April 2012
Vol 12, No.04
AFGHAN KILLINGS - NERVOUS BREAKDOWN? By Gholamali Khoshroo
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lthough news about the ruthless killing of 16 innocent Afghan women and children by a US soldier in Kandahar has shocked the world, the incident was by no means unexpected. A statement issued by the Head of NATO command in that region noted that the assailant committed the crime in a fit of nervous breakdown.
A mother, whose young child was killed in the incident, was crying out asking if her two-year child has been
a Taliban fighter to deserve such a death? The bereaved mother knew better than NATO commanders that the attack was not the result of a nervous breakdown, but the result of Islamophobia to which this region, especially Afghanistan, has been a victim during the past 10 years. This phenomenon of Islamophobia can be clearly seen in the disastrous events which have befallen Afghanistan in the past few months. Just a few weeks ago, there were images of NATO soldiers on international media showing those soldiers urinating on dead bodies of the victims of the Afghan war. Those images shocked the entire world, but let’s not forget that the people of Afghanistan are daily victims of similar cases of violence. Many of these cases are never caught on camera and are regularly denied.
Nobody will believe that this has been the first or even the last case of NATO soldiers urinating on dead bodies; they have done this both in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. The catastrophic burning of the Quran at the NATO military base in Bagram has upset Muslims across the world. NATO claimed that it had been just a mistake and the Quran pages have been burned along with useless papers on mistake. The question is why so many volumes of the Quran have been included among useless papers at that military base? Had NATO soldiers collected those Qurans from people’s homes or Afghan prisoners as examples of dangerous books promoting violence before consigning them to fire? Who believes that NATO soldiers give a damn about the religious values of their victims?
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STATEMENTS .WORSENING TRENDS IN GLOBAL ARMS TRANSFERS
BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.........................................................P 2
. THE GLOBAL MARCH TO JERUSALEM
BY CHANDRA MUZAFFAR.............................................................P 3
ARTICLES .ORGANIZERS SAY JERUSALEM MARCH ACHIEVED GOALS BY MA’AN NEWS AGENCY.............................................................P 4
.BRICS SUMMIT 2012: MEMBER NATIONS SIGN PACTS TO PROMOTE TRADE IN LOCAL CURRENCY
BY THE TIMES OF INDIA.................................................................P 4
.WHY PUTIN IS DRIVING WASHINGTON NUTS
BY PEPE ESCOBAR....................................................................P 5
.KONY 2012: US “HUMANITARIAN” INTERVENTION IN AFRICA BY BILL VAN AUKEN.........................................................P 6
.AL JAZEERA EXODUS
BY RT.COM..............................................................................P 8
.THE WASHINGTON- “MODERATE ISLAM” ALLIANCE: CONTAINING REBELLION; DEFENDING EMPIRE (PART II) BY JAMES PETRAS ...............................................................P 10
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continued from page 1 In reality, however, in order to attack a country, you should first fan the flames of hatred toward that country so high that the military will be ready to embark on a war with no guilty conscience. Perhaps, the soldier who has attacked poor people in a remote village using his automatic gun thought why should they wait a number of years and see those children grow into mature men who would take up arms to fight them. So, he concluded, it would be better to nip that violence in the bud. Didn’t the US Defense Secretary under President Ronald Reagan once say that the United States should eradicate Iranians as a nation? Aren’t Israelis making daily calls on the United States to wage a new war in the Middle East? Aren’t the US presidential candidates engaged in a hot race over putting more pressure on and waging a military attack on Iran?
At a time when this is the mentality at the highest decision-making level in the United States, how can a simple soldier, who is facing horrors in Kandahar instead of having a good time in Florida, be expected not to go down
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with a nervous breakdown? A closer look will show us that his nervous fit was, in fact, a result of similar nervous fits of high-ranking commanders who wage wars and call for a war on terror, or adopt a hypocritical stance against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The real person with nervous fit is the US president, who instead of insisting on freeing the Middle East from nuclear weapons, takes pride in his heartfelt love for and strategic alliance with Israel which already possesses the most destructive arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. When the US Joint Chief of Staff threatens the entire region with war and constantly talks about a military option to solve the United States’ domestic and international problems, it is him who has gone down with a nervous breakdown. What happened from Abu Ghraib Prison to Bagram airbase and from Bagram airbase to Kandahar and from Kandahar to arrogant urination of NATO troops on dead bodies of bearded men, all convey the same message of Islamophobia. From the
L E A D A R T I C L E viewpoint of American strategists, Islam is the most important identity element in the Muslim Middle East. The call of “God is the greatest,” is heard in all Muslim countries many times a day. Therefore, killing of Afghan children should not be simplistically reduced to nervous attack of an American soldier, but should be construed within a broader framework of Islamophobic policies and strategies of the West. No show of power and military deployment can destroy Islam, but it simply draws NATO into the vortex of a deadly whirlpool. The best way of interaction between Islam and the West is not through fanning the flames of war, but is opening up some space for dialogue. Islamophobia will only give birth to catastrophic violence. The sole way of interaction between Islam and the West is through dialogue based on understanding as well as cooperation away from dictatorship and bullying and founded on justice and freedom. 14 March, 2012 Gholamali Khoshroo is the Senior Editor of the Encyclopedia of Contemporary Islam. Source: iranreview.org
STATEMENTS WORSENING TRENDS The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) has in its 2011 Report highlighted trends in global arms transfers which any sane human being would describe as “worsening.” SIPRI shows that “the volume of international transfers of major conventional weapons was 24 per cent higher in the period 2007-11 than in 2002-2006.” The top supplier of arms during both periods was the United States of America. Its exports increased by 24 per cent in the latter period. The US accounted for 30 per cent of
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all arms exports between 2007 and 2011. The US was followed by Russia whose exports increased by 12 per cent between 2002-2006 and 2007-2011. Russia accounted for 24 per cent of all exports. Germany, France and Britain were the other three big arms suppliers. The top 5 suppliers accounted for 75 per cent of the total volume of all global arms exports. The 5 biggest arms importers in 2007-2011 were India, South Korea,
Pakistan, China and Singapore in that order. India was also the top importer in 2002-2006. Asia as a whole was the biggest importer of arms in 2007-2011, accounting for 44 per cent of imports. However, the largest arms deal for “at least two decades was Saudi Arabia’s order for 84 new and 70 rebuilt F-15SG combat aircraft.” The beneficiary of this purchase concluded in 2011 was the US. What is the larger significance of these worsening trends in global arms transfers? continued next page
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One, global security has not increased one iota as a result of increased arms transfers. Wars and armed conflicts continue unabated. The underlying causes of conflicts and tensions in West Asia and North Africa (WANA), the Korean Peninsula, East Asia, South Asia and parts of subSaharan Africa remain unresolved. If anything, escalating export and import of arms may even have exacerbated tensions between states within a region — tensions arising from a relentless arms race between neighbours.
reduced growth rates worldwide. To focus upon buying and selling arms when economies are crumbling and collapsing, and millions of people are without jobs or are struggling to make ends meet, is utterly, despicably, immoral and unconscionable. Governments and elites everywhere, including those who reap huge profits from the arms industry, should be concentrating upon those economic activities that conduce towards life, dignity and justice — not an enterprise that promotes death, violence and destruction.
Two, increased arms transfers are happening at a time when the global conomy is mired in deep crisis. It is a crisis that has caused massive unemployment in some parts of the world, compounded national debts, aggravated inflationary trends, increased food and fuel prices, and
Given this conjuncture between an increase in arms transfers, on the one hand, and a global economy in crisis, on the other, citizens the world over should persuade and pressure governments and elites to reduce and eventually eliminate the production and consumption of all major conventional
THE GLOBAL MARCH The International Movement for a Just World (JUST) expresses its solidarity with the Global March to Jerusalem on 30th March 2012. The March will “demand freedom for Jerusalem and its people and to put an end to the Apartheid, ethnic cleansing and Judaisation policies affecting the people, land and sanctity of Jerusalem.” The organisers of the March also seek “to highlight the cause of Jerusalem (the City of Peace) which is considered the key to peace and war in the region and the world. The March will confirm that the policies and practices of the racist Zionist state of Israel against Jerusalem
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S T A T E M E N T S weapons. It goes without saying that this cannot be done on a national or regional basis. It has to be a truly global endeavour. Governments should come together and formulate a timetable for global disarmament. This is one of humankind’s time-honoured, much cherished dreams — a world free from all weapons of death and destruction. Translating it into reality we realise is a monumental challenge which goes beyond the cessation of the production and consumption of conventional weapons. But let the citizens of the world at least demand that those who rule in their name put disarmament on the global agenda as an urgent item that requires immediate attention. Dr Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World (JUST). 2 April, 2012.
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and its people are a crime not only against Palestinians but against all humanity.” People from all over the world, of different religious and cultural backgrounds are expected to join the March. The diversity itself will signal the commitment of the world’s citizens to the Palestinian struggle for justice and freedom. It will help convince everyone that there will be no peace on earth unless the dignity of Jerusalem and the people of Palestine is respected and restored to the fullest. At the core of Jerusalem’s dignity is its character as a truly multi-religious city that
embodies the diversity of the human family. Whatever the size of the March, and regardless of whether the Marchers get anywhere close to Jerusalem, the Global March to Jerusalem marks an important turningpoint in the peaceful, global mobilization of the citizens of the world for justice in Palestine and the world. This is why all human beings who cherish peace should support it wholeheartedly. Executive Committee, JUST 29 March, 2012.
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ARTICLES ORGANIZERS SAY JERUSALEM MARCH ACHIEVED GOALS By Ma’an News Agency Organizers of the Global March to Jerusalem commemorating Land Day say the march on Friday made big strides as most of its goals were realized. General coordinator of the march Ribhi Halloum told Ma’an from Jordan that the organizers put forward three major goals. The first goal, he said, was to lay the grounds for future activities in line with this goal. The rally was divided into two parts the first of which was organizing rallies and sit-in strikes in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Egypt. Part two of this goal, added Halloum, was demonstrations and face-to-face confrontations with the occupation inside Palestine “to prove that the Palestinian people are still present and
are still holding fast to their land.” The second goal, according to Halloum, was to maintain that the question of Palestine is no longer the cause of the Palestinian people alone, but rather a global cause, and that was evident in the participation of solidarity activists from 84 countries. The third goal was to show that occupation will eventually disappear no matter how long it might survive, he said. The organizers, added Halloum, do not pay great attention to the number of participants in the rallies, but rather to the number of countries joining the protests, as that reflects the support for Palestine.
Halloum highlighted that for the first time in Jordan more than 57,000 Jordanian citizens joined in different activities commemorating Land Day. For his part, member of the organizing committee from inside Israel aja Aghbariyya told Ma’an that the march achieved its goals at an international level and in Arab countries. He highlighted that there are plans to organize similar rallies on May 15 commemorating the Nakba anniversary. Preparations are underway, he said. 31 March, 2012
Source: Ma’an News Agency
BRICS SUMMIT 2012: MEMBER NATIONS SIGN PACTS PROMOTE TRADE IN LOCAL CURRENCY
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By The Times of India In an initiative to promote trade in local currencies, the BRICS nations today signed two agreements to provide line of credit to business community and decided to examine the possibility of setting up a development bank on lines of multilateral lending agencies. The agreements were signed by officials of five countries — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — at the fourth BRICS summit here. “The agreements signed today by development banks of BRICS countries will boost trade by offering credit in our local currency,” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said in a media statement after the meeting. The Master Agreement on Extending Credit Facility in Local Currency and
the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility Agreement are being perceived as a step towards replacing the dollar as the main unit of trade between them. Such intra-BRICS initiatives, according to officials, will not only contribute to enhanced trade and investments among the nations but would also facilitate economic growth in difficult economic times. As regards the initiative to set up a BRICS Development Bank on the lines of multilateral lending agency, Singh said the proposal would be examined by the finance ministers. A suggestion has been made to set up a BRICS development bank, we have
directed our FM to examine the proposal and report back by next summit,” Singh said. The initiative to set up a BRICS Development Bank on the lines of the World Bank would allow the member countries to pool resources for infrastructure development and could also be used to lend during the difficult global environment. Intra-BRICS trade is about USD 230 billion and has the potential of more than doubling to USD 500 billion by 2015. 29, March 2012 Source: The Times of India
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WHY PUTIN
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DRIVING WASHINGTON NUTS By Pepe Escobar
Forget the past (Saddam, Osama, Gaddafi) and the present (Assad, Ahmadinejad). A bet can be made over a bottle of Petrus 1989 (the problem is waiting the next six years to collect); for the foreseeable future, Washington’s top bogeyman - and also for its rogue North Atlantic Treaty Organization partners and assorted media shills - will be none other than back-to-the-future Russian President Vladimir Putin.
of the last king brought in to rule the new “emirate” - to the delight of those model democrats of the House of Saud.
And make no mistake; Vlad the Putinator will relish it. He’s back exactly where he wants to be; as Russia’s commander-in-chief, in charge of the military, foreign policy and all national security matters.
Most of this was already implied in Putin’s previous road map - his paper A new integration project for Eurasia: The future in the making. That was Putin’s ippon - he loves judo - against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the International Monetary Fund and hardcore neo-liberalism. He sees a Eurasian Union as a “modern economic and currency union” stretching all across Central Asia.
Anglo-American elites still squirm at the mention of his now legendary Munich 2007 speech, when he blasted the then George W Bush administration for its obsessively unipolar imperial agenda “through a system which has nothing to do with democracy” and non-stop overstepping of its “national borders in almost all spheres”.” So Washington and its minions have been warned. Before last Sunday’s election, Putin even advertised his road map The essentials; no war on Syria; no war on Iran; no “humanitarian bombing” or fomenting “color revolutions” - all bundled into a new concept, “illegal instruments of soft power”. For Putin, a Washingtonengineered New World Order is a nogo. What rules is “the time-honored principle of state sovereignty”. No wonder. When Putin looks at Libya, he sees the graphic, regressive consequences of NATO’s “liberation” through “humanitarian bombing”; a fragmented country controlled by alQaeda-linked militias; backward Cyrenaica splitting from more developed Tripolitania; and a relative
More key essentials; no US bases encircling Russia; no US missile defense without strict admission, in writing, that the system will never target Russia; and increasingly close cooperation among the BRICS group of emerging powers.
For Putin, Syria is an important detail (not least because of Russia’s naval base in the Mediterranean port of Tartus, which NATO would love to abolish). But the meat of the matter is Eurasia integration. Atlanticists will freak out en masse as he puts all his efforts into coordinating “a powerful supranational union that can become one of the poles of today’s world while being an efficient connecting link between Europe and the dynamic AsiaPacific Region”. The opposite roadmap will be Obama and Hillary’s Pacific doctrine. Now how
exciting is that? Putin plays Pipelineistan It was Putin who almost singlehandedly spearheaded the resurgence of Russia as a mega energy superpower (oil and gas accounts for two-thirds of Russia’s exports, half of the federal budget and 20% of gross domestic product). So expect Pipelineistan to remain key. And it will be mostly centered on gas; although Russia holds no less than 30% of global gas supplies, its liquid natural gas (LNG) production is less than 5% of the global market share. It’s not even among the top ten producers. Putin knows that Russia will need buckets of foreign investment in the Arctic - from the West and especially Asia - to keep its oil production above 10 million barrels a day. And it needs to strike a complex, comprehensive, trillion-dollar deal with China centered on Eastern Siberia gas fields; the oil angle has been already taken care of via the East Siberian Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline. Putin knows that for China - in terms of securing energy this deal is a vital counterpunch against Washington’s shady “pivoting” towards Asia. Putin will also do everything to consolidate the South Stream pipeline - which may end up costing a staggering $22 billion (the shareholder agreement is already signed between Russia, Germany, France and Italy. South Stream is Russian gas delivered under the Black Sea to the southern part of the EU, through Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary and Slovakia). If South Stream is a go, rival pipeline Nabucco is checkmated; a major Russian victory against Washington pressure and Brussels bureaucrats.
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continued from page 5 Everything is still up for grabs at the crucial intersection of hardcore geopolitics and Pipelineistan. Once again Putin will be facing yet another Washington road map - the not exactly successful New Silk Road (See US’s post-2014 Afghan agenda falters, Asia Times Online, Nov 4, 2011.) And then there’s the joker in the pack - the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Putin will want Pakistan to become a full member as much as China is interested in incorporating Iran. The repercussions would be ground-breaking - as in Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran coordinating not only their economic integration but their mutual security inside a strengthened SCO, whose motto is “non-alignment, nonconfrontation and non-interference in the affairs of other countries”.
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Putin sees that with Russia, Central Asia and Iran controlling no less than 50% of world’s gas reserves, and with Iran and Pakistan as virtual SCO members, the name of the game becomes Asia integration - if not Eurasia’s. The SCO develops as an economic/security powerhouse, while, in parallel, Pipelineistan accelerates the full integration of the SCO as a counterpunch to NATO. The regional players themselves will decide what makes more sense - this or a New Silk Road invented in Washington. Make no mistake. Behind the relentless demonization of Putin and the myriad attempts to delegitimize Russia’s presidential elections, lie some very angry and powerful sections of Washington and Anglo-American elites. They know Putin will be an ultra tough negotiator on all fronts. They know Moscow will apply increasingly closer
A R T I C L E S coordination with China; on thwarting permanent NATO bases in Afghanistan; on facilitating Pakistan’s strategic autonomy; on opposing missile defense; on ensuring Iran is not attacked. He will be the devil of choice because there could not be a more formidable opponent in the world stage to Washington’s plans - be they coded as Greater Middle East, New Silk Road, Full Spectrum Dominance or America’s Pacific Century. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s get ready to rumble. 9 March, 2012
Pepe Escobar is the roving correspondent for the Asia Times. His latest book is Obama Does Globalisation (Nimble Books, 2009). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com. Source: Asia Times
KONY 2012: US “HUMANITARIAN” INTERVENTION IN AFRICA By Bill Van Auken The campaign launched around Kony 2012, a 30-minute video targeting the leader of Uganda’s Lord’s Resistance Army, Joseph Kony, is aimed at furthering US military intervention on the African continent under the guise of humanitarianism. The video has been viewed on YouTube tens of millions of times, and its depiction of the suffering of the people, and particularly the children, of Uganda as the result of the protracted military conflict between the LRA and the USbacked government of President Yoweri Museveni has no doubt struck a chord with many, particularly younger people with little knowledge of the complex history of the region and the many interests involved.
“Diddy” Combs, Rhianna and four of the Kardashians, all of whom have tweeted their support. It has likewise received virtually uncritical promotion from the mass media, with television anchors in the US comparing it to the use of social media during the mass revolts that shook Tunisia and Egypt last year.
The campaign’s message has been greatly amplified by a series of celebrities, ranging from Oprah Winfrey to George Clooney, Sean
In reality, there is absolutely nothing radical or oppositional about Kony 2012, whose explicitly stated aim is to drum up popular support for the
continuation and escalation of one of the first direct military interventions by the Pentagon’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) on the African continent. In October of last year, the Obama administration announced its decision to send 100 combat-equipped US military “advisers,” most of them special forces troops, into Central Africa with the stated aim of hunting down and either capturing or killing Kony and other leaders of the LRA. While Invisible Children claims its campaign is for Kony to be delivered to the International Criminal Court for trial, the US government has refused to be a party to the ICC and has made no mention of the court in relation to its military operations in Central Africa. A March 7 open letter to President Barack Obama, issued in conjunction with the release of the video, praises the Democratic president for his continued next page
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“leadership on this issue.” “Your decision to deploy U.S. military advisors to the region in October of 2011 was a welcome measure of further assistance for regional governments in their efforts to protect people from LRA attacks,” the letter states.
It continues, “However, we fear that unless existing U.S. efforts are further expanded, your strategy may not succeed.” It touts the US military as the sole force capable of providing “tactical airlift” together with “crossborder coordination.” It cautions against any “premature” withdrawal of US special operations troops and urges the administration to utilize recently approved Pentagon funding “to provide enhanced mobility, intelligence, and other support for ongoing operations.” The heads of three organizations signed the letter: Invisible Children, the maker of the Kony 2012 video; the Enough Project, a subsidiary of the Democraticoriented think tank, the Center for American Progress; and Resolve, a human rights group connected to Catholic missionary organizations. Behind this campaign is an unholy alliance between the Christian right in the US, which has chosen Uganda as something of a laboratory for its reactionary social and political outlook, and sections of well-heeled liberals who have become a new constituency for imperialist intervention waged on the pretext of upholding human rights and protecting civilians.
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The White House last week came out publicly in support of the Kony 2012 campaign, with spokesman Jay Carney stating that Obama “congratulates” all those who responded to this “unique crisis of conscience” and vows to continue the US intervention. Underlying the sudden and peculiar turn by Washington towards a “human rights” crusade against the Lord’s Resistance Army are very definite economic and geo-strategic interests. These are bound up with the recent discovery of substantial oil reserves precisely in the area where the hunt for the LRA is being staged and increasingly fractious competition between Washington and Beijing for geo-political influence in resource-rich Africa. AFRICOM and military intervention have become crucial instruments for the US in combating the wave of Chinese investments in infrastructure projects aimed at facilitating the extraction of African oil and mineral wealth. What is peculiar about the intervention against the LRA is that it has been launched under conditions in which the militia group has already been reduced to a few hundred fighters and driven out of Uganda. While it conducted brutal attacks that claimed many civilian lives and was responsible for abducting large numbers of children for use as child soldiers a decade ago, its operations have been sharply curtailed in recent years and its atrocities far overshadowed by the mass killing carried out in the resource wars being waged in the neighboring Democratic Republic of the Congo, where Museveni’s Ugandan troops and affiliated militia groups are among those responsible for the loss of nearly 6 million lives since the mid-1990s. The Kony 2012 video portrays Uganda as it was a decade ago, thereby generating false propaganda for the US military intervention. At the same time, it casts the struggle between the
A R T I C L E S Ugandan government and the LRA as a morality play, pitting “good” against “evil.” While the LRA has committed massacres and crimes against the region’s civilian population, it is hardly unique in this regard. It is a product in the final analysis of the divide-and-rule methods utilized by British colonialism, which generated inter-ethnic conflicts that independence and a rising native ruling class only continued to foster. With the coming to power of Idi Amin in 1971, power shifted to the traditionally oppressed north of the country and away from the south, which had been favored by the British. The Acholi, one of the main northern ethnic groups, dominated the country’s military, which continued to exercise significant power even after Amin’s ouster in 1979.
In 1986, however, the country’s military ruler, Gen. Tito Okello, was brought down and the Acholidominated army disbanded after Museveni and his National Resistance Army, which preceded Kony in the use of child soldiers, swept to power. It was out of Museveni’s ruthless suppression of resistance in the north that the LRA emerged. This repression led to the forced relocation of much of the north’s Acholi population into “protective villages,” effectively concentration camps in which people were deprived of their land and agriculture and many thousands died from hunger and disease. Even the Museveni regime has continued next page
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criticized the film’s distortions. “It is totally misleading to suggest that the war is still in Uganda,” Fred Opolot, a spokesman for the Ugandan government, told the Telegraph. “I suspect that if that’s the impression they [Invisible Children] are making, they are doing it only to garner increasing financial resources for their own agenda.” While no doubt the Ugandan regime is critical for its own reasons, tied to its own interests and concerns that an image of Uganda as a war zone will interfere with the corrupt privatization and investment schemes that have enriched a narrow elite at the expense of the masses of people, the government spokesman has a point.
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Africa, while 20 percent covered salaries and expenses and 43 percent was used for “awareness programs.”
According to Invisible Children official Jason Russell, the group sold some 500,000 $30 “action kits,” consisting of T-shirts, bracelets, stickers, posters and buttons, in just the first week since the posting of the video, translating into $15 million in revenue.
Invisible Children’s previous funding sources also merit critical examination. Among its biggest donors is the National Christian Foundation and the Christian Community Foundation, two grant-making groups that provide financial backing to key organizations of the Christian right, such as Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, which promote anti-abortion and anti-gay legislation and religion in school, as well as the Discovery Institute, which advocates teaching “intelligent design,” or creationism.
As Invisible Children freely admits, the bulk of this money does not go to aid the impoverished population of Uganda. Barely one third of its spending last year supported programs in Central
Some of these same religious right groups have been deeply involved in fostering anti-gay hysteria in Uganda, including the pushing of legislation that would make homosexual acts an
A R T I C L E S offense punishable by death. Invisible Children’s Jason Russell was a featured speaker last November at Liberty University, the evangelical Christian school in Lynchburg, Virginia. The school was founded by the extreme right-wing demagogue and Baptist preacher Jerry Falwell, a defender of segregation and South Africa’s apartheid regime who became a significant force within the Republican Party. The Kony 2012 campaign represents a cynical attempt to manipulate public opinion in the interests of US intervention. It seeks to exploit the idealism of young people in order to distract them from the fundamental source of the tragic conditions facing masses of people in Africa—the heritage of colonial oppression and continued imperialist domination. And it proposes the US government and the US military as the solution to human rights abuses, as if the war crimes from Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya had never happened. 14 March, 2012 Bill Van Auken is a politician and activist for the Social Equality Party and was a Presidential candidate in the U.S. election od 2004. He is a fulltime reporter for World Socialist Web Site Source: WSWS.org
AL JAZEERA EXODUS By Rt.com Key staff from Al Jazeera’s Beirut Bureau have resigned citing “bias” in the channel’s stance on the conflict in Syria.
lambasted him as a shabeeh [implying a regime loyalist],” a source told Lebanese press.
Bureau Managing Director Hassan Shaaban reportedly quit last week, after his correspondent and producer had walked out in protest. A source told the Lebanese paper Al Akhbar that Al Jazeera’s Beirut correspondent Ali Hashem had quit over the channel’s stance on covering events in Syria. “… his position [which]
changed after the station refused to show photos he had taken of armed fighters clashing with the Syrian Army in Wadi Khaled. Instead [Al Jazeera]
Ali Hashem was also infuriated by Al Jazeera’s refusal to cover a crackdown by the King of Bahrain while twisting its Syria angle. “[In Bahrain], we were seeing pictures of a people being butchered by the ‘Gulf’s oppression machine’, and for Al Jazeera, silence was the name of the game,” he said.
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The Beirut bureau’s producer also quit claiming Al Jazeera had totally ignored Syria’s constitutional reform referendum, which saw a 57% turnout with 90% voting for change. Ghassan Ben Jeddo, who had been the head of the Beirut Bureau before resigning almost a year ago, said that Al Jazeera was biased in covering the Arab Spring, especially in Syria and Bahrain. “I do believe that Al Jazeera and other channels were not balanced in dealing with the events,” he said. “For instance, with respect to the events in Syria and Bahrain, we started to invite guests from America who only criticize the regime in Syria and support the regime in Bahrain and persons who justify NATO intervention. This is unacceptable.”
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April of 2011,” Debar told RT. “The head of the bureau in Beirut quit, many other people quit because of the biased coverage and outright hand of the government in dictating editorial policy over Libya, and now Syria.” ‘There’s a chill, they’re controlling things more at Al Jazeera’ Former Al Jazeera Englishlanguage blogger Ted Rall recounted his own story of quitting the job. He said his blogs and columns were being rejected on a regular basis. “For a long time I ascribed it to incompetence on their part because they weren’t very good at getting back very quickly, but over time I came to learn through various people there that the politics of the channel were changing,” he told RT. What he found out was that leftist and progressive voices such as his were not welcome anymore and that he no longer needed to submit anything. Rall noted that this change in policy only took place recently.
Journalist and author Afshin Rattansi, who worked for Al Jazeera, told RT that, “sadly”, the channel had become one-sided voice for the Qatari government’s stance against Bashar alAssad, having begun as the region’s revolutionary broadcaster. “That has been ongoing since last
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“After September 11, Al Jazeera became a channel that could be counted upon for openness and transparency, certainly compared to most corporate broadcast media in the West, particularly related to the Middle East and Central Asia and South Asia but that has really changed in the last year or so,” he said “There’s a chill, they’re controlling things more.” When Rall first went to work at Al Jazeera, he says he was surprised that it was actually owned by the Qatari government. He compared their past
hands-off policy to that of Rupert Murdoch when he owned the Village Voice of New York City. But now, the “Qataris have decided to shape the picture of the news a little more than they used to.” While he rejected the notion of objectivity, Rall did note that the media could try to present a more balanced view. “What you really want to see is a broad marketplace of ideas, where lots of different ideas and stories are being told,” he summed up. When it was first set up, Al Jazeera English was intended to be a softer version of its Arabic counterpart. Since then, the situation has changed drastically, Middle East analyst Tariq Ali told RT. “The channel I think, was largely set up to please the west and its coverage showed that very clearly. There were few critical programs, compared to Arabic Al Jazeera, but it seems now both are working in tandem.” 12 March, 2012 Source: RT.com
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THE WASHINGTON-“MODERATE ISLAM” ALLIANCE: CONTAINING REBELLION; DEFENDING EMPIRE (PART II) By James Petras
Contemporary History of Islamist-Imperial Conflict The relation between Islamist regimes and imperialism is complex, changing and full of examples of bloody conflict. The US backed the “modernizing” free market dictatorship of the Shah in Iran, overthrowing the nationalist Mosaddegh regime. They provided arms and intelligence for the Savak, the Shah’s monstrous secret police as it hunted down and murdered tens of thousands of nationalist-Islamists and leftist resistance fighters and critics in Iran and abroad. The rise to power of the fundamentalist-anti-imperialist Khomeini regime fueled US armed attacks and provoked retaliatory moves: Iran backed and financed anticolonial Islamist groups in Lebanon (Hezbollah), Palestine (Hamas) and Iraq (the Shia parties). Subsequent to 9/11 the US invaded and overthrew the Islamist Taliban regime, re-colonized the country, establishing a puppet regime under US-European auspices. The Taliban and allied Islamist and nationalist resistance fighters organized and established a mass guerrilla army which has engaged in a decade long war with armed support from Pakistani Islamist forces responding to US military incursions. In Palestine: Washington, under the overweening control of Israel’s Zionist fifth column, has armed and financed Israel’s war against the popularly elected Palestinian Islamist Hamas government in Gaza. Washington’s total commitment to the Jewish state and its colonial expansion and usurpation of Palestinian (Muslim and Christian) lands and property in Jerusalem and elsewhere reflects the profound and pervasive influence of the Zionist power configuration throughout the US political system
...They secure 90% votes in Congress, pledges of allegiance from the White House, and senior appointments in Treasury, State Department and the Pentagon.
What determines whether the US Empire will have a collaborative or conflict-ridden relation with Islam depends on the specific political context. The US allies with Islamists when faced with nationalist, leftist and secular democratic regimes and movements, especially where their optimal choice, a military-neo-liberal alternative is relatively weak. However, faced with a nationalist, anti-colonial Islamist regime (as is the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran), Washington will side with pro-western liberals, dissident Muslim clerics, pliable tribal chiefs, separatist ethnic minorities and pro-Western generals. The key to US-Islamist relations from the White House perspective is based on the Islamists’ attitude toward empire, class politics, NATO and the “free market” (private foreign investment). Today’s ‘moderate’ Islamist parties in Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Morocco (and elsewhere), which have offered their support to NATO and its wars against Libya and Syria, uphold ‘private property’ (i.e. foreign and imperialist
client control of key industries) and repress independent working class and anti-imperialist parties: They are the Empire’s “new partners” in the pillage of the resource-rich Middle East and North Africa. The US-brokered counterrevolutionary alliance among moderate Islamists, the previous military rulers and Washington is fraught with tensions. The military demands total impunity and a continuation of its economic privileges; this includes a veto on any legislation addressing the previous regime’s brutal crimes against its own people. On the other hand, the Islamist parties uphold their electoral victories and demand majority rule. Washington insists the alliance adhere to its policy toward Israel and abandon their support for the Palestinian national struggle. As these tensions and conflicts deepen, the alliance could collapse ushering in a new phase of conflict and instability. Emblematic of “moderate Islamiist” collaboration with US-EU imperialism is the role of Qatar, home to the ‘respectable’ Arabic media giant, AlJazeera, and the demagogic Qatari “spiritual guide” Sheik Youssef alQaradawi. Sheik Youssef quotes the Koran and Islamic moral principles in defense of NATO’s 8-month aerial bombing of Libya, which killed over 50,000 pro-regime Libyans (themselves Muslims). He calls for armed imperial intervention in Syria to overthrow the secular Assad regime, a position he shares comfortably with the state of Israel. He urges the “moderate Islamists” in Egypt and Tunisia to cease any criticism of the existing economic order, ( see “Spiritual guide steers Arabs to moderation”, Financial Times, continued next page
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continued from page 10 December 9, 2011 - p5). In a word, this respectable Muslim cleric is NATO’s perfect Koran-quoting “moderate Islamist” partner - a dream come true.
The Strategic Utility of “Moderate” Islamist Parties Islamist parties are approached by the Empire’s policy elites only when they have a mass following and can therefore weaken any popular, nationalist insurgency. Mass-based Islamist parties serve the empire by providing “legitimacy”, by winning elections and by giving a veneer of respectability to the pro-imperial military and police apparatus retained in place from the overthrown client state dictatorships. The Islamist parties compete at the “grass roots” with the leftists. They build up a clientele of supporters among the poor in the countryside and urban slums through organized charity and basic social services administered at the mosques and humanitarian religious foundations. Because they reject class struggle and are intensely hostile to the left (with its secular, pro-feminist and working-class agenda), they have been ‘half-tolerated’ by the dictatorship, while the leftist activists are routinely murdered. Subsequently, with the overthrow of the dictatorship, the Islamists emerge intact with the strongest national organizational network as the country’s ‘natural leaders’ from the religious-bazaar merchant political elite. Their leaders offer to serve the empire and its traditional native military collaborators in exchange for a ‘slice of power’, especially over morality, culture, religion and households (women), in other words, the “micro-society”. For their part, they offer to marginalize and undermine the left, anti-imperialist secular democrats in the streets. In the face of mass popular rebellion calling into question the imperial order, a
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‘moderate’ Islamist-imperial partnership is a ‘heavenly deal’ praised in Washington, Paris or London (as well as Riyadh and Tel Aviv). Conclusion: How Viable is the Imperial-Islamic Coalition? Those who thought that the spontaneous pro-democracy movements spelled the end of the imperial order left out the role of organized “moderate” Islamist electoral parties as able collaborators of Empire. The brutally repressed mass mobilization of unemployed youth was no match for the well-funded grass roots community organization of the moderate Islamists. This is especially true when politics shifted from the street to the ballot box, a process that the Islamist parties facilitated. In the absence of a mass revolutionary party, seeking state power, the existing military-police state was able to work around the mass protesters and put together a power sharing agreement at least in the short-run. In the November 2011 elections, the radical Egyptian Islamist party, Nour, gathered one-quarter of the vote in Cairo and Alexandria. Their showing was even higher among the urban poor districts, which promises even greater support among poor rural constituencies in the coming elections. Essentially a Salafist Islamist party, Nour, unlike the Muslim Brotherhood, combined denunciations of class abuses and elite corruption with mass appeals to a return to a mythic harmonious life. They used effective grass roots organizing around basic services in order to gain a greater proportion of the working class vote than all the leftist parties combined. Nour’s message of “class retribution against the …abuses of Egypt’s elite fueled Nour’s new found popularity”, (Financial Times 10 December, 2011 p6). Despite the successes of the IslamistImperial partnership, the world economic crises and especially the growing unemployment and misery in
A R T I C L E S the Arab countries will make it difficult for the ‘respectable moderate’ Islamists to stabilize their societies. They are inextricably constrained by their alliances to function within the confines of the ‘orthodox neo-liberal framework’ imposed by the Empire. For that reason, the “moderate” Islamists will try to co-opt some secular liberals, social democrats and even a few leftists as ‘minority partners’, so that they won’t be held solely responsible for dashing the expectations of the poor in their countries. The fact of the matter is that the proimperial Islamist parties have absolutely no answer to the current crises: Charities delivered from the mosque during the dictatorship won them mass support; now more austerity programs imposed from their ministerial posts will certainly alienate and infuriate their mass base. What will follow depends on who is best organized: Liberals are limited to media campaigns and tied to economic orthodoxy; the leftists have to advance from protest movements in the downtown squares to organized political units operating in popular neighborhoods, workplaces, markets, villages and slums. Otherwise radical fundamentalist, like the Salafists, will exploit the people’s outrage with moderate Islamist betrayals and promote their own version of a closed clerical society, opposing the West while repressing the Left. The US and EU may have ‘temporarily’ avoided revolution by accommodating electoral reforms and adapting to alliances with “moderate” Islamists, but their ongoing military interventions and their own growing economic crisis will simply postpone a more decisive conflict in the near future. 13 December, 2011 James Petras is the author of more than 62 books published in 29 languages, and over 600 articles in professional journals. Part I can be read in March Commentary online: www.just-international.org Source: Countercurrents.org
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