Friday, September 28, 2012
Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine
Let Your Life Be a Friction to Stop the Machine
This Is A Must Watch Video
A brief and crucial history of the United States
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Jewish leaders meet Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in NYC
This video is banned for broadcast on News Networks in USA, Israel and Europe. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel and US does not want you to see. Jewish leaders and prominent businessmen Greet Ahmadinejad with Inshallah and Bless him for long life. Jews have lived in Iran for thousands of years. Over 50,000 Jews live in Teheran.
Monday, September 24, 2012
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Thursday, September 13, 2012
Join Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, and Angela Davis at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine
Join Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, and Angela Davis at the
New York City ~ October 6-7, 2012
Have you gotten your tickets for the Russell Tribunal on Palestine? If not, you should act fast to secure the early bird rates! (Student one-day is $10, 2-day is $15; non-student one-day is $15, 2-day is $20)
Register for the RToP at — http://www.russelltribunalonpalestine.com/en/sessions/future-sessions/register
Watch the latest promotion video for the RToP featuring Archbishop Desmond Tutu and author Alice Walker — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCYpFv_FljE#!
The world's most prominent public intellectual Noam Chomsky, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, and the civil rights leader Angela Davis will be offering and weighing testimony at the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP), an international people’s tribunal that was created to expose human rights abuses and stir people to action in opposition to Israel’s recognized violations of international law.
In addition to them, Russell Means and Dennis Banks, dubbed by the LA Times, "the two most famous Indians since Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse," will join Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, the former Palestine Liberation Organization spokesperson Diana Buttu, and a Who's Who of international human rights figures at RToP in New York City, Oct. 6-7, 2012.
RToP was launched in 2009 following the massacre of more than 1,400 Gazans perpetrated by Israel, and has since worked to bring together legal experts, scholars, activists, and other people of note to help shed light on the reality of Israel’s occupation of Palestine. RToP also shines a light on the active role that third parties—foreign governments and corporations—play in perpetuating human rights violations in Israel-Palestine.
Walker, Davis, Means, and Banks—all of whom are Black or Native American—are among the Russell Tribunal participants to issue an “urgent call to others who share our commitment to racial justice, equality, and freedom.” They invite people to attend the hearings in New York City on October 6 and 7, writing, “Each and every one of us—particularly those of us and our fellow jury members who grew up in the Jim Crow South, in apartheid South Africa, and on Indian reservations in the United States—is shocked by what Israel is doing to the Palestinians.”
Previous sessions of the tribunal have been held in Barcelona, London, and Cape Town. These hearings have addressed, respectively, European Union support for Israel, the complicity of corporations in the occupation of Palestine, and the question of whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. The fourth and final session will be held in New York City and will examine the role of the United Nations and the United States in perpetuating Israel’s impunity in depriving the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination.
For more information about the Russell Tribunal on Palestine-NYC please contact rtop.nyc@gmail.com.
To arrange for an interview with one of our speakers or jurors, please call Sherry Wolf at 773-991-3877 or e-mail sherrywolf2000@yahoo.com.
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SOLIDARITY STATEMENT by Alice Walker, Angela Davis, Dennis Banks, Russell Means and Stephane Hessel
We are writing to you on behalf of the Russell Tribunal on Palestine (RToP), an international people's tribunal that was created to expose human rights abuses and stir people to action in opposition to Israel's recognized violations of international law. We hope that you will help promote, attend, and participate in our final hearings in New York City on October 6–7, 2012.
RToP was launched in 2009 following the massacre of more than 1,400 Gazans perpetrated by Israel, and has since worked to bring together legal experts, scholars, activists, and other people of note, to help shed light on the reality of Israel's occupation of Palestine. RToP also shines a light on the active role that third parties—foreign governments and corporations—play in perpetuating human rights violations in Israel-Palestine.
Previous sessions of the tribunal have been held in Barcelona, London, and Cape Town. These hearings have addressed, respectively, European Union support for Israel, the complicity of corporations in the occupation of Palestine, and the question of whether Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid. The fourth and final session will be held in New York City this October, and will examine the role of the United Nations and the United States in perpetuating Israel's impunity in depriving the Palestinian people of their rights.
Each and every one of us—particularly those of us and our fellow jury members who grew up in the Jim Crow South, in apartheid South Africa, and on Indian reservations in the United States—is shocked by what Israel is doing to the Palestinians. This letter is an urgent call to others who share our commitment to racial justice, equality, and freedom. This sense of urgency knows no bounds and stretches across vastly militarized borders. In this way the dangers are unprecedented, but so are the opportunities that stem from uniting our struggles.
One of us, Angela Davis, participated in a delegation of indigenous and women of color feminists who traveled to Palestine in June 2011, to bear witness to the effects of the occupation and meet with Palestinians resisting on the ground. The delegation was deeply impressed by the insistence of many Palestinians to link their own struggle to other forms of injustice throughout the world. It is fitting that the fourth session of RToP is being held in the United States, which bears primary responsibility as the enabler of Israeli crimes against Palestinians. In line with the wishes of Palestinian activists and our communities, we link the struggle for Palestinian freedom and self-determination with the battles that shape the lives of poor people, especially people of color, living under the authority of the US state.
Not since Operation Wetback and Operation Gatekeeper have so many families been torn apart; not since Jim Crow have so many rights been denied; not since reservations and internment camps has the United States invested in so many apartheid walls, fences, and cages. The obsession with and militarization of our southern border and every community in between; the Supreme Court's ruling in favor of SB1070's “show me your papers” provision, and the racist anti-immigrant legislation spreading across the nation share troubling parallels with the treatment of Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces. These parallels are what student activists in the United States have deemed “concrete connections” between US-Israeli corporate interests that guide politics while profiting from war, apartheid, and incarceration.
Israeli violations of human rights in Palestine are mirrored in the United States and have not escaped notice. There is growing interest, especially among young people, to connect these struggles. Latino and immigrant justice groups and Students for Justice in Palestine committees, for example, are creating campaigns and arranging outreach and solidarity events among their constituencies.
Heeding the example of the international movement against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s, these groups are organizing to get their institutions and communities to divest, boycott, and sanction apartheid Israel. From California to Texas and Arizona, from Chicago to New York City and Providence, Rhode Island, mobilization efforts in solidarity with Palestinians are on the rise.
Distance does not diminish humanity, nor does shade, gender, tongue, sexuality, or religion. International solidarity is at the root of addressing injustices in Palestine. It is also at the heart of the Russell Tribunal as these sessions have brought together people from across the world and have helped arm them with the knowledge and legal tools to fight human rights abuses.
Building solidarity is an empowering process. We hope that you will join us for the final session of the RToP in New York City on October 6–7, 2012.
We hope to see you there.
Alice Walker
Angela Davis
Dennis Banks
Russell Means
Stephane Hessel
Monday, September 10, 2012
The Chávez Election
Dear friends and colleagues,
With less than a month before Venezuela’s presidential elections, I wanted to share this interesting article by Professor Steve Ellner published in Le Monde Diplomatique with you. For more information on the elections remember to check our election webpage: http://venezuela-us.org/2012/06/01/elections-2012/
Best, Olivia
The Chávez Election
By Steve Ellner
Source: Le Monde Diplomatique
Friday, September 07, 2012
“You pay back a favour with favours,” said Joanna Figueroa, a resident of El Viñedo, a barrio in the coastal city of Barcelona in eastern Venezuela. She had pledged to work for the reelection of Hugo Chávez after receiving a house as part of the government’s ambitious Great Housing Mission programme. She helped build it, as part of a “workers team” that included a bricklayer, a plumber and an electrician appointed by her community council. Her job was to mix cement. As Chávez followers keep saying of their feelings towards their president, “You pay back love with love.” The frequency with which the phrase is used shows the deep emotional bond that exists between Chávez and many Venezuelans.
Much is at stake in the presidential election due on 7 October. The opposition’s candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, calls himself a reformer, free of any sort of ideology. Even so, he belongs to the conservative Justice First Party (MPJ), which stresses private investment and questions the effectiveness of state economic controls. The opposition has grown wiser since its failed coup in 2002 and its decision to boycott national elections. Now, opposition leaders fervently defend the 1999 constitution — which they opposed at the time, despite its overwhelming adoption in a popular referendum — and have even achieved a degree of unity under Capriles, nominated after a primary in February.
The achievements of the Housing Mission, building thousands of homes for the poor and including barrio residents in their planning and execution, does much to explain Chávez’s lead in the polls. The opposition’s claims that it is winning have a hollow ring: Chávez opponent and media owner Rafael Poleo recently attributed the “barren” results of an opinion poll in May to Capriles’s “failure to go anywhere”. The Datanálisis survey gave Chávez a 43.6% to 27.7% lead over Capriles. It also indicated that 62.4% of voters rate Chávez’s performance as above average; 29.4% consider it poor. Datanálisis is the most credible of the polling agencies with an impressive record. That its findings favour Chávez must annoy its owner, Luis Vicente León, who openly sides with the opposition.
Chávez’s lead is surprising as an erosion of support and enthusiasm for his movement is only to be expected after 13 years in power. His recent bout with cancer (his illness was originally announced without revealing the nature of the disease) might also not have helped. The opposition is quick to point out that the Chávez movement lacks a second-in-command who could step into the presidency and retain the nation’s confidence. And pro-establishment media, in Venezuela and abroad, tie the issue of Chávez’s health to the electoral contest: media expert Keane Bhatt notes that Reuters, Associated Press and the Miami Herald have stressed Capriles’s “youthful energy” in contrast to Chávez’s “frailty” (1).
The president’s illness has now made his movement pay attention to his leadership, and even he has begun to recognise the downside of his all-encompassing power: while ministers have come and gone, Chávez — whose face appears on most Bolivarian political posters — stands as the sole embodiment of a political process that now depends upon him.
On a visit to Brazil in April 2010, he was asked about letting another leader emerge. “I do not have a successor in sight,” he answered. But there may be a change in thinking. Last year Chávez told a former adviser, the Spanish academic Juan Carlos Monedero, who had warned of the danger of “hyperleadership” in Venezuela: “I have to learn to delegate power more.” During his extended medical treatment, several top leaders filled the gap and emerged as possible successors: foreign minister Nicolás Maduro (a former trade union leader), who headed the commission that drafted the new labour law; executive vice president ElÃas Jaua (popular among the Chávez rank-and-file); National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello (a former army lieutenant with a pragmatic approach and strong backing among the armed forces). In May, the critical Monedero remarked that formerly “some of us saw the difficulties of continuing this process” without Chávez, but “now we have lost this fear because I see dozens of people who could continue the process without any problem.”
Pragmatism all round
The key to Chávez’s political success is the continuous deepening of change. New programmes and goals, regularly formulated, invigorate the movement rank and file, as in the case of the Housing Mission. Chávez has come a long way since he was first elected president in December 1998, on a rather moderate platform to counter the polemical image he had acquired with his coup attempt seven years before. The moderate stage ended with the approval of a new constitution, the enactment of land reform and other radical social and economic legislation in 2001. Chávez embraced socialism in 2005, then nationalised strategic sectors such as telecommunications, banking, electricity and steel; since 2009 he has expropriated many smaller companies. These measures were accompanied by an escalation of rhetoric against the “bourgeoisie” and the “oligarchy” (terms which Chávez uses interchangeably) as well as against US imperialism.
The expropriations were designed to achieve what Chávez calls “food sovereignty”: state-owned companies are now producing rice, coffee, cooking oil, milk and other foodstuffs. The latest in June was the production of sunflower oil-based mayonnaise, considered a superior variety. The increase in production and successful management of services, including food processing, banking and telecommunications, show that the government is capable of effective management. Difficulties in state-run heavy industries such as steel, aluminium and cement are the result of labour unrest and the lack of commercial networks. To overcome that, the government has expanded into commerce and sale of construction material direct to the community, eliminating middlemen (who are notorious for creating artificial scarcities).
The UN’s Economic Commission on Latin America reports a 21% reduction of poverty rates between 1999 and 2010. But the middle classes do not like this change. A recent survey by the Venezuela Institute of Data Analysis says that though Chávez leads Capriles by 20%, relatively privileged voters support Capriles (with 52.5%; 32.5% for Chávez). Many vehemently oppose Chávez, partly out of fear, provoked by accusations from the opposition aired in the private media, that he means to eliminate private property. There is some evidence of class resentment towards the poor, who receive privileged treatment from government programmes. To neutralise this, the government has passed measures favouring the middle class, such as the sale of dollars at a special preferential exchange rate for foreign travel.
As Chávez has distanced himself from past policies, Capriles claims to be forward-looking. He points out that at 40, he is not tied to the mistaken policies of pre-1998 Venezuela — even those implemented by parties that endorse his candidacy. Capriles associates the “old way of doing politics” with the intolerance and polarisation that characterised the past, as well as the present under Chávez. As proof, he pledges not to scrap but to improve the Chávez social programmes, which have been successful. He proposes to introduce a “Missions Equal for All Law”, which would guarantee equal treatment for non-government supporters in social programmes.
But though the opposition recognises the government’s social advances, the two leaders have conflicting economic policies, shown by their positions on company expropriations. For Chávez supporters, these help to create a mixed economy in the construction, banking and food sectors, in which monopolies and oligopolies now face competition from public companies, which combats artificially created scarcities. “We are in an election year, so why don’t we have the scarcities we had in previous electoral cycles?” asks Irán Aguilera, a state congressman and Chávez supporter. “The answer is that state companies fill the gap created by the private sector for political reasons.”
Capriles has pledged to refrain from expropriating companies. “I’m not going to squabble with businessmen or anyone else,” he says. He claims, without statistics, that production in companies taken over by the state has declined sharply. He omits any reference to restrictions or conditions on foreign investments, which he hopes will help him reach his goal of creating 3m jobs during his presidency. In a proposal with neoliberal implications, Capriles calls for the transformation of the state-run social security programme into a mixed system that would include “voluntary individual savings”. In another electoral statement, the alliance of parties that support Capriles, the Democratic Unity Table (MUD), advocates making flexible the legislation that asserts state control over the oil industry “to promote competition and private participation in the industry” (2).
Capriles is not in the right place to go beyond the middle-class base of his MPJ party. He comes from a wealthy business family with multiple interests (real estate, industry, media), a background uncommon for Venezuelan politicians. He is also the former mayor of the municipality of Baruta, a fairly affluent community in Caracas. His boyish, middle-class appearance is hardly an asset in challenging Chávez’s popularity in the barrios.
‘A fraud and a failure’
The MUD calls the Housing Mission “a fraud and a failure” and criticises the government for expropriating land to build housing, and violating city zoning. Even so, the polling firm Hinterlaces indicates that, with a 76% approval rating, the Housing Mission is the most popular government social programme. In May, information minister Andrés Izarra announced that the programme was on target with 200,000 units built since it began in 2011.
True to his military background, Chávez declared the Housing Mission to be an all-out war and enlisted the support of his entire government and movement. In some barrios, students in the makeshift high school programme, the Ribas Mission, receive scholarship money to form construction work “brigades.” But the centrepieces are the estimated 30,000 community councils, which date to a law passed in 2006: they hire skilled and unskilled workers, all of whom generally live in the community, and select the beneficiaries. The signature programme builds new houses in place of dilapidated ones. To avoid the previous misuse of funds, there are new mechanisms — paying workers only after jobs are satisfactorily completed, with cheques drawn on state-run banks rather than cash handled via community councils. Steps have been taken to avoid speculation through the resale of public houses. “There’s a learning curve in which mistakes made at an earlier stage due to the lack of effective controls are being corrected,” says Leandro RodrÃguez of the National Congress’s Committee on Citizen Participation.
Chávez cleverly chose the eve of the 1 May holiday, at the height of the presidential campaign, to introduce the new Labour Law. This reduces the working week to 40 hours (from 44), bans outsourcing for ongoing jobs and increases pre- and post-natal paid time off to 26 weeks (from 18). It also re-establishes the old system of severance pay, which neoliberal-inspired legislation modified in 1997. On leaving a company, for whatever reason, workers will receive a payment based on their last monthly salary multiplied by the number of years of employment — a major trade union demand. Capriles has attacked the law on the grounds that it does nothing to deal with unemployment or to benefit those with unprotected casual jobs. He claims: “This is a law that Chávez came up with to help him win on 7 October.”
The outcome on 7 October will have a major impact throughout the continent. Capriles pledges to reestablish friendly relations with the US, and his close allies promise a thorough revision of Venezuela’s aid programmes and alliances with the rest of Latin America. They also plan cheap credit arrangements with China in exchange for oil. When the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited in June, Capriles criticised the plethora of agreements signed with Iran, insisting instead that the government “look after the interests of Venezuela by generating employment for Venezuelans”.
Chávez has been a major promoter of Latin American unity, leading to the South American bloc organisations: the Union of South American Nations (Uuasur) headed by Chávez confidant Alà RodrÃguez Araque), the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac) founded in Caracas last December), and the Bolivarian Alternative for Latin America and the Caribbean (Alba), bringing together Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua (3). In June, the Latin American bloc energetically protested the removal of the pro-leftist president of Paraguay, Fernando Lugo, and by doing so, overshadowed the Washington-based Organization of American States and left the US State Department on the sidelines. The firmest response came from Chávez who recalled his ambassador from Asunción and cut off the supply of oil, a measure criticised by Capriles.
The hemisphere’s enemy number one
Washington circles view Chávez as the ringleader of these expressions of Latin American nationalism and unity. For the right, and many in the political centre, Chávez is the hemisphere’s enemy number one. Three weeks before stepping down as president of the World Bank in June, Robert Zoellick declared that “Chávez’s days are numbered” and, with the elimination of his government’s foreign subsidies, other nations such as Cuba and Nicaragua will “be in trouble.” This chain of events, according to Zoellick, will present “an opportunity to make the western hemisphere the first democratic hemisphere” as opposed to a “place of coups, caudillos, and cocaine.” Michael Penfold, writing in Foreign Affairs,warned: “If Chávez wins in October, a vast majority of the opposition’s political capital will be dashed; in many ways, it will be back to square one” (4).
Even academics who are wary of extreme leftist trends in the continent distinguish between Chávez and other radicals such as Evo Morales. Maxwell Cameron and Kenneth Sharpe, in Latin America’s Left Turn,claim that while Chávez has “made efforts to politicise state institutions... [and] create an official party under his control... Morales embodies a political movement in which the role of the leader is not to monopolise power” (5).
That Chávez has gone further than his leftist counterparts in Bolivia, Ecuador and elsewhere is also recognised on the other end of the political spectrum. Jeffery Webber, a Trotskyist academic and co-editor of a book on the Latin American left, views Morales as a “reconstituted neoliberal” but applauds Chávez’s movement for “having done a great deal to rejuvenate the international critique of neoliberalism and to bring discussion of socialism back on the agenda” (6).
There is good reason why political actors and analysts of different ideological convictions single out Chávez for special treatment. Widespread expropriations and other reversals of neoliberal economic measures, the creation of a popular militia, the firm control of the armed forces, and the generous funding of programmes of international cooperation that bolster Venezuela’s standing in Latin America are distinguishing features of the Chávez government unmatched elsewhere.
Deepening of change
A Chávez victory in October will mean further deepening of change in Venezuela. New expropriations will create a mixed economy in important sectors stimulating competition between public and private companies. Chávez’s proposals for 2013-2019 call for state incursions into commerce and transport, to the detriment of middlemen, through the creation of “centres of local distribution for the sale and direct distribution of products.”
Another far-reaching goal outlined in Chávez’s electoral platform is the expansion of the power of community councils. Several hundred “communes in construction” group a dozen or more community councils each to undertake projects covering a wide area, such as gas and water distribution. Chávez proposes to promote the creation of new communes to represent 68% of the population. The communes are to be granted the same prerogatives as state and municipal governments, including budgeting, participation in state planning and, eventually, tax collection.
A Chávez victory will feed into the “left tide” in Latin America at a critical moment and will undermine US influence. The record of the left-leaning bloc and its banner of Latin American unity has been mixed recently. In 2009, the right triumphed in the presidential elections in Chile, but the popularity of its president Sebastián Piñera subsequently plummeted. In 2010, centrist candidate Juan Manuel Santos was elected president in Colombia, but he soon rallied to the shared aim of Latin American unity under the auspices of the left, and he has even allowed himself to disagree with Washington on key issues. Only Paraguay, with the removal in June of President Fernando Lugo, is now out of step with its neighbours.
But none of these developments matches the significance of the elections in Venezuela. A defeat for Chávez would represent (whatever his rival may say) a return to pre-1999 Venezuela. Another term in office would extend Chávez’s reign to 18 years; that’s a great deal, perhaps too much. Even so, Venezuela’s social transformation over so long a period, under a democratically elected president, is without parallel in contemporary history.
Olivia Burlingame Goumbri
Social Outreach Adviser
Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
1099 30th Street, NW
Washington, D.C. 20007
Tel: 202-342-6854
Friday, August 24, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Saturday, July 28, 2012
Welcome to the Kurdish Spring By Pepe Escobar
THE ROVING EYE
Welcome to the Kurdish Spring
By Pepe Escobar
Welcome to the Kurdish Spring
By Pepe Escobar
Turkish foreign policy, codified by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, used to be known in shorthand as "zero problems with our neighbors". When Turkey started calling for regime change in Syria, it turned into "a major problem with one of our neighbors" (even tough Davutoglu himself admitted on the record the policy change failed).
Now, in yet another twist, it's becoming "all sorts of problems with two of our neighbors". Enter - inevitably - Ankara's ultimate taboo; the Kurdish question.
Ankara used to routinely chase and bomb Kurdish PKK guerrillas crossing from Anatolia to Iraqi Kurdistan. Now it may be
positioning itself to do the same in Syrian Kurdistan.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan came out all guns blazing on Turkish TV; "We will not allow a terrorist group to establish camps in northern Syria and threaten Turkey."
He was referring to the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Party (PYD) - affiliated with the PKK; after a quiet deal with the Assad regime in Damascus, the PYD is now in control of key areas in northeast Syria.
So Ankara may provide logistics to tens of thousands of Syria's NATO "rebels" - which include plenty of hardcore Sunni Arab "insurgents" formerly known as terrorists; but as long as Syrian Kurds - which are part of the Syrian opposition - demonstrate some independence, they immediately revert to being considered "terrorists".
It's all conditioned by Ankara's immediate nightmare; the prospect of a semiautonomous Syrian Kurdistan very closely linked to Iraqi Kurdistan.
Follow the oil
This Swedish report [1] contains arguably the best breakdown of the hyper-fragmented Syrian opposition. The "rebels" are dominated by the exile-heavy Syrian National Council (SNC) and its Hydra-style militias, the over 100 gangs that compose the Not Exactly Free Syrian Army (FSA).
But there are many other parties as well, including socialists; Marxists; secular nationalists; Islamists; the Kurdish National Council (KNC) - an 11-party coalition very close to the Iraqi Kurdistan government; and the PYD.
The KNC and the PYD may bicker about everything else, but basically agree on the essential; the civil war in Syria shall not penetrate Syria Kurdistan; after all, when it comes to the nitty gritty, they are neither pro-Assad nor pro-opposition; they favor Kurdish interests. The agreement was sealed under the auspices of their cousins - the Iraqi Kurds. And it explains why they are now in full control of a de facto Kurdish enclave in northeast Syria.
As much as Turkish paranoia may apply, it's a long and winding road from a semi-autonomous area to an independent Kurdistan agglutinating Kurds in both Syria and Iraq - not to mention, in the long run, Turkish Kurds. Yet half of a possible, future, independent Kurdistan would indeed be Turkish. Ankara's nightmare in progress is that the closer Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan get, the merrier the agitation among Turkish Kurds in Anatolia.
Priorities though divert; the bottom line for Iraqi Kurds is independence from Baghdad. After all; they have loads of oil. On the other hand Syria Kurdistan has none. This means, crucially, no role in regional Pipelineistan.
This concerns above all two strategic oil and gas pipelines from Kirkuk to Ceyhan - a direct deal between Ankara and the Iraqi Kurds which in theory bypasses Baghdad.
Well, not really. As Baghdad has made it clear, there's no way these pipelines will be operative without the central government having its sizeable cut; after all it pays for 95% of the budget of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Show me your terrorist ID
Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani told al-Jazeera [2] that yes - they are training Syrian Kurds who defected from the Syrian Army to defend their de facto enclave. It was Barzani who supervised the key deal sealed in Irbil on July 11 that led to Assad forces retreating from Syrian Kurdistan.
What is being described as "liberated cities" [3] is now being "jointly ruled" by the PYD and the KNC. They have formed what is known as a Supreme Kurdish Body.
One can never underestimate the Kurdish capacity to shoot themselves in the foot (and elsewhere). Yet one can also imagine all this cross-country Kurdish frenzy terrifying quite a few souls in Istanbul and Ankara. This [4] columnist for the daily newspaper Hurriyet got it right; "Arabs are fighting, Kurds are winning." The Kurdish Spring is at hand. And it is already hitting Turkey's borders.
Davutoglu must have seen it coming; when a formerly "zero problem" foreign policy evolves into housing the weaponized opposition to a neighboring government, you're bound to be in trouble.
Especially when you start itching to kill "terrorists" living in your neighbor's territory - even though your Western allies may view them as "freedom fighters". Meanwhile you actively support Salafi-jihadis - "insurgents" formerly known as terrorists - back and forth across your borders.
An increasingly erratic Erdogan has invoked a "natural right" [5] to fight "terrorists". But first they must produce an ID; if they are Sunni Arab, they get away with it. If they are Kurdish, they eat lead.
Notes: 1. See here
2. Iraqi Kurds train their Syrian brethren, Al-Jazeera, 23 Jul 2012
3. See Iraq's Kurdistan Peshmerga forces will be called into Syria when needed, PYD Leader says, Kurd Net, July 26, 2012
4. The Arab Spring has transformed into the Kurdish Spring, Hurriyet Daily News, July 27 2012
5. PM declares Syria intervention a ‘natural right’, Hurriyet Daily News, July 27 2012
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 most recent book is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Palestinian Hunger Strikers and U.S. Veterans Returning Service Medals Lead Movements for Peace
Dear Reader,
In a rare victory for human rights in a part of the world far more familiar with human rights violations, Palestinian prisoners on hunger strike won major concessions from the Israeli occupying forces. Their collective action began on April 17th – but five hunger strikers had not eaten for much longer, including Bilal Diab and Thaer Halahleh, whose hunger strike lasted a miraculous 77 days. They were among the "administrative detainees" among the hunger strikers – held for many months or years without charge or trial, in complete violation of international law. The strike forced the Israelis to agree that their administrative detention orders will not be renewed and they will be released upon the expiration of their current orders.
According to the Palestinian prisoner rights organization Addameer, the 2,000 or so hunger strikers demanded and won an end to Israel’s "abusive use of isolation for 'security' reasons, which currently affects19 prisoners, some of whom have spent 10 years in isolation, and a repeal of a series of punitive measures taken against Palestinian prisoners following the capture of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, including the denial of family visits for all Gaza prisoners since 2007 and denial of access to university education since June 2011."
According to Addameer, the agreement contained five main provisions:
Certainly Israel’s violations of the Geneva Conventions and other tenets of international law regarding prisoners have not ended. The hunger strikers’ most important demand had been for a complete end to Israel’s use of administrative detention; as expected, that demand was not met. But the Israeli concessions on treatment of prisoners represents a huge victory. Now our job is to continue to monitor, mobilize, and work to end U.S. support for Israel’s illegal policies on prisoners and beyond – including U.S. government and corporate support.
NATO IN CHICAGO: PROTESTING WARS IN AFGHANISTAN & BEYOND
Many of us are heading to Chicago in the next few days, for a series of marches and teach-ins protesting the NATO summit and NATO's business-as-usual. That business is making war around the world – including wars in Afghanistan and elsewhere, far beyond the "North Atlantic" region that NATO is supposed to be defending. And now the question for heads of state gathering in Chicago – turning the City of the Big Shoulders into the City of Big Shudders around the world, as we watch the war-mongers at work – will include how to craft a new global raison d'etre for the U.S.-dominated Western military alliance.
In other NATO countries opposition to the Afghanistan war is growing even faster – and when you combine that with the massive European and especially euro-zone economic crisis, President Obama may face far less traditional NATO unanimity than usual. Oh the official statements will be anodyne and unanimous…But the summit is happening just days after right-wing French President Sarkozy, for whom President Obama all but campaigned, was defeated by the [way too moderate, but still] socialist Francois Hollande who will lead the French delegation in Chicago. In Greece the pro-NATO parties that negotiated the euro-bailout were massively defeated in elections a couple of weeks ago. Angela Merkel, hard-line queen of Europe’s austerity-for-all-but-the-1% plan, saw her party defeated in Germany’s largest province over the weekend, replaced by a center left-green coalition. None of this means that NATO will politely go where it belongs – into the dustbin of history as a relic of the Cold War. But opposition is growing.
The problem is, of course, that NATO is one giant militarized hammer – and when you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you're a military alliance, every problem, from human rights to global warming, looks like it needs a military solution. But NATO's and the Pentagon's military "solution" does not solve those problems but creates massive new ones -- including in Afghanistan.
(For those of you planning to be in Chicago, I’ll be doing workshops on Afghanistan and Iran with a host of other friends and comrades. Click here for details and logistics.)
If we look just at Afghanistan, and pull our eyes from the war-caused devastation of that land, and just look at the devastation here at home, the price paid by our veterans – themselves victims as well as perpetrators of this war – and their families comes to the fore. According to former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Mike Mullen (sure, now that he’s FORMER chief, he’s willing to tell a bit of the truth…) 18 veterans are committing suicide every day – more than 6500 every year. At the same time, he noted in the Washington Post, "as of last week, 6,414 U.S. service members have died in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, suicide kills as many of our troops in one year as our enemies have killed in the past decade."
Maybe they have to redefine "our enemies" to realize that wars and militarism are the enemy, not some impoverished Afghan fighter furious at the drone strike that killed his daughter and desperate to get those foreign occupiers out of his country any way he can.
VETERANS TAKE THE ANTI-WAR LEAD
In the meantime, the great news is that our veterans – Iraq Veterans Against the War and especially IVAW's Afghanistan veterans' contingent – will be leading the protests in Chicago this weekend. Many of the vets will be returning their service medals, in recognition that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were wrong, not something to be celebrated.
And not only veterans, but lots of people, it seems, are starting to understand that.
It shouldn't surprise anyone, but support for the longest U.S. war is dropping further and faster than ever. The latest national U.S. poll, released on May 9, shows 66 percent of Americans are against the war in Afghanistan – and 40 percent are "strongly opposed."
We're already hearing the usual spin, claims that it’s a hard slog but Afghans are still better off, and that we have to finish what we started. That only the presence of our brave troops is giving the Afghan government and military the chance to consolidate their rule. That only our troops provide the possibility for stability and security in Afghanistan. That we have to stay to protect Afghan women.
But the reality is people have watched – and paid for – this war for more than 11 years now, and some facts just can't be spun anymore. Half of the 66 percent who oppose the war say that the presence of U.S. troops is actually hurting the people of Afghanistan more than they are helping. They're the ones who got it right.
U.S. troops urinate on the bodies of dead Afghans. U.S. troops burn Q'’rans. One or more U.S. troops goes on a murderous rampage killing 17 civilians, 9 of them children. U.S. troops photograph each other grinning with the body parts of dead Afghans draped over their shoulders. As for protecting women, according to Save the Children’s new "State of the World’s Mothers" report, Afghanistan is the second worst place in the world for a mother to give birth and try raise a child.
And the war has cost the lives of more than 1800 U.S. troops, killed unknown thousands of Afghans, and cost more than half a trillion dollars in taxpayers’ money. That's not spin – those are the reasons that support for the illegal war continues to plummet. If that money ($571 billion according to the National Priorities Project) had not been wasted on the war in Afghanistan since 2001, it could instead have paid for ten years of health care for 12 million low-income people, or hired 840,000 new elementary school teachers for ten years, or paid for converting 246 million households to all solar energy for a year. Think it's those investments, or a brutal, useless war, that would make us safer?
Only 27 percent of people in this country say they support the war now – the lowest number ever. Just a year ago 37 percent supported the war, and the year before that support in some polls was at 46 percent – almost half. And only 8 percent now "strongly" support the war.
Certainly there's an election connection to all this. Support for the war is dropping among Republicans too – to 37 percent backing the war, down from 58 percent just last year. That raises a lot of questions about whether Romney – or perhaps Republican congressional candidates, might decide to abandon the war, even if they loved it when George W. Bush launched it 11 years ago, and embrace the Republican majority who now oppose the war.
For President Obama, the challenge may be even greater. This is his war now, it has been since January 20, 2009. But support for the war in his party (a slightly embarrassingly low 30 percent last year) has dropped to a humiliating 19 percent today. Does he really think he can re-energize his base with the claim that "I’m ending the war" when the reality of his plan is so well known? His plan for two more years of full-scale war in Afghanistan, followed by at least ten years of continued occupation by thousands (16,000? 20,000?) of special forces and "training" troops? Too many people know that's the reality of the agreement Obama signed with the U.S.-backed Afghan President Karzai last week. It’s not an end to the war, it's simply changing the size and nature of the occupation.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee and the Progressive Caucus are leading an effort to gain support for HR 780, which would cut all funds to the Afghanistan war except money needed to safely withdraw all U.S. troops and contractors. It certainly reflects the vast majority of public opposition to the war – but it still faces a difficult battle. Many members of Congress are signing on, but far too many members are still afraid to use their Constitutional power of the purse to end this war. Too many – and they’re not afraid of what will happen in Afghanistan, or what will happen to the troops (how better to keep them safe than to pull them out?). They're afraid of what their hometown headlines will say the next day.
We've largely won the battle for public opinion. The challenge now is to turn that transformation of public opinion into the transformation of policy. It's very late – but we have no choice but to continue to try.
The great songwriter Phil Ochs, in his masterful Viet Nam-era "White Boots Marching in a Yellow Land" also had Afghanistan right: "We’re fighting in a war we lost before the war began." The main unspinnable fact is that whichever of the myriad of reasons, rationales, excuses, and justifications for this war of vengeance one chooses, it was lost long ago. The only solution now is to get out – now, not in 2014. And completely, not with thousands of troops continuing to occupy Afghanistan through 2014 and beyond. Get Out. Now.
(This article, "We’re Fighting in a War We Lost Before the War Began," was published in much shorter form last week on the IPS blog, CommonDreams, and a number of other venues.)
I'm just back from an extraordinary month of writing and studying in Marfa, Texas, a writers residency sponsored by the Lannan Foundation and its also extraordinary staff. I remain grateful to all of them for the amazing opportunity. And I remain grateful to all of you, as well, for all you do, and for all your support.
Chicago is a step in fighting back to STOP these wars we lose before the war begins. But it's only one step. We've got a lot of work to do.
All best,
Phyllis |
Thursday, April 19, 2012
The Secret Service and the girls from Cartagena
The Secret Service and the girls from Cartagena
WMR has learned from our intelligence sources that the prostitution scandal will grow since there are also reports that staying at the $200/night five-star Hotel El Caribe in the trendy Bocagrande area of Cartagena were members of the White House Communication Agency that sets up all White House encrypted communications services prior to a presidential visit, as well as members of the president's White House staff. White House staff members had rented entire suites at the hotel. The incident is being treated by the U.S. Intelligence and law enforcement communities as potentially a major compromise of presidential security and classified White House communications. President Obama later said he wanted a "rigorous" probe of the incident.
WMR's intelligence sources point out that Cartagena is not only the center for Israeli-run prostitution rings but that these rings also use both legal age and underage females who are provided with breast enhancements by their Israeli organized crime pimps to make them more attractive to customers. The spin being employed by the White House and their sycophants in the media is that the prostitution scandal merely involved mostly married Uniformed Division and special agent Secret Service personnel unconnected to the Presidential Protective Division that provides personal protection for the president.
The Secret Service agents and military personnel were heavily drinking at bars near the El Caribe on the night of April 11. At the bars, they met prostitutes and many took them back to their hotel rooms. The El Caribe has a policy that requires overnight guests of hotel customers to leave a photo ID with the front desk and vacate the room by 7 o'clock in the morning. Apparently, the Secret Service agents and military personnel used their official security credentials to circumvent the hotel's security policy, which was enhanced just prior to the Summit. A number of officials of other Latin American and Caribbean governments had already been checking into the hotel prior to the Summit. President Obama was booked into the Cartagena Hilton, which is close to the Caribe. Obama had not arrived when the prostitution incident took place. The accused Secret Service agents hurriedly departed Colombia on April 12, a day before Obama's arrival.
When one Secret Service agent refused to pay one prostitute 47 dollars and a heated argument ensued that attracted the attention of hotel security, the hotel management called the police. Police then filed a report, which was then leaked to the media. One major question remains, however. Why did the Colombian police, who have a history of covering up such incidents in order to protect VIP visitors and their staffs, decide to make the incident public?
The answer to that question lies in the frosty pre-Summit interchanges between Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. ambassador to Colombia Michael McKinley over Santos's pre-summit trip to Havana to meet with Cuban President Raul Castro to apologize for Washington's and Ottawa's insistence that Cuba be barred from attending the Cartagena summit. Santos was also furious with pre-summit statements by U.S. officials flatly rejecting his and other Latin American leaders' proposals to legalize drugs and supporting Argentina's claims over the Malvinas or Falkland Islands, which are controlled by Britain.
When the Secret Service agents, U.S. military members, and reportedly, other members of the White House political staff, were compromised by the prostitution parties in the El Caribe, instead of ordering the police to gloss over the incident and tell the unpaid prostitute to leave the scene or be arrested, Santos allowed the police investigation of the incident to proceed and the subsequent leak of the incident to the media to occur.
Santos, who enjoys friendly relations with ailing Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has also been successful in bringing the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) to the negotiating table. Therefore, Santos no longer feels encumbered to placate the dictates of Washington, which, in the past, has provided military and counter0insurgency support to Bogota.
The Secret Service and other White House staffers also walked into a cleverly-contrived trap. Israel's Mossad is under orders to undermine Obama at every step in order to better the odds for the election of Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's former Boston Consulting Group colleague and friend Mitt Romney as president. The Israeli embassy in Bogota reportedly worked closely with Colombian and Israeli Jewish criminal elements and businessmen in Cartagena to draw the White House team into a trap. The ploy worked and as a result Republican members of the House of Representatives are calling for a full inquiry into the scandal, which has tarnished Obama's statesmanship credentials during an important international summit.
Former Washington Post reporter Ron Kessler was the first to report the prostitute scandal in an exclusive to his old paper. However, today, Kessler writes for the right-wing Newsmax, which apes a strong pro-Israeli line. Kessler also has contacts inside the Secret Service, having written a book about the agency. Kessler has overly-dramatized the Colombian incident, stating "This is the worst scandal in the history of the Secret Service," Many scholars would agree that the Secret Service's failure to protect President John F. Kennedy from assassins' bullets was the worst scandal in the agency's history. On CNN, Kessler said the second-worst scandal for the Secret Service was the crashing of a White House state dinner in 2009 by two supposedly uninvited publicity-seeking guests, Tareq and Michaele Salahi. Kessler placed that incident ahead of the failure to ensure that potential assassins could not fire off weapons at Presidents Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford.
Many Cartagena prostitutes, known for their attractiveness, are provided with balloon breast implants by the Colombian/Israeli mafia in the city. The women are then trafficked to such locations as Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Dubai, and Singapore to provide "services" to international bankers and oil sheiks who then find themselves subject to blackmail by Mossad interlocutors. The womens' work visas are facilitated jointly by local Israeli crime syndicates who work closely with the responsible Mossad stations.
Israeli intelligence teams have plagued Colombia for a number of years. Colombia still has Interpol arrest warrants out for three Israeli mercenaries -- Yair Klein, Melnik Ferri, and Tzedaka Abraham -- who provided assistance to Colombian drug cartels and right-wing death squads. The three, along with other Israeli agents, have collaborators and informants riddled throughout Colombia's police, intelligence, and military ranks.
Santos, when informed of the attempt to compromise the security of the White House security team by putas employed by the Israeli mob, simply told the police that the Americans were on their own and they had to simply pay the prostitutes, deal with the media exposure, and that the Colombian government would not provide the customary cover extended by past Colombian presidents like Santos's Mossad- and CIA-controlled predecessor Alvaro Uribe. For Obama, Colombian "Hookergate" should serve as a wake up call on just how far Netanyahu will go to embarrass the Obama administration and just how bankrupt Latin American goodwill is towards the United States.
Thursday, April 12, 2012
What's goin' on at the Turkish-Syrian border? By Pepe Escobar
THE ROVING EYE
What's goin' on at the Turkish-Syrian border?
By Pepe Escobar
There is a video [1] that could be loosely translated as "Terrorist Turkish border opening fire on the Syrian side" that pretty accurately sums up what's going on at the ultra-volatile geopolitical hotspot of the moment.
The voice over says, "This is the Syria-Turkey border, and this is an operation of the Free Syrian Army [FSA] ... The Gate [that would be the Syrian side of the border, housing the Gate checkpoint] is going to be seized."
What this means is that Turkey is sheltering the FSA right on the border, only a few meters - and not kilometers - away from Syrian territory. Way beyond hosting a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) command and control center in Iskenderun for months now - a fact already reported by Asia Times Online - Turkey has now advanced right to the border, enabling a back-and-forth by heavily weaponized guerrillas/mercenaries to attack a sovereign state.
Imagine a similar scenario happening, say, at a Mexican-US border in Arizona or Texas.
This can be seen as a very peculiar Ankara interpretation of "safe havens" and "humanitarian corridors" as outlined by what can be seen as the prime blueprint for regime change in Syria: a report [2] by the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, authored by the usual cocktail of Israeli firsters and Qatar-affiliated Middle East "experts".
So expect to see this movie generating countless sequels; the FSA attacking a Syrian border checkpoint, killing soldiers and then retreating under a hail of bullets, which will inevitably hit a nearby Syrian refugee camp.
The border escalation graphically illustrates the wider scenario: civil war.
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu - of the fabled "zero problems with our neighbors" policy - had to abruptly cut short his trip to China and return to Turkey because of the border escalation. It would be very enlightening to learn how the Beijing leadership told him that Turkey's agent provocateur gimmicks amount to playing with a ball of fire.
The border escalation also proves that NATO has less than zero interest in the success of the ceasefire widely brandished as the Kofi Annan plan (that's in fact a diluted version of both the Russian and Chinese plans). Trouble will escalate further - as suggested by a RT report. [3]
Obviously, a sovereign government - in this case Syria - had to demand written guarantees that its weaponized opponents would also abide by the Annan ceasefire.
The single-most important reason that they won't - and they have already stressed so publicly - is that not only the FSA and splinter guerrillas will continue to be weaponized by Qatar and the House of Saud, and sprinkled with Libyan "rebels" flown into Syria; it's that two United Nations Security Council permanent members - Britain and France - also have their own special forces on the ground, engaged in training, intel and combat operations.
The trillion Turkish lira question is whether Ankara will go one step beyond and actually implement those "safe havens"; that would amount to being directly involved in the Syrian civil war, ie, a declaration of war against Damascus. That's exactly what the FSA has been begging the Turks to do. But even that would not be enough to topple the Bashar al-Assad regime.
As for the Assad police state/military apparatus, it just has to be wily enough not to be provoked into an orgy of torture, summary executions and artillery bombardment - the necessary condition to maintain the key diplomatic support of BRICS members Russia and China. Once again, it's average Syrians, caught in the middle, who will be the tragic losers.
Notes
1. See here.
2. See here.
3. See 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 most recent book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
Thursday, April 05, 2012
We want war, and we want it now By Pepe Escobar
THE ROVING EYE
We want war, and we want it now
By Pepe Escobar
It was deep into the night, somewhere over Siberia, in a Moscow to Beijing flight (BRIC to BRIC?) when the thought, like a lightning bolt, began to take hold.
What the hell is wrong with those Arabs?
Maybe it was the narcotic effect of that perennially dreadful Terminal F at Sheremetyevo airport - straight out of a Brejnev gulag. Maybe it was the anticipation of finding more about the Russia-China joint naval exercise scheduled for late April.
Or it was simply another case of "you can take the boy out of the Middle East, but you can't take the Middle East out of the boy".
With friends like these ... It all had to do with that Friends of Syria (fools for war?) meeting in Istanbul. Picture Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal - who seems to have a knack for sending US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into rapture - feverishly arguing that the House of Saud, those paragons of democracy, had "a duty" to weaponize the Syrian "revolutionary" opposition.
And picture al-Faisal ordering an immediate ceasefire by the Bashar al-Assad government, guilty - according to the House of Saud - not only of cruel repression but crimes against humanity.
No; this was not a Monty Python sketch.
To make sure he was milking the right cow, al-Faisal also said that the Gulf Counter-revolution Club (GCC), also known as Gulf Cooperation Council, wanted to get further into bed with the United States. Translation, if any was needed; the US-GCC tag team, as expressed by the weaponization of the Syrian "rebels", is meant to body slam Iran.
For both the House of Saud and Qatar (the other GCCs are just extras), what's goin' on in Syria is not about Syria; it's always been about Iran.
This especially applies to the Saudi pledge to flood the global oil market with a spare oil production capacity that any self-respecting oil analyst knows they don't have - or rather wouldn't use; after all, the House of Saud badly needs high oil prices to bribe its restive eastern province population into not even thinking about that Arab Spring nonsense.
Clinton got the pledge from the House of Saud in person, before landing in Istanbul. Washington's return gift was of the Pentagon kind; the GCC soon will be protected from "evil" Iran by a US-supplied missile shield. That implies that an attack on Iran may have been discarded for 2012 - but it's certainly "on the table" for 2013.
Asian nations - especially BRICS members China and India - will keep buying oil from Iran; the problem is what the European poodles will do. Other real problems are that the Kurds in northern Iraq are taking their oil off the market until Baghdad pays them the share they had agreed upon. And then there are Syria's 400,000 barrels a day, which have been dwindling over the past few months.
Still, the Saudis will keep playing the make-believe oil scenario as a gift to Washington - as the US pressures compliant European Union poodle economies and extremely wary Asians they have no reason to keep buying Iranian oil.
But then into this mess in Istanbul Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki - whose power is a direct consequence of Washington's invasion and destruction of Iraq - steps in with quite a bang.
Here it is, in his own words:
We reject any arming [of Syrian rebels] and the process to overthrow the [Assad] regime, because this will leave a greater crisis in the region ... The stance of these two states [Qatar and Saudi Arabia] is very strange ... They are calling for sending arms instead of working on putting out the fire, and they will hear our voice, that we are against arming and against foreign interference ... We are against the interference of some countries in Syria's internal affairs, and those countries that are interfering in Syria's internal affairs will interfere in the internal affairs of any country ... It has been one year and the regime did not fall, and it will not fall, and why should it fall?"
Maliki knows very well that the ongoing and already escalating weaponizing of Sunni Syrians - many of the Salafi and jihadi kind - will inevitably spill over into Iraq itself, and threaten his Shi'ite-majority government. And that irrespective of the fact that his administration supports the close Iran-Syria relationship.
Maliki, by the way, was back in power in the autumn of 2010 because Tehran deftly intervened to make sure the Sadrists would support him. To add to Maliki's anger, Qatar is refusing to extradite Iraqi Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, accused of masterminding a pro-Sunni coup d'etat in Baghdad.
How green was my jihad valley
So Washington is now merrily embarking in a remix of the 1980s Afghan jihad - which, as every grain of sand from the Hindu Kush to Mesopotamia knows, led to that ghostly entity, al-Qaeda, and the subsequent, transformer "war on terror".
The House of Saud and Qatar have institutionalized that motley crew known as the Free Syrian Army as a mercenary outfit; they are now on their payroll, to the tune of $100 million (and counting). Isn't democracy wonderful - when US-allied Persian Gulf monarchies can buy a mercenary army for peanuts? Isn't it great to be a revolutionary with an assured paycheck?
Not missing a beat, Washington has set up its own fund as well, for "humanitarian" assistance to Syria and "non-lethal" aid to the "rebels"; "non-lethal" as in ultra battle-ready satellite communications equipment, plus night-vision goggles. Clinton's silky spin was that the equipment would allow the "rebels" to "evade" attacks by the Syrian government. No mention that now they have access to actionable US intelligence via a swarm of drones deployed all over Syria.
Maliki can clearly see the writing on the (Sunni) wall. The House of Saud invaded Shi'ite-majority Bahrain to protect the extremely unpopular Sunni al-Khalifa dynasty in power - their "cousins". Maliki knows that a post-Assad Syria would mean Muslim Brotherhood Sunnis in power - sprinkled with Salafi-jihadis. In his worst nightmare, Maliki sees this possible dystopian future as an al-Qaeda in Iraq remix on steroids.
So this is what the Istanbul-based "Friends of Syria" bash turned into; a shameless legitimizing - by Arabs allied with the US - of civil war in yet another Arab country. The victims will be average Syrians caught in the crossfire.
This US-GCC weaponizing entirely dissolves the United Nations Syria envoy and former secretary general Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan. The plan calls for a ceasefire; for the Syrian government to "cease troop movements" and "begin pullback of military concentrations"; and for a negotiated political settlement.
There will be no ceasefire. The Assad government accepted the plan. The weaponized "rebels" rejected it. Imagine the Syrian government beginning the "pullback of military concentrations" while swarms of weaponized "rebels" and assorted mercenaries (from Libya, Lebanon and Iraq) keep deploying their torture tactics and launching a barrage of improvised explosive devices.
I landed in Beijing eager to learn more about the upcoming joint Russia-China naval exercise in the Yellow Sea, but instead I was stuck with a Henry Kissinger op-ed in the Washington Post. [1] Here it is, in Dr K's own words:
The Arab Spring is widely presented as a regional, youth-led revolution on behalf of liberal democratic principles. Yet Libya is not ruled by such forces; it hardly continues as a state. Neither is Egypt, whose electoral majority (possibly permanent) is overwhelmingly Islamist. Nor do democrats seem to predominate in the Syrian opposition.
The Arab League consensus on Syria is not shaped by countries previously distinguished by the practice or advocacy of democracy. Rather, it largely reflects the millennium-old conflict between Shi'ite and Sunni and an attempt to reclaim Sunni dominance from a Shi'ite minority. It is also precisely why so many minority groups, such as Druzes, Kurds and Christians, are uneasy about regime change in Syria.
Well, China scholar Dr K at least got this one right (and in total agreement with Maliki, no less). A full-fledged mercenary army paid for by autocrat Arabs to overthrow an Arab government is pure and simple regime change - US rhetoric about "democracy" and "freedom" notwithstanding. It's all about classic, imperial divide and rule, profiting from pitting Sunnis against Shi'ites.
And then my divine roasted duck revealed to me that realpolitik stalwart Dr K is not getting much traction in Washington these days.
Note
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 most recent book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).
He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com
Gunter Grass Addresses Israel's Nuclear Threat by Stephen Lendman
Gunter Grass Addresses Israel's Nuclear Threat
by Stephen Lendman
Writer, poet, playwright, sculptor, artist, and Nobel laureate Grass is regarded as Germany's most celebrated author.
Awarded the 1999 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Swedish Academy said his "frolicsome black fables portray the forgotten face of history."
It credited his first novel, "The Tin Drum," with restoring honor to German literature "after decades of linguistic and moral destruction."
It "comes to grips with the enormous task of reviewing contemporary history by recalling the disavowed and the forgotten: the victims, losers and lies that people wanted to forget because they had once believed in them."
Published in 1959, "The Tin Drum" became one of the most admired and revealing allegories of guilt and complicity. He once said he "believe(d) it....a good thing that a writer does not sit on the side of the victors." He also called Germany a psychologically damaged society.
His writings stirred controversy. He's done it again. On April 4, Haaretz headlined, "German Nobel laureate Guenter Grass' new poem: Nuclear Israel is a threat to world peace," saying:
Now age 84, his new poem "calls for Germany to cease supplying Israel with submarines (able to carry nuclear-armed missiles), and warns against an Israeli strike on Iran."
"Israel's nuclear potential has been stealthily growing for years," he said, with no international supervision. Fearing the worst, he added that "Germany could be responsible for a crime that can be foreseen."
Der Spiegel headlined, "Nobel Laureate Grass Attacks Israel in New Poem," saying:
"Germany's most famous living author....sparked outrage in Germany....with the publication of a poem, "What must be said," in which he sharply criticizes Israel's policies on Iran."
In response, Israel's Berlin Embassy responded as expected, saying:
"What must be said is that it is a European tradition to accuse the Jews before the Passover festival of ritual murder."
"Earlier, it was Christian children whose blood the Jews allegedly used to make their unleavened bread, but today it is the Iranian people that the Jewish state allegedly wants to annihilate. What also must be said is that Israel is the only state in the world whose right to exist is openly doubted."
"That was true on the day of its founding and it remains true today. We want to live in peace with our neighbors in the region. And we are not prepared to assume the role that Gunter Grass is trying to assign to us as part of the German people's efforts to come to terms with the past."
The hypocrisy and duplicity deserve no comment. They explain plenty on their own.
Germany's Central Council of Jews called the poem an "aggressive pamphlet of agitation."
Bundestag member Ruprecht Polenz said Grass "has difficulties whenever he comments on politics and is often wrong." His colleague Philipp Missfelder called the poem "tasteless, ahistorical, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge about the situation in the Middle East."
Prominent Jewish German writer Henryk Broder also attacked Grass, saying he "always had a problem with Jews, but it has never articulated it as clearly as he has in this 'poem,' "
He "always had a tendency toward megalomania, but this time he is completely nuts."
Grass was critical of Israel earlier. In a 2001 SPIEGEL ONLINE interview, he addressed the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, saying:
"Israel doesn't just need to clear out of the occupied areas. The appropriation of Palestinian territory and its Israeli settlements are also a criminal activity. That not only needs to be stopped -- it also needs to be reversed. Otherwise there will be no peace."
Then and now Grass performed a valuable service. His prominence gives his remarks special significance. They're featured worldwide. He touched the right nerve, the same one media scoundrels avoid. He got it right. Why else would he be assailed? He deserves praise, not condemnation.
Israel's occupation and settlements are illegal. Its open secret is it's nuclear armed and dangerous. Not only is its arsenal and delivery systems formidable, it threatens to use them preemptively against perceived threats.
In 1986, whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu exposed it. The London Times published dozens of photos and scientific documents he provided. A long-time Dimona nuclear technician, he had access to secret information.
The Times' article headlined, "Revealed - the secrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal/Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production," saying:
"Hidden beneath the Negev desert, the factory has been producing nuclear atomic warheads for the last 20 years. Now it has almost certainly begun manufacturing thermo-nuclear weapons," with yields great enough to destroy entire cities.
Vanunu's documents were genuine. They proved conclusively that Israel possessed sophisticated technology enabling it "to build up a formidable nuclear arsenal."
According to Theodore Taylor, a world expert at the time:
"There should no longer be any doubt that Israel is, and for at least a decade has been, a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state....considerably more advanced than (earlier) indicated...."
Other top nuclear scientists agreed. Israel then and now is a world nuclear power. It has sophisticated technology and weapons. Estimates of its arsenal range from 200 - 400 warheads able to destroy entire cities.
For his courageous whistleblowing, Israel abducted him in Rome, secretly tried him, sentenced him to 18 years in prison, held him for years in punishing isolation, harasses him to this day, refuses him permission to leave the country, and denies him all rights.
That's the price of truth-telling in Israel. That's how rogue states operate, especially belligerent nuclear powered ones.
Translated, Grass wrote:
"Why I am silent, silent for too much time, how much is clear and we made it in war games, where, as survivors, we are just the footnotes."
"That is the claimed right to the formal preventive aggression which could erase the Iranian people dominated by a bouncer and moved to an organized jubilation, because in the area of his competence there is the construction of the atomic bomb."
"And then why do I avoid myself to call the other country with its name, where since years – even if secretly covered - there is an increasing nuclear power, without control, because unreachable by every inspection?"
"I feel the everybody silence on this state of affairs, which my silence is slave to, as an oppressive lie and an inhibition that presents punishment we don’t pay attention to; the verdict "anti-Semitism" is common."
"Now, since my country, from time to time touched by unique and exclusive crimes, obliged to justify itself, again for pure business aims - even if with fast tongue we call it 'reparation' - should deliver another submarine to Israel, with the specialty of addressing annihilating warheads where the existence of one atomic bomb is not proved but it wants evidence as a scarecrow, I say what must be said."
"Why did I stay silent until now? Because the thought about my origin, burdened by an unclearing stain, had avoiding to wait this fact like a truth declared by the State of Israel that I want to be connected to."
"Why did I say it only now, old and with the last ink: the nuclear power of Israel threat the world peace? Because it must be said what tomorrow will be too late; because - as Germans and with enough faults on the back - we might also become deliverers of a predictable crime, and no excuse would erase our complicity."
"And I admit: I won’t be silent because I had enough of the Western hypocrisy; Because I wish that many will want to get rid of the silence, exhorting the cause of a recognizable risk to the abdication, asking that a free and permanent control of the Israel atomic power and the Iran nuclear bases will be made by both the governments with an international supervision."
"Only in this way, Israelis, Palestinians, and everybody, all people living hostile face to face in that country occupied by the craziness, will have a way out, so us too."
A Final Comment
Nuclear armed and dangerous, Israel, like its Washington paymaster/partner, is a world menace. Others need to spread Grass' words before it's too late to matter.
He's a hero for explaining what everyone needs to know. There ought to be a Nobel award for that!
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
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