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Every grain of sand in the Syrian desert now knows there won’t be a “responsibility to protect”-enabled North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) “humanitarian” intervention to provoke regime change in Damascus. A protracted war like in Libya is not feasible – even though those faultless democratic practitioners, the House of Saud, have offered to pay for it, lavishly.

Yet the fog of near war remains impenetrable. What is NATO really up to in Syria?

It was already established (see The shadow war in Syria Asia Times Online, December 2, 2011) that NATO had set up a command and control center in Turkey’s southern Hatay province – where British commandos and French intelligence are training the dodgy Free Syria Army (FSA). The target: to foment a civil war engulfing northern Syria.

Now comes the confirmation, via the website of former United States Federal Bureau of Investigation whistleblower Sibel Edmonds, that a pincer movement may be in effect, involving Jordan. [1]

Edmonds quotes local sources according to whom “hundreds of soldiers who speak languages other than Arabic” have been “moving back and forth … between the King Hussein air base in al-Mafraq” and “Jordanian villages adjacent to the Syrian border”.

Edmonds sustains none of this is being reported by US media because of a gag order from above that in theory expired this Tuesday. And don’t try asking King Abdullah of Jordan about it.

The base at al-Mafraq is virtually across the border from Dar’a. A lot of action has been going on in Dar’a recently – an epicenter of the anti-President Bashar al-Assad movement. As far as the Syrian news agency Sana is concerned, security forces have been routinely killed by “terrorist gangs”. As far as the “rebels” are concerned, these are patriotic army defectors attacking military supply lines.

Let’s hit plan B

By adopting this pincer movement, NATO in Syria is now actively diversifying into an Iraq-in-the-1990s strategy; to submit Syria to a prolonged state of siege before eventually going for the kill.

Yet as much as NATO would pray to Allah for the contrary, Syria is not Libya. It’s much smaller and compact, but more populated and with a real, battle-tested army. On top of being immensely estranged from each other by the current eurodrama, the Brits and former colonial power France have calculated they have everything to lose economically if they engage in the folly of a conventional war.

As for the Syrian opposition stalwarts – the Syrian National Council (SNC) – they are a joke. Most are Muslim Brotherhood, with a sprinkling of Kurds. The leader, Burhan Ghalioun, is an opportunist Paris exile with zero credibility (for the average Syrian) although in a recent Wall Street Journal interview he made all the right noises to appease the Israel lobby (no more ties with Iran, no more support to Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza).

The FSA claims 15,000 army defectors. But it’s infected with mercenaries and what scores of Syrian civilians describe as armed gangs. The SNC, in thesis, is anti-guerrilla. But that’s exactly what the FSA is actively practicing, attacking Syrian soldiers and Ba’ath party offices.

The SNC key tactic for now is to sell Western public opinion the Libya-style “potential” nightmare of an imminent massacre in Homs. Not many are buying it – apart from the usual, strident, corporate media suspects. Although both are based in Istanbul, the SNC and the FSA can’t seem to get their act together; they look like a lethal version of The Three Stooges.

Then there is the Arab League, which is now controlled by The Eight Stooges; the six GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council, aka Gulf Counter-revolution Club) monarchies plus “invited” GCC members Morocco and Jordan. The stooges are subcontractors of NATO’s Greater Middle East on (humanitarian) steroids. Nobody, though, is asking where were the stooges were when Beirut and southern Lebanon were destroyed in 2006, and when Gaza was destroyed in 2008 – in both instances by Israel. The stooges don’t dare question the divine rights of the US/Israel axis.

NATO’s tactics in Syria have been crystal clear for a while now. France, under neo-Napoleonic liberator of Libya President Nicolas Sarkozy, concentrates on turbo-charging escalation. A the same time, Paris is trying to position the rise and rise of the Muslim Brotherhood all across the Arab world as a strategic Western interest – as in curbing Iranian influence.

Then there’s the ongoing economic blockade – impossible without cooperation from Iraq (it won’t happen), Lebanon (it won’t happen) and Jordan (it could, but to Jordan’s detriment).

But NATO’s wet dream is really to push Turkey to do the dirty work. Irretrievably broke as they are, NATO countries – including the US – simply cannot launch yet another Middle East war that would send oil prices through the roof.

What NATO cannot fathom is the possibility of a sectarian Sunni-Shi’ite war re-exploding in Iraq. In this case, the only safe haven would be Iraqi Kurdistan. And that would strengthen Kurdish unity – from Iraq to Syria, from Turkey to Iran. Turkey in this case would have more pertinent fish to fry than to get embroiled in a war in Syria.

Turkey’s double game

Still, the great imponderable in this complex chessboard is Turkey – as in what precisely happened to their much-lauded foreign policy of “zero problems with our neighbors”, devised by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

Faced with Riyadh’s impotence, and Cairo in turmoil, Ankara seems to have monopolized the mantle of Sunni leadership – or guardian of Sunni orthodoxy facing those Shi’ite heretics, mostly from Iran (but also Iraq, Alawis in Syria and Hezbollah).

 At the same time, to please NATO and the US, Ankara allows the deployment of missile defense in its territory – which is directed not only against Iran but most of all against Russia. Not to mention Ankara harbors the secret – forbidden – desire to “solve” the Kurdish question for good by establishing an autonomous zone in Syrian territory.

And Ankara also wants to make money; winners in Libya were British and French oil interests, while losers were the Italians and the Turks. But so far Turkey is also losing, especially in Hatay province near the Syrian border, as a free-trade agreement between both countries has been canceled.

To the West’s despair, the Assad regime is far from being strangled. To counteract the hefty package of Arab League/Turkish sanctions, the regime has accelerated trade with China – by bartering and bypassing the international financial system.

No wonder Washington is taking the long-haul approach. It has deployed back to Damascus its ambassador Robert Ford – a former assistant to the sinister former destabilizer of Nicaragua John Negroponte when he was ambassador in Baghdad, and a current enthusiast of the House of Saud counter-revolution.

Ford will have plenty of time to exchange e-mails with a Syrian opposition totally in bed with former colonial power France. Talk about a stooge festival; this one is bound to carve its own niche in the annals of Middle East infamy.

By Pepe Escobar

15 December 2011

@ Online Asia Times

Note

1. The report is here. An interview with Syrian journalist Nizar Nayouf is here.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

On Friday millions of workers and youth protested against military rule in Egypt and demanded the downfall of the US-backed Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) junta. In Cairo hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered on Tahrir Square. By the early afternoon, the square was packed with protesters chanting, “The people demand the removal of the field marshal,” “We will not go, he should go” and “Down, down with military rule.”

Throughout the day, mass marches kicked off from different locations in the capital, all converging in Tahrir Square. Thousands of marchers tore down the banners and posters of parliamentary candidates on their way to Tahrir, protesting the decision to hold parliamentary elections under the thumb of the SCAF junta, and denouncing the political establishment as a whole.

In major cities all over Egypt, hundreds of thousands took to the streets. In Alexandria tens of thousands of protesters gathered in front of Al-Qaed Ibrahim Mosque shouting against military rule and marching towards the Northern Military Zone near Sidi Gaber. Thousands of protesters gathered on Arbaeen Square in Suez. There were demonstrations in Tanta, Mahalla al Kubra, Sohag, Ismailiya, Damanhour, in the Upper Egyptian cities of Luxor, Minya and Assiut, and on the Sinai.

Friday’s mass demonstrations were the seventh day of continuous mass protests against the junta. Protests erupted last Saturday after the notorious Amn Al Markazi (Central Security Forces) violently attacked a small sit-in on Tahrir Square. Thousands of workers and youth poured into the streets to defend the sit-in against Mubarak’s generals, who have continued the same anti-social and anti-democratic politics as the ousted dictator.

The junta has launched a brutal crackdown against protesters since Saturday, killing at least 38 and wounding several thousand. Military and Central Security Forces have shot rubber bullets, birdshots and tear gas canisters at protesters. The latest autopsy records indicate that at least 22 protesters were shot with live ammunition. There is increasing evidence that the Egyptian military is also using armored vehicles against peaceful protesters. A Youtube video shows tanks chasing protesters through the streets of Ismailiya, an industrial city on the west bank of the Suez Canal.

The crackdown is closely overseen by Washington, the main sponsor of the Egyptian military. The ammunition used to kill and wound Egyptian workers and youth is labeled “Made in USA.” After the Tuesday speech by junta leader and de facto dictator Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the US State Department cynically criticized “excessive force” used by the junta but praised Egypt’s military leaders for pledging to hold elections and supposedly hand over power to civilians before July.

For the US and the Egyptian bourgeoisie, much is at stake. The situation in Egypt is the most explosive since the revolution began on January 25. The masses are demanding the overthrow of the junta that replaced Mubarak, and they are turning against the military—the backbone of the Egyptian state, defending Egyptian capitalism and the interests of imperialism in the entire region.

The junta and its imperialist backers are insisting that the SCAF must retain power and elections must take place under their control. At a Thursday press conference in Cairo, General Mokhtar Al-Molla and General Mamdouh Shahin stated that this would be a “betrayal” of the people’s trust and insisted that they would not be dislodged by a “slogan-chanting crowd.”

The biggest political group in the country, the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood (MB), distributed leaflets at Friday prayers supporting the elections. The MB did not take part in the protests, but organized their own protest in front of al-Azhar mosque.

In the eyes of masses of protesters, the MB is deeply discredited. On Monday one of their leaders, Mohamed ElBeltagi, was thrown out of Tahrir Square when he tried to enter to calm down protesters. The MB has established close ties with the US and the junta in the recent months and is collaborating closely with them to stop the revolution.

To achieve this aim, the Egyptian ruling elite is using a double strategy. On the one hand, violence against protesters continues. On the other, SCAF issued a cynical apology on Facebook “to the families of the martyrs throughout Egypt” and is trying to stabilize the situation. On Tuesday the chief of staff of the Egyptian Armed Forces, Sami Anan, met with various political forces in an emergency meeting. There have also been reports that SCAF approached Mohamed ElBaradei to form a so-called national salvation government.

On Thursday, Kamal El-Ghanzouri was named prime minister and charged with forming a new government. Like his predecessor Essam Sharaf, Ghanzouri is a former Mubarak official, having served as prime minister in 1996-1999. His cabinet championed free-market policies and included many figures now in prison, like hated former interior minister Habib El-Adly.

On Friday Ghanzouri spoke at his first press conference after his appointment, indicating that the new cabinet would be not much different from the previous one, including members of the former cabinet and possibly even his predecessor Essam Sharaf. “I’m keen to have some of those ministers and some newcomers,” Ghanzouri said.

Ghanzouri also made clear in his speech that he had been given more powers than his predecessors: “The powers given to me exceed any similar mandates. I will take full authority so I can serve my country.”

This only signals that the junta and the new PM are preparing even more violence against protesters to push through the elections.

Workers and youth on Tahrir Square rejected the junta’s latest maneuver, chanting “Illegitimate, illegitimate” after hearing Ghanzouri’s speech. Some 2,000 protesters immediately started a sit-in front of the cabinet building, to keep Ghanzouri from entering.

Protester Mohammed el-Fayoumi told AP: “Not only was he prime minister under Mubarak, but also part of the old regime for a total of 18 years. Why did we have a revolution then?” Another added: “The revolution was hijacked once. We won’t let it happen again.”

US President Barack Obama declared his full support for the new government and SCAF-controlled elections, stating that the US “strongly believes that the new Egyptian government must be empowered with real authority immediately. … Egypt’s transition to democracy must continue, with elections proceeding expeditiously, and all necessary measures taken to ensure security and prevent intimidation.”

The aim of the junta, the US, and large parts of the Egyptian bourgeoisie is to hold the elections at any price on November 28 as scheduled. They hope to use these elections to legitimize the state apparatus inherited from the former Mubarak regime and to protect the wealth and property of the Egyptian ruling class and the interests of imperialism in Egypt.

White House demands that “all necessary measures” should be taken to push through the elections amount to a blank cheque for the junta and the new government to use large-scale violence against the mass protests if they do not die down before the elections on Monday.

The Egyptian revolution is again at a turning point. Workers and youth understand that the elections under military rule are a farce, and that any “elected” government would be deeply reactionary and controlled by SCAF and the US. Friday’s mass protests show again that the Egyptian masses are willing to bring down the junta through revolutionary struggle. But for these struggles to be successful, a new, socialist perspective is needed.

The whole experience of the last 10 months has shown that only a government emerging directly from the struggle of the Egyptian workers and youth—that is, a workers’ government—can achieve the social and democratic aspirations of the masses. To fight for such a government to reorganize society on a socialist basis, workers and youth must build their own independent organizations of state power. They cannot and do not want to rely on a state apparatus controlled by the junta and its imperialist backers.

The most dangerous opponents of such a struggle are so-called “left” opposition groups, like the Revolutionary Socialists (RS), the Democratic Workers Party or the Socialist Popular Alliance Party. These groups participated in the Friday protests not to fight for a socialist perspective, but to disarm the working class politically and subordinate it to one or another wing of the bourgeoisie and thus to the junta itself.

In a statement issued on Thursday, the RS demanded the “immediate handover of power to civilian revolutionary rule […] without the parties and political forces which have accepted to sit down with the killer of the revolutionaries.” This is at least unconvincing, however, as many forces tied to the RS themselves have “accepted to sit down” with the junta. On Tuesday night Abou El-Ghar of Egypt’s Social-Democratic Party felt compelled to declare himself “truly sorry for participating in the meeting with the SCAF.”

Another statement published on their website called for “the formation of a revolutionary goverment […] to manage the transition period and determine the timeline for the transition to an elected democratic government.”

According to Al Ahram, “representatives of revolutionary movements” proposed Mohamed El-Baradei on Friday evening as the head of a government of national salvation at the Cabinet offices on Kasr El-Aini Street. They would also like to see Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the Nasserist Karama Party and former member of the Guidance Bureau of the MB, Abdel-Moneim Aboul-Futtouh, in a cabinet led by ElBaradei.

All these people are experienced bourgeois politicians and announced presidential candidates who cooperated closely with the military regime in the recent months. If the junta decides to bring such a government to power, it would be installed to defend the interests of the Egyptian ruling elite and crush the protests and strikes even more ruthlessly than the junta dares to do it now.

By Johannes Stern

26 November 2011

WSWS.org

New Delhi watches warily as Doha-based Islamist scholar-activist Yusuf al-Qaradawi emerges as peace broker

Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a Doha-based Islamist scholar who once called on his followers to back jihadist groups in Jammu and Kashmir, has emerged as a key mediator in secret talks between the U.S. and the Taliban, government sources have told The Hindu.

In 2009, Mr. al-Qaradawi had issued a fatwa, or religious edict, asserting that “the Kashmiris were properly fighting jihad against the Indian army.” The jihad was legitimate, he argued, since mujahideen groups sought to create an Islamic state. Therefore, the edict concluded, it was incumbent on all Muslims to help Kashmiris gain their “freedom from Indian aggression.”

New Delhi, Indian diplomatic sources said, has been warily watching Mr. al-Qaradawi’s emergence as peace broker — fearful that his growing influence could help regional jihadist groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Muhammad find new sanctuaries in a rapidly changing West Asia or a future Afghan regime which includes the Taliban.

Earlier this month, the sources said, Mr. al-Qaradawi helped draw a road map for a deal between the Taliban and the United States, aimed at giving the superpower a face-saving political settlement ahead of its planned withdrawal from Afghanistan which is due to begin in 2014.

In return for the release of prisoners still held by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, the lifting of United Nations sanctions on its leadership and its recognition as a legitimate political group, the Taliban was expected to agree to sever its links to transnational organisations like al-Qaeda, end violence and eventually share power with the Afghan government.

Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s President, recalled his country’s envoy to Qatar after The Hindu broke news that negotiations to open a Taliban office had reached an advanced stage — angered, reports said, at the prospect of a deal that would have given Taliban legitimacy at a time when hardliners in its ranks are carrying out a lethal campaign targeting regime supporters. However, Kabul on Tuesday announced it would accept a Taliban liaison office in Doha — as long as the talks were “Afghan-led.”

Evidence that hardliners have increasing influence over Taliban decision-making, intelligence sources say, has been mounting. Earlier this year, for example, Sheikh Muhammad Aminullah — who was placed on a United Nations watchlist in 2009 for aiding acts of terrorism — was given command of its Peshawar shura, or command council. Born in 1973, Mr. Aminullah represents a new generation of Taliban commanders ideologically committed to al-Qaeda’s vision.

His predecessor, Maulvi Abdul Kabir, had only a peripheral military role, and was considered a key player in secret peace talks with the Afghan government and the United States.

Islamists vs. jihadists

Egyptian-born Mr. al-Qaradawi is seen by both the United States and the Taliban traditionalists as an ally in the battle against the growing influence of this new generation of commanders. Expelled from his homeland for his Islamist views, he has emerged over the last year as ideological pole star of the Muslim Brotherhood — now West Asia’s most influential political movement.

In 1993, Mr. al-Qaradawi issued a landmark edict endorsing democratic pluralism; the Muslim Brotherhood later cast its embrace of electoral politics in Egypt and elsewhere as a form of da’wa, or proselytising missionary work. Even though Mr. al-Qaradawi said he remained committed to “the spread of Islam until it conquers the entire world,” he argued this could be achieved peacefully.

He condemned 9/11 and, in September, 2005, described the Iraqi jihadist Abu Musa’ab al-Zarqawi as a “criminal.” In a 2009 book, he defended armed jihad under specific conditions — Kashmir, Iraq and, later, Libya were among those cases he endorsed — but lashed out at al-Qaeda for a “mad declaration of war on the whole world.”

Mr. al-Qaradawi explained his logic thus to Der Spiegel: “The [Muslim Brotherhood] have tried [jihad], but [jihad] has not been helpful, and we have not gained anything out of [jihad] other than detention, suffering, and victimisation.”

The Muslim Brotherhood’s decision to embrace electoral politics incensed al-Qaeda. In 2008, al-Qaeda’s now-chief Ayman al-Zawahiri lashed out at the Muslim Brotherhood for accepting the Egyptian constitution, rather than God’s word, as a source of law — a fundamental betrayal, he claimed, of the precepts of Islam. In many countries, Brotherhood cadre clashed with salafi-jihadist groups sympathetic to al-Qaeda.

The west’s embrace of Mr. al-Qaradawi for its Afghan negotiations marks the restoration of an old, but little-known, relationship. Key Brotherhood leaders like Said Ramadan, the historian Ian Johnson has shown, were cultivated by the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency for anti-communist operations —along with several central and west Asian Islamists who fought with German fascist forces against the Soviet Union in 1941-1945.

Expelled by Egypt’s socialist rulers for his neo-fundamentalist views, Dr. Ramadan received a warm reception — and a radio programme — when he landed in Pakistan in 1948.

The Pakistani-Canadian scholar Tarek Fatah said Dr. Ramadan’s work “was instrumental in turning a secular Muslim country into a hotbed of Islamic extremism.” Dr. Ramadan also visited the White House in 1953, where he met with President Dwight Eisenhower.

By Praveen Swami

29 December 2011

@ The Hindu

 

“Haha, Ortega doesn’t know what he’s talking about, neither does Evo, they don’t know anything about crime, there are reports out there that know more,” said a journalist from Bloomberg to his colleague. The journalist was sitting next to me in the press tent set up outside the CELAC plenary sessions in the Patio de Honor of the Bolivarian Militia University of Venezuela. He was watching Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega on one of the various large screens broadcasting the summit live, working at one of 60 laptops provided by the Venezuelan government.

And right there were two things already that made the CELAC different to other regional blocs; inclusiveness- that alternative journalists like us from Venezuealanslysis.com, as well as many others, who normally would have been outside the meeting protesting, were instead involved in it and sitting next to naive and bigoted mainstream journalists such as the man from Bloomberg, and the fact that the whole summit was broadcast live- not just to journalists, but around Venezuela and on the internet. Many Venezuelans at home followed the meeting closely, because unlike the OAS or APEC, they felt that the CELAC summit had to do with them, and that it was important.

Nothing like the OAS

“And the president of the United States is more the president of my country / than the president of my country,” wrote Roque Dalton in a poem about the OAS.

Initiated eight months after the coup in Honduras, the absence of the US and Canada, the only countries in the Americas not in the CELAC, is nothing but deliberate. The CELAC is a conscious and collective effort to combat US economic, political, military, and cultural domination in the region.

As Cuban president Raul Castro said on the first day of the summit, “It would be a serious mistake to not recognise that Latin America and the Caribbean have changed, that we can’t be treated as we were in the past. We have had to work hard to confront the burden of colonialism and neo-colonialism, and one can expect a firm regional determination to defend the independence we have reached.”

“The OAS is a …reflection of the 50s and 60s, when it was an instrument to promote the colonialist policy of Washington…that’s why no one talks about the OAS as something Latin American. It represents the past rather that the future,” wrote James Petras.

During the summit, many heads of state echoed similar sentiments, including the prime minister of Dominica, Roosevelt Skerrit, “CELAC can’t follow in the footsteps of blocs like the OAS and the UN,” he said, and Ortega agreed, “It’s a different Latin America today.”

Many of the heads of state talked about south-south cooperation and regional integration as something necessary, that hadn’t existed in the past. They also talked about solidarity, something that isn’t in the scope of organisations like the OAS.

While following the summit from the press tent, I interviewed Llafrancis Colina, director of Caracas based alternative television station Avila, and Augusto Melero, also with Avila. Molero explained, “The initiative taken by Venezuela for Latin American integration comes at a time when the vision of the world is changing, where there are occupations of Wall Street because the US and Europe haven’t been able to beat their economic crisis. In the CELAC we believe that cooperation will strengthen economic democracy.”

The CELAC’s formally stated objective is to deepen integration and political, social, economic, and cultural unity and to promote sustainable development. That is, rather than a fiesta of free trade deals and luxurious feasts for businessmen or women as is standard fare for regional blocs, CELAC, with the influence of a range of left wing presidents such as Chavez, Morales, and Correa, is about cooperation, social justice, and benefiting the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean.

“This summit has been more humane, there’s a position of respect for people’s self determination,” said Melero.

“In the summit itself, there’s a feeling of camaraderie between the different countries, it goes beyond diplomacy. There’s the feeling that, despite having different political perspectives, the presidents can sit down and arrive at agreements, there’s a real intention to solve problems, to work together. The interests of CELAC go beyond the individual interests of each country. For example, the European Union, it’s just about politics and economy, but here with CELAC there’s a cultural aspect, a social one, it’s not just economic,” Melero explained.

One example of that was the proposal by Rafael Correa at the summit for an inter-American system to defend human rights, without the contradictions, hypocrisy, and imperialist arrogance of human rights “reports” that come out of U.S backed organisations about the rest of the world’s human rights situation.

“For the rights of the weak to have weight in the world, we have to unite, that is the fight, this isn’t a struggle for a utopia, it’s a struggle to be,” said Uruguay’s Jose ‘Pepe’ Mujica.

Venezuela has prioritised the CELAC and Latin American integration

The US government with its arrogant and deathly invasions and its paid coup puppeteers offers much less to the cause of Latin American integration than Venezuela does with its social policies and its numerous concrete efforts for Latin American collaboration such as Telesur, the Simon Bolivar satellite, the Radio del Sur, cross continental tourism, petroleum agreements, free eye surgery performed by its doctors in other countries in the region, and so on.

It’s therefore not surprising that it was Venezuela and Chavez who became the president pro tempore of CALC, the predecessor to CELAC, that Venezuela hosted the founding summit on the weekend, and has lead the push to make CELAC real and legitimate.

“For 12 years since Chavez came into government, we’ve been fighting for Latin American integration,” Colina from Avila told me, as she sipped Venezuelan coffee.

“The president [Hugo Chavez] has had a political policy of strengthening Venezuela’s relations with other countries, through bilateral agreements, talks, and ALBA and UNASUR,” Melero added.

“It’s an honour for Venezuela [to host the summit]… many talk about the dream of Bolivar [for a united Latin America] but few talk about it as a project, about actually putting it into practice. Today we’re laying down the first stone, a fundamental one for the unity of Latin America and for our real independence,” Chavez said.

The seriousness the Venezuelan government is giving CELAC was evident in the ongoing coverage and debate by its radio, television, and written media, the decoration of Caracas streets and parks with CELAC posters and photos of Latin America, and the high level of organisation of both the summit and for the media.

Media war comes subtly to CELAC

In the past, spoilt private media journalists have complained of the mediocre reception and non subservient type facilities in Venezuela. One freelance journalist once commented to me that it was a global standard that any restaurant, hotel, or company treat journalists well (ie free food, stay etc) in order to get a good write up, and that Venezuela was doing itself a disservice by not doing the same, and with its chaotic streets and transport. While I beg to differ on the ethics of that, it was important to the Venezuelan government last weekend that the CELAC was accessible to all media- private, public , and alternative, and it wanted that media to be able to easily cover the summit and thereby help the new organisation gain legitimacy and world wide recognition.

At VA we got a 22 page media guide about five days before the summit, then on the day, made our way in the train to La Rinconada station. In a parking lot nearby a tent was set up where journalists registered, and were taken to the summit. After going through security, we made our way to the press tent, with its free lunch and dinner, coffee, laptops and internet, phones, printers, 16 television monitors, and antennas.

The cooperation between progressive media, and the assistance and information provided by Venezuela’s ministry of communications was special. As Melero told me, “This summit has been premised on inclusion, for example, our media, Avila, an alternative youth station, hasn’t been excluded, we have the same opportunities [access to technology, permission to take photos etc] as other media, we sit next to CNN and talk to them.”

Nevertheless, the mainstream media, in a choir of scepticism, and despite the good hosting by Venezuela, predictably has either boycotted covering the CELAC (Christmas and sports are more important) or has focused on irrelevant angles of it, and purposefully missed the point.

Reuters dismissed CELAC, saying it was just another bunch of “initials” and criticising it for having “no budget nor a permanent secretary”, writing that “analysts” (who the article doesn’t bother to name) are “sceptical” about the bloc and suggesting that historical differences and different national agendas have always got in the way. Another Reuters article, this one in English, reduced the importance of CELAC to a “test” of Chavez’s health and wrote (lied) “The CELAC summit will give the theatrical but authoritarian 57-year-old a much-loved opportunity to grandstand at a big event, and bash the United States at the same time.”

Americas Society also used unnamed “detractors” who “question the usefulness of a potentially redundant forum in a region already plagued by a history of hobbled attempts at integration” and the Wall Street Journal followed what seems to be a private media trend, quoting more unnamed “analysts” that while the US should note the “latest indication of growing Latin American autonomy”, different strains of government could hamper the Community’s effectiveness.

“The media [when writing about Venezuela] always looks for the negative things, the errors and failures, in this case of the summit,” Colina said.

“The mainstream media has tried to minimise the impact of CELAC. They aren’t interested in a united block that goes against the interests of US imperialism, they did the same when they invented things that didn’t happen in the Green Square in Libya to justify the killing of Gaddafi, but in this case they are trivialising the CELAC or making it invisible,” Melero added.

CELAC not just for the suits

Apart from many people here following CELAC live or in the press and debating its outcomes, there were also other activities in Caracas related to the summit, such as art and museum exhibitions, cinema forums, a food festival including dishes from 16 of the CELAC countries, theatre, poetry, sculpture, and book stalls.

Colina expressed it well, “CELAC is not just about sitting at tables and talking, it’s not just for the government, but for all of us, for Latin America”.

The CELAC didn’t end in a million dollar feast in a five star hotel with 30,000 police outside the hotel arresting and repressing protesters, as is common with other regional blocs. No, it ended in a huge concert in the rain, and the sounds of Venezuela’s youth orchestra united with Calle 13’s hip hop,

Their words:

I’m Latin America / A people without legs that walks …

You can’t buy my life / My land isn’t for sale

Long live Latin America!

 

 

Introduction

After suffering major military and political defeats in bloody ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, failing to buttress long-standing clients in Yemen, Egypt and Tunisia and witnessing the disintegration of puppet regimes in Somalia and South Sudan, the Obama regime has learned nothing: Instead he has turned toward greater military confrontation with global powers, namely Russia and China. Obama has adopted a provocative offensive military strategy right on the frontiers of both China and Russia.

After going from defeat to defeat on the periphery of world power and not satisfied with running treasury-busting deficits in pursuit of empire building against economically weak countries, Obama has embraced a policy of encirclement and provocations against China, the world’s second largest economy and the US’s most important creditor, and Russia, the European Union’s principle oil and gas provider and the world’s second most powerful nuclear weapons power.

This paper addresses the Obama regime’s highly irrational and world-threatening escalation of imperial militarism. We examine the global military, economic and domestic political context that gives rise to these policies. We then examine the multiple points of conflict and intervention in which Washington is engaged, from Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Venezuela, Cuba and beyond. We will then analyze the rationale for military escalation against Russia and China as part of a new offensive moving beyond the Arab world (Syria, Libya) and in the face of the declining economic position of the EU and the US in the global economy. We will then outline the strategies of a declining empire, nurtured on perpetual wars, facing global economic decline, domestic discredit and a working population reeling from the long-term, large-scale dismantling of its basic social programs.

The Turn from Militarism in the Periphery to Global Military Confrontation

November 2011 is a moment of great historical import: Obama declared two major policy positions, both having tremendous strategic consequences affecting competing world powers.

Obama pronounced a policy of military encirclement of China based on stationing a maritime and aerial armada facing the Chinese coast – an overt policy designed to weaken and disrupt China’s access to raw materials and commercial and financial ties in Asia. Obama’s declaration that Asia is the priority region for US military expansion, base-building and economic alliances was directed against China, challenging Beijing in its own backyard. Obama’s iron fist policy statement, addressed to the Australian Parliament, was crystal clear in defining US imperial goals.

“Our enduring interests in the region [Asia Pacific] demands our enduring presence in this region … The United States is a Pacific power and we are here to stay … As we end today’s wars [i.e. the defeats and retreats from Iraq and Afghanistan]… I have directed my national security team to make our presence and missions in the Asia Pacific a top priority … As a result, reduction in US defense spending will not … come at the expense of the Asia Pacific” (CNN.com, Nov. 16, 2011).

The precise nature of what Obama called our “presence and mission” was underlined by the new military agreement with Australia to dispatch warships, warplanes and 2500 marines to the northern most city of Australia (Darwin) directed at China. Secretary of State Clinton has spent the better part of 2011 making highly provocative overtures to Asian countries that have maritime border conflicts with China. Clinton has forcibly injected the US into these disputes, encouraging and exacerbating the demands of Vietnam, Philippines, and Brunei in the South China Sea. Even more seriously, Washington is bolstering its military ties and sales with Japan, Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea, as well as increasing the presence of battleships, nuclear submarines and over flights of war planes along China’s coastal waters. In line with the policy of military encirclement and provocation, the Obama-Clinton regime is promoting Asian multi-lateral trade agreements that exclude China and privilege US multi-national corporations, bankers and exporters, dubbed the “Trans-Pacific Partnership”. It currently includes mostly smaller countries, but Obama has hopes of enticing Japan and Canada to join …

Obama’s presence at the APEC meeting of East Asian leader and his visit to Indonesia in November 2011 all revolve around efforts to secure US hegemony. Obama-Clinton hope to counter the relative decline of US economic links in the face of the geometrical growth of trade and investment ties between East Asia and China.

A most recent example of Obama-Clinton’s delusional, but destructive, efforts to deliberately disrupt China’s economic ties in Asia, is taking place in Myanmar (Burma). Clinton’s December 2011 visit to Myanmar was preceded by a decision by the Thein Sein regime to suspend a China Power Investment-funded dam project in the north of the country. According to official confidential documents released by WilkiLeaks the “Burmese NGO’s, which organized and led the campaign against the dam, were heavily funded by the US government”(Financial Times, Dec. 2, 2011, p. 2). This and other provocative activity and Clinton’s speeches condemning Chinese “tied aid” pale in comparison with the long-term, large-scale interests which link Myanmar with China. China is Myanmar’s biggest trading partner and investor, including six other dam projects. Chinese companies are building new highways and rail lines across the country, opening southwestern China up for Burmese products and China is constructing oil pipelines and ports. There is a powerful dynamic of mutual economic interests that will not be disturbed by one dispute (FT, December 2, 2011, p.2). Clinton’s critique of China’s billion-dollar investments in Myanmar’s infrastructure is one of the most bizarre in world history, coming in the aftermath of Washington’s brutal eight-year military presence in Iraq which destroyed $500 billion dollars of Iraqi infrastructure, according to Baghdad official estimates. Only a delusional administration could imagine that rhetorical flourishes, a three day visit and the bankrolling of an NGO is an adequate counter-weight to deep economic ties linking Myanmar to China. The same delusional posture underlies the entire repertoire of policies informing the Obama regime’s efforts to displace China’s predominant role in Asia.

While any one policy adopted by the Obama regime does not, in itself, present an immediate threat to peace, the cumulative impact of all these policy pronouncements and the projections of military power add up to an all out comprehensive effort to isolate, intimidate and degrade China’s rise as a regional and global power. Military encirclement and alliances, exclusion of China in proposed regional economic associations, partisan intervention in regional maritime disputes and positioning technologically advanced warplanes, are all aimed to undermine China’s competitiveness and to compensate for US economic inferiority via closed political and economic networks.

Clearly White House military and economic moves and US Congressional anti-China demagogy are aimed at weakening China’s trading position and forcing its business-minded leaders into privileging US banking and business interests over and above their own enterprises. Pushed to its limits, Obama’s prioritizing a big military push could lead to a catastrophic rupture in US-Chinese economic relations. This would result in dire consequences, especially but not exclusively, on the US economy and particularly its financial system. China holds over $1.5 trillion dollars in US debt, mainly Treasury Notes, and each year purchases from $200 to $300 billion in new issues, a vital source in financing the US deficit. If Obama provokes a serious threat to China’s security interests and Beijing is forced to respond, it will not be military but economic retaliation: the sell-off of a few hundred billion dollars in T-notes and the curtailment of new purchases of US debt. The US deficit will skyrocket, its credit ratings will descend to ‘junk’, and the financial system will ‘tremble onto collapse’. Interest rates to attract new buyers of US debt will approach double digits. Chinese exports to the US will suffer and losses will incur due to the devaluation of the T-notes in Chinese hands. China has been diversifying its markets around the world and its huge domestic market could probably absorb most of what China loses abroad in the course of a pull-back from the US market.

While Obama strays across the Pacific to announce his military threats to China and strives to economically isolate China from the rest of Asia, the US economic presence is fast fading in what used to be its “backyard”: Quoting one Financial Times journalist, “China is the only show [in town] for Latin America” (Financial Times, Nov. 23, 2011, p.6). China has displaced the US and the EU as Latin America’s principle trading partner; Beijing has poured billions in new investments and provides low interest loans.

China’s trade with India, Indonesia, Japan, Pakistan and Vietnam is increasing at a far faster rate than that of the US. The US effort to build an imperial-centered security alliance in Asia is based on fragile economic foundations. Even Australia, the anchor and linchpin of the US military thrust in Asia, is heavily dependent on mineral exports to China. Any military interruption would send the Australian economy into a tailspin.

The US economy is in no condition to replace China as a market for Asian or Australian commodity and manufacturing exports. The Asian countries must be acutely aware that there is no future advantage in tying themselves to a declining, highly militarized, empire. Obama and Clinton deceive themselves if they think they can entice Asia into a long-term alliance. The Asian’s are simply using the Obama regime’s friendly overtures as a ‘tactical device’, a negotiating ploy, to leverage better terms in securing maritime and territorial boundaries with China.

Washington is delusional if it believes that it can convince Asia to break long-term large-scale lucrative economic ties to China in order to join an exclusive economic association with such dubious prospects. Any ‘reorientation’ of Asia, from China to the US, would require more than the presence of an American naval and airborne armada pointed at China. It would require the total restructuring of the Asian countries’ economies, class structure and political and military elite. The most powerful economic entrepreneurial groups in Asia have deep and growing ties with China/Hong Kong, especially among the dynamic transnational Chinese business elites in the region. A turn toward Washington entails a massive counter-revolution, which substitutes colonial ‘traders’ (compradors) for established entrepreneurs. A turn to the US would require a dictatorial elite willing to cut strategic trading and investment linkages, displacing millions of workers and professionals. As much as some US-trained Asian military officers , economists and former Wall Street financiers and billionaires might seek to ‘balance’ a US military presence with Chinese economic power, they must realize that ultimately advantage resides in working out an Asian solution.

The age of Asian “comprador capitalists”, willing to sell out national industry and sovereignty in exchange for privileged access to US markets, is ancient history. Whatever the boundless enthusiasm for conspicuous consumerism and Western lifestyles, which Asia and China’s new rich mindlessly celebrate, whatever the embrace of inequalities and savage capitalist exploitation of labor, there is recognition that the past history of US and European dominance precluded the growth and enrichment of an indigenous bourgeoisie and middle class. The speeches and pronouncements of Obama and Clinton reek of nostalgia for a past of neo-colonial overseers and comprador collaborators – a mindless delusion. Their attempts at political realism, in finally recognizing Asia as the economic pivot of the present world order, takes a bizarre turn in imagining that military posturing and projections of armed force will reduce China to a marginal player in the region.

Obama’s Escalation of Confrontation with Russia

The Obama regime has launched a major frontal military thrust on Russia’s borders. The US has moved forward missile sites and Air Force bases in Poland, Rumania, Turkey, Spain, Czech Republic and Bulgaria: Patriot PAC-3 anti-aircraft missile complexes in Poland; advanced radar AN/TPY-2 in Turkey; and several missile (SM-3 IA) loaded warships in Spain are among the prominent weapons encircling Russia, most only minutes away from it strategic heartland. Secondly, the Obama regime has mounted an all-out effort to secure and expand US military bases in Central Asia among former Soviet republics. Thirdly, Washington, via NATO, has launched major economic and military operations against Russia’s major trading partners in North Africa and the Middle East. The NATO war against Libya, which ousted the Gadhafi regime, has paralyzed or nullified multi-billion dollar Russian oil and gas investments, arms sales and substituted a NATO puppet for the former Russia-friendly regime.

The UN-NATO economic sanctions and US-Israeli clandestine terrorist activity aimed at Iran has undermined Russia’s lucrative billion-dollar nuclear trade and joint oil ventures. NATO, including Turkey, backed by the Gulf monarchical dictatorships, has implemented harsh sanctions and funded terrorist assaults on Syria, Russia’s last remaining ally in the region and where it has a sole naval facility (Tartus) on the Mediterranean Sea. Russia’s previous collaboration with NATO in weakening its own economic and security position is a product of the monumental misreading of NATO and especially Obama’s imperial policies. Russian President Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov mistakenly assumed (like Gorbachev and Yeltsin before them) that backing US-NATO policies against Russia’s trading partners would result in some sort of “reciprocity”: US dismantling its offensive “missile shield” on its frontiers and support for Russia’s admission into the World Trade Organization. Medvedev, following his liberal pro-western illusions, fell into line and backed US-Israeli sanctions against Iran, believing the tales of a “nuclear weapons programs”. Then Lavrov fell for the NATO line of “no fly zones to protect Libyan civilian lives” and voted in favor, only to feebly “protest”, much too late, that NATO was “exceeding its mandate” by bombing Libya into the Middle Ages and installing a pro-NATO puppet regime of rogues and fundamentalists. Finally when the US aimed a cleaver at Russia’s heartland by pushing ahead with an all-out effort to install missile launch sites 5 minutes by air from Moscow while organizing mass and armed assaults on Syria, did the Medvedev-Lavrov duet awake from its stupor and oppose UN sanctions. Medvedev threatened to abandon the nuclear missile reduction treaty (START) and to place medium-range missiles with 5 minute launch-time from Berlin, Paris and London.

Medvedev-Lavrov’s policy of consolidation and co-operation based on Obama’s rhetoric of “resetting relations” invited aggressive empire building: Each capitulation led to a further aggression. As a result, Russia is surrounded by missiles on its western frontier; it has suffered losses among its major trading partners in the Middle East and faces US bases in southwest and Central Asia.

Belatedly Russian officials have moved to replace the delusional Medvedev for the realist Putin, as next President. This shift to a political realist has predictably evoked a wave of hostility toward Putin in all the Western media. Obama’s aggressive policy to isolate Russia by undermining independent regimes has, however, not affected Russia’s status as a nuclear weapons power. It has only heightened tensions in Europe and perhaps ended any future chance of peaceful nuclear weapons reduction or efforts to secure a UN Security Council consensus on issues of peaceful conflict resolution. Washington, under Obama-Clinton, has turned Russia from a pliant client to a major adversary.

Putin looks to deepening and expanding ties with the East, namely China, in the face of threats from the West. The combination of Russian advanced weapons technology and energy resources and Chinese dynamic manufacturing and industrial growth are more than a match for crisis-ridden EU-USA economies wallowing in stagnation.

Obama’s military confrontation toward Russia will greatly prejudice access to Russian raw materials and definitively foreclose any long-term strategic security agreement, which would be useful in lowering the deficit and reviving the US economy.

Between Realism and Delusion: Obama’s Strategic Realignment

Obama’s recognition that the present and future center of political and economic power is moving inexorably to Asia, was a flash of political realism. After a lost decade of pouring hundreds of billions of dollars in military adventures on the margins and periphery of world politics, Washington has finally discovered that is not where the fate of nations, especially Great Powers, will be decided, except in a negative sense – of bleeding resources over lost causes. Obama’s new realism and priorities apparently are now focused on Southeast and Northeast Asia, where dynamic economies flourish, markets are growing at a double digit rate, investors are ploughing tens of billions in productive activity and trade is expanding at three times the rate of the US and the EU.

But Obama’s ‘New Realism’ is blighted by entirely delusional assumptions, which undermine any serious effort to realign US policy.

In the first place Obama’s effort to ‘enter’ into Asia is via a military build-up and not through a sharpening and upgrading of US economic competitiveness. What does the US produce for the Asian countries that will enhance its market share? Apart from arms, airplanes and agriculture, the US has few competitive industries. The US would have to comprehensively re-orient its economy, upgrade skilled labor, and transfer billions from “security” and militarism to applied innovations. But Obama works within the current military-Zionist-financial complex: He knows no other and is incapable of breaking with it.

Secondly, Obama-Clinton operate under the delusion that the US can exclude China or minimize its role in Asia, a policy that is undercut by the huge and growing investment and presence of all the major US multi-national corporations in China , who use it as an export platform to Asia and the rest of the world.

The US military build-up and policy of intimidation will only force China to downgrade its role as creditor financing the US debt, a policy China can pursue because the US market, while still important, is declining, as China expands its presence in its domestic, Asian, Latin American and European markets.

What once appeared to be New Realism is now revealed to be the recycling of Old Delusions: The notion that the US can return to being the supreme Pacific Power it was after World War Two. The US attempts to return to Pacific dominance under Obama-Clinton with a crippled economy, with the overhang of an over-militarized economy, and with major strategic handicaps: Over the past decade the United States foreign policy has been at the beck and call of Israel’s fifth column (the Israel “lobby”). The entire US political class is devoid of common, practical sense and national purpose. They are immersed in troglodyte debates over “indefinite detentions” and “mass immigrant expulsions”. Worse, all are on the payrolls of private corporations who sell in the US and invest in China.

Why would Obama abjure costly wars in the unprofitable periphery and then promote the same military metaphysics at the dynamic center of the world economic universe? Does Barack Obama and his advisers believe he is the Second Coming of Admiral Commodore Perry, whose 19th century warships and blockades forced Asia open to Western trade? Does he believe that military alliances will be the first stage to a subsequent period of privileged economic entry?

Does Obama believe that his regime can blockade China, as Washington did to Japan in the lead up to World War Two? It’s too late. China is much more central to the world economy, too vital even to the financing of the US debt, too bonded up with the Forbes Five Hundred multi-national corporations. To provoke China, to even fantasize about economic “exclusion” to bring down China, is to pursue policies that will totally disrupt the world economy, first and foremost the US economy!

Conclusion

Obama’s ‘crackpot realism’, his shift from wars in the Muslim world to military confrontation in Asia, has no intrinsic worth and poses extraordinary extrinsic costs. The military methods and economic goals are totally incompatible and beyond the capacity of the US, as it is currently constituted. Washington’s policies will not ‘weaken’ Russia or China, even less intimidate them. Instead it will encourage both to adopt more adversarial positions, making it less likely that they lend a hand to Obama’s sequential wars on behalf of Israel. Already Russia has sent warships to its Syrian port, refused to support an arms embargo against Syria and Iran and (in retrospect) criticized the NATO war against Libya. China and Russia have far too many strategic ties with the world economy to suffer any great losses from a series of US military outposts and “exclusive” alliances. Russia can aim just as many deadly nuclear missiles at the West as the US can mount from its bases in Eastern Europe.

In other words, Obama’s military escalation will not change the nuclear balance of power, but will bring Russia and China into a closer and deeper alliance. Gone are the days of Kissinger-Nixon’s “divide and conquer” strategy pitting US-Chinese trade agreements against Russian arms. Washington has a totally exaggerated significance of the current maritime spats between China and its neighbors. What unites them in economic terms is far more important in the medium and long-run. China’s Asian economic ties will erode any tenuous military links to the US.

Obama’s “crackpot realism”, views the world market through military lenses. Military arrogance toward Asia has led to a rupture with Pakistan, its most compliant client regime in South Asia. NATO deliberately slaughtered 24 Pakistani soldiers and thumbed their nose at the Pakistani generals, while China and Russia condemned the attack and gained influence.

In the end, the military and exclusionary posture to China will fail. Washington will overplay its hand and frighten its business-oriented erstwhile Asian partners, who only want to play-off a US military presence to gain tactical economic advantage. They certainly do not want a new US instigated ‘Cold War’ dividing and weakening the dynamic intra-Asian trade and investment. Obama and his minions will quickly learn that Asia’s current leaders do not have permanent allies – only permanent interests. In the final analysis, China figures prominently in configuring a new Asia-centric world economy. Washington may claim to have a ‘permanent Pacific presence’ but until it demonstrates it can take care of its “basic business at home”, like arranging its own finances and balancing its current account deficits, the US Naval command may end up renting its naval facilities to Asian exporters and shippers, transporting goods for them, and protecting them by pursuing pirates, contrabandists and narco-traffickers. Come to think about it, Obama might reduce the US trade deficit with Asia by renting out the Seventh Fleet to patrol the Straits, instead of wasting US taxpayer money bullying successful Asian economic powers.

By James Petras

8 December 2011

Countercurrents.org

James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals, including the American Sociological Review, British Journal of Sociology, Social Research, and Journal of Peasant Studies. He has published over 2000 articles in nonprofessional journals such as the New York Times, the Guardian, the Nation, Christian Science Monitor, Foreign Policy, New Left Review, Partisan Review, TempsModerne, Le Monde Diplomatique, and his commentary is widely carried on the internet. His publishers have included Random House, John Wiley, Westview, Routledge, Macmillan, Verso, Zed Books and Pluto Books. He is winner of the Career of Distinguished Service Award from the American Sociological Association’s Marxist Sociology Section, the Robert Kenny Award for Best Book, 2002, and the Best Dissertation, Western Political Science Association in 1968. His most recent titles include Unmasking Globalization: Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century (2001); co-author The Dynamics of Social Change in Latin America (2000), System in Crisis (2003), co-author Social Movements and State Power (2003), co-author Empire With Imperialism (2005), co-author)Multinationals on Trial (2006).

In his book Kairos for Palestine, Rifat Odeh Kassis [4] deals with a topic that is as fresh as the destruction of a Palestinian home by Israeli-driven, US-built bulldozers, and as ancient as the use of the term kairos, derived from an ancient Greek word which refers to a specific moment in time.

Why does this wanton destruction of private Palestinian homes continue unabated? The answer is simple: Israel controls the narrative that justifies its conduct by reporting the demolition of a Palestinian home as a “necessary step” for the “security” and well-being of Israel. The Israeli narrative keeps the Western world locked into a permanent state of ignorance, following the pattern of previous Western colonial invaders and occupiers.

The Israeli narrative, carefully honed by Israel well before Israel’s 1947-48 war of conquest, has skillfully made the case that Israel is a state whose inhabitants deserve their own state as victims of oppression and genocide. They chose the ancient biblical lands of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) on the grounds that the land was “given to them” by Yahweh (the Hebrew word for God).

That narrative — mixing ancient biblical beliefs with modern political strategy — has so totally dominated the perspective of the Western world outside the Middle East, that it has emerged as the only view of reality known to the West. It is in this narrative that Israel is the “victim” and the Palestinian people are an enemy that seeks to drive Israelis “into the sea.”

It has been Israel’s goal since it gained UN recognition as a state in 1949 to control this narrative and prevent any contrary narrative from obtaining a hearing. The occupation of the Palestinian people is sold to the West as a necessity. Palestinians in this narrative are perceived as a threat to the well being and security of all Israelis.

The large majority of Americans have accepted this narrative as the only available reality. They permit their government to function as a financial backer of Israel, and to politically support Israel in world forums. American politicians function within a bipartisan political operation which accepts and promotes the “Israel is a permanent victim” narrative. This narrative obscures the political reality that Israel serves as an important part of the American empire, which seeks to control the people of the Middle East through military power and political deceit.

The invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan and the current role the US plays in Libya and in the agitation for war against Iran, are the most recent examples of this power and deceit.

 The Palestinian narrative traces its history through Arab history, from which Palestinians emerged as an important part of the Ottoman Empire. Following Arab support for the Western allies in their war in 1917-18 against Germany and Turkey, Palestinians were assured they would retain their homeland in their corner of the Ottoman Empire. The Palestinian narrative in the modern era emphasizes the Nakba [5] (catastrophe), the ethnic cleansing that led to Israel’s establishment. That narrative has been denied a part in American discussions of the Middle East.

Israeli propaganda saturates American society

It is the Israeli narrative that enables Israel to be an important American ally in the Middle East. That narrative saturates American society through the media, the economy, political structures, nongovernmental institutions involved in education and religious groups.

The Zionists were amongst the last of the western colonial invaders to arrive in the Middle East to conquer a land and exploit its population. This invasion was built on military power and deceit, the twin sins that continue to shape the US/Israel alliance in the Middle East.

Kairos for Palestine traces the history of what led to the Palestine Kairos Document that emerged from the situation created by that alliance. It tells the story of the Christian churches’ effort to communicate the suffering imposed by Israel on Palestinians and it does so from a Christian perspective.

The document originated within the Christian churches working inside Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza. It is a community-created document written out of the experience of the Palestinians. It calls upon Christians everywhere to wake up to the conditions under which all of the people of Palestine — Christian, Muslim and non-religious — and respond appropriately to gross injustice created by the US/Israel alliance of empire-building through oppression.

The political strategy of boycott, divestment and sanctions [6] (BDS) is a separate project from the Kairos Document. The two run parallel, however, as different ways in which Palestinians address the outside world.

BDS is a strategy of nonviolence that advocates economic pressure on Israel to halt its oppressive military occupation. It calls attention to the manner in which outside corporations endorse that occupation and profit from it.

BDS originated as a political movement in July 2005 as a “call from Palestinian civil society.” It was signed and sent out from a large number of civil society groups within the West Bank and Gaza. It is important to note that, unlike the Kairos Document, BDS is a strategy which the civil society of Palestinians has developed.

Kairos Palestine, which is the primary focus of Kassis’ book, originated in Bethlehem as a statement from Palestinian Christian leaders. The document was released in December 2009. It is a theological document of faith, not a proposal of strategy. Circumstances since the original document was written in 2009 have grown even worse as Kassis explains (9):

Jerusalem is being forcibly de-Arabized and systematically Judaized with unprecedented speed and aggression: Life for Palestinians there becomes less and less bearable as house demolitions, evictions, arbitrary arrests and interrogations, residency revocations, and the imprisonment and house arrests of children all increase. The siege on the Gaza Strip remains and intensifies unabated.

The Israeli government is forgoing its longstanding public relations campaign — its ongoing propaganda as the only ‘democracy’ in the Middle East — and reverting instead to openly racist laws like the one that seeks to criminalize individuals and organizations that call for boycott.

BDS, with its secular origins, is not promoted by the Kairos Document, but BDS has been adopted by some Christian groups as a practical strategy which Palestinians propose the West adopt as a means toward putting economic pressure on Israel to give up its oppressive control of the Palestinian people.

Resistance of Americans to BDS illustrates how effectively the Israeli (“we are the victims under outside threat”) narrative works to prevent Americans from hearing the call of either the Kairos Document, or the economic strategy of BDS.

Confronting apartheid

The modern use of a Kairos statement by an oppressed population dates back to the first edition of a statement from South African Christians in 1985, a document intended, Kassis reports, “to provide an alternative discourse to the dominant theological thinking” of the day. This South African document confronted the apartheid structures maintained by the minority white population of that society.

Subsequent Kairos documents have emerged in Kenya, Zimbabwe, India and Latin America, each in ways appropriate to the historical moment addressed, all insisting that the Christian faith calls for the oppressors to acknowledge the sinfulness of their oppressive conduct. The various Kairos documents all pursued the same goal, a prophetic call to those in power to acknowledge that the New Testament commands them to halt their oppressive conduct and identify with the oppressed.

Kassis writes (83) that these Kairos documents all emerged from similar contexts: oppression, injustice and the denial of equality and human rights.

They are also “united by their timing, by the kind of moment at which they came into being. They aren’t written at any time; rather they are created when there are no options than true participation in a process of collective change.” To use a theological term, kairos “speaks to the qualitative, not sequential, form of time; for example, the New Testament defines it as “the appointed time in the purpose of God.”

Kassis adds that this moment is one in which God acts. It is a moment, as well, in political terms, that implies “a crucial time, an appointed time, in which the message of the text is delivered” (83).

Adopting a more modern form of expression, Kassis concludes that “the message of the Kairos is both the SOS signal of a sinking ship and a call for hope in the face of despair.”

The Palestine Kairos Document, Kassis explains, arose from a dialogue within Palestinian Christian communities, in short, not from outsiders, but from those who suffer under occupation, which is to say, oppression and captivity.

The Kairos Document emerged from a Palestinian dialogue among a group of 15 interdenominational Palestinian Christian leaders.

After two years of work, prayer, many meetings and discussions, along with debates and draft, the leaders produced a final draft of the document, which they called “A Moment of Truth: A Word of Faith, Hope and Love from the Heart of Palestinian Suffering.”

The final document was released to the public at an event in Bethlehem on 11 December 2009. Kassis was deeply involved in preparing the final document. With its release, Kassis was selected to serve as the General Coordinator of the Kairos Palestine Group.

He began his career as an activist and religious leader in 1988 when he served as director of the YMCA rehabilitation programs in the West Bank, the first of many assignments he has handled since.

In 2005 he became the international manager of the World Council of Churches (WCC) Ecumenical Accompaniment Program in Palestine and Israel.

From September 2007 until March 2009, Kassis was the WCC’s general secretary’s special advisor on the Middle East. His current task is to write about and explain the significance of the Palestine Kairos Document.

Demand to pay attention

The kairos moment places a demand not only on Christians, but on people of other religions or no religions, to pay attention to the message that Israeli occupation is “oppression” in the same way South African apartheid and Latin American economic oppression of the poor were oppressive.

The challenge to readers of this book is for its readers to bridge the gap between the Christian theological language of a “right and opportune moment” and the universal cry for justice for those who suffer and are oppressed.

However the reader understands the term kairos, the impossible-to-refute “facts on the ground” in Israel and Palestine, are clear; this is the “right moment” for the world to recognize and acknowledge that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is unjust, immoral, illegal and destructive. Read this book, learn from it, and use it for small group discussions, and as an instrument with which to fight the wall of ignorance that endorses Palestinian suffering. It is a book that demands that attention must be paid to the conduct of the governments in Israel and in the United States, the two military powers who have the power to maintain or end this suffering.

25 December 2011

By James M. Wall

@The Electronic Intifada

James M. Wall is a contributing editor of The Christian Century magazine, based in Chicago, Illinois. From 1972 through 1999, he was editor and publisher. He writes a personal blog, Wallwritings.me [8], which he began in April 2008.

As protests raged again across the Middle East, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, offered his assessment of the Arab Spring last week. It was, he said, an “Islamic, anti-western, anti-liberal, anti-Israeli, undemocratic wave”, adding that Israel’s Arab neighbours were “moving not forwards, but backwards”.

It takes some chutzpah – or, at least, epic self-delusion – for Israel’s prime minister to be lecturing the Arab world on liberalism and democracy at this moment.

In recent weeks, a spate of anti-democratic measures have won support from Netanyahu’s rightwing government, justified by a new security doctrine: see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil of Israel. If the legislative proposals pass, the Israeli courts, Israel’s human rights groups and media, and the international community will be transformed into the proverbial three monkeys.

Israel’s vigilant human rights community has been the chief target of this assault. Yesterday Netanyahu’s Likud faction and the Yisrael Beiteinu party of his far-right foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, proposed a new law that would snuff out much of the human rights community in Israel.

The bill effectively divides non-governmental organisations (NGOs) into two kinds: those defined by the right as pro-Israel and those seen as “political”, or anti-Israel. The favoured ones, such as ambulance services and universities, will continue to be lavishly funded from foreign sources, chiefly wealthy private Jewish donors from the United States and Europe.

The “political” ones – meaning those that criticise government policies, especially relating to the occupation – will be banned from receiving funds from foreign governments, their main source of income. Donations from private sources, whether Israeli or foreign, will be subject to a crippling 45 per cent tax.

The grounds for being defined as a “political” NGO are suitably vague: denying Israel’s right to exist or its Jewish and democratic character; inciting racism; supporting violence against Israel; supporting politicians or soldiers being put on trial in international courts; or backing boycotts of the state.

One human rights group warned that all groups assisting the UN’s 2009 report report by Judge Richard Goldstone into war crimes committed during Israel’s attack on Gaza in winter 2008 would be vulnerable to such a law. Other organisations like Breaking the Silence, which publishes the testimonies of Israeli soldiers who have committed or witnessed war crimes, will be silenced themselves. And an Israeli Arab NGO said it feared that its work demanding equality for all Israeli citizens, including the fifth who are Palestinian, and an end to Jewish privilege would count as denying Israel’s Jewish character.

At the same time Netanyahu wants the Israeli media emasculated. Last week his government threw its weight behind a new defamation law that will leave few but milionaires in a position to criticise politicians and officials. Mr Netanyahu observed: “It may be called the Defamation Law, but I call it the ‘publication of truth law’.” The media and human rights groups fear the worst.

This monkey must speak no evil.

Another bill, backed by the justice minister, Yaacov Neeman, is designed to skew the make-up of a panel selecting judges for Israel’s supreme court. Several judicial posts are about to fall vacant, and the government hopes to stuff the court with apppointees who share its ideological worldview and will not rescind its anti-democratic legislation, including its latest attack on the human rights community. Neeman’s favoured candidate is a settler who has a history of ruling against human rights organisations.

Senior legislators from Mr Netanyahu’s party are pushing another bill that would make it nigh impossible for human rights organisations to petition the supreme court against government actions.

The judicial monkey should see no evil.

At one level, these and a host of other measures – including increasing government intimidation of the Israeli media and academia, a crackdown on whistleblowers and the recently passed boycott law, which exposes critics of the settlements to expensive court actions for damages – are designed to strengthen the occupation by disarming its critics inside Israel.

But there is another, even more valued goal: making sure that in future the plentiful horror stories from the Palestinian territories – monitored by human rights organisations, reported by the media and heard in the courts – never reach the ears of the international community.

The third monkey is supposed to hear no evil.

The crackdown is justified in the Israeli right’s view on the grounds that criticism of the occupation represents not domestic concerns but unwelcome foreign interference in Israel’s affairs. The promotion of human rights – whether in Israel, the occupied territories or the Arab world – is considered by Netanyahu and his allies as inherently un-Israeli and anti-Israeli.

The hypocrisy is hard to stomach. Israel has long claimed special dispensation to interfere in the affairs of both the EU and the United States. Jewish Agency staff proselytise among European and American Jews to persuade them to emigrate to Israel. Uniquely, Israel’s security agencies are given free rein at airports around the world to harass and invade the privacy of non-Jews flying to Tel Aviv. And Israel’s political proxies abroad – sophisticated lobby groups like AIPAC in the US – act as foreign agents while not registering as such.

 

Of course, Israel’s qualms against foreign meddling are selective. No restrictions are planned for rightwing Jews from abroad, such as US casino magnate Irving Moskowitz, who have pumped enormous sums into propping up illegal Jewish settlements built on Palestinian land.

There is a faulty logic too to Israel’s argument. As human rights activists point out, the areas where they do most of their work are located not in Israel but in the Palestinian territories, which Israel is occupying in violation of international law.

Privately, European embassies have been trying to drive home this point. The EU gives Israel preferential trading status, worth billions of dollars annually to the Israeli economy, on condition that it respects human rights in the occupied territories. Europe argues it is, therefore, entitled to fund the monitoring of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. More’s the pity that Europe fails to act on the information it receives.

Given the right’s strengthening hand, it can be expected to devise ever more creative ways to silence the human rights community and Israeli media and emasculate the courts as way to end the bad press.

Israelis are obssessed with their country’s image abroad and what they regard as a “delegitimisation” campaign that threatens not only the occupation’s continuation but also Israel’s long-term survival as an ethnic state. The leadership has been incensed by regular surveys of global opinion showing Israel ranked among the most unpopular countries in the world.

The Palestinians’ recent decision to turn to the international community for recognition of statehood has only amplified such grievances.

Israel has no intention of altering its policies, or of pursuing peace. Rather, Netanyahu’s government has been oscillating between a desperate desire to pass yet more anti-democratic legislation to stifle criticism and a modicum of restraint motivated by fear of the international backlash.

A cabinet debate last month on legislation against human rights groups focused barely at all on the proposal’s merits. Instead the head of the National Security Council, Yaakov Amidror, was called before ministers to explain whether Israel stood to lose more from passing such bills or from allowing human rights groups to carry on monitoring the occupation.

Deluded as it may seem, Netanyahu’s ultimate goal is to turn the clock back 40 years, to a “golden age” when foreign correspondents and western governments could refer, without blushing, to the occupation of the Palestinians as “benign”.

Donald Neff, Jerusalem correspondent for Time magazine in the 1970s, admitted years later that his and his colleagues’ performance was so feeble at the time in large part because there was little critical information available on the occupation. When he witnessed first-hand what was taking place, his editors in the US refused to believe him and he was eventually moved on.

Now, however, the genie is out the bottle. The international community understands full well – thanks to human rights activists – both that the occupation is brutal and that Israel has been peace-making in bad faith.

If Israel continues on its current course, another myth long accepted by western countries – that Israel is “the only democracy in the Middle East” – may finally be shattered.

By Jonathan Cook

1 December 2011

Countercurrents.org

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

A version of this story was first published in the National, Abu Dhabi

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Obama administration’s claims last week that US military occupation had bequeathed democracy to Iraq were disintegrating even before the last American troops left on Sunday.

Just four days after the official withdrawal, the always tense relations between the Shiite- and Sunni-based factions within the country’s government have led to an open split along sectarian and geographical lines, raising the prospect of a civil war that could draw in neighbouring states or be exploited to justify the return of US forces.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, the head of the coalition of Shiite parties that dominates the parliament, is being accused by the Iraqiya alliance of Sunni-based parties of attempting to establish a dictatorship. Last Friday, Iraqiya MPs began a boycott after the Shiite majority put a no-confidence motion against Sunni vice prime minister Saleh Mutlaq for labelling Maliki a “dictator.” On Sunday, intelligence agencies under Maliki’s command boarded an aircraft carrying Sunni vice president Tariq al-Hashemi and dragged off seven of his bodyguards on charges of terrorism.

An arrest warrant was issued on Monday against Hashemi himself, claiming that he was behind a series of bombings, including an alleged attempt to assassinate Maliki. Three of his arrested bodyguards were presented on live television, apparently confessing to carrying out terrorist acts on Hashemi’s orders. Hashemi has taken refuge in the autonomous Kurdish region in Iraq’s three northern provinces, where authorities have refused to obey court orders that he be arrested and returned to Baghdad.

The result has been the effective collapse of the so-called national unity government formed under US pressure in December 2010, nine months after national elections. Maliki retained the prime ministership, but the three major Shiite, Sunni and Kurdish blocs were each given government ministries in the name of power-sharing. After the charges were laid against Hashemi, Iraqiya announced that Sunni ministers would no longer perform their duties.

The move against Hashemi follows the arrest over the past several months of hundreds of predominantly Sunni former members of Saddam Hussein’s Baath Party and ex-army officers on charges of plotting to overthrow the government. Maliki alleges to have information from pro-US former Libyan interim leader Mahmoud Jibril that the Gaddafi regime was financing and encouraging a Sunni uprising once US forces had left.

In an interview with Reuters on Tuesday, Iraqiya leader Iyad Allawi denounced the wave of arrests, labelled the televised confessions as “fabricated,” compared Maliki with Hussein, and implicitly appealed for outside intervention to prevent civil war.

“We fear the return of dictatorship by this authoritarian way of governing,” Allawi said. “Maliki has crossed all red lines and Iraq is now facing a very, very serious and very difficult situation… My fear is that the Iraqi people will lose faith in the political process and sectarianism will prevail. Unless the international community and the region get involved and unless sense prevails, Iraq is heading towards a very big conflict.”

Kurdish leader Massud Barzani declared the situation was a “deep crisis.” Attempting to straddle the Shiite and Sunni camps, he stated that “we must not underestimate or tolerate terrorism; at the same time, however, security forces should not be used for political objectives.”

Through the fog of alleged conspiracies and intrigues, more fundamental issues are involved in the rising tensions.

Every faction of the venal Iraqi elite collaborated with the US occupation and bears the responsibility for the resulting social catastrophe. They each fear an eruption of popular opposition, similar to the movements that have emerged across the Middle East this year. The uprising against the Assad regime in Syria, on Iraq’s western border, is provoking the greatest concerns. Millions of desperately impoverished and oppressed Iraqi workers and urban poor, including the one million Iraqi refugees in Syria, are being politicised by events.

Sectarianism is being exploited by the ruling elites to divert social discontent in reactionary directions. In the predominantly Sunni provinces of Anbar, Nineveh, Salahaddin and Diyala, local organisations are raising demands for the same autonomy from the central government as the Kurdish region, which controls its own security forces, budget and foreign affairs. Last week, the provincial government in Diyala unilaterally declared itself autonomous on the grounds that the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government was starving it of funds for services and reconstruction.

During the armed resistance to the US occupation, autonomy was opposed by the insurgent organisations, many of whom were based in Sunni areas. A de-facto partition of the country is now viewed by the Sunni elite as a means of maintaining control over the population, pressuring Baghdad to grant them a greater share of national oil income and forging their own relations with neighbouring states. Sunni extremists denounce Maliki’s government as a puppet of the Shiite-based regime in Iran and call for closer ties with Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other Arab countries.

For their part, Maliki and the Shiite parties are seeking to channel unrest within the majority Shiite population into fears that the departure of American forces is being accompanied by a Sunni plot to re-establish an anti-Shiite dictatorship similar to Hussein’s. The calls for autonomy in Sunni areas are taking place in the context of a US-driven campaign against Iran and its regional allies such as the Syrian regime of Bashar Assad.

Maliki has pointedly refused to support regional condemnations of Assad’s repression of anti-government protests. If Assad’s government falls, it will most likely be replaced by a fiercely anti-Iranian regime, backed by Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and based on sectarian Sunni movements that are developing close ties with Sunni parties and tribes in western Iraq.

A December 20 article in the British Guardian cited Ali Hatem Suleiman, a leader of the large Dulaimi tribe in Anbar province, which borders Syria. He warned that “the people are preparing for war” against the Maliki government and admitted that Iraqi Sunni fighters would potentially cross into Syria to aid the anti-Assad uprising. Suleiman bluntly said: “If Assad is gone, at least our back will be secured, especially in Anbar… It is Arab versus Persian [Iran].”

The danger of sectarian warfare is considerable. In Diyala, Shiite militiamen loyal to cleric Moqtada al-Sadr have blockaded roads in protest against the declaration of autonomy. In Baghdad, Shiite troops of the Iraqi Army have been deployed outside the homes of leading politicians in largely Sunni-populated suburbs.

The civilian population of all backgrounds are living with the increasing fear of a new round of bloodshed. Sectarian violence, deliberately stoked by the US occupation, claimed tens of thousands of lives, particularly between 2006 and 2008, and displaced an estimated 4.7 million Iraqis from their homes.

Developments in Iraq are being followed intensely in Washington. US Vice President Joe Biden reportedly rang Maliki and the speaker of the Iraqi parliament on Tuesday to press for all factional leaders “to meet and work through their differences together.” If a sectarian civil war erupts, tens of thousands of US troops, stationed in Kuwait, Bahrain and other Gulf states, could be sent back into Iraq to protect American strategic and economic interests.

By James Cogan

22 December 2011

WSWS.org

The first question in last Saturday night’s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the “possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran,” struck a darker tone than previous assessments. But it was carefully hedged. On the debate platform, however, any ambiguity was lost. One of the moderators said that the I.A.E.A. report had provided “additional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon” and asked what various candidates, upon winning the Presidency, would do to stop Iran. Herman Cain said he would assist those who are trying to overthrow the government. Newt Gingrich said he would coördinate with the Israeli government and maximize covert operations to block the Iranian weapons program. Mitt Romney called the state of Iran’s nuclear program Obama’s “greatest failing, from a foreign-policy standpoint” and added, “Look, one thing you can know … and that is if we reëlect Barack Obama Iran will have a nuclear weapon.” The Iranian bomb was a sure thing Saturday night.

I’ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeated inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran. The goal of the high-risk American covert operations was to find something physical—a “smoking calutron,” as a knowledgeable official once told me—to show the world that Iran was working on warheads at an undisclosed site, to make the evidence public, and then to attack and destroy the site.

The Times reported, in its lead story the day after the report came out, that I.A.E.A. investigators “have amassed a trove of new evidence that, they say, makes a ‘credible’ case” that Iran may be carrying out nuclear-weapons activities. The newspaper quoted a Western diplomat as declaring that “the level of detail is unbelievable…. The report describes virtually all the steps to make a nuclear warhead and the progress Iran has achieved in each of those steps. It reads likes a menu.” The Times set the tone for much of the coverage. (A second Times story that day on the I.A.E.A. report noted, more cautiously, that “it is true that the basic allegations in the report are not substantially new, and have been discussed by experts for years.”)

But how definitive, or transformative, were the findings? The I.A.E.A. said it had continued in recent years “to receive, collect and evaluate information relevant to possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program” and, as a result, it has been able “to refine its analysis.” The net effect has been to create “more concern.” But Robert Kelley, a retired I.A.E.A. director and nuclear engineer who previously spent more than thirty years with the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program, told me that he could find very little new information in the I.A.E.A. report. He noted that hundreds of pages of material appears to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the I.A.E.A. by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established. Those materials, and others, “were old news,” Kelley said, and known to many journalists. “I wonder why this same stuff is now considered ‘new information’ by the same reporters.”

A nuanced assessment of the I.A.E.A. report was published by the Arms Control Association (A.C.A.), a nonprofit whose mission is to encourage public support for effective arms control. The A.C.A. noted that the I.A.E.A. did “reinforce what the nonproliferation community has recognized for some times: that Iran engaged in various nuclear weapons development activities until 2003, then stopped many of them, but continued others.” (The American intelligence community reached the same conclusion in a still classified 2007 estimate.) The I.A.E.A.’s report “suggests,” the A.C.A. paper said, that Iran “is working to shorten the timeframe to build the bomb once and if it makes that decision. But it remains apparent that a nuclear-armed Iran is still not imminent nor is it inevitable.” Greg Thielmann, a former State Department and Senate Intelligence Committee analyst who was one of the authors of the A.C.A. assessment, told me, “There is troubling evidence suggesting that studies are still going on, but there is nothing that indicates that Iran is really building a bomb.” He added, “Those who want to drum up support for a bombing attack on Iran sort of aggressively misrepresented the report.”

Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshare Fund, a disarmament group, who serves on Hillary Clinton’s International Security Advisory Board, said, “I was briefed on most of this stuff several years ago at the I.A.E.A. headquarters in Vienna. There’s little new in the report. Most of this information is well known to experts who follow the issue.” Cirincione noted that “post-2003, the report only cites computer modelling and a few other experiments.” (A senior I.A.E.A. official similarly told me, “I was underwhelmed by the information.”)

The report did note that its on-site camera inspection process of Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities—mandated under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory—“continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.” In other words, all of the low enriched uranium now known to be produced inside Iran is accounted for; if highly enriched uranium is being used for the manufacture of a bomb, it would have to have another, unknown source.

The shift in tone at the I.A.E.A. seems linked to a change at the top. The I.A.E.A.’s report had extra weight because the Agency has had a reputation for years as a reliable arbiter on Iran. Mohammed ElBaradei, who retired as the I.A.E.A.’s Director General two years ago, was viewed internationally, although not always in Washington, as an honest broker—a view that lead to the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei’s replacement is Yukiya Amano of Japan. Late last year, a classified U.S. Embassy cable from Vienna, the site of the I.A.E.A. headquarters, described Amano as being “ready for prime time.” According to the cable, which was obtained by WikiLeaks, in a meeting in September, 2009, with Glyn Davies, the American permanent representative to the I.A.E.A., said, “Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the group of developing countries], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” The cable added that Amano’s “willingness to speak candidly with U.S. interlocutors on his strategy … bodes well for our future relationship.”

It is possible, of course, that Iran has simply circumvented the reconnaissance efforts of America and the I.A.E.A., perhaps even building Dick Cheney’s nightmare: a hidden underground nuclear-weapons fabrication facility. Iran’s track record with the I.A.E.A. has been far from good: its leadership began construction of its initial uranium facilities in the nineteen-eighties without informing the Agency, in violation of the nonproliferation treaty. Over the next decade and a half, under prodding from ElBaradei and the West, the Iranians began acknowledging their deceit and opened their enrichment facilities, and their records, to I.A.E.A. inspectors.

The new report, therefore, leaves us where we’ve been since 2002, when George Bush declared Iran to be a member of the Axis of Evil—with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.

By Seymour M. Hersh

18 November 2011

@ The New Yorker

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2011/11/iran-and-the-iaea.html#ixzz1gag68abM

 

 

A course for US military officers has been teaching that America’s enemy is Islam in general and suggesting that the country might ultimately have to obliterate the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina without regard for civilian deaths, following second world war precedents of the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.

The Pentagon suspended the course in late April when a student objected to the material. The FBI also changed some agent training last year after discovering that it, too, was critical of Islam.

The teaching in the military course was counter to repeated assertions by US officials over the past decade that America is at war against Islamic extremists, not the religion itself.

“They hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit,” the instructor, Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Dooley, said in a presentation last July for the course at Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia. The college, for professional military members, teaches mid-level officers and government civilians on subjects related to planning and executing war.

Dooley also presumed, for the purposes of his theoretical war plan, that the Geneva conventions that set standards of armed conflict, are “no longer relevant”.

He adds: “This would leave open the option once again of taking war to a civilian population wherever necessary (the historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki being applicable to the Mecca and Medina destruction decision point).”

His war plan suggests possible outcomes such as “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation … Islam reduced to cult status”.

A copy of the presentation was obtained and posted online by Wired.com’s Danger Room blog. The college did not respond to the Associated Press’ requests for copies of the documents, but a Pentagon spokesman authenticated the documents. Dooley still works for the college, but is no longer teaching, said the joint chiefs of staff chairman, General Martin Dempsey. Dooley has refused to comment.

A military service record summary provided by army human resources at Fort Knox, Kentucky, shows that Dooley was commissioned as a second lieutenant upon graduation from the US military academy at West Point, New York, in May 1994. He has served tours in Germany, Bosnia, Kuwait and Iraq. He has numerous awards including a Bronze Star medal, the fourth-highest US combat award.

In what he termed a model for a campaign to force a transformation of Islam, Dooley called for “a direct ideological and philosophical confrontation with Islam”, with the presumption that Islam is an ideology rather than just a religion.

He further asserted that Islam has already declared war on the west, and the US specifically.

“It is therefore illogical” to continue with the current US strategy, which Dooley said presumes there is a way of finding common ground with Islamic religious leaders, without “waging near total war”.

The course on Islam had been taught since 2004, but was not part of the required core curriculum. It was offered five times a year, with about 20 students each time.

Though Dooley has been teaching at the college since August 2010, it was unclear when he took on that particular class, called Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.

The joint staff suspended the course after it had received a student complaint, and within days Dempsey ordered all service branches to review their training to ensure other courses do not use anti-Islamic material.

On Thursday, Dempsey said the material in the Norfolk course was counter to American “appreciation for religious freedom and cultural awareness”.

“It was just totally objectionable, against our values, and it wasn’t academically sound,” Dempsey said. “This wasn’t about … pushing back on liberal thought; this was objectionable, academically irresponsible.”

In his July 2011 presentation on “counterjihad”, Dooley asserted that the rise of what he called a “military Islam/Islamist resurgence” compels the US to consider extreme measures, “unconstrained by fears of political incorrectness”.

He described his purpose as generating “dynamic discussion and thought”, while noting that his ideas and proposals are not official US government policy and cannot be found in any current official defence department documents.

A Pentagon inquiry is seeking to determine whether someone above the professor’s level is supposed to approve course materials and whether that approval process was followed in this case, said Colonel Dave Lapan, a spokesman for Dempsey.

The problem of negative portrayals of Islam in federal government is not new. A six-month review the FBI launched into agent training material uncovered 876 offensive or inaccurate pages that had been used in 392 presentations, including a PowerPoint slide that said the bureau can sometimes bend or suspend the law in counterterror investigations.

Martin Dempsey

11 May 2012

@guardian.co.uk