three or four months afterwards he expected to go to prison for violating nondisclosure aggreements. He popped a lot of PTSD pills and gained a huge amount of weight as a result of nervousness, he says.  Then, the day before he expected the Frontline story to air, he says, the show told him it would not be airing.  Frontline was afraid of being held liable for inducing Knappenberger to violate his nondisclosure aggreements.

Knappenberger has made the same information public without any charges being brought against him.  Frontline would simply have made it more public.  Like Bradley Manning, Frontline would not have provided enemies of the United States with tools to be used against us.  Rather, like Bradley Manning, Frontline would have informed more of us what our government was doing in our name.  And some of what it has been doing is extremely hard to look at without turning away.

This past January, Knappenberger says he testified on the record, via telephone, to the office of the United Nations Human Rights Commissioner on the topic of torture.  Knappenberger was not qualified to “interrogate” people, but Donald Rumsfeld’s reorganization of the Army found ways to put non-combat troops into combat roles.  Used to test this model was Knappenberger’s First Special Troops Battalion.  These cooks, military police, signals and chemical specialists, clerks, and analysts were called on to fight terror and spread freedom.  Knappenberger says his platoon sergeant was a payroll specialist who “got his legs blown off in combat he was never trained for,” while a first sergeant “got his head blown off, and he was an intel geek.”  Knappenberger says his roommate was a specialist in fixing radios who lost his hearing and suffered traumatic brain injury on an IED squad.

Knappenberger says that recruiters had told him he’d do desk work.  But he also says that when he joined up he was ready to kill people.  He ended up doing double duty.  There would be 10 or 12 hours at your normal job, he says, followed by 8 hours on a combat job.  Knappenberger’s combat job was not a shooting one.  It was his duty to tell others where to shoot, what to blow up, whom to kill.  Knappenberger at age 20 was one of three “intel” people in his unit at Camp Taji north of Baghdad, the other two being women aged 25 and 26.  None of the three had experience, but they took over for eight well-trained veterans who had been there for two years, and some of whom even spoke Arabic.  The 26-year-old woman in charge was a drone pilot now placed in charge of a combat area with 100,000 people around Camp Taji.  Many FREs (former regime elements) lived right outside the base.

As the only male, Knappenberger says he was assigned to do the questioning of suspects brought in.  Lacking any census, the only database of individuals Knappenberger possessed came from the oil-for-food program.  A friend had found the information in Baghdad and typed it in.  When someone was pulled over, soldiers would radio to Knappenberger who would search for them in the database.  Usually they’d be released.  If someone was caught “with a bloody knife or a tube of mortars” Knappenberger says, “they’d be brought in.”  But without really good evidence they could not be booked for lack of space.  So, good evidence had to be obtained within 24 hours.  The method of choice was coerced confession.

Knappenberger told me they used sensory deprivation on these suspects.  They blindfolded them, put bags on their heads, handcuffed them, sat them on the cold ground in their underwear, etc.  In one case that he described to me, they drove a man in circles around the base blindfolded in a truck, put him on the ground, and gave him a cigarette.  The man “freaked out because he thought he’d been driven to the middle of nowhere to be executed.  But we never told him that, so it was legal.”  The more common approach, Knappenberger said, was to tell someone you would drop him off in the middle of the market and give him $100.  This would amount to framing someone with turning in others, and the penalty would likely be death . . . for the individual and for his family.  “We’d show them pictures of dead bodies and say ‘This is what’s going to happen to you,’ and we’d talk about their wives and girlfriends.”  Knappenberger says he did not engage in physical abuse, but that others did while he literally turned his back.  Iraqi interpreters, wearing masks, hit, slapped, grabbed hair, etc.  Turning your back was understood by the U.S. Army as making you a non-witness, Knappenberger says.

This went on from January to March, 2006, until “I finally got into trouble.”  Afraid that a prisoner would file a complaint after being booked, Knappenberger’s boss promoted him from the tactical to the operational command staff.  Knappenberger’s new job, too, provides a window into the madness of war.

Knappenberger came up with an analysis of likely weapons caches.  Some were in junk yards and other random sites.  But the largest was in a munitions depot supposedly guarded by the Iraqi Army.  The further one moved away from this depot, Knappenberger found, the fewer weapons caches were found.  Similarly, Knappenberger identified likely locations of ethnic killings as Iraqi Army checkpoints.

The Oil Protection Force, a special unit of the Iraqi Army, was headquartered in one of the hottest spots for IEDs in all of Iraq, Knappenberger says.  “We were paying them and they were stealing oil out of the pipeline they were supposedly guarding.”  When Knappenberger’s unit arrested the head of the Oil Protection Force for leading a Sunni militia against U.S. troops, within an hour, he says, a DIA helicopter arrived and “the guys in suits took him and put him back out on the streets.”  Shortly afterwards the pipeline blew up and burned for 30 days.

Another Iraqi whom Knappenberger had an interesting encounter with is Ali Latif Ibrahim Hamad el Falahi.  “I spent eight months trying to find that guy,” he says.  Knappenberger met Falahi at a civil affairs dinner at a sheik’s house his first week in Iraq and spoke with him for about an hour.  Three days later, Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll was kidnapped .  Knappenberger says Falahi was “the suspect” and was “our number two target for a year and a half” as he engaged in ethnic cleansing, decapitation, and ambushing Shiite units in the Iraqi Army.  “I spent 8 months trying to have him killed.  We killed dozens of people trying to find him.  We had a gunship fly around his orchard because of heat signals there.  Thirteen people died there, none him.”  Falahi was reportedly later killed in the same sheik’s house after failing to set off a suicide vest beside a U.S. soldier.

“I think about that guy every day,” says Knappenberger.  “We raided his house.  I had his diary translated.  I had a whole file on this guy.”  Remarkably, Knappenberger recognizes humanity in Falahi, saying “I don’t think he was a bad person because I didn’t get that vibe from him when I talked to him.”  Knappenberger uses the example of Hitler to suggest that there is good in the worst of people.  Of Falahi he says, “He did very bad things.  He killed a lot of people.  There were even allegations that he was raping women.  But before the Americans came he was just a hardworking farmer taking care of his aunt.”  Falahi had gone to his Imam and argued over how to get Americans to leave without violence, says Knappenberger.  “Falahi and his nephews went through Camp Taji and took a bunch of weapons the day Saddam disappeared.  And it was supposed to be for protection.  They set up a militia to guard the village.  They had check points on the road in and out.”  Then the United States armed the Shiites as the new Iraqi Army, and Paul Bremer cut out the Baath Party and banned possession of over 30 rounds of ammunition per family.  “That’s when he got radicalized.”

Evan Knappenberger says he began as an Ayn Rand fan, an atheist and a Republican (and you thought Karl Rove was the only atheist Republican!).  Knappenberger has since turned against Ayn Rand and rightwing politics including war, and gone religious .

Evan says that he found the Army to be “a pretty socialist institution,” in which people are encouraged to protect their friends as a way to motivate them to kill.  But, he says, “I was willing to kill without that.”  Why?  As revenge for 9-11, he says, and as an expression of hatred that Evan says he harbored even before 9-11.  He remembers reading Readers Digest as a kid and learning about “terrorists who want to kill us.”  In the end, Evan says he did not shoot anyone.  But he prepared packets of information on targets, including maps to their homes, photos of them, the reasons they were targets, and what was to be done to them (kill/capture, exploit, source, etc.)  Artillery officers, who Evan says are “notoriously stupid,” became a targeting cell, and whatever he told them (“This guy is bad.  This is where he lives.”) they would work from to plan bombings and raids.

My impression from speaking with Evan Knappenberger is that what turned him against war and militarism, even more than the SNAFU experience in Iraq, even more than the gradual exposure of the lies that launched the war, and more than the “socialism” within the military, was coming into contact with radical inequality of wealth and power within the Army, mirroring our society at large.

On a two-week leave, completely exhausted, in the middle of his year in Iraq, Evan flew back to Charlottesville, Virginia.  On the last leg from Atlanta, he was one of two people in uniform on the plane.  The other was a JAG general with a gold watch and a leather briefcase but no combat patch.  Evan, in contrast, hadn’t had a shower in a week, and it showed.  Apparently the two of them regarded each other with mutual contempt.  While on leave, Evan attended a jobs fair in Crystal City for people with security clearances like his.  At lunch time, he says, lots of officers came over from the Pentagon looking for high-paying jobs.  “I was the lowest ranking person in the room.  And the thing that really shocked the hell out of me: You go six months in Iraq and the highest ranking person you see is a colonel.  And I’m in a room full of generals and sergeant majors of the army and chief warrant officer fives, and not one of them had a combat job in the whole big ball room — not one of those m—– f—— had been in a combat zone for 30 days to get a combat patch — or if they did they weren’t proud of it.  And these were the people making the decisions and making my life hell — and that had a lot to do with turning me against the war.”

Another factor was the unfairness of the policy of stop-loss.  The Army had messed up Evan’s paperwork when he had shipped out, delaying him, and as a result his date for completing his contract just barely made it into the group the Army chose to hold over for additional “service.”  To avoid being stop-lossed, Evan cut a deal with his commanders that would allow him to be honorably discharged for minor misbehavior.  However, a brand new division commander gave Evan a general discharge, eliminating his GI Bill and other benefits.  Evan says it took him three years to get any disability coverage from the V.A.

Evan still has PTSD, as well as a skin problem he attributes to toxic chemicals and garbage burned in open pits in Iraq by the U.S. Army.  On tower guard duty adjacent to such a pit, Evan says he lost his sense of smell and coughed up a black substance.  “That whole year was like a nightmare,” he says.  “Getting mortared every night.  Rockets coming in.  The first couple of times I got shot at on guard duty I had no idea what was going on. . . .  I thought it was bats. . . .  I got so used to getting mortared.  I was at the airport getting ready to leave and was in the portapotty when a siren went off.  Then there were booms and after the last boom dirt clods falling on the portapotty.  I walked out, doing up my belt, and there was a major and a sergeant major under a truck face down in the mud.  And the guy screams at me: ‘Get to the bunker!'”  Evan’s response was a casual “Whatever.  It’s over now.”

In April of 2007, Evan Knappenberger came back to Charlottesville.  He says he’d been dating long distance and had a bad break up on the phone while driving.  He just kept driving for three months, living out of his car and spending his Army money.  He ended up in Bellingham, Washington, where he met a woman at a peace vigil and married her in October.  The marriage has “almost been ruined a few times by PTSD.”

Evan has done a lot of antiwar activism in Bellingham, including helping AWOL soldiers make it to Canada.  He built and did guard duty on a tower in Bellingham and then in Washington, D.C., to protest the stop loss policy.  I organized a press conference for his mother in Charlottesville.

Evan was nothing if not outspoken.  This included informing an Ohio couple that their son was dead, despite a government coverup and propaganda campaign.  In 2004 Iraqis produced a video of a U.S. soldier, Matt Maupin, held hostage, and then another of him being killed.  According to Knappenberger, the DIA used facial pattern recognition and a study of the blotches on his uniform and was 100% certain that Maupin had been executed.  But the military told the media to suppress the video, and the U.S. media complied.  Maupin’s parents campaigned for Bush’s “reelection” in the swing state of Ohio in ’04 because “John Kerry wants to leave Matt behind,” even though Knappenberger says the government knew that Matt was dead.  As part of the public relations push, Maupin was repeatedly promoted in rank, and his pay was placed in an account for when he was found.

Evan saw the video in 2006.  In 2007 he told a Washington Post reporter who filed a FOIA and was told the information was classified.  So, in September 2007, Evan says he told Maupin’s parents, who were reluctant to believe him.  An hour later, an Army intelligence officer called Evan and threatened him with jail.  According to Knappenberger, he replied, “If you tell the parents I won’t have to.  If you don’t I will.”  Meanwhile, says Knappenberger, “the poor dad was putting together a team to go find Matt.”  Maupin’s dad, Evan says, told him “I’ve got Andrew Card’s number.  I’m calling him right now.”  Two weeks later he was allowed to watch the video at the Pentagon.

One’s heart breaks for those parents and so many others like them, and for the vastly greater number of Iraqis whose loved ones have been killed by U.S. loved ones.  One’s heart breaks for Evan Knappenberger as well.  He says he is committed to nonviolence, but it is a process he is working at.  He grew up in a violent culture and was trained to use and value violence.  Since getting out of the Army, he has repeatedly been accused of threatening violence.  He recounted to me an incident in which he threatened President Bush with violence.  He has threatened rightwing war supporters with violence in blog posts.  Evan’s been hospitalized twice for PTSD.  He’s had an on-again off-again relationship with antiwar groups like IVAW (Iraq Veterans Against the War).

During what Evan describes as a “really bad breakdown” in January 2009, he showed up at the V.A. hospital in Seattle.  It was full, and he was told to come back Monday.  He called a senator, and had an appointment within an hour.  Within another hour, he says, he was loaded up with antidepressants and on the street.  Four weeks of antidepressants later, he had a worse breakdown that landed him in jail following an attempted suicide and what he says was an unfounded charge of “unlawful imprisonment” of his wife, which he pled to a misdemeanor.

Despite everything our society places in the way of it, Evan Knappenberger has obtained an associate’s degree and is working on a bachelor’s.  After a troubled but useful contribution to Occupy Charlottesville (he says he quit, others say they evicted him), Evan is headed back to Bellingham to work on his marriage and his mortgage payments.  I wish him well and thank him for speaking out.

By David Swanson

David Swanson is the author of ” When the World Outlawed War ,” ” War Is A Lie ” and ” Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union “

 

 

November 18-20, 2011: Thousands of social justice activists from across the Americas will occupy the main gates of Fort Benning, Georgia to call for an end to U.S. militarization and for the closure of the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of Americas, 

“The SOA provides the military muscle to protect the greed of the 1% at the expense of the 99% throughout the Americas.” said Father Roy Bourgeois, the founder of SOA Watch. “The surge of social justice activism in the U.S. is fueling the call for the closure of this notorious institution.” 

In August 2011, 69 Members of the House of Representatives delivered a letter to President Obama, calling on the President to shut down the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC), formerly the School of Americas (SOA) by executive order. The 69 Representatives including Representative John Lewis from Georgia, Representative Ron Paul from Texas and Representative James McGovern from Massachusetts. To read the letter, visithttp://soaw.org/docs/ObamaLetter.pdf 

On November 4, Representative McGovern introduced H.R. 3368, the Latin America Military Training Review Act, in the House of Representatives. The bill calls for the suspension of the SOA/ WHINSEC and an investigation into the connection between U.S. military training and human rights abuses in Latin America. 

By SOA Watch

SOA Watch is a nonviolent grassroots movement that works for the closing the School of the Americas and a change in U.S. foreign policy – www.SOAW.org

 

 

 

 

[This is an expanded version of remarks at an Occupy Austin teach-in, October 30, 2011.]

There’s one question that pundits and politicians keep posing to the Occupy gatherings around the country: What are your demands?

I have a suggestion for a response: We demand that you stop demanding a list of demands.

The demand for demands is an attempt to shoehorn the Occupy gatherings into conventional politics, to force the energy of these gatherings into a form that people in power recognize, so that they can roll out strategies to divert, co-opt, buy off, or — if those tactics fail — squash any challenge to business as usual.

Rather than listing demands, we critics of concentrated wealth and power in the United States can dig in and deepen our analysis of the systems that produce that unjust distribution of wealth and power. This is a time for action, but there also is a need for analysis. Rallying around a common concern about economic injustice is a beginning; understanding the structures and institutions of illegitimate authority is the next step. We need to recognize that the crises we face are not the result simply of greedy corporate executives or corrupt politicians, but rather of failed systems. The problem is not the specific people who control most of the wealth of the country, or those in government who serve them, but the systems that create those roles. If we could get rid of the current gang of thieves and thugs but left the systems in place, we will find that the new boss is going to be the same as the old boss.

My contribution to this process of sharpening analysis comes in lists of three, with lots of alliteration. Whether you find my analysis of the key questions compelling, at least it will be easy to remember: empire, economics, ecology.

Empire: Immoral, Illegal, Ineffective

The United States is the current (though fading) imperial power in the world, and empires are bad things. We have to let go of self-indulgent notions of American exceptionalism — the idea that the United States is a unique engine of freedom and democracy in the world and therefore a responsible and benevolent empire. Empires throughout history have used coercion and violence to acquire a disproportionate share of the world’s resources, and the U.S. empire is no different.

Although the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq are particularly grotesque examples of U.S. imperial destruction, none of this is new; the United States was founded by men with imperial visions who conquered the continent and then turned to the world. Most chart the beginning of the external U.S. empire-building phase with the 1898 Spanish-American War and the conquest of the Philippines that continued for some years after. That project went forward in the early 20 th century, most notably in Central America, where regular U.S. military incursions made countries safe for investment.

The empire emerged in full force after World War II, as the United States assumed the role of the dominant power in the world and intensified the project of subordinating the developing world to the U.S. system. Those efforts went forward under the banner of “anti-communism” until the early 1990s, but continued after the demise of the Soviet Union under various other guises, most notably the so-called “war on terrorism.” Whether it was Latin America, southern Africa, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, the central goal of U.S. foreign policy has been consistent: to make sure that an independent course of development did not succeed anywhere. The “virus” of independent development could not be allowed to take root in any country out of a fear that it might infect the rest of the developing world.

The victims of this policy — the vast majority of them non-white — can be counted in the millions. In the Western Hemisphere, U.S. policy was carried out mostly through proxy armies, such as the Contras in Nicaragua in the 1980s, or support for dictatorships and military regimes that brutally repressed their own people, such as El Salvador. The result throughout the region was hundreds of thousands of dead — millions across Latin America over the course of the 20 th century — and whole countries ruined.

Direct U.S. military intervention was another tool of U.S. policymakers, with the most grotesque example being the attack on Southeast Asia. After supporting the failed French effort to recolonize Vietnam after World War II, the United States invaded South Vietnam and also intervened in Laos and Cambodia, at a cost of 3-4 million Southeast Asians dead and a region destabilized. To prevent the spread of the “virus” there, we dropped 6.5 million tons of bombs and 400,000 tons of napalm on the people of Southeast Asia. Saturation bombing of civilian areas, counterterrorism programs and political assassination, routine killings of civilians, and 11.2 million gallons of Agent Orange to destroy crops and ground cover — all were part of the U.S. terror war.

On 9/11, the vague terrorism justification became tangible for everyone. With the U.S. economy no longer the source of dominance, policymakers used the terrorist attacks to justify an expansion of military operations in Central Asia and the Middle East. Though non-military approaches to terrorism were more viable, the rationale for ever-larger defense spending was set.

A decade later, the failures of this imperial policy are clearer than ever. U.S. foreign and military policy has always been immoral, based not on principle but on power. That policy routinely has been illegal, violating the basic tenets of international law and the constitutional system. Now, more than ever, we can see that this approach to world affairs is ineffective, no matter what criteria for effectiveness we use. An immoral and criminal policy has lost even its craven justification: It will not guarantee American dominance.

That failure is the light at the end of the tunnel. As the elite bipartisan commitment to U.S. dominance fails, we the people have a chance to demand that the United States shift to policies designed not to allow us to run the world but to help us become part of the world.

Economics: Inhuman, Anti-Democratic, Unsustainable

The economic system underlying empire-building today has a name: capitalism. Or, more precisely, a predatory corporate capitalism that is inconsistent with basic human values. This description sounds odd in the United States, where so many assume that capitalism is not simply the best among competing economic systems but the only sane and rational way to organize an economy in the contemporary world. Although the financial crisis that began in 2008 has scared many people, it has not always led to questioning the nature of the system.

That means the first task is to define capitalism: that economic system in which (1) property, including capital assets, is owned and controlled by private persons; (2) most people must rent their labor power for money wages to survive, and (3) the prices of most goods and services are allocated by markets. “Industrial capitalism,” made possible by sweeping technological changes and imperial concentrations of capital, was marked by the development of the factory system and greater labor specialization. The term “finance capitalism” is often used to mark a shift to a system in which the accumulation of profits in a financial system becomes dominant over the production processes. Today in the United States, most people understand capitalism in the context of mass consumption — access to unprecedented levels of goods and services. In such a world, everything and everyone is a commodity in the market.

In the dominant ideology of market fundamentalism, it’s assumed that the most extensive use of markets possible, along with privatization of many publicly owned assets and the shrinking of public services, will unleash maximal competition and result in the greatest good — and all this is inherently just, no matter what the results. If such a system creates a world in which most people live in poverty, that is taken not as evidence of a problem with market fundamentalism but evidence that fundamentalist principles have not been imposed with sufficient vigor; it is an article of faith that the “invisible hand” of the market always provides the preferred result, no matter how awful the consequences may be for real people.

How to critique capitalism in such a society? We can start by pointing out that capitalism is fundamentally inhuman, anti-democratic, and unsustainable.

Inhuman: The theory behind contemporary capitalism explains that because we are greedy, self-interested animals, a viable economic system must reward greedy, self-interested behavior. That’s certainly part of human nature, but we also just as obviously are capable of compassion and selflessness. We can act competitively and aggressively, but we also have the capacity to act out of solidarity and cooperation. In short, human nature is wide-ranging.  In situations where compassion and solidarity are the norm, we tend to act that way. In situations where competitiveness and aggression are rewarded, most people tend toward such behavior.

Why is it that we must accept an economic system that undermines the most decent aspects of our nature and strengthens the cruelest? Because, we’re told, that’s just the way people are. What evidence is there of that? Look around, we’re told, at how people behave. Everywhere we look, we see greed and the pursuit of self-interest. So the proof that these greedy, self-interested aspects of our nature are dominant is that, when forced into a system that rewards greed and self-interested behavior, people often act that way. Doesn’t that seem just a bit circular? A bit perverse?

Anti-democratic: In the real world — not in the textbooks or fantasies of economics professors — capitalism has always been, and will always be, a wealth-concentrating system. If you concentrate wealth in a society, you concentrate power. I know of no historical example to the contrary.

For all the trappings of formal democracy in the contemporary United States, everyone understands that for the most part, the wealthy dictate the basic outlines of the public policies that are put into practice by elected o fficials. This is cogently explained by political scientist Thomas Ferguson’s “investment theory of political parties,” which identifies powerful investors rather than unorganized voters as the dominant force in campaigns and elections. Ferguson describes political parties in the United States as “blocs of major investors who coalesce to advance candidates representing their interests” and that “political parties dominated by large investors try to assemble the votes they need by making very limited appeals to particular segments of the potential electorate.” There can be competition between these blocs, but “on all issues affecting the vital interests that major investors have in common, no party competition will take place.” Whatever we might call such a system, it’s not democracy in any meaningful sense of the term.

People can and do resist the system’s attempt to sideline them, and an occasional politician joins the fight, but such resistance takes extraordinary effort. Those who resist sometimes win victories, some of them inspiring, but to date concentrated wealth continues to dominate. If we define democracy as a system that gives ordinary people a meaningful way to participate in the formation of public policy, rather than just a role in ratifying decisions made by the powerful, then it’s clear that capitalism and democracy are mutually exclusive.

Unsustainable: Capitalism is a system based on an assumption of continuing, unlimited growth — on a finite planet. There are only two ways out of this problem. We can hold out hope that we might hop to a new planet soon, or we can embrace technological fundamentalism and believe that evermore complex technologies will allow us to transcend those physical limits here. Both those positions are equally delusional. Delusions may bring temporary comfort, but they don’t solve problems; in fact, they tend to cause more problems, and in this world those problems keep piling up.

Critics now compare capitalism to cancer. The inhuman and antidemocratic features of capitalism mean that, like a cancer, the death system will eventually destroy the living host. Both the human communities and non-human living world that play host to capitalism eventually will be destroyed by capitalism. Capitalism is not, of course, the only unsustainable system that humans have devised, but it is the most obviously unsustainable system, and it’s the one in which we are stuck. It’s the one that we are told is inevitable and natural, like the air we breathe. But the air that we are breathing is choking the most vulnerable in the world, choking us, choking the planet.

Ecology: Out of Gas, Derailed, Over the Waterfall

In addition to inequality within the human family, we face even greater threats in the human assault on the living world that come with industrial society. High-energy/high-technology societies pose a serious threat to the ability of the ecosphere to sustain human life as we know it. Grasping that reality is a challenge, and coping with the implications is an even greater challenge. We likely have a chance to stave off the most catastrophic consequences if we act dramatically and quickly. If we continue to drag our feet, it’s “game over.”

While public awareness of the depth of the ecological crisis is growing, our knowledge of the basics of the problem is hardly new. Here is a “World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity” issued by 1,700 of the planet’s leading scientists:

That statement was issued in 1992, and since then we have fallen further behind in the struggle for sustainability. Look at any crucial measure of the health of the ecosphere in which we live — groundwater depletion, topsoil loss, chemical contamination, increased toxicity in our own bodies, the number and size of “dead zones” in the oceans, accelerating extinction of species and reduction of bio-diversity — and the news is bad. Remember also that we live in an oil-based world that is fast running out of easily accessible oil, which means we face a huge reconfiguration of the infrastructure that undergirds our lives. And, of course, there is the undeniable trajectory of climate disruption.

Add all that up, and ask a simple question: Where we are heading? Pick a metaphor. Are we a car running out of gas? A train about to derail? A raft going over the waterfall? Whatever the choice, it’s not a pretty picture. It’s crucial we realize that there are no technological fixes that will rescue us. We have to acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed. We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves.

Facing a Harsh Future with a Stubborn Hope

The people who run this world are eager to contain the Occupy energy not because they believe the critics of concentrated wealth and power are wrong, but because somewhere deep down in their souls (or what is left of a soul), the powerful know we are right. People in power are insulated by wealth and privilege, but they can see the systems falling apart. The United States’ military power can no longer guarantee world domination. The financial corporations can no longer pretend to provide order in the economy. The industrial system is incompatible with life.

We face new threats today, but we are not the first humans to live in dangerous times. In 1957 the Nobel writer Albert Camus described the world in ways that resonate:

“Tomorrow the world may burst into fragments. In that threat hanging over our heads there is a lesson of truth. As we face such a future, hierarchies, titles, honors are reduced to what they are in reality: a passing puff of smoke. And the only certainty left to us is that of naked suffering, common to all, intermingling its roots with those of a stubborn hope.”

A stubborn hope is more necessary than ever. As political, economic, and ecological systems spiral down, it’s likely we will see levels of human suffering that dwarf even the horrors of the 20 th century. Even more challenging is the harsh realization that we don’t have at hand simple solutions — and maybe no solutions at all — to some of the most vexing problems. We may be past the point of no return in ecological damage, and the question is not how to prevent crises but how to mitigate the worst effects. No one can predict the rate of collapse if we stay on this trajectory, and we don’t know if we can change the trajectory in time.

There is much we don’t know, but everything I see suggests that the world in which we will pursue political goals will change dramatically in the next decade or two, almost certainly for the worse. Organizing has to adapt not only to changes in societies but to these fundamental changes in the ecosphere. In short: We are organizing in a period of contraction, not expansion. We have to acknowledge that human attempts to dominate the non-human world have failed. We are destroying the planet and in the process destroying ourselves. Here, just as in human relationships, we either abandon the dominance/subordination dynamic or we don’t survive.

In 1948, Camus urged people to “give up empty quarrels” and “pay attention to what unites rather that to what separates us” in the struggle to recover from the horrors of Europe’s barbarism. I take from Camus a sense of how to live the tension between facing honestly the horror and yet remaining engaged. In that same talk, he spoke of “the forces of terror” (forces which exist on “our” side as much as on “theirs”) and the “forces of dialogue” (which also exist everywhere in the world). Where do we place our hopes?

“Between the forces of terror and the forces of dialogue, a great unequal battle has begun,” he wrote. “I have nothing but reasonable illusions as to the outcome of that battle. But I believe it must be fought.”

The Occupy gatherings do not yet constitute a coherent movement with demands, but they are wellsprings of reasonable illusions . Rejecting the political babble around us in election campaigns and on mass media, these gatherings are an experiment in a different kind of public dialogue about our common life, one that can reject the forces of terror deployed by concentrated wealth and power.

With that understanding, the central task is to keep the experiment going, to remember the latent power in people who do not accept the legitimacy of a system. Singer/songwriter John Gorka, writing about what appears to be impossible, offers the perfect reminder:

By Robert Jensen

Robert Jensen is a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin, one of the partners in the community center “5604 Manor,” http://5604manor.org/ .

He is the author of All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice, (Soft Skull Press, 2009); Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity (South End Press, 2007); The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege (City Lights, 2005); Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (City Lights, 2004); and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream (Peter Lang, 2002).

Jensen is also co-producer of the documentary film “Abe Osheroff: One Foot in the Grave, the Other Still Dancing,” which chronicles the life and philosophy of the longtime radical activist. Information about the film, distributed by the Media Education Foundation, and an extended interview Jensen conducted with Osheroff are online at http://thirdcoastactivist.org/osheroff.html .

Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html . To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html .

 

 

 

President Barack Obama has pledged that planned cuts in defence spending will not affect America’s military presence in east Asia, as the US seeks to play a larger role in shaping the region’s future.

Speaking to the Australian parliament in Canberra, Mr Obama said Washington hoped to improve co-operation with Beijing, but stressed that the US was “here to stay” as a Pacific power despite China’s dramatic economic and military advances. The Asia Pacific region, he added, was now a “top priority”.

The speech, one of the most significant foreign policy statements of Mr Obama’s presidency, brought together several important shifts in US strategy that have been taking shape over the past two years and are aimed at addressing the rise of China. These include the winding down of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and increased attention on south-east Asia and the South China Sea.

The president also emphasised Washington’s desire for India to play a larger role in regional issues.

“Here is what the region must know. As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority,” said Mr Obama. “The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay.”

He was speaking a day after he formally announced 2,500 US marines would be based in northern Australia next year, along with more aircraft and naval vessels, providing the American military with a new platform for intervening in the region. “We are deepening our alliance and this is the perfect place to do it,” he said later in the day in Darwin.

While the Pentagon is planning at least $450bn of spending cuts over the next decade, Mr Obama said Asia would be exempt from such pressures: “Reductions in US defence spending will not – I repeat, will not – come at the expense of the Asia Pacific. We will preserve our unique ability to project power and preserve peace.”

The new agreement with Australia was criticised by Chinese officials, who fear that the US is bent on trying to contain their country’s rise.

“It may not be quite appropriate to intensify and expand military alliances and may not be in the interest of countries within this region,” Liu Weimin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, said.

Mr Obama used a regional summit last weekend in Hawaii to promote the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade pact that at the moment does not include China. It is expected that he will use another regional summit this weekend in Indonesia to raise the issue of maritime security in the South China Sea, despite Beijing’s opposition.

During his first year in office, Mr Obama sought to avoid confrontation with China and even appeared to offer a strong partnership with Beijing to manage a host of global issues.

However, over the past year his administration has appeared increasingly sceptical about China’s ambitions. Unnerved by what some see as more aggressive behaviour by China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Vietnam and several other countries have encouraged the US to increase its engagement with the region.

Mr Obama said Washington was not looking to contain China and hoped to improve collaboration with the People’s Liberation Army.

“We’ll seek more opportunities for co-operation with Beijing, including greater communication between our militaries to promote understanding and avoid miscalculation,” he said. “All our nations have a profound interest in the rise of a peaceful and prosperous China.”

By Geoff Dyer

18 November 2011

@ Financial Times

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, was recently persuaded by Netanyahu and Barak to support such a move.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak are trying to muster a majority in the cabinet in favor of military action against Iran, a senior Israeli official has said. According to the official, there is a “small advantage” in the cabinet for the opponents of such an attack.

Netanyahu and Barak recently persuaded Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman, who previously objected to attacking Iran, to support such a move.

Although more than a million Israelis have had to seek shelter during a week of rockets raining down on the south, political leaders have diverted their attention to arguing over a possible war with Iran. Leading ministers were publicly dropping hints on Tuesday that Israeli could attack Iran, although a member of the forum of eight senior ministers said no such decision had been taken.

Senior ministers and diplomats said the International Atomic Energy Agency’s report, due to be released on November 8, will have a decisive effect on the decisions Israel makes.

The commotion regarding Iran was sparked by journalist Nahum Barnea’s column in Yedioth Ahronoth last Friday. Barnea’s concerned tone and his editors’ decision to run the column under the main headline (“Atomic Pressure” ) repositioned the debate on Iran from closed rooms to the media’s front pages.

Reporters could suddenly ask the prime minister and defense minister whether they intend to attack Iran in the near future and the political scene went haywire.

Western intelligence officials agree that Iran is forging ahead with its nuclear program. Intelligence services now say it will take Iran two or three years to get the bomb once it decides to (it hasn’t made the decision yet ).

According to Western experts’ analyses, an attack on Iran in winter is almost impossible, because the thick clouds would obstruct the Israel Air Force’s performance.

Netanyahu did not rule out the possibility of the need for a military action on Iran this week. During his Knesset address on Monday, Netanyahu warned of Iran’s increased power and influence. “One of those regional powers is Iran, which is continuing its efforts to obtain nuclear weapons. A nuclear Iran would constitute a grave threat to the Middle East and the entire world, and of course it is a direct and grave threat on us,” he said.

Barak said Israel should not be intimidated but did not rule out the possibility that Israel would launch a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “I object to intimidation and saying Israel could be destroyed by Iran,” he said.

“We’re not hiding our thoughts. However there are issues we don’t discuss in public … We have to act in every way possible and no options should be taken off the table … I believe diplomatic pressure and sanctions must be brought to bear against Iran,” he said.

Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Ya’alon said he preferred an American military attack on Iran to an Israeli one. “A military move is the last resort,” he said.

Interior Minister Eli Yishai has not made his mind up yet on the issue. In a speech to Shas activists in the north on Monday Yishai said “this is a complicated time and it’s better not to talk about how complicated it is. This possible action is keeping me awake at night. Imagine we’re [attacked] from the north, south and center. They have short-range and long-range missiles – we believe they have about 100,000 rockets and missiles.”

Intelligence and Atomic Energy Minister Dan Meridor said he supports an American move against Iran. In an interview to the Walla! website some two weeks ago Meridor said “It’s clear to all that a nuclear Iran is a grave danger and the whole world, led by the United States, must make constant efforts to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The Iranians already have more than four tons of 3-4 percent enriched uranium and 70 kgs. of 20 percent enriched uranium. It’s clear to us they are continuing to make missiles. Iran’s nuclearization is not only a threat to Israel but to several other Western states, and the international interest must unite here.”

Former Defense Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer said he feared a “horror scenario” in which Netanyahu and Barak decide to attack Iran. He warned of a “rash act” and said he hoped “common sense will prevail.”

On Tuesday, Barak said at the Knesset’s Finance Committee that the state budget must be increased by NIS 7-8 a year for five years to fulfill Israel’s security needs and answer the social protest. “The situation requires expanding the budget to enable us to act in a responsible way regarding the defense budget considering the challenges, as well as fulfill some of the demands coming from the Trajtenberg committee,” he said.

By Barak Ravid, Amos Harel, Zvi Zrahiya and Jonathan Lis

2 November 2011

@ Haaretz.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

Clashes continued yesterday in cities across Egypt, on the fifth day of mass protests demanding the overthrow of the US-backed Egyptian military junta. The protests started Saturday, when police used live ammunition and rubber bullets against a sit-in by a few hundred protesters in Tahrir Square, in Cairo.

Demonstrations have spread across the country, with hundreds of thousands filling Tahrir Square and clashing with police outside the Interior Ministry, which oversees Egypt’s hated police forces. Demonstrations also shook Alexandria, Port-Said, Qena, Aswan, Assiut, and other cities. There are calls for a million-man march in Cairo tomorrow.

These are the most powerful demonstrations since mass strikes and protests in February forced out pro-US dictator President Hosni Mubarak. The masses are turning against the military, whose leaders control much of the wealth of the country and formed the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) junta led by Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi to replace Mubarak. Protesters rejected Tantawi’s proposals on Tuesday to erect a civilian caretaker government next year, correctly fearing that this would only be a façade for continuing military rule.

The army and security forces have responded with an orgy of violence, trying to smash the protests. Significantly, Egyptian state media have cited police repression of Occupy Wall Street protests in the United States as a justification for the army’s deadly violence against the Egyptian people.

As of yesterday morning, at least 35 protesters had been killed and an estimated 2,000 wounded by Egyptian security forces over the five days of protests. Three more protesters were reported shot and killed in Cairo yesterday morning, as protesters took the wounded to hospitals in ambulances or on scooters. Security forces also shot a 10-year-old boy in the head with a bullet; he was not expected to survive.

Protesters in Cairo chanted “The people want the removal of the Field Marshal” and “Shame, shame, shame, the Army kills revolutionaries.”

The state-owned daily Al Ahram reported that police broke a two-hour truce negotiated by Muslim clerics yesterday evening on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, near the Interior Ministry. They fired intense volleys of tear gas against protesters who shouted, “We will not leave, SCAF should leave” and “Muslims and Christians are one hand.”

Protesters in the port city of Alexandria set up barricades outside police headquarters and were attacked by security forces. One protester was reportedly shot dead.

Al Jazeera wrote that there was an element of “self-preservation” in police attacks in Alexandria, as police fear that protesters might raid their weapon stockpiles and arm themselves for defense against the junta. Police headquarters, reporter Rawya Rageh noted, “is not only a place of law and order, but also a place where there is a large stockpile of weapons. [The police] cannot let the protesters take over.”

Questions are emerging about the massive use of tear gas by police forces, especially after several people reportedly died due to asphyxiation by gas. Khalid Hamdi, working at a field clinic in Tahrir Square, told Al Jazeera: “We’ve seen many faintings and we’d never seen that before. About 70 percent of the injuries are fainting. People are coming in with asthma, convulsions sometimes—this wasn’t often [the case] before.”

Many protesters have taken to wearing gas masks when going to demonstrations.

In a press conference yesterday, Health Minister Amr Helmy acknowledged the use of live ammunition against protesters since Saturday—which had previously been denied by police. He denied reports, however, that Egyptian police have put nerve agents in tear gas, noting that the tear gas canisters came from the United States. Helmy claimed that “seizures and fainting symptoms were from the tear gas.”

The two main companies exporting tear gas to Egypt are Combined Systems Inc. and NonLethal Technologies Inc., both based in the US state of Pennsylvania.

Renewed mass protests against the US-backed junta have exploded the lies the Western powers used against revolutionary struggles that broke out in the Middle East this year. Washington, which funds the Egyptian military to the tune of $1.3 billion per year, postured as supporting a SCAF-led “democratic transition” in Egypt—while continuing to back the junta’s dictatorial rule against the working class. The US government and its European allies are again desperately trying to disarm and suppress revolutionary struggles against a Western-backed puppet regime.

For the time being, the US government is still backing Tantawi’s plans. On Wednesday US State Department spokesman Victoria Nuland endorsed a July 2012 deadline Tantawi set for handing over power to an elected government.

The Western press is increasingly backing proposals, first made by official “opposition” politician Mohamed ElBaradei, for a formal transfer of power to a “national salvation” government, presided by a politician chosen by the junta. There are calls to scrap the SCAF-controlled elections and immediately install a civilian government.

German government spokesman Steffen Seibert said : “The demonstrators’ demands … for a quick transition to a civilian government are understandable from the German government’s point of view.”

These plans are increasingly driven by a fear that the SCAF regime may collapse. In a comment titled “Egypt’s Doomed Elections” in yesterday’s New York Times, Andrew Reynolds argued that Egypt “is careening toward a disastrous parliamentary election that begins on November 28 and could bring the country to the brink of civil war.” Reynolds cited Egyptian Coptic Christians’ fear of a government dominated by the right-wing Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, and evidence that election rules still favored incumbents in parliamentary elections.

In the British Guardian, Ahdaf Soueif wrote: “The crucial thing now is to stand firm until SCAF hands over power. To whom? To a government headed by any one or more of our potential presidential candidates—and this government would run for elections.”

These comments evade the critical point: such a government would be reactionary and correctly rejected as illegitimate by the Egyptian population, precisely because it would emerge not from the revolutionary struggles of the Egyptian working class, but the plots of the SCAF. Its goal would be to protect the wealth and power of the Egyptian ruling class and their ties to the major imperialist powers.

The objective logic of the mass struggles underway against the Egyptian military dictatorship demands that the working class overthrow the junta and take power, instead of accepting another regime vetted by the Egyptian generals, NATO, and Washington. A new, socialist perspective is required. The working class must form its own organizations to overthrow the junta and take state power, based on a struggle to place the economic resources of Egypt and the world under its democratic control.

The most dangerous opponents of this perspective have been Egypt’s “left” opposition parties, who have promoted a bankrupt perspective of working with the Islamists and pushing for “democratic space” under the aegis of the junta’s dictatorship. Such politics, which have allowed the Islamist parties to posture as the leading opposition to the regime, are increasingly despised by the working class.

On Tuesday night Abou El-Ghar of Egypt’s Social-Democratic Party felt compelled to distance himself from his party’s decision to participate in meetings with SCAF vice-president Sami Anan. Claiming that he had believed the junta’s claims that “violence would stop immediately,” he said he was “truly sorry for participating in the meeting with the SCAF.”

By Alex Lantier