Global Governments

War Propaganda: Disneyland goes to war-torn Iraq

2008-05-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

Disneyland goes to war-torn Iraq, with a multi-million dollar entertainment complex, to be built on a 50 acre lot adjacent to the Green Zone. ("Fun park rises from ruins of Baghdad zoo", The Times, London, 24 April 2008)

The American-style amusement park will feature a skateboard park, rides, a concert theatre and a museum.

The occupation forces are of the opinion that Baghdad is "lacking in entertainment". General David Petraeus, is said to be a “big supporter” of bringing Disneyland to Baghdad.

Fox News considers the project as a "market signal that the arrow is pointing up.: ...We should not refuse to take notice when good things are happening in Iraq. Item number one, a Los Angeles entrepreneur said he plans to invest millions to create a vast entertainment and amusement complex in the center of downtown Baghdad." (Fox News, April 26, 2008)

Supported by the Pentagon, an unknown Los Angeles based holding company C3 of unnamed private equity investors, will be developing the "Baghdad Zoo and Entertainment Experience". The park will be designed by Ride and Show Engineering (RSE)

RSE founders Eduard Feuer and William Watkins pioneered Walt Disney's "Imagineering", the design and engineering division of the Walt Disney Company, before setting up RSE as a separate corporate entity.

RSE has developed numerous large scale entertainment complexes around the world including a project at the Anaheim California Disney Complex.

Ride and Show Engineering Projects

FloorRide

Animated Bridge

Large Scale

Source RSE website

The American Dream

The entertainment park is an integral part of war propaganda.

Establishing an American cultural outpost in an occupied land serves to uphold the legitimacy of the invaders and their Worldwide "cultural values".

Most of the country's cultural and educational infrastructure including museums, schools, universities, parks, theaters, cinemas have been destroyed and now the invaders are "helping to rebuild".

Under this "reconstruction effort", America is to donate 200,000 California style skateboards to Iraqi children.

The skateboard is a symbol of American pop culture, which has attracted "a tough, independent, and rebellious type of urban youth, who have created their own subculture."

What happens when, under the auspices of the Pentagon, these colorful skateboards (with suggestive subliminal images) are brought from Los Angeles, California to Baghdad...

What will be the impact on impoverished Iraqi kids and adolescents living under US occupation?

The hidden agenda is to cut them off from their own social reality, depoliticize Iraqi youth and curb anti-American sentiment.

More generally, through Hollywood imagery, the Baghdad style Disneyland is intended to nurture Iraqi public opinion, mould a pro-American view of the World as well as weaken the resistance movement against the US occupation.

Designs of the Baghdad Park
Copyright John March

Through the use of motion based simulations and sophisticated entertainment equipment, the harsh daily realities of poverty and military occupation are replaced by a World of fiction and fantasy.

The concept underlying Disney's Imagineering (developed by RSE) is to "overcome the barriers between reality and dreams".

The objective is to replace reality by a dream world.

Iraq's daily realities of death, destruction and torture are replaced by a "Dream World Made in America".

The imagery and motion simulations intended for Iraqi children and adolescents provide a "human face" to the American invaders.

The project constitutes a despicable form of war propaganda. It is a cover-up of the extensive war crimes committed against the Iraqi people in the name of an illusory "American Dream".

The project will take possession of the existing Al Zawra park and Baghdad Zoo, which was ransacked when US troops entered Baghdad in April 2003.

Al Zawra park

Also in April 2003, Iraq's archeological treasures were looted with the support of the American invaders. The pillaging of Iraq's cultural heritage was a premeditated act. The looters were protected by the invaders.

And now the looters return to Baghdad with a new museum

Psychological Warfare

The Baghdad Disneyland-style project has all the essential features of a PsyOp. It is intended to instill American values and destroy Iraqi identity.

"The people [of Iraq] need this kind of positive influence. Its going to have a huge psychological impact," said Mr. Werner of C3.

In a cruel irony the PsyOp target group are Iraqi Children:

“There are all sorts of investment opportunities all over Iraq. But it’s not just hydrocarbons. Half the Iraqi population is under the age of 15. These kids really need something to do,” (Mr. Brinkley, quoted in The Times, April 24, 2008)

Iraq's cultural heritage is destroyed.

The historical memory of Mesopotamia is wiped out.

US investors are to "bring badly needed fun" to the war theater.

The sponsor of project Mr. Llewellyn Werner says the time is ripe for a "fun park":

"I think people will embrace it. They'll see it as an opportunity for their children regardless if they're Shia or Sunni. They'll say their kids deserve a place to play and they'll leave it alone."(Ibid)

According to a spokesman for the US installed Iraqi regime:

“There is a shortage of entertainment in the city. Cinemas can’t open. Playgrounds can’t open. The fun park is badly needed for Baghdad. Children don’t have any opportunities to enjoy their childhood.” Mr al-Dabbagh added that entry to the park would be strictly controlled." (Times, April 24, 2008)

Children don’t have any opportunities to enjoy their childhood?

What kind of childhood can be "enjoyed" in a land where public infrastructure, including schools and hospitals have been transformed into rubble?

Imagine the road-blocks and military check points that impoverished Iraqi children will have to go through to see Mickey Mouse...

The US investment company will essentially take possession of municipal lands in an undisclosed deal reached with the Mayor of Baghdad.

At the moment the site is occupied by the Al-Zawra park and zoo, where Baghdad residents gather on weekends. The park is typically Iraqi with ponds, fountains, sculptures, and children’s playgrounds.

"Everything Here is for Profit"

The site is a functioning national park, which is slated for privatization. It is prime real estate for the US investors. The California holding company C3 plans to use the land for lucrative investments in hotels and upscale housing. No doubt, for the project to be profitable and financially viable, it will also require direct financing by the Pentagon.

“I wouldn’t be doing this if I wasn’t making money”:

"Mr Werner will retain exclusive rights to housing and hotel developments, which he says will be both culturally sensitive and enormously profitable... I also have this wonderful sense that we’re doing the right thing – we’re going to employ thousands of Iraqis. But mostly everything here is for profit.”

Iraqi youth attend a concert in Al-Zawra amusement park during Eid al-Fitr, a national holiday to celebrate the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, in Baghdad October 14, 2007.

An Iraqi soldier talks to youths as they queue outside al-Zawra park in central Baghdad during the Eid al-Adha festivities in December 2007. (Photo: Khalil al-Murshidi / AFP-Getty Images)

video of Al Zawra Park in 1971

The Pentagon Strangles Our Economy: Why the U.S. Has Gone Broke

2008-05-05T19:34:00.001-07:00

The military adventurers in the Bush administration have much in common with the corporate leaders of the defunct energy company Enron. Both groups thought that they were the "smartest guys in the room" -- the title of Alex Gibney's prize-winning film on what went wrong at Enron. The neoconservatives in the White House and the Pentagon outsmarted themselves. They failed even to address the problem of how to finance their schemes of imperialist wars and global domination.

As a result, going into 2008, the United States finds itself in the anomalous position of being unable to pay for its own elevated living standards or its wasteful, overly large military establishment. Its government no longer even attempts to reduce the ruinous expenses of maintaining huge standing armies, replacing the equipment that seven years of wars have destroyed or worn out, or preparing for a war in outer space against unknown adversaries. Instead, the Bush administration puts off these costs for future generations to pay or repudiate. This fiscal irresponsibility has been disguised through many manipulative financial schemes (causing poorer countries to lend us unprecedented sums of money), but the time of reckoning is fast approaching.

There are three broad aspects to the U.S. debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on "defense" projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.

Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures -- "military Keynesianism" (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.

Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the U.S. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world's number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.

Fiscal disaster

It is virtually impossible to overstate the profligacy of what our government spends on the military. The Department of Defense's planned expenditures for the fiscal year 2008 are larger than all other nations' military budgets combined. The supplementary budget to pay for the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not part of the official defense budget, is itself larger than the combined military budgets of Russia and China. Defense-related spending for fiscal 2008 will exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. The U.S. has become the largest single seller of arms and munitions to other nations on Earth. Leaving out President Bush's two on-going wars, defense spending has doubled since the mid-1990s. The defense budget for fiscal 2008 is the largest since the second world war.

Before we try to break down and analyze this gargantuan sum, there is one important caveat. Figures on defense spending are notoriously unreliable. The numbers released by the Congressional Reference Service and the Congressional Budget Office do not agree with each other. Robert Higgs, senior fellow for political economy at the Independent Institute, says: "A well-founded rule of thumb is to take the Pentagon's (always well publicized) basic budget total and double it." Even a cursory reading of newspaper articles about the Department of Defense will turn up major differences in statistics about its expenses. Some 30-40% of the defense budget is 'black,'" meaning that these sections contain hidden expenditures for classified projects. There is no possible way to know what they include or whether their total amounts are accurate.

There are many reasons for this budgetary sleight-of-hand -- including a desire for secrecy on the part of the president, the secretary of defense, and the military-industrial complex -- but the chief one is that members of Congress, who profit enormously from defense jobs and pork-barrel projects in their districts, have a political interest in supporting the Department of Defense. In 1996, in an attempt to bring accounting standards within the executive branch closer to those of the civilian economy, Congress passed the Federal Financial Management Improvement Act. It required all federal agencies to hire outside auditors to review their books and release the results to the public. Neither the Department of Defense, nor the Department of Homeland Security, has ever complied. Congress has complained, but not penalized either department for ignoring the law. All numbers released by the Pentagon should be regarded as suspect.

In discussing the fiscal 2008 defense budget, as released on 7 February 2007, I have been guided by two experienced and reliable analysts: William D Hartung of the New America Foundation's Arms and Security Initiative and Fred Kaplan, defense correspondent for Slate.org. They agree that the Department of Defense requested $481.4bn for salaries, operations (except in Iraq and Afghanistan), and equipment. They also agree on a figure of $141.7bn for the "supplemental" budget to fight the global war on terrorism -- that is, the two on-going wars that the general public may think are actually covered by the basic Pentagon budget. The Department of Defense also asked for an extra $93.4bn to pay for hitherto unmentioned war costs in the remainder of 2007 and, most creatively, an additional "allowance" (a new term in defense budget documents) of $50bn to be charged to fiscal year 2009. This makes a total spending request by the Department of Defense of $766.5bn.

But there is much more. In an attempt to disguise the true size of the U.S. military empire, the government has long hidden major military-related expenditures in departments other than Defense. For example, $23.4bn for the Department of Energy goes towards developing and maintaining nuclear warheads; and $25.3bn in the Department of State budget is spent on foreign military assistance (primarily for Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Republic, Egypt and Pakistan). Another $1.03bn outside the official Department of Defense budget is now needed for recruitment and re-enlistment incentives for the overstretched U.S. military, up from a mere $174m in 2003, when the war in Iraq began. The Department of Veterans Affairs currently gets at least $75.7bn, 50% of it for the long-term care of the most seriously injured among the 28,870 soldiers so far wounded in Iraq and 1,708 in Afghanistan. The amount is universally derided as inadequate. Another $46.4bn goes to the Department of Homeland Security.

Missing from this compilation is $1.9bn to the Department of Justice for the paramilitary activities of the FBI; $38.5bn to the Department of the Treasury for the Military Retirement Fund; $7.6bn for the military-related activities of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; and well over $200bn in interest for past debt-financed defense outlays. This brings U.S. spending for its military establishment during the current fiscal year, conservatively calculated, to at least $1.1 trillion.

Military Keynesianism

Such expenditures are not only morally obscene, they are fiscally unsustainable. Many neo-conservatives and poorly informed patriotic Americans believe that, even though our defense budget is huge, we can afford it because we are the richest country on Earth. That statement is no longer true. The world's richest political entity, according to the CIA's World Factbook, is the European Union. The E.U.'s 2006 GDP was estimated to be slightly larger than that of the U.S. Moreover, China's 2006 GDP was only slightly smaller than that of the U.S., and Japan was the world's fourth richest nation.

A more telling comparison that reveals just how much worse we're doing can be found among the current accounts of various nations. The current account measures the net trade surplus or deficit of a country plus cross-border payments of interest, royalties, dividends, capital gains, foreign aid, and other income. In order for Japan to manufacture anything, it must import all required raw materials. Even after this incredible expense is met, it still has an $88bn per year trade surplus with the U.S. and enjoys the world's second highest current account balance (China is number one). The U.S. is number 163 -- last on the list, worse than countries such as Australia and the U.K. that also have large trade deficits. Its 2006 current account deficit was $811.5bn; second worst was Spain at $106.4bn. This is unsustainable.

It's not just that our tastes for foreign goods, including imported oil, vastly exceed our ability to pay for them. We are financing them through massive borrowing. On 7 November 2007, the U.S. Treasury announced that the national debt had breached $9 trillion for the first time. This was just five weeks after Congress raised the "debt ceiling" to $9.815 trillion. If you begin in 1789, at the moment the constitution became the supreme law of the land, the debt accumulated by the federal government did not top $1 trillion until 1981. When George Bush became president in January 2001, it stood at approximately $5.7 trillion. Since then, it has increased by 45%. This huge debt can be largely explained by our defense expenditures.

The top spenders

The world's top 10 military spenders and the approximate amounts each currently budgets for its military establishment are

Our excessive military expenditures did not occur over just a few short years or simply because of the Bush administration's policies. They have been going on for a very long time in accordance with a superficially plausible ideology, and have now become so entrenched in our democratic political system that they are starting to wreak havoc. This is military Keynesianism -- the determination to maintain a permanent war economy and to treat military output as an ordinary economic product, even though it makes no contribution to either production or consumption.

This ideology goes back to the first years of the cold war. During the late 1940s, the U.S. was haunted by economic anxieties. The great depression of the 1930s had been overcome only by the war production boom of the second world war. With peace and demobilization, there was a pervasive fear that the depression would return. During 1949, alarmed by the Soviet Union's detonation of an atomic bomb, the looming Communist victory in the Chinese civil war, a domestic recession, and the lowering of the Iron Curtain around the USSR's European satellites, the U.S. sought to draft basic strategy for the emerging cold war. The result was the militaristic National Security Council Report 68 (NSC-68) drafted under the supervision of Paul Nitze, then head of the Policy Planning Staff in the State Department. Dated 14 April 1950 and signed by President Harry S. Truman on 30 September 1950, it laid out the basic public economic policies that the U.S. pursues to the present day.

In its conclusions, NSC-68 asserted: "One of the most significant lessons of our World War II experience was that the American economy, when it operates at a level approaching full efficiency, can provide enormous resources for purposes other than civilian consumption while simultaneously providing a high standard of living."

With this understanding, U.S. strategists began to build up a massive munitions industry, both to counter the military might of the Soviet Union (which they consistently overstated) and also to maintain full employment, as well as ward off a possible return of the depression. The result was that, under Pentagon leadership, entire new industries were created to manufacture large aircraft, nuclear-powered submarines, nuclear warheads, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and surveillance and communications satellites. This led to what President Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address of 6 February 1961: "The conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience" -- the military-industrial complex.

By 1990 the value of the weapons, equipment and factories devoted to the Department of Defense was 83% of the value of all plants and equipment in U.S. manufacturing. From 1947 to 1990, the combined U.S. military budgets amounted to $8.7 trillion. Even though the Soviet Union no longer exists, U.S. reliance on military Keynesianism has, if anything, ratcheted up, thanks to the massive vested interests that have become entrenched around the military establishment. Over time, a commitment to both guns and butter has proven an unstable configuration. Military industries crowd out the civilian economy and lead to severe economic weaknesses. Devotion to military Keynesianism is a form of slow economic suicide.

Higher spending, fewer jobs

On 1 May 2007, the Center for Economic and Policy Research of Washington, DC, released a study prepared by the economic and political forecasting company Global Insight on the long-term economic impact of increased military spending. Guided by economist Dean Baker, this research showed that, after an initial demand stimulus, by about the sixth year the effect of increased military spending turns negative. The U.S. economy has had to cope with growing defense spending for more than 60 years. Baker found that, after 10 years of higher defense spending, there would be 464,000 fewer jobs than in a scenario that involved lower defense spending.

Baker concluded: "It is often believed that wars and military spending increases are good for the economy. In fact, most economic models show that military spending diverts resources from productive uses, such as consumption and investment, and ultimately slows economic growth and reduces employment."

These are only some of the many deleterious effects of military Keynesianism.

It was believed that the U.S. could afford both a massive military establishment and a high standard of living, and that it needed both to maintain full employment. But it did not work out that way. By the 1960s it was becoming apparent that turning over the nation's largest manufacturing enterprises to the Department of Defense and producing goods without any investment or consumption value was starting to crowd out civilian economic activities. The historian Thomas E Woods Jr. observes that, during the 1950s and 1960s, between one-third and two-thirds of all U.S. research talent was siphoned off into the military sector. It is, of course, impossible to know what innovations never appeared as a result of this diversion of resources and brainpower into the service of the military, but it was during the 1960s that we first began to notice Japan was outpacing us in the design and quality of a range of consumer goods, including household electronics and automobiles.

Can we reverse the trend?

Nuclear weapons furnish a striking illustration of these anomalies. Between the 1940s and 1996, the U.S. spent at least $5.8 trillion on the development, testing and construction of nuclear bombs. By 1967, the peak year of its nuclear stockpile, the U.S. possessed some 32,500 deliverable atomic and hydrogen bombs, none of which, thankfully, was ever used. They perfectly illustrate the Keynesian principle that the government can provide make-work jobs to keep people employed. Nuclear weapons were not just America's secret weapon, but also its secret economic weapon. As of 2006, we still had 9,960 of them. There is today no sane use for them, while the trillions spent on them could have been used to solve the problems of social security and health care, quality education and access to higher education for all, not to speak of the retention of highly-skilled jobs within the economy.

The pioneer in analyzing what has been lost as a result of military Keynesianism was the late Seymour Melman (1917-2004), a professor of industrial engineering and operations research at Columbia University. His 1970 book, Pentagon Capitalism: The Political Economy of War, was a prescient analysis of the unintended consequences of the U.S. preoccupation with its armed forces and their weaponry since the onset of the cold war. Melman wrote: "From 1946 to 1969, the United States government spent over $1,000bn on the military, more than half of this under the Kennedy and Johnson administrations -- the period during which the [Pentagon-dominated] state management was established as a formal institution. This sum of staggering size (try to visualize a billion of something) does not express the cost of the military establishment to the nation as a whole. The true cost is measured by what has been foregone, by the accumulated deterioration in many facets of life, by the inability to alleviate human wretchedness of long duration."

In an important exegesis on Melman's relevance to the current American economic situation, Thomas Woods writes: "According to the U.S. Department of Defense, during the four decades from 1947 through 1987 it used (in 1982 dollars) $7.62 trillion in capital resources. In 1985, the Department of Commerce estimated the value of the nation's plant and equipment, and infrastructure, at just over $7.29 trillion ... The amount spent over that period could have doubled the American capital stock or modernized and replaced its existing stock."

The fact that we did not modernize or replace our capital assets is one of the main reasons why, by the turn of the 21st century, our manufacturing base had all but evaporated. Machine tools, an industry on which Melman was an authority, are a particularly important symptom. In November 1968, a five-year inventory disclosed "that 64% of the metalworking machine tools used in U.S. industry were 10 years old or older. The age of this industrial equipment (drills, lathes, etc.) marks the United States' machine tool stock as the oldest among all major industrial nations, and it marks the continuation of a deterioration process that began with the end of the second world war. This deterioration at the base of the industrial system certifies to the continuous debilitating and depleting effect that the military use of capital and research and development talent has had on American industry."

Nothing has been done since 1968 to reverse these trends and it shows today in our massive imports of equipment -- from medical machines like proton accelerators for radiological therapy (made primarily in Belgium, Germany, and Japan) to cars and trucks.

Our short tenure as the world's lone superpower has come to an end. As Harvard economics professor Benjamin Friedman has written: "Again and again it has always been the world's leading lending country that has been the premier country in terms of political influence, diplomatic influence and cultural influence. It's no accident that we took over the role from the British at the same time that we took over the job of being the world's leading lending country. Today we are no longer the world's leading lending country. In fact we are now the world's biggest debtor country, and we are continuing to wield influence on the basis of military prowess alone."

Some of the damage can never be rectified. There are, however, some steps that the U.S. urgently needs to take. These include reversing Bush's 2001 and 2003 tax cuts for the wealthy, beginning to liquidate our global empire of over 800 military bases, cutting from the defense budget all projects that bear no relationship to national security and ceasing to use the defense budget as a Keynesian jobs program.

If we do these things we have a chance of squeaking by. If we don't, we face probable national insolvency and a long depression.

Western Media Fabrications regarding the Tibet Riots

2008-05-05T19:25:00.000-07:00

Fake Videotape used by CNN

On the day of the Lhasa Riots (March 14, 2008), there is evidence of media fabrication by CNN.

The videotape presented by CNN in its News Report on the 14th of March (1.00pm EST) was manipulated.

VIDEO: Tibet monks protest against Chinese rulers (CNN, March 14, 2008)

The report presented by CNN's Beijing Correspondent John Vause focussed on the Tibet protests in Gansu province and in the Tibetan capital Lhasa.

What was shown, however, was a videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India.

Viewers were led to believe that the protests were in China and that the Indian police shown in the videotape were Chinese cops.

At the outset of the report, a few still pictures were presented followed by a videotape showing police repressing and arresting demonstrators in what appeared to be a peaceful protest:
.
JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT

[CNN Vause reports on the protest movement in Gansu province. (starts at 1'.00)]

CNN received these photographs from Gansu province, where there is a large Tibetan population. [still photographs followed by video footage] According to Students for a Free Tibet, about 2,000 protestors took to the streets earlier today. They were there for about three hours. They flew the Tibetan flag and called for an independent Tibet. All of this comes after days of unrest in Tibet after monks, who were marking the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule. (CNN News, 1.00pm EST, March 14, 2008)

The voice over of John Vause then shifts into reporting on violence in Lhasa. The videotape however depicts the Tibetan protest in Himashal Pradesh, India.

[JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT]

And what could be worrying here to Beijing is that these demonstrations are being joined by ordinary Tibetan civilians, lay Tibetans. The targets here are ethnic Chinese. We've been told by one Chinese woman that she was attacked by Tibetan rioters. Her injuries sent her to hospital.

Also under fire here, Chinese-owned businesses, as well as government offices, and also the security forces.

According to U.S.-based human rights groups, the three main monasteries on the outskirts of Lhasa have now been surrounded by Chinese troops, and they've been sealed off.

We've also heard over the last couple of days, according to human rights groups, that more than a dozen monks have been rounded up and arrested. And there are reports, unconfirmed, that at least two people have been killed.

The video footage, which accompanied CNN's John Vause's report, had nothing to do with China. The police were not Chinese, but Indian cops in khaki uniforms from the Northeastern State of Himachal Pradesh, India.

Viewers were led to believe that demonstrations inside China were peaceful and that people were being arrested by Chinese cops.

Chinese Cops in Khaki Uniforms

1'.27-1'.44" video footage of "Chinese cops" and demonstrators including Buddhist monks. Chinese cops are shown next to Tibetan monks

Are these Chinese Cops from Gansu Province or Lhasa, the Tibetan capital, as suggested by CNN's John Vause's Report?

REPORT ON CHINA, MARCH 14

Alleged Chinese cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in China , CNN, March 14, 2008 1'.36''

Alleged Chinese cops in khaki uniforms repressing Tibet demonstrators in China, CNN, March 14, 2008 1'40"

Their khaki uniforms with berets seem to bear the imprint of the British colonial period.

Khaki colored uniforms were first introduced in the British cavalry in India in 1846.

Khaki means "dust" in Hindi and Persian.

Moreover, the cops with khaki uniforms and mustache do not look Chinese.

Look carefully.

They are Indian cops.

The videotape shown on March 14 by CNN is not from China (Gansu Province or Lhasa, Tibet's Capital). The video was taken in the State of Himachal Pradesh, India. The videotape of the Tibet protest movement in India was used in the CNN report on the Tibet protest movement within China.

In a March 13 Report by CNN, demonstrators are being arrested by Indian police in khaki uniforms during a protest march at Dehra, about 50 km from Dharamsala in the northern state of Himachal Pradesh.

VIDEO; Tibet Protest movement in India, CNN, March 13, 2008

"Indian police arrested around 100 Tibetans on Thursday, dragging them into waiting police vans, as they tried to march to the Chinese border to press claims for independence and protest the Beijing Olympics." (REUTERS/Abhishek Madhukar (INDIA))

Below are images from the CNN's report on March 13, on the protest movement in Himachal Pradesh, India:

Compare these images to those in the March 14 CNN report. Same cops, same uniforms, same Indian style mustache

CNN MARCH 13 REPORT ON INDIA

Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008 0'.53"

Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008 1'.02"

Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008, 1'.18"

Indian cops repressing Tibet demonstrators in Himachal Pradesh, India CNN, March 13, 2008 2.04"

We invite our readers to examine these two reports as well as the Transcript of the March 14 CNN program.

The CNN's March 14 report on the Tibet Protest movement in China shows Chinese cops in khaki uniforms, yellow lapels and berets. While the videotape is not identical to that of March 13, CNN's coverage of the events in China on March 14 used a videotape taken from the coverage of the Tibet Protest movement in India, with Indian cops in khaki uniforms.

The protest movement in India on March 13 was "peaceful". It was organised by the Dalai Lama's "government in exile". It took place within 50 km of the headquarters of the Dalai Lama in Dharamsala.

The Western media was invited in to film the event, and take pictures of Buddhist monks involved in a peaceful, nonviolent march. These are the pictures which circled the World.

So what has occurred is that CNN has copied and pasted its own videotape of the Tibet Protest movement in India and has fabricated a Gansu Province/ Lhasa, China "peaceful" protest movement with Chinese cops in khaki British colonial style uniforms.

The Chinese never adopted the British style khaki uniform and beret.

These uniforms do not correspond to those used by the police in China. (See photograph below)

No khaki uniforms in China. These are the uniforms of China's "Armed Police".

Meanwhile, the images of the violent riots in Lhasa, in which a criminal mob set fire to shops, homes and schools, burning several people alive, and stabbing innocent civilians with knives were not shown on network TV in the US and Western Europe. Small segments of the riots in Lhasa were shown out of context and with a view to accusing the Chinese authorities of repressing a "peaceful protest".(See our report on the events, see coverage of the Lhasa Riots by China's CC-TV)

While the videotape used is not identical, both CNN reports, however, show the same cops in khaki uniforms and the same Tibetan demonstrators in India. The footage used in support of CNN's March 14 coverage of the protext movement in China has nothing to do with China. it happened in India.

CNN has got its countries mixed up.

Sloppy journalism or media fraud?

VIDEO: Tibet monks protest against Chinese rulers (CNN, March 14, 2008)

VIDEO; Tibet Protest movement in India, (CNN, March 13, 2008)

COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT OF CNN NEWS COVERAGE ON TIBET (MARCH 14, 2008

CNN NEWSROOM 1:00 PM EST

March 14, 2008 Friday

[with Don Lemon and John Vause reporting from Beijing]

....

LEMON: All right. So this place, we know, should be known for peace. Right? But that is not what is happening here lately.

Buddhist monks demonstrating for independence from China. Ethnic Tibetans join in, and soon -- soon streets are filled with screams, with gunfire, with rioting. And so far the Chinese government has refused to allow CNN to even enter Tibet.

Our John Vause brings us what he knows. He's in Beijing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The latest information from our sources in Lhasa tell us that the streets are basically deserted, except for patrols by police cars and armored military vehicles.

We're told fires are still burning and phone lines are still down, but electricity has been restored. And the situation there now is described as relatively calm. But these protests do appear to be spreading to the east of the country.

CNN received these photographs from Gansu province [still picture followed by live video of Indian protest], where there is a large Tibetan population. According to Students for a Free Tibet, about 2,000 protestors took to the streets earlier today. They were there for about three hours. They flew the Tibetan flag and called for an independent Tibet. All of this comes after days of unrest in Tibet after monks, who were marking the 49th anniversary of a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

And what could be worrying here to Beijing is that these demonstrations are being joined by ordinary Tibetan civilians, lay Tibetans. The targets here are ethnic Chinese. We've been told by one Chinese woman that she was attacked by Tibetan rioters. Her injuries sent her to hospital.

Also under fire here, Chinese-owned businesses, as well as government offices, and also the security forces.

According to U.S.-based human rights groups, the three main monasteries on the outskirts of Lhasa have now been surrounded by Chinese troops, and they've been sealed off.

We've also heard over the last couple of days, according to human rights groups, that more than a dozen monks have been rounded up and arrested. And there are reports, unconfirmed, that at least two people have been killed.

Beijing has now moved to seal off Tibet, banning foreigners and journalists from traveling there. Flights and train services have also been canceled.

John Vause, CNN, Beijing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

This is not the only example of media fabrication where video images and photographs are manipulated.

What really happened.

Compare CNN's report using a fake videotape to the coverage of the Lhasa riots on China State TV.

coverage of the Lhasa Riots by China State Television CC-TV

Who is Telling the Truth?

Iran should be "Set Up for an Attack"

2008-04-24T07:36:00.000-07:00

When Gen. David Petraeus along with U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker gave their testimony to the Senate on April 9, they did nothing more than to confirm in spades what had been being mooted and duly leaked by the Washington-based press: that the Bush-Cheney Administration had officially endorsed the line that Iran should be set up for attack, on grounds that it--and not any indigenous resistance--were responsible for the mounting death toll among American troops in Iraq.

While claiming security had improved, Petraeus said the violence involving the Mahdi Army of Moqtadar al Sadr "highlighted the destructive role Iran has played in funding, training, arming and directing the so-called 'special groups'" which, he added, "pose the greatest long-term threat to the viability of a democratic Iraq." (See Washington Post, April 9, 2008). Petraeus even granted that Syria had cut the alleged flow of fighters into Iraq, only to stress by con trast, that "Iran has fuelled the violence in a particularly damaging way, through its lethal support to the special groups." Finally, Petraeus specified that the "special groups" were run by Iran's Qods force, the Revolutionary Guards recently placed in the category of terrorists..

There was nothing new about the line: Dick Cheney had dispatched Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner last year to Iraq, with the task of finding a smoking gun, or, better, a couple of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) with "made in Iran" stamped on them. What was new in the testimony of the top U.S. military and diplomatic officials in the war zone, were the categorical statements, uttered with an air of certainty usually backed up by courtroom evidence, that Iran was the culprit, and the implicit conclusion that Iran must be the target of U.S. aggression. In order to make sure that (as Nixon would have said), the point be perfectly clear, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley was trotted out to tell an enthusiastic Fox News reporter on April 13, that indeed Iran was the casus belli; Iran is "training Iraqis in Iran who come into Iraq and attack our forces, Iraqi forces, Iraqi civilians." And, therefore, Hadley went on, "We will go after their surrogate operations in Iraq that are killing our forces, killing Iraqi forces." (www.foxnews.com). Although Defense Secretary Robert Gates was saying almost simultaneously that he thought "the chances of us stumbling into a confrontation with Iran are very low," he, too, repeated the mantra that the Iranians were sending weapons into the south of Iraq, etc. etc. President George W. Bush could not be left out of the dramatic build-up, and blessed Petraeus's testimony with an order for a halt in the troop reductions.

Pat Buchanon performed an important service in immediately blowing the whistle on this fraud, and his piece, "General Petraeus Points to War with Iran," has fortunately received wide coverage. (www.buchanon.org, 11.04.2008, globalresearch.ca, 12.04.2008) One would hope that Seymous Hersh would come forth with further ammunition in the fight to prevent an all-too-likely attack against Iran. They are at it again, they are serious, and must be stopped.

The Anti-Shi'ite Surge

But, if war is indeed on the agenda, as Global Research has documented over months, one question to be raised, is: how does the recent "surge" in military actions against the Moqtadar al-Sadr forces, in Basra, Baghdad and numerous other Iraqi cities, fold into the current military-political gameplan? The massive joint U.S.-Iraqi operations at the end of March, against the Mahdi Army, were, militarily speaking, a fiasco. The news reported by AFP on April 14 that the Iraqi government has sacked 1,300 Iraqi troops for not having performed as expected (i.e., for having deserted or joined the enemy) is a not-so-eloquent acknowledgement of this embarrassing fact. And, as has been generally acknowledged by now, it was only due to the diplomatic intervention of Iranian authorities, that the conflict was ended, leading to the decision of al-Sadr to cease hostilities.

Now, however, that ill-conceived offensive has been relaunched in the wake of the performances by the Petraeus-Crocker-Hadley trio, and with a vengeance. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki told CNN on April 7, that the offensive against al-Mahdi would continue "until a decisive victory is achieved .. a victory that will not allow these people to attack the Green Zone or other areas." To signal the renewed thrust, Riyad al-Nuri, the director of al Sadr's Najaf office, and his brother-in-law, was brutally murdered in the holy city on April 11. Joint U.S.-Iraqi military incursions have continued in Sadr City. Where will this lead? To victory? If so, how does one define victory? If the joint U.S.-Iraqi military operations physically eliminate al-Sadr's forces, it will only be as a result of the deployment of massive brute force as has not yet been used. In this tragic case, the political effect would likely not be the decimation of that political force, but its enhancement. It should not be forgotten that Moqtadar al-Sadr himself comes from a family of martyrs.

One consideration in the minds of the U.S. strategists of the anti-Sadr war, is that they must wipe his organization off the Iraqi political map well before elections take place next October, elections in which his followers could make significant gains, expanding their current 30-seat presence in parliament to a considerable power. The Al-Sadr phenomenon in Iraq is, in this sense, not so different from the Hamas phenomenon in Palestine; both are militant (and military) formations fighting against foreign occupation, while also providing crucial social services to their people, be it schools, clinics, hospitals or the like. It is in this light that one must read the decision by the Iraqi cabinet on April 14 to exclude militias from that vote, i.e. to exclude any political parties that have armed militias. Clearly, this is aimed at al-Sadr. If one were to ask: What about the Badr Brigade, which is the militia of the Shi'ite party, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), le d by Abdel-Aziz al-Hakim? one might get the answer: that is no longer to be considered a separate militia, but works as part of the Iraqi military forces.

Intra-Shi'ite Conflict Targets Iran

But there is more to the story. The usual assumption made by U.S. military and political leaders, and shared by too many press outlets, is that the conflict inside Iraq should now be reduced to a fight among rival Shi'ite factions: that the ISCI and al-Sadr group are competing for control over Basra, an oil-rich and strategically situated province; that al-Maliki, whose own Shi'ite party Al Dawa, depends on the support of al-Hakim's faction to survive; that, in sum, the name of the game is intra-Shi'ite conflict.(1)

Yes, the political rivalries among the three main Shi'ite factions in Iraq do exist. To be sure, neither al-Maliki nor al-Hakim would welcome the emergence of a majority force in parliament led by the al-Sadr group. But this is not the salient feature of the situation. Rather, as was shown in the recent, short-lived halt to the operations against al-Sadr, it was Iran which was decisive. The most important factor to be considered, in understanding the current crisis, at least from the inside, is this: Iran has excellent relations with {all three} major Shi'ite factions in Iraq, despite their internal differences. The ISCI, it will be remembered, was given hospitality in Iran, during its years-long exile under the Saddam Hussein regime. Moqtadar al-Sadr enjoys support from Iran. And the greatest foreign support that the al-Maliki government has, is from Tehran.

So, who can be expected to gain from exacerbating the intra-Shi'ite conflict? Most obviously, the U.S. as the occupying power. As qualified Iranian sources have stressed to this author, Iran's power lies in its ability to promote and mediate cooperation among all these factions, as dramatically demonstrated in its mediating the end to the first anti-Sadr offensive at the end of March. The occupying power is seen as intent on utilizing intra-Shi'ite conflict to damage each of these factions, and to hurt Iran.

One generally ignored, but important factor noted by the same Iranian sources, is the factionalized situation {within} the al-Sadr movement. Moqtadar al-Sadr is seen by these sources as a fervently committed fighter, who, however, views the situation from a somewhat narrowly defined local standpoint: he wants to style himself as the leader of the Shia in Iraq, indeed as the national leader--even more national than al-Maliki. His ambitions, according to some, go beyond this; he sees himself as a future leader of the Muslims overall. At the same time, there is a faction within the al-Sadr movement, considered a "sub-group," which is controlled by outside forces, in Saudi Arabia, the Emirates and also the U.S. This sub-group is seen as responsible for provocative actions designed to destabilize Iraq, and therefore welcoming any U.S.-Iraqi joint offensive against al-Sadr. The main reason for this, is that the foreign sponsors of this sub-group, whether Saudi or Emirate or America n, are intent on weakening, discrediting and ultimately replacing al-Maliki as Prime Minister of Iraq, while at the same time undermining the role of al-Hakim. A slaughter against al Sadr's forces could doom the al-Maliki government. To put it simply: these outside influences, who are thinking strategically, are hoping to pit al-Sadr against both al-Hakim and al-Maliki; the al-Sadr forces, who are thinking on a more limited, local level, see themselves as competitors to the other two groupings, for future political leadership in Iraq, and miss the point about the broader strategic picture.

In short, the U.S.'s enthusiastic order to al-Maliki to launch his anti-al-Sadr purge, is actually a ploy to discredit and destroy al-Maliki himself, and prepare for permanent occupation. Vice President Dick Cheney has made no secret of the fact that he would like to replace al-Maliki, whom he has always accused of being too close to the Iranians, with one of his own, like Iyad Allawi, and that might be what is in the offing. Another benefit to discrediting al-Maliki is that the Cheney-Bush crew can further argue that, since al-Maliki and. co. have proven unable to deal with the al-Sadr threat alone, U.S. occupying forces should remain for a longer priod of time, if not for the one-hundred years that John McCain is fantasizing about.

Enter Condi Rice

To complete the picture, a couple of other developments should be mentioned. First, Condi Rice's trip to the region. She follows in the footsteps of Cheney, who toured the region to whip up Arab support for, or at least acquiescence to, a military assault on Iran. This had been Cheney's aim during his late 2006 visit, and now he has returned with the same agenda. Rice, then as now, will be following the same script. She will be meeting with the foreign ministers of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Egypt and Jordan, the famous "GCC + 2" that she and Cheney have been forging as a Sunni bloc against Iran. Her message will be: prepare for the repercussions of a new assault on Iran. In parallel, the Israelis have been working overtime to heat up tensions in the region, not only against Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas, but also Iran. While National Infrastructures Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer threatened to "detsroy the Iranian nation," if it attacked Israel, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni told Arab conference attendees in Qatar that their real enemy was not Israel, but Iran.

At the same time, an ominous event occurred on April 12 in Shiraz, when an explosion rocked a mosque during prayers, killing 12 and wounding more than 200. Although initial Iranian reports ruled out sabotage, the causes of the blast were not immediately identified, and, according to latest press reports, Iranian authorities are still "uncertain" about the affair. If, in the end, it turns out to have been a terror attack, the most likely suspects would be found among the Mujahedeen e Qalk (MKO/MEK) terrorist organization that still enjoys U.S. refuge in Iraq, and the Kurdish terrorists in the PKK-allied Pejak. The PKK also enjoys the protection of the U.S. occupying forces in northern Iraq. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Pejak (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan) warned on April 13, that it would "carry out bombings against Iranian forces" inside the country. Perhaps this is what President Bush has in mind, when he makes his periodic appeals to the "Iranian people" to rise up ag ainst their government.

NOTE

1. See Robert Dreyfuss, in "The Lessons of Basra," aljazeera.com, April 3, and also Ramzy Baroud, in "Basra battles: Barely half the story," aljazeera.com, April 13.

The United Nation's highest body upholds Israeli War Crimes, in Violation of the UN Charter

2008-04-24T07:15:00.000-07:00

Transcript of Resolution 1701 in annex to Article: "the word "War" is not mentioned in The UN Security Council Resolution

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was drafted by France and the US in close consultation with the Israeli government.

a) The resolution is in blatant violation of the UN charter and international law. It fails to acknoweldge that Israel has launched an all out war on Lebanon in violation of international law. It describes the bombing and destruction of an entire country as as a "conflict between Hizbollah and Israel". The word "war" does not appear in the text of the Resolution.

b) Referring to the two abducted Israeli soldiers, the Resolution states that Hizbollah was responsible for launching "the attack on Israel on 12 July". It denies the fact, amply documented, that an all out war against Lebanon had been in the planning stages well before July 12.

c) The historical causes of the war are denied. The abduction of the two Israeli soldiers on July 12, is presented as a just cause for Israeli retaliation.

d) The resolution does not acknowledge the extensive war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israel against the people of Lebanon. In this regard, Israel is indelibly responsible for "Crimes against Peace" as defined in Article 6a of the Nuremberg Charter: for "the planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression, or a war in violation of international treaties". Israel is also responsible for "War Crimes" under Article 6b of the Nuremberg Charter .through the "plunder of public or private property, wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity;" (Art. 6b). It is responsible for "Crimes against Humanity" through the perpetration of acts of : "murder,... and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population, before or during the war..." (Article 6c).

e) The Resolution does not acknowledge another important dimension. Israel is in violation of the Geneva Convention by deliberately preventing the flow of humanitarian aid to the war zone: Article 15 of the Geneva Convention states in this regard that "parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the wounded and sick,..."

f) In practice, Lebanon's Sovereignty is in jeopardy. There is nothing in Resolution 1701 which requires Israel to immediately and unconditonally withdraw its troops. The Security Council acknowledges the government of Lebanon's "request" for withdrawal of Israeli forces and it "calls upon the government of Israel" to withdraw its troops once a UN mandated international force is in place in Southern Lebanon:

"Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and Unifil as authorised by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the South and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel;"

g) Israel signed a military cooperation agreement with NATO in 2005. It has a longstanding military alliance with Turkey. Also in 2005, Israel signed a military cooperation agreement under NATO auspices entitled the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) with several frontline Arab states including Egypt, Morocco, Jordan and Algeria. If troops are dispatched from NATO countries, in all likelihood they will serve the interests of Israel under the terms of the NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement.

h) The resolution implies the disarmament of Hizbollah, although the condition is not explicitly stated.

i) The draft of Resolution 1701 was prepared in close consultation with the Israeli government, which is responsible for extensive war crimes.

j) The adoption of Security Council Resolution 1701 doesnot override or erase the fact that Israel has violated international law and has committed extensive crimes (Article 6 of Nuremberg Charter).

k) The UN system is potentially in jeopardy: The United Nation's highest body has not only failed to acknowledge the existence of pervasive war crimes in violation of the UN charter, it has also acted in the interests of the Israeli government which has ordered these war crimes.

Text of Resolution 1701, passed unanimously by the UN Security Council aimed at ending the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

emphasis (bold italics) added

The Security Council,

Recalling all its previous resolutions on Lebanon, in particular resolutions 425 (1978), 426 (1978), 520 (1982), 1559 (2004), 1655 (2006), 1680 (2006) and 1697 (2006), as well as the statements of its president on the situation in Lebanon, in particular the statements of 18 June, 2000, of 19 October, 2004, of 4 May 2005, of 23 January 2006 and of 30 July 2006;

Expressing its utmost concern at the continuing escalation of hostilities in Lebanon and in Israel since Hezbollah's attack on Israel on 12 July 2006, which has already caused hundreds of deaths and injuries on both sides, extensive damage to civilian infrastructure and hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons;

Emphasising the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasising the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including by the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers;

Mindful of the sensitivity of the issue of prisoners and encouraging the efforts aimed at urgently settling the issue of the Lebanese prisoners detained in Israel;

Welcoming the efforts of the Lebanese prime minister and the commitment of the government of Lebanon, in its seven-point plan, to extend its authority over its territory, through its own legitimate armed forces, such that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon, welcoming also its commitment to a UN force that is supplemented and enhanced in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operation, and bearing in mind its request in this plan for an immediate withdrawal of the Israeli forces from southern Lebanon;

Determined to act for this withdrawal to happen at the earliest;

Taking due note of the proposals made in the seven-point plan regarding the Shebaa farms area;

Welcoming the unanimous decision by the government of Lebanon on 7 August 2006 to deploy a Lebanese armed force of 15,000 troops in south Lebanon as the Israeli army withdraws behind the Blue Line and to request the assistance of additional forces from Unifil as needed, to facilitate the entry of the Lebanese armed forces into the region and to restate its intention to strengthen the Lebanese armed forces with material as needed to enable it to perform its duties;

Aware of its responsibilities to help secure a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution to the conflict;

Determining that the situation in Lebanon constitutes a threat to international peace and security;

1. Calls for a full cessation of hostilities based upon, in particular, the immediate cessation by Hezbollah of all attacks and the immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations;

2. Upon full cessation of hostilities, calls upon the government of Lebanon and Unifil as authorised by paragraph 11 to deploy their forces together throughout the South and calls upon the government of Israel, as that deployment begins, to withdraw all of its forces from southern Lebanon in parallel;

3. Emphasises the importance of the extension of the control of the government of Lebanon over all Lebanese territory in accordance with the provisions of resolution 1559 (2004) and resolution 1680 (2006), and of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, for it to exercise its full sovereignty, so that there will be no weapons without the consent of the government of Lebanon and no authority other than that of the government of Lebanon;

4. Reiterates its strong support for full respect for the Blue Line;

5. Also reiterates its strong support, as recalled in all its previous relevant resolutions, for the territorial integrity, sovereignty and political independence of Lebanon within its internationally recognized borders, as contemplated by the Israeli-Lebanese General Armistice Agreement of 23 March 1949;

6. Calls on the international community to take immediate steps to extend its financial and humanitarian assistance to the Lebanese people, including through facilitating the safe return of displaced persons and, under the authority of the government of Lebanon, reopening airports and harbours, consistent with paragraphs 14 and 15, and calls on it also to consider further assistance in the future to contribute to the reconstruction and development of Lebanon;

7. Affirms that all parties are responsible for ensuring that no action is taken contrary to paragraph 1 that might adversely affect the search for a long-term solution, humanitarian access to civilian populations, including safe passage for humanitarian convoys, or the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons, and calls on all parties to comply with this responsibility and to cooperate with the Security Council;

8. Calls for Israel and Lebanon to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the following principles and elements:

Full respect for the Blue Line by both parties;
security arrangements to prevent the resumption of hostilities, including the establishment between the Blue Line and the Litani river of an area free of any armed personnel, assets and weapons other than those of the government of Lebanon and of UNIFIL as authorised in paragraph 11, deployed in this area;
Full implementation of the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and of resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), that require the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon, so that, pursuant to the Lebanese cabinet decision of July 27, 2006, there will be no weapons or authority in Lebanon other than that of the Lebanese state;
No foreign forces in Lebanon without the consent of its government;
No sales or supply of arms and related materiel to Lebanon except as authorized by its government;
Provision to the United Nations of all remaining maps of land mines in Lebanon in Israel's possession;

9. Invites the secretary general to support efforts to secure as soon as possible agreements in principle from the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel to the principles and elements for a long-term solution as set forth in paragraph 8, and expresses its intention to be actively involved;

10. Requests the secretary general to develop, in liaison with relevant international actors and the concerned parties, proposals to implement the relevant provisions of the Taif Accords, and resolutions 1559 (2004) and 1680 (2006), including disarmament, and for delineation of the international borders of Lebanon, especially in those areas where the border is disputed or uncertain, including by dealing with the Shebaa farms area, and to present to the Security Council those proposals within 30 days;

11. Decides, in order to supplement and enhance the force in numbers, equipment, mandate and scope of operations, to authorize an increase in the force strength of Unifil to a maximum of 15,000 troops, and that the force shall, in addition to carrying out its mandate under resolutions 425 and 426 (1978):

a. Monitor the cessation of hostilities;
b. Accompany and support the Lebanese armed forces as they deploy throughout the South, including along the Blue Line, as Israel withdraws its armed forces from Lebanon as provided in paragraph 2;
c. Coordinate its activities related to paragraph 11 (b) with the government of Lebanon and the government of Israel;
d. Extend its assistance to help ensure humanitarian access to civilian populations and the voluntary and safe return of displaced persons;
e. Assist the Lebanese armed forces in taking steps towards the establishment of the area as referred to in paragraph 8;
f. Assist the government of Lebanon, at its request, to implement paragraph 14;

12. Acting in support of a request from the government of Lebanon to deploy an international force to assist it to exercise its authority throughout the territory, authorizes Unifil to take all necessary action in areas of deployment of its forces and as it deems within its capabilities, to ensure that its area of operations is not utilised for hostile activities of any kind, to resist attempts by forceful means to prevent it from discharging its duties under the mandate of the Security Council, and to protect United Nations personnel, facilities, installations and equipment, ensure the security and freedom of movement of United Nations personnel, humanitarian workers, and, without prejudice to the responsibility of the government of Lebanon, to protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence;

13. Requests the secretary general urgently to put in place measures to ensure Unifil is able to carry out the functions envisaged in this resolution, urges member states to consider making appropriate contributions to Unifil and to respond positively to requests for assistance from the Force, and expresses its strong appreciation to those who have contributed to Unifil in the past;

14. Calls upon the government of Lebanon to secure its borders and other entry points to prevent the entry in Lebanon without its consent of arms or related materiel and requests Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11 to assist the government of Lebanon at its request;

15. Decides further that all states shall take the necessary measures to prevent, by their nationals or from their territories or using their flag vessels or aircraft;

a. the sale or supply to any entity or individual in Lebanon of arms and related materiel of all types, including weapons and ammunition, military vehicles and equipment, paramilitary equipment, and spare parts for the aforementioned, whether or not originating in their territories, and;
b. the provision to any entity or individual in Lebanon of any technical training or assistance related to the provision, manufacture, maintenance or use of the items listed in subparagraph (a) above, except that these prohibitions shall not apply to arms, related material, training or assistance authorised by the government of Lebanon or by Unifil as authorised in paragraph 11;

16. Decides to extend the mandate of Unifil until 31 August 2007, and expresses its intention to consider in a later resolution further enhancements to the mandate and other steps to contribute to the implementation of a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution;

17. Requests the secretary general to report to the Council within one week on the implementation of this resolution and subsequently on a regular basis;

18. Stresses the importance of, and the need to achieve, a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, based on all its relevant resolutions including its resolutions 242 (1967) of 22 November 1967 and 338 (1973) of 22 October 1973;

19. Decides to remain actively seized of the matter.

Breaking the Silence - Israeli Soldiers Speak

2008-04-24T07:08:00.001-07:00

They're called "Refuseniks" but not for refusing to serve. They've done it proudly and courageously, and here's how "Courage to Refuse" members state their position:

"We, reserve officers and soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)....have always served in the front lines....were first to carry out any mission, light or heavy, (and we did it) to protect the State of Israel and strengthen it.

We....served....long weeks every year, in spite of dear cost to our personal lives, have been on reserve duty all over the Occupied Territories, and were issued commands and directives that had nothing to do with the security of our country (but were only given to perpetuate) our control over the Palestinian people. We('ve)....seen the bloody toll this Occupation exacts from both sides.

....the commands issued to us in the Territories (have) destroy(ed) all the values (we learned) growing up in this country.

....the (way) the Occupation (undermines the) IDF's human character and (exposes) the corruption of the entire Israeli society.

We....know that the Territories are not Israel, and that all settlements are bound to be evacuated in the end.

We hereby declare that we shall not continue to fight this War of the Settlements.

We shall not continue to fight beyond the 1967 borders to dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people.

We hereby declare that we shall continue serving the Israel Defense Forces in any mission that serves Israel's defense.

The missions of occupation and oppression do not serve this purpose - and we shall take no part in them."

These are courageous men and some women, hundreds of them. Their "Courage to Refuse - Combatant's Letter" web site lists 550 by name. There are hundreds more as well. Their numbers are growing, and their resistance is firm. There are five separate refusenik groups. They're listed below. Courage to Refuse is one of them.

Yesh Gvul (There is A Limit)

Yesh Gvul combats the "misuse of the IDF for unworthy ends" that includes the occupation of Palestine. It was established during Israel's 1982 Lebanon invasion that they denounced as a "naked (act of) aggression in which they wanted no part." It supports imprisoned members and their families, holds vigils where they're held, informs the public of their status, and embraces a peace agenda. They state that "as responsible citizens (they) declare that (they) will take no part in the continued oppression of the Palestinian people (nor will they) participate in policing actions or in guarding the settlements."

They further say that as "an Israeli peace group" they oppose the occupation and support soldiers who refuse to be part of it. They call the Israeli army's role "brutal" and "subjugating." It places servicemen "in a grave and moral and political dilemma (because it requires them) to enforce policies they deem illegal, immoral and ultimately harmful to Israeli interests." Many of their members are combat officers, they've served with distinction, and they rank from sergeant to major. They hold different political views, support peace but no one specific program, and they back a "two-state" solution they believe is "key to (peacefully resolving) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

The Shministim

The Shministim is made up of high school seniors approaching age 18 after which Jewish and Druze men and women face mandatory military service, except for exemptions on religious, health and other accepted grounds. The organization no longer maintains a web site.

Courage to Refuse (The Combatants Letter)

The organization was founded in 2002 by a group of 50 combat officers and soldiers after its members realized that their missions had nothing to do with defending Israel. They're to colonize Palestine and oppress its people. They further believe that many commands issued them harm Israel's strategic interests and they refuse to obey them.

They've served their country and support it, but they determined that "fighting in Gaza and....West Bank (was counterproductive): by obeying orders they would not be protecting the lives of their dear ones." They believe "the Occupation poses a threat to the security of Israel." They stated their beliefs openly in "The Combatant's Letter." Hundreds of IDF members signed it and joined "Courage to Refuse." New members join weekly, and Yaffee Center for Strategic Studies surveys show that over 25% of Israelis sympathize with their struggle.

They continue to perform reserve duty, but won't serve in the Occupied Territories. Over 280 of them have been court-martialed and jailed for up to 35 days. Yet they've "won a warm place for the movement in the hearts of many Israelis" who support their self-sacrifice and willingness to be imprisoned for their beliefs.

Hundreds of Israeli professors signed petitions for them. Sami Michael is acting chairman of the Israeli Association for Human Rights. He said that refusing the occupation is not just a moral act, it's the purest form of patriotism in Israel today. Their reasons for not serving are stated above.

The Pilots Group

The Pilots Group maintains a web site in Hebrew only, so it can't be monitored by non-Hebrew readers. In September 2003, 27 of their members (including reserve Brigadier General Yiftah Spector) published their statement for the first time. It declared they would no longer fly missions against West Bank and Gaza civilians, that doing so is illegal and immoral, and they denounced targeted assassinations.

On Israeli television, one pilot said: "We veteran pilots and active pilots alike....are opposed to carrying out illegal and immoral attacks, of the type carried out by Israel in the Territories. We....love the State of Israel (but) refuse to take part in air force attacks in civilian populations centers. We refuse to continue harming innocent civilians."

They knew they could be punished for their stance and for their "illegitimate" and "forbidden" statement, according to Israel's chief of army staff, Moshe Ya'alon. Israeli Air Force (IAF) chief Dan Halutz downplayed their action, said announcing it on national television was "inappropriate," and called it "the mother of all dangers to our people."

Because of it, they were expelled from the IAF, denounced as traitors, and went public again two months later to explain further. One captain's comment was typical: "In the beginning, we were pilots who believed our country would do all it could to achieve peace. We believed in the purity of our arms and that we did all we could to protect unnecessary loss of life. Somewhere in the last few years it became harder and harder to believe that is the case."

A single incident changed them. It was the bombing of Hamas military leader Salah Shehade's home that killed him and 14 members of his family, nine of whom were children. One pilot called it "murder," another "state terrorism," still another "vengeance," and all agreed they could no longer perform these missions.

Lt. Colonel Avner Raanan was one of them. He's one of Israel's most respected and decorated pilots. He signed the letter and stated: "If you look at the past three years, you see that, if we had a suicide bombing, the Israeli air force made a big operation in which civilians were killed, and that looks to innocent eyes like revenge. You hear it in the streets of Israel; people want revenge. But we should not behave like that. We are not a mafia."

Referring to an attack on Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, another pilot added: "Is it legitimate to take F-15s and helicopters designed to destroy enemy tanks, and use them against cars and houses in one of the most heavily populated places in the world....we have become blinded by the blood on our own faces. We cannot see that on the other side....is a whole nation of innocent people."

The pilots' action and statements shook Israeli society. Their superiors condemned them, but over 500 supportive letters disagreed, including one from a holocaust survivor and others from fellow pilots. In addition, former left wing cabinet ministers also praised their courage.

Sayeret Matkal

This is an elite IDF commando unit that maintains no web site. In December 2003, 13 of its reservists and officers (including one major) wrote the Prime Minister declaring their refusal to serve henceforth in the Territories. Their statement read: "We say to you today, we will no longer give our hands to the oppressive reign in the territories and the denial of human rights to millions of Palestinians, and we will no longer serve as a defensive shield for the settlement enterprise."

Members of this commando group carried out the 1976 Entebbe, Uganda airport raid that rescued 100 hostages on an Air France hijacked plane. They rarely serve in the Territories, but their announcement was significant because of the group's standing in Israeli society. Former Prime Minister Ehud Barak once commanded them and led a raid against a 1972 hijacked Sabena plane at Tel Aviv airport. He asked the signers to reconsider, called their letter a grave mistake, and said "it's not too late to correct it...." Other officials also condemned them, but Meretz Knesset Member (MK) Roman Bronfman believed they acted bravely, and Labor MK Ophir Pines said it requires that serious discussion be held.

In May 2004, Haaretz journalist Gideon Levy was supportive. He urged more soldiers to speak out, discuss their actions in the Territories, and ask why they serve there "to protect groups of delusional settlers (and) what their systematic abuse of the Palestinians has to do with security....how many innocent people (have) they killed and (keep on) killing."

He noted that Israelis don't know what goes on in the Territories, so it's up to soldiers to "lift this screen....The Palestinians aren't believed, the Israeli press (keeps) its distance from the Territories and the international press is perceived as hostile. Only the soldiers can break the vicious circle....No one (can) deny their accounts....it's time (for them) to stand up and speak out....how they killed and jailed and humiliated for no good reason."

Excerpts From Soldiers Breaking the Silence

Breaking the Silence (Shovrim Shtika) dedicates itself to two purposes:

-- exposing IDF oppression in occupied Palestine; and

-- providing discharged Israeli soldiers and reservists a platform to explain what they were ordered to do on the ground.

In their own words, hundreds of their testimonies tell shocking stories - the ordeal they faced, its moral price, and the corrupting erosion it had on their values. They focus on orders gotten, rules of engagement and operational procedures that include frequent illegal commands:

-- firing at civilians posing no risk;

-- revenge operations for collective punishment; and

-- intentionally attacking Palestinian rescue forces, including ambulances.

Their accounts are disturbing. They portray institutionalized moral corruption, universal contempt for Arabs, and how it affects everyone from new recruits to commanders. Rules of engagement are unrestrained, government oversight is non-existent, so reporting abuse is urgent. They want it stopped and demand an independent body to do it.

It goes on everywhere in occupied Palestine with Hebron a prominent example because it's the only Palestinian city with an Israeli settlement in its center. Sixty-four soldiers from the Nachal brigade spoke out, they were there during the Second Intifada, and their testimonies recount horrors on the ground they were ordered to commit.

They call their experiences "shocking" with photos for confirming evidence. Their collective statement says: "In coping daily with the madness of Hebron, we couldn't remain the same people beneath our uniforms. We saw our buddies and ourselves slowly changing....

We were exposed to the ugly face of terror....an innocent family killed while at the Sabbath table. Countless engagements, bereaved families, innocent civilians injured, chase and arrests.

The settlers....rioted, occupied houses, and confronted the police and army....The constant curfew made Hebron into a ghost town....The school in Jebl Ju'ar has been an army post....We asked ourselves why an army platoon prevents children from going to school. We found no answers.

We decided to speak out....to tell....Hebron isn't in outer space....But it's light years away from Tel Aviv....Come, see, hear and understand what's happening there."

Here are more paraphrased comments:

We man checkpoints, stop people from going somewhere, humiliate them, but "I'm doing my duty (and) inflicting pain on people, harming them unnecessarily." It affects your mind, your sleep the longer you serve there. Jews do as they please. There are no laws. Anything goes, breaking into shops, occupying Palestinian homes. Your judgment gets impaired when everyday your enemy is an Arab. You don't look at them as people. But they're not dogs, not animals, not inferior, yet they simply don't count, and since they're your enemy you can kill them.

At checkpoints, our job was don't let them pass. It was absurd, there were old ladies who had to get through to go home. Why was it forbidden to pass? It was collective punishment. "You're not allowed to pass because you're not allowed to pass." Then there are the curfews. "I'm certain that 80% of the time there was a curfew." We closed all the stores and sent everyone home.

I'm ashamed of myself because I realized I enjoy the feeling of power. I'm the Law. It's a mighty feeling. It's because you have a weapon, because you're a soldier, it's addictive. You can do whatever you want, unsupervised, enter people's homes, conduct random searches. Tell them what you want and they'll do it because they're afraid. Palestinians feel you don't let them walk in the streets, work, live or breathe.

I have a machine gun, it's loaded, the safety catch is off. I can shoot you any time, for any reason, split your head open with the gun butt and my commander will pat me on the back and say good job. It's crazy, I'm just a kid, but Hebron hardens you. I say to myself I'm doing something I don't believe in, and I'm putting myself in a position where someone wants to kill me because of it. You see things that couldn't possibly happen in your own home and shouldn't happen. But here everything is different.

Any time of day or night, whenever we feel like it, we pick a house, any house, and we go in. We move all the men into one room, the women in another, and place them under guard. We can do whatever we want. There's no justification for it. It shouldn't be happening.

Then there are the settlers. They run wild. There's no law. They do what they please. So they burn another shop, trash another home, occupy another one, no big deal, happens all the time. We just watch and do nothing.

If someone is sick and needs to go to the hospital, I ask my commander if I can let her pass. No way if there's a curfew. She's not going anywhere no matter how sick. All these stories are my daily routine for over six months. When it ended, I questioned whether I protected myself or my country. I began watching out for myself because I didn't believe in the ideology.

Serving in Hebron made me feel there's something different about being a Jew. I can't explain it. I'm supposed to guard the settlers who don't have the kind of morality I was raised to believe. I reached a point where I didn't know who the enemy was anymore, Jews or Arabs. Maybe I need to protect the Arabs, not the Jews who attack them. I feel emotionally injured. If someone's caught breaking curfew, we can let them have it aggressively. Hold them, make them wait eight hours with no water, sit and wait. "Why? Because he walked outside. Because he dared go buy something. Because he dared send his kid to school." We can even shoot them.

Selected Israeli Organizations Supporting Refuseniks

Several important ones are covered below:

New Profile

New Profile is a pluralistic feminist organization that includes men and women. It's goal is to transform Israel from a militaristic to a civil society. It opposes occupation and supports all conscientious objectors - from pacifists opposed to war to refuseniks who won't serve in occupied Palestine. Its charter states that "Israel is capable of a determined peace politics. It need not be a militarized society." It understands that "the words 'national security' have often masked calculated decisions to choose military action for the achievement of political goals."

It no longer is "willing to take part in such choices. We are no longer willing to go on being mobilized, raising our children for mobilization....while those in charge of the country go on deploying the army easily, rather than building other solutions."

It's "hard to express this type opinion in Israel today....An attitude that dares question the fundamental principle of willing enlistment is almost incomprehensible in a soldiers' state." We reject perpetuating war. We prioritize and protect life.

"We oppose the use of the army, police, (and) security forces in the ongoing oppression and discrimination of the Palestinian citizens of Israel (and in the Occupied Territories)," in demolishing their homes, "denying them building and development rights, (and) using violence" against them. Thousands of young Israelis are opting out and refuse to serve. They reject military service in Israel today. The IDF states that only one-third of reserve forces in fact serve actively.

Israeli law doesn't recognize conscientious objection. "We regard Israeli conscription law as discriminatory and non-democratic, and call for" recognizing every person's right to act according to his or her conscience. They should have the right to fulfill their social commitment by alternative civic or community means, including through non-governmental, voluntary organizations.

The Refuser Solidarity Network (RSN)

It was founded in 2002 to support Israel's growing "Refuser Movement." RSN supports Courage to Refuse, Combatants for Peace, Yesh G'vul, the Shiministim, New Profile and other Israeli organizations advocating peaceful conflict resolution in Occupied Palestine.

Its original 2002 "Call to Action" declaration said: "The time has come" to act against growing violence. Increasing numbers of Israeli soldiers reject serving in Occupied Palestine. They've seen what goes on, it has nothing to do with security, and its sole purpose is "perpetuating our control over the Palestinian people." They now declare they no longer will help "dominate, expel, starve and humiliate an entire people."

The time has come "to listen to our consciences," summon our courage, and publicly support them. Israel can never have peace and security unless it withdraws from Occupied Palestine. This is a "crucial moment, a potential turning point." Their campaign was initiated from Chicago, but it resonates across the country as a "portal" in support of the Refuser Movement in Israel.

Combatants for Peace

Former Palestinian and Israeli cycle of violence participants are the founders - IDF soldiers and Palestinian resistance fighters. They believe their actions were futile, decided another way is crucial, and now work together for peace. Henceforth, they "refuse to take part (in further) bloodletting." They will only act non-violently through dialogue and reconciliation and work together cooperatively to understand each other's aspirations.

Their goal - end the occupation, halt the settlement project, and establish a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem alongside the State of Israel. They want to raise consciousness, educate both sides, and create political pressure to establish a constructive dialogue for resolution.

They hold meetings, conduct educational lectures and public forums, undertake joint projects, have bi-national media teams to get out their message, and participate in non-violent demonstrations against the occupation. It's motto reads: "Only by joining forces, will we be able to end the cycle of violence."

Israeli Laws Affecting Conscientious Objection and Refuseniks

Conscription existed since Israel became a state in 1948. Today, its legal basis comes under the country's 1986 National Defence Service Law. It requires all Israeli citizens and permanent residents (men and women) to serve. However, the Ministry of Defence has discretion under Article 36 to exempt all non-Jews, except the Druze. Israeli Arabs may volunteer, but they're not encouraged, and very few do it. Reserve service is also required up to age 51 for men and 24 for women.

Exemptions are possible for reasons of:

-- educational requirements,

-- religion (orthodox Jews are exempted),

-- health,

-- family considerations,

-- married or pregnant women or those with children,

-- persons convicted of crimes,

-- the undereducated (until they complete at least eight years of school), and

-- other considerations at the Ministry of Defence's discretion.

Israeli law rejects conscientious objection rights for men and only partly accepts them for women on the basis of religion. Those who cite it and refuse to serve are in trouble. They're subjected to unfair procedures and hearings that may, and most often do, recommend prosecution and imprisonment.

Israel signed the United Nations Charter and must, under its provisions, comply with the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Its Article 18 guarantees everyone "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion." So does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights under Article 18 where it repeats that "Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion..." By denying refuseniks this right, Israel violates international law and a fundamental human right afforded everyone under it.

No official figures exist, but refusenik numbers have grown since the Second Intifada began in September 2000. Most opt out in the Territories, and estimates of their numbers range from 1100 well-documented cases to as many as double that number. Here's what they face.

Article 35 (a) (2) of the National Defence Service Law states that:

-- failure to fulfill a duty under the law is punishable by up to two years imprisonment;

-- evading military service is subject to five years in prison;

-- refusing to perform reserve duties calls for up to a 56 day sentence that's renewable if the objector refuses repeatedly;

-- helping someone avoid military service is punishable by a fine and up to two years in prison;

-- disobeying call-up orders means facing up to five years imprisonment, although most often sentences rarely exceed 12 months.

Refuseniks are generally sentenced on one of the following charges:

-- refusing to obey an order;

-- absence without leave;

-- desertion; or

-- refusing to be mobilized.

Where exemption applications are denied, individuals are ordered to perform military or reserve duty. Continued refusal can mean discipline or court-martial, and repeat offenders face re-imprisonment in violation of Article 14, paragraph 7 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It states: "No one shall be liable to be tried or punished again for an offence for which he (or she) has already been finally convicted or acquitted in accordance with the law and penal procedure of each country."

Summary Comments

Peace activists, people of conscience and most notably Israeli refuseniks are in the front lines of a valiant struggle:

-- to free Palestinians from 41 illegal occupation years,

-- end decades of abuse,

-- achieve a just and lasting peace, and

-- protect everyone's fundamental human rights and freedoms that are guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights for "all members of the human family...."

Israel must no longer be exempted from international law, from being allowed to flaunt it brazenly, from ignoring over five dozen UN Resolutions going back decades. Peace activists and refuseniks condemn the Jewish state for its actions, deplore it for committing them, and demand, call on and insist Israeli governments end them. Its lawlessness must end, and collective resistance can achieve it. It's no longer an option. It's an obligation to assure that everyone has equal dignity and the right to life, liberty, security and freedom under universal international law.

May 14 is the 60th anniversary of Israel's founding. Commemorations there and in the West will celebrate it. People of conscience won't participate. Refuseniks may not either. Use this time to demand an illegal occupation end and that Israel no longer be allowed a pass on the international law it disdains.

Media Manipulation and the United Nations

2008-04-20T12:53:00.000-07:00

On March 12, 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) decided to withdraw their patronage of Reporters Without Borders second annual Online Free Expression Day. UNESCO’s press release, said that they had granted Reporters Without Borders (RSF) their patronage for the international day on February 28, 2008, on the condition that UNESCO “could not ‘be associated with the activities envisaged for this occasion’ by RSF.” However, they add that:

“In its communications on the day, RSF published material concerning a number of UNESCO’s Member States, which UNESCO, had not been informed of and could not endorse. Furthermore, UNESCO’s logo was placed in such a way as to indicate the Organization’s support of the information presented.”

Reporters Without Borders hit back at UNESCO by saying that “UNESCO’s grovelling” was a result of “direct pressure” from several of the governments on their list of 15 `Internet Enemies', observing that UNESCO had “behaved with great cowardice”. Controversially, Reporters Without Borders concluded by pointing out that “it seems we have gone back 20 years, to the time when authoritarian regimes called the shots at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.”

Which ‘authoritarian’ regime Reporters Without Borders are referring to is not entirely clear, because just over 20 years ago (in January 1985) it was the US government that “called the shots at UNESCO”. Indeed they successfully undermined UNESCO’s proposal for a progressive New World Information and Communication Order, by withdrawing from the agency at a time when they were providing a quarter of UNESCO’s funding. Of course needless to say, this progressive proposal was strongly opposed by the world’s dominant Western media corporations, because UNESCO’s proposals if met “even partially, would constitute a serious diminution in the influence of the existing transnational corporate information system.” Consequently the UK also withdrew from UNESCO, and as a result UNESCO suffered severe funding problems, which combined with the ongoing attacks on their legitimacy, in the US, British and French media, served to undermine the implementation of the New World Information and Communication Order. [1]

Returning to the present controversy, according to another article from a Cuban newspaper: “Diplomatic sources from UNESCO told Prensa Latina that the agency made the decision due to the repeated demonstration of a lack of ethics on the part of Reporters Without Borders in its goal of disqualifying a certain number of countries.” [2] This report then adds that “because of this and previous actions, UNESCO decided to completely end its relationship with RSF and rule out any type of future collaboration.” To date, this information has not been reported on the website of either RSF or UNESCO. Yet even if this report is true, it is wishful thinking to believe (as this article does) that UNESCO withdrew their support of RSF because of the latter’s intimate involvement with imperial democracy manipulators like the National Endowment for Democracy.

The truth of this observation becomes apparent upon examination of the list of press freedom groups “maintaining official relations with UNESCO”, as many of the organizations are linked in some way to the work of the global democracy manipulating establishment. These media ‘freedom’ groups include Internews International, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Federation of Journalists, the World Press Freedom Committee (a group that “[o]riginally created to oppose proposals” for UNESCO’s New World Information and Communication Order), and the International Press Institute.

In recent years a number of authors have criticized the activities of Reporters Without Borders, and much attention has been paid to the fact that they have received funding from the National Endowment for Democracy. However, to date, next to no attention has been paid to the work of similarly ‘democratic’ UNESCO-linked organizations, like the International Press Institute. Therefore, the rest of this article will provide the first critical enquiry into the work of the International Press Institute by primarily examining the ‘democratic’ backgrounds of the recipients of their annual Free Media Pioneer Award.

The International Press Institute as Annual Democracy Manipulator

The International Press Institute (IPI) was founded in 1950 at Columbia University, and they describe themselves as a “global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists, is dedicated to the furtherance and safeguarding of press freedom, the protection of freedom of opinion and expression, the promotion of the free flow of news and information, and the improvement of the practices of journalism”. Most notably, the current president and chair of the IPI, Piotr Niemczycki, serves as the deputy president of the management board of Agora, and as the publisher of the Gazeta Wyborcza (Election Gazette). The IPI’s president was also involved in founding both Gazeta Wyborcza and Agora. Niemczycki’s links to these two organizations are important because Agora is a media company with tight connections to the democracy manipulating establishment.

Formed “on the eve of the [Polish] parliamentary elections in 1989”, Agora’s website notes that Gazeta Wyborcza was the “first independent newspaper in Poland, while Agora grew into one of the largest and most renowned media companies in Central and Eastern Europe.” Gazeta Wyborcza “was established… as a daily representing the Solidarity opposition”, but their website neglects to mention that this political party, Solidarity, obtained vital support from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, and the notorious democracy manipulator George Soros. Moreover, according to the Polish American Library, the National Endowment for Democracy “was the original funding source for Gazeta Wyborcza”.

George Soros was highly active in supporting the work of Solidarity, and in 1988 he created the Stefan Batory Foundation (an ostensibly “independent private Polish foundation”) to help direct his democracy manipulating efforts. Currently the Batory Foundation’s largest funder, aside from the Open Society Institute, is the Ford Foundation, but the Batory Foundation has also received funding from other ‘democratic’ groups like the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, and the Institute of International Education. Writing in 2004, Srdja Trifkovic notes that the:

“Hoi polloi are force-fed the daily fare of OSI [Open Society Institute] agitprop by ‘the Soros media’... from the Gazeta Wyborcza in Warsaw to Danas (Today) in Serbia, the Monitor in Montenegro, the Markiza TV channel in Bratislava, and Vreme weekly and the B-92 electronic media conglomerate in Belgrade. They invariably parrot Soros’ views and ambitions, reflected by the agenda of the local Soros foundation at home and, in world affairs, by the International Crisis Group (ICG), largely financed by Soros and run by his appointees.” (For more information on some of these media groups see later)

Given the intimate relations that exist between George Soros and the National Endowment for Democracy it is little surprise that in 2000, Gazeta Wyborcza, “awarded him the title of the Man of Year for his “support of the development of democracy, education and civil society in the countries of the CEE [Central and Eastern Europe] region.”

Another of the IPI’s executive board members, Kavi Chongkittavorn, also has excellent democracy manipulating credentials, because in September 2007 she received the National Endowment for Democracy’s coveted Democracy Award. In addition to her IPI affiliation Chongkittavorn presently serves as the assistant group editor of Nation Media Group, is a member of the steering committee of the NED-created World Movement for Democracy, and serves as the chair of the Southeast Asian Press Alliance – a group that has received annual support from the NED for its work in Malaysia (since 1999).

Finally it is worth mentioning that the IPI’s ‘democratic’ roots can be traced to its founding in 1950, as from 1951 until 1954 their founding chair was Lester Markel. At the time of the founding of the IPI Markel was the Sunday editor of The New York Times, but it is most interesting to note that in 1947 he “initiated” the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations’ “Propaganda and Foreign Policy” group, which was soon renamed as the “Public Opinion and Foreign Policy” group. Given this knowledge, it is entirely consistent that Anthony Giffard (1989) should have classified the IPI as an organization that “played an active role in opposing” UNESCO’s proposal for a New World Information and Communication Order in the late 1970s and early 1980s. [3] Thus, having provided a little background on the ‘democratic’ orientation of the IPI, this article now introduces the ‘democratic’ recipients of their annual press freedom award.

Awarding ‘Democracy’

Established in 1996, the IPI’s annual Free Media Pioneer Award is awarded to “recognize individuals and organizations that have fought against great odds to ensure freer and more independent media in their countries.” This annual award is co-sponsored by Freedom Forum, a group that was founded in 1991 and describes itself as a “nonpartisan foundation dedicated to free press, free speech and free spirit for all people”. [4] Yet despite Freedom Forum’s benign sounding self-description, they, like the IPI, have solid democracy manipulating credentials. For example, Freedom Forum’s founder Allen H. Neuharth serves on the advisory committee of the aforementioned World Press Freedom Committee; another of their trustees, Wilma P. Mankiller, recently served as a trustee of the Ford Foundation; while a further Freedom Forum trustee, Bette Bao Lord, is chair emeritus of Freedom House. Thus both sponsors of the Free Media Pioneer Award are well connected to the democracy manipulating credentials establishment. Following is a demonstration of how this press ‘freedom’ award is used to legitimate the work of ‘democratic’ media groups all over the world.

In 1996, the first Free Media Pioneer Award was given to the Russian commercial TV station, NTV – which is owned by media oligarch Vladimir Gusinsky – for its objective reporting on the Chechnya conflict. Yet while NTV’s coverage may have been a thorn in the side of President Boris Yeltsin, this didn’t stop the president of NTV, Igor Malashenko, from working as Yeltsin’s chief media advisor for his re-election campaign in April 1996. Indeed, as in other “electoral interventions”, the global democracy manipulators had selected their favored candidate (Yeltsin in this case) and, despite NTV’s critical reporting on Chechnya, it appears that they could be relied upon not to rock the boat too much. Thus NTV won the IPI’s first Free Media Pioneer Award just as the struggling independent media in Russia “were falling into the hands of two rival oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky (TV-6) and Vladimir Gusinsky (NTV)”. As Edward Herman observed a few years later: “Boris Yeltsin is a ‘reformer,’ in the contemporary post-Orwellian usage of the word: that is, one who is carrying out policies approved by dominant Western interests.” [5]

The second Pioneer Award was distributed to the Indonesian-based Alliance of Independent Journalists, a group that was critical of the Western-backed Suharto dictatorship. The timing of this award may have to do with a change of heart of western governments’ ‘democratic’ plans for Indonesia, as, at around this time, they were beginning to start thinking about withdrawing their support for Suharto (the PR disaster), and sure enough in 1998 he was eventually removed from power. In addition, the Alliance of Independent Journalists is one of five members of the aforementioned NED-funded Southeast Asian Press Alliance, and in 1998 their founder, Goenawan Mohamad, was awarded the International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

In 1998, Serbian-based Radio B-92 was honored with the Pioneer Award for its unrelenting commitment to democracy, of which one important part was the role it played in the creation (in 1993) of the Association of Independent Electronic Media (ANEM). There can be no question that ANEM successfully protected media broadcasters from state repression in Serbia, but there is also no doubt that this would have been impossible without the financial and diplomatic support that they received from Western governments. [6] In fact, the democracy manipulating establishment had been extremely busy in the former Yugoslavia throughout the early 1990s, providing between US$7-10 million for media development during this time; while after 1995 the US gave a further US$23 million and the European Union augmented this with another 17 million Euros for supporting ‘independent’ media groups.

More specifically, Radio B-92 received a grant from the NED the year before they obtained the IPI’s Pioneer Award, which was used – in the NED’s words – to help “break the stranglehold of government-dominated media in Serbia by strengthening an independent source of news and opinion and will ensure the free flow of unbiased information throughout the country”. In 1998, Radio B-92 then received a grant from the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (the British version of the NED to enable them “to conduct a systematic and critical analysis of the coverage of the war in Kosovo presented by Serbian state television.” (NED grants were also given to Radio Television B-92 in 2001 and 2005.) Finally ANEM themselves received their first NED grant in 1998, and subsequently went on to obtain indirect NED support in 2004 and 2005, when NED grants were channeled to them via the intermediary media group Medienhilfe. As in other ‘democratic’ interventions, it seems that the main reason the democracy manipulating community supported the development of ‘independent’ media outlets like Radio B-92 and ANEM was to ensure a ‘favorable’ change of government, that is, to facilitate the ouster of President Milosevic.

In 1992 and again in 1993, the NED gave grants to support independent journalism in Ethiopia. The 1992 grant is most notable here as the NED noted that it was to be used to “lay the foundation for an indigenous and self-sustainable training center for journalists and publishers in Ethiopia.” In 1999, the Ethiopian Free Press Journalists’ Association received the fourth Pioneer Award. Although it seems that this association has no direct links to democracy manipulating bodies it is worth noting that this Association was formed in 1993 shortly after the aforementioned NED grants.

The next recipient of the Pioneer Award was the Instituto De Prensa Y Sociedad (or the Peruvian Press and Society Institute) – a group that was founded in 1993, and has exemplary ‘democratic’ credentials that I have outlined in full elsewhere. Two years before receiving the 2000 Pioneer Award, the Peruvian Press and Society Institute received their first NED grant to help “develop a national network to protect journalists”; they then received renewed NED support in both 2000 and 2001. Like the IPI’s Kavi Chongkittavorn, the Peruvian Press and Society Institute were rewarded with the NED’s annual Democracy Award in 2007.

The 2001 winner of the IPI’s Press Award was the Malaysian website Malaysiakini.com, a site that was launched in 1999 by the Southeast Asian Press Alliance (SEAPA). With the assistance of the World Press Freedom Committee, Freedom Forum, and the Committee to Protect Journalists, SEAPA were formed by IPI executive board member Kavi Chongittavorn (n 1989) to campaign for press freedom in Southeast Asia. Since 1999, SEAPA have received annual grants from the NED to support their work in Malaysia, which focuses on the “development and protection of journalistic independence and professionalism”. Here it is important to note that out of all of SEAPA’s annual NED grants the only grant that specifies “support for online media” was given to them in 1999.

In 2002, the Serbian newspaper, Danas, received the Pioneer Award, and like previous award winners, they too received prior aid from the NED. Thus, the year after Danas was launched (in 1997), they received a NED grant to “open a news bureau in… Prishtina” to help “improve the paper’s ability to gather up-to-date information on developments in Kosovo.” In 2000, they received another NED grant channelled to them via the regular NED aid recipient the BETA News Agency. [7]

The Media Council of Tanzania won the Pioneer Award in 2003, and - although they have not obtained any funding from the NED - they have received aid from other prominent international democracy manipulators. For example, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency gave the Media Council a three year grant of SEK 4,000,000 in 2001, while the Netherlands-based Communication Assistance Foundation awarded them NLG 364, 522 for the same period.

In 2004, the Baku-based Central Asian and Southern Caucasian Freedom of Expression Network (CASCFEN) received the Pioneer Award. This group most likely played a significant role in two NED-backed revolutions in both Georgia (2003) and in Kyrgyzstan (2005). In both cases the ‘independent’ media played a crucial role in the success of the revolutions.

The founder of CASCFEN, Azer Hasret, formerly served as the president of the Journalists' Trade Union – the group that helped launch CASCFEN in August 2001 along with five other groups which included the Azerbaijan National Committee of International Press Institute, the Independent Association of Georgian Journalists, Public Association “Journalists”, the Union of Independent Journalists of Uzbekistan, and the National Association of Independent Mass Media of Tajikistan. [8] Interestingly while only the latter group went on to receive NED aid (in both 2003 and 2005), in 2003, Zviad Pochkhua, the president of the Independent Association of Georgian Journalists critiqued another Georgian-based NGO – the Liberty Institute – for receiving funding from US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Soros Foundation. [9] So it is ironic that even CASCFEN’s work has received support from George Soros’ Open Society Institute-Assistance Foundation Azerbaijan. Finally, between 2004 and 2005, the Azerbaijan-based Journalists' Trade Union worked on the Election Monitoring Center’s media programme, which is significant because in 2005 this Center received a grant from the NED to “inform the public about the electoral process and the political platforms of different parties and candidates by producing newspaper inserts, radio programs, and televised debates.”

Zimbabwe’s SW Radio Africa won the Pioneer Award in 2005, making it the first externally broadcast media group to receive the award – due to government repression they are based in London (UK). SW Radio Africa first started operating in December 2001, and according to diplomatic sources they are funded by the USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives. [10] Furthermore, from 2005 to 2006 Violet Gonda a “producer and presenter for the news section of SW Radio Africa” served as a fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at Stanford University. This is particularly noteworthy because the Director of the CDDRL is Michael McFaul, an individual who happens to be a director of the National Endowment for Democracy’s International Forum for Democratic Studies, and is a trustee of both Freedom House and the Eurasia Foundation.

The 2006 recipient of the Pioneer Award was the Yemen Times, a newspaper that only exhibits tenuous links to the NED, as from 2006 to 2007, one of their reporters, Hafez Al-Bukari, served as a Reagan Fascell Democracy Fellow at the NED. [11] In addition, it is more than coincidental that another former Yemen Times reporter, Hatem Bamehriz, previously served as the Deputy Country Director of the Yemen field office of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (which is one of the NED’s core grantees). [12]

The winner of the 2007 Free Media Pioneer Award was the Mizzima News Agency, an Agency that was formed in 1998 by a group of exiled Burmese journalists based in both India and Thailand. According to Reuters, “Mizzima is one of several outlets, like the Oslo-based Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), that have become major source of information on the country.” Consequently it is highly significant that since 1999 the Agency has received support from George Soros’ Open Society Institute, and in 2006 (at least) they obtained financial support from the NED (and two other NED-supported groups: Internews and the Southeast Asian Press Alliance). Given that the impetus for this article was UNESCO’s controversial relationship with Reporters Without Borders it is appropriate that Mizzima is also linked to this notorious press ‘freedom’ watchdog. This connection comes through the presence of Maung Maung Myint on Mizzima’s advisory board, as he is also currently the president of NED-sponsored Burma Media Association, and serves on international jury for Reporters Without Borders Fondation de France Prize.

Democratizing the United Nations?

This article has demonstrated that the ostensibly progressive International Press Institute is a key member of the global democracy manipulating establishment. This information is problematic on a number of levels, not least of which is that UNESCO maintains cordial relations with the International Press Institute and many other NED-linked media groups. Moreover, this is not the first time that the United Nations has compromised its integrity through ties with the NED. Indeed, as I illustrated in a recent article, the recently formed UN Democracy Fund works extremely closely with the NED and their global cadres; furthermore, my limited critiques of the United Nations are amplified by many other authors whose work can be found on the Center for Research on Globalization’s website.

In January 2007, Ban Ki-Moon succeeded Kofi Annan as the new Secretary-General of the United Nations, but it is highly questionable as to whether he is he going to be able (or willing) to reform the United Nations. Indeed, as Professor Rodrigue Tremblay writes, so far the “only reforms the new Secretary-General has espoused have been minor administrative arrangements—and even those were contested”. He adds:

“What the United Nations needs is more than simply shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It needs a fundamental structural reorganization if it is to play the role it was assigned originally in 1945, that is to say to promote international cooperation and to maintain international peace and security.”

Yet, perhaps the United Nations cannot be reformed after all, as the job that it was initially set up to fulfill – as intended by the Council on Foreign Relations War and Peace Studies Group – was to legitimate America’s imperial ventures. [13]

As Edward Herman observes, we are already in the “midst of a crisis within the post-war international system, as a serial aggressor [the United States] is now able to mobilize the [United Nations] Security Council… to declare the state that it threatens with war a menace to the peace and to help the aggressor disarm its target.” The United Nations has gone far beyond simply legitimating US domination; it now acts as a critical armament of imperialism, both in its soft form - as exemplified by its work with the NED - and in justifying harder militaristic forms of imperialism. So the question remains, ‘is the United Nations the type of institution that should be reformed in the first place?’ If not, then we need to think hard about the type of institution that should replace it, because what is urgently need is an international organization that can help reign in aggressor states not encourage them, and promote popular democracy not elite ‘democracy’.

Michael Barker is a doctoral candidate at Griffith University, Australia. He can be reached at Michael. J. Barker [at] griffith.edu.au. Most of his other articles can be found here.

Endnotes

[1] William Preston, Jr., Edward S. Herman, and Herbert I. Schiller, Hope and Folly: the United States and UNESCO, 1945-1985 (New York: Institute for Media Analysis, 1989) , p. 297, pp. 203-81.

[2] Incidentally Cuba was on Reporters Without Borders ‘Internet Enemy’ list.

[3] Anthony C. Giffard, UNESCO and the Media (New York: Longman, 1989), p.28.

[4] Freedom Forum is “supported by income from an endowment now worth more than $1 billion in diversified assets” and in 1997 they distributed over $48 million in grants. See JoEllen Gorg, U.S. Foundations: A Review of International Funding Priorities 2002, Prepared for the USAID/ANE Bureau, May 2002.

[5] Edward Herman notes: “The Russian election was badly compromised by Western intervention, some of it contrary to Russian law, all of it in violation of nominal Western principles of fairness. Western leaders gathered in Moscow during the campaign to proclaim their opposition to ‘terrorism’ (in the midst of Yeltsin's terrorist attacks on Chechnya) and to give a boost to the ‘reformer.’ German president Helmut Kohl traveled to Moscow, as did U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher, for photo appearances with our man. The IMF made a $10.2 billion loan to Russia in the midst of the campaign, despite the fact that Russia was in violation of IMF loan conditions and was dispensing large sums of public money for election purposes. A trio of Republican advisers joined the Yeltsin election campaign, although such foreign participation in an election violates Russian law. U.S. ambassador Thomas Pickering urged candidate Grigory Yavlinsky to drop out of the election in order to help Yeltsin.”

[6] Spasa Bosnjak, Fight the Power: The Role of the Serbian Independent Electronic Media in the Democratization of Serbia (Simon Fraser University: Unpublished MA thesis, 2005), p.71.

[7] The BETA News Agency received NED grants annually from 1997 to 2005.

[8] In 2003 Azer Hasret was also the Secretary General of the Azerbaijan Journalists Confederation.

[9] Although not noted in Zviad Pochkhua’s article, the Georgian-based Liberty Institute received NED funding in 1999, 2001, and 2004. It is also interesting that the vice president of the Independent Association of Georgian Journalists, Geno Jokhidze, has also been the editor-in-chief of Echo newspaper since 2002. This is because from 2003 to 2004 the deputy editor-in-chief of the daily Echo served as a NED Reagan-Fascell Democracy Fellow.

[10] A Radio Netherland Media Network report notes that SW Radio Africa “receive millions of dollars from a department of the US International Development Agency, known as the Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI), although according to the station its funding comes from unspecified ‘human rights and media freedom groups’”.

[11] Hafez Al-Bukari was also “a member of the informal advisory board of the [neoconservative] American Enterprise Institute’s Arab Reform program and coordinator of the International Federation of Journalists’ Project in Yemen.”

[12] Hatem Bamehriz is now currently working for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in Somalia. Although I have demonstrated that the Yemen Times can be linked to the NED, they appear to utilize reporters from a variety of political persuasions, as according to the US Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (2002): “In May the PSO [Political Security Organization] detained journalist Hassan al-Zaidi and held him incommunicado for 16 days, at times in solitary confinement, in the detention center under the PSO headquarters in Sana'a. Authorities never formally charged al-Zaidi with any crime, but told him that he had ‘exceeded the red lines.’ In addition to being a reporter for the Yemen Times, al-Zaidi is a member of the Islamist opposition party Union of Popular Forces (UPF) and belongs to the al-Zaidi tribe, which has been responsible for kidnappings of foreigners and other destabilizing activity.”

[13] Laurence Shoup and William Minter (1980) noted that Council on Foreign Relations member, Isaiah Bowman, observed in a Council meeting in May 1942 that: “[T]he United States had to exercise the strength need to assure ‘security,’ and at the same time ‘avoid conventional forms of imperialism.’ The way to do this, he argued, was to make the exercise of that power international in character through a United Nations body.”

America's "war on terrorism" trophy prisoner: University professor Sami Al-Arian - His Ordeal Continues

2008-04-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Al-Arian is a Kuwaiti-born son of Palestinian refugees who fled during the 1947-49 Nakba catastrophe;

-- he came to America in 1975 and was denied citizenship because of his faith and ethnicity; ever since, he's been an award-winning scholar, community leader and civil activist;

-- he was a distinguished University of South Florida (USF) computer science professor until being unjustly fired for his human rights efforts for Arabs and Muslims;

-- now he's one of hundreds of political prisoners doing hard time in US prisons and treated no differently than others like him at Guantanamo;

-- the system is a gulag (at home and offshore) and shame of the nation
(http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2006/03/us-gulag-prison-system-shame-of-nation.html)

-- Al-Arian's case is special; the FBI hounded him for 11 years; he was unjustly indicted, arrested, tried, yet exonerated in court - acquitted on eight false terrorism charges with the jury deadlocked on nine others 10 - 2 in his favor; DOJ routinely dismisses these cases; retrying them rarely happens; but it wasn't the plan for Al-Arian;

-- DOJ continued to pursue him, struck a plea bargain, then broke it; in violation of its terms, it subpoenaed him three times before grand juries;

-- the scheme is to entrap him under perjury and obstruction charges; on advice of counsel, Al-Arian won't testify; his plea agreement exempts him;

-- the first two times he was held in contempt and his sentence extended; it may be extended a third time; under his agreement, he was to be released for time served and voluntarily deported on May 1, 2006; DOJ had other plans; it likely still does;

-- Al-Arian is a "war on terrorism" trophy prisoner; he was targeted for his faith, ethnicity and political activism;

-- he's been in prison since February 20, 2003; held in over a dozen maximum and other federal prison facilities, treated punitively in all of them, held in solitary confinement for 37 months, and until April 14, 2008 (most recently) was in special housing unit (SHU) isolation at the Jessup, Maryland's Howard County Detention Center.

Here's how events unfolded this month. On April 11, Al-Arian was taken to the Alexandria, VA federal courthouse, held in a holding cell for three hours, then moved to the Alexandria Detention Center. He remained there until immigration authorities (ICE) took him to Fairfax, VA for processing.

At 10PM, he was taken to the Jessup, MD Howard County Detention Center and placed in the general population, according to standard procedure.

At 1AM April 12, he was transferred to the SHU unit, held in isolation under 23-hour lockdown, forced to endure frigid temperatures, and blasted with continuous deafening sounds for maximum punitive effect.

In January 2007, Al-Arian went on hunger strike (ingesting only water after 18 total abstinence days) to protest his abusive treatment. When it ended after two months, he lost 55 pounds, was very weak, unable to walk or stand on his own, and had to be confined to a wheelchair. He also endangered his life. Al-Arian is diabetic and needs regular sustenance for his health. Prison authorities were indifferent and abusive.

On March 3, 2008, Al-Arian again went on hunger strike. It's now in its 47th day, he's lost over 34 pounds (likely much more), been denied medical treatment, then on April 14 was transferred again - this time temporarily to an ICE holdover cell before being moved again to continue his ordeal.

Before the move, his family got 30 minutes with him behind a glass partition. His wife Nahla was here from Egypt where she moved and has now returned. His daughter Laila and son Abdullah were also there. They were shocked at what they saw. His son said "He (was) far thinner and weaker than the last time (they) saw him. (They) don't know how much more of this he can take. The government needs to release him, if for nothing else, than for his life."

Mrs. Al-Arian was visibly shaken and said "He looked like he'd been through a concentration camp. We want him to stop the hunger strike but he feels he has no other choice. This indefinite imprisonment has torn our family apart. We have had to suffer through three different release dates without him ever being freed."

So far, even in ICE custody, there's no indication it's planned, justice demands it now, it's been shamelessly denied, and "His life is on the line" according to his daughter. She urges all her father's supporters to "become involved at this critical stage" and tell DOJ to "do the right thing and let him go....But there isn't much time."

On April 15, ICE agents transferred Al-Arian again - this time to the Hampton Roads Regional Jail in Portsmouth, VA. Since arriving, he's been subjected to even worse treatment than in Maryland.

Initially, he was placed in the general population. Hours later, he was moved to a segregation unit and told he was put on suicide watch because of his hunger strike. He's being treated barbarically. He was placed in a cold prison cell. His eyeglasses, clothing and undergarments were removed and replaced with a thin hospital gown. He has no bed sheets, blankets or pillows, just a hard metal bed frame supporting a one-inch thick mattress. He also has no drinking cup which is vital for water during his hunger strike.

He was told he can have one telephone call every 15 days but none from attorneys. Before being transferred, ICE officials said Hampton Roads Jail wouldn't subject him to humiliating and abusive treatment. Instead, it's worse than in Maryland, Al-Arian is greatly weakened after 46 days without food, his situation is grave, prison authorities are hostile and dismissive, and DOJ may be trying to kill him.

The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice supports Al-Arian proudly, it's backed him from the start, and it urges everyone of conscience to contact their elected officials, DOJ and DHS to demand that justice delayed him no longer be denied. His imprisonment term ended April 11, yet he remains confined. His plea bargain stipulated that his long ordeal end and that he be deported expeditiously.

The Bush administration disdains the law and shows no signs of complying. Its actions are vile and barbarous. It's up to thousands of Al-Arian supporters to act. Justice can no longer be delayed. His life now depends on it.

The US Palestine-Israel Fairytale

2008-04-20T12:46:00.000-07:00

A memorable quote in Mark Twain's Tom Sawyer Abroad (1894) still carries a wealth of relevance. He writes, "They own the [holy] land, just the mere land, and that's all they do own; but it was our folks, our Jews and Christians, that made it holy, and so they haven't any business to be there defiling it. It's a shame and we ought not to stand it a minute. We ought to march against them and take it away from them."

Recently an influential pastor, John Hagee of the Dallas's Cornerstone mega-church, followed his endorsement of Republican presidential candidate John McCain with some telling remarks. "What Senator McCain, I feel, needs to do to bring evangelicals into his camp is to make it very clear that he is a strong defender of Israel and that he has a strong 24 years of being pro-life. And I think on those two issues they will get on common ground and have a common understanding."

Such are the views of a man who has ever- growing influence among an ever-swelling culture in the US -- the evangelical Christian bloc. No mention was made of the well being of Palestinians, even Christian Palestinians, many of who are descendants of the early church.

To be sure, the human rights and needs of Palestinians are rarely addressed by American officials. On the rare occasion that they are, any expression of support must be closely followed by a strong condemnation of "Palestinian terrorism".

Welcome to America's parallel reality on Israel and Palestine, bare-faced in its defying the notions of common sense, equality and justice, ever-insistent on peeking at the Arab- Israeli conflict through a looking glass manufactured jointly in the church, in Congress and in the newsroom, where the world is reduced to characters interacting in a Hollywood-like movie set: good guys, well groomed and often white-skinned versus bad guys bearing opposite qualities.

One may become accustomed to watching, reading and listening to the chorus of support that America -- its politicians, most of its mainstream media and a large conglomerate of its churches and clergies -- tirelessly offers Israel. While the advocacy for Israel by various evangelical churches is both bizarre -- since the ultimate objective of this crowd is the annihilation of most Jews and the conversion of some as prerequisites for "the Rapture" -- and widely acknowledged, their influence on the political culture of America is not equally recognised. For example, Pastor Hagee, a televangelist to 99 million viewers, established Christians United for Israel (CUFI) in 2005 following the publication of his book, The Jerusalem Countdown: A Warning to the World.

US writer Robert Weitzel explains, "Hagee envisions CUFI as the Christian version of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby whose political clout has significant influence on US foreign policy in the Middle East."

Journalist Max Blumenthal took his cameras to the CUFI's Washington-Israel summit held July 2007, in Washington DC. The result was a documentary entitled, Rapture Ready: The Unauthorised Christians United for Israel Tour. It opens with former Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who is asked how important the Second Coming is as a factor in his support for Israel. "Obviously, it is what I live for. Really, I hope it comes tomorrow. Obviously, we need to be connected to Israel to enjoy the Second Coming of Christ."

Weitzel reports, "John Hagee is not without fawning friends in Washington. Presidential hopeful John McCain made a campaign stop at the summit and admitted to the audience that, 'it's very hard trying to do the Lord's work in the city of Satan ... ' House Minority Leader Whip Roy Blunt followed McCain to the podium and assured the faithful that 'This is a mission, this is a vision that I believe is a vision for God's time.' Senator Joe Lieberman was there and described Pastor Hagee as an 'Ish Elokim,' a man of God." Even President Bush sent his best wishes, "I appreciate CUFI members... for your passion and dedication to enhancing the relationship between the United States and Israel. Your efforts set a shining example for others ..."

While most US politicians are self-seeking, power-hungry and would do whatever it takes to be elected, the average American, though it may seem otherwise, is not born "pro-Israel" and "anti-Palestinian". Most Americans are pro the manufactured yet misleading images of Israel that reach their homes through television, wait at their doorsteps in the morning newspaper, and confront them through the web. Israel has mastery over the language of the Western media, which, again, helped create a parallel reality that has little correlation to the real world, that of facts, numbers and actual events. That alternative universe only exists on newspaper editorial pages, in mega-churches and in the blabber of Fox News "experts".

There is no serious or equitable debate regarding Palestine and Israel in the US corporate media, nor in any other US cultural, political and religious circles. If the existing narrative is to be called a debate, then it's one with an imagined, not real, language, almost entirely irrelevant to realities in Palestine and Israel; one that is largely predicated on a narrow minded, apocalyptic religious discourse that for decades has found itself an accepted point of departure for most politicians, even those who falsely pose as liberals.

Between the two discourses, that of misguided religious fantasies and pandering politicians, there maybe exists enough room for alternative narratives. Unfortunately, that space too is overwhelmed by cultural misconceptions, institutional bias and deliberate confusion introduced and instilled by media producers, pundits and other manufacturers of American popular culture.

Until the gatekeepers of US culture are seriously challenged, Palestine will continue to reside in American imagination as a battle between good and evil, a "Holy Land" that must be wrested from the hands of those who might have owned the land, at some point, but now "haven't any business to be there defiling it."

Welcome to Kosovo! The World's Newest Narco State

2008-04-15T04:37:00.000-07:00

The unilateral declaration of independence by Kosovo's Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, former warlord/commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), heralds the birth of a new European narco state.

The illegal dismemberment of Serbia, completing the U.S./EU/NATO destruction of Yugoslavia, is proclaimed by ruling elites and their sycophants as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. This provocative move, outside the framework of international law, threatens any sovereign state with similar treatment should they deviate from the "Washington consensus."

Far from bringing "peace" let alone "stability," an "independent" Kosovo will serve as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on spreading their tentacles East, further encircling Russia by penetrating the former spheres of influence of the Soviet Union.

Led by dodgy characters and war criminals such as Hashim Thaci and Agim Ceku, "independent" Kosovo is a gangster state governed by thugs with ties to Albanian drug trafficking syndicates and al-Qaeda.

Al-Qaeda, the KLA and Western Intelligence

Al-Qaeda's service to the CIA and other Western intelligence services is well-documented. Beginning in 1998 and perhaps earlier, the London-based cleric Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the "emir" of the al-Qaeda-linked Islamist group al-Muhajiroun began a recruitment drive for aspiring mujahideen for the "holy war" in Kosovo at London's notorious Finsbury Park Mosque.

On Friday, March 13, 1998 a London rally for the jihad was backed by some 50 local Islamist organizations. According to Christopher Deliso,

...the Albanian Islamic Society of London, headed by Kosovar Sheik Muhammed Stubla, was lobbying and raising money for the KLA's campaign. ... In contradiction to the KLA leadership's claims about secularism, the Kosovar sheik specifically defined the militant group as "an Albanian Islamic organisation which is determined to defend itself, its people, its homeland, and its religion with all its capabilities and by all means." ... The chief bank account for fundraising was in the London branch of terrorist-linked Habibsons Bank of Pakistan. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate, Westport: Praeger Security International, 2007, p. 43)

In 2005, in the wake of the July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks in London, it was revealed that Bakri, a probable asset of Britain's MI6, was the "spiritual" force behind the deadly attacks.

Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed reports that,

The reluctance to take decisive action against the leadership of the extremist network in the UK has a long history. According to John Loftus, a former Justice Department prosecutor, Omar Bakri and Abu Hamza, as well as the suspected mastermind of the London bombings Haroon Aswat, were all recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to draft up British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. American and French security sources corroborate the revelation. The MI6 connection raises questions about Bakri's relationship with British authorities today. Exiled to Lebanon and outside British jurisdiction, he is effectively immune to prosecution. ("Sources: August terror plot is a 'fiction' underscoring police failures," The Raw Story, Monday, September 18, 2006)

Before fleeing, Bakri defended the actions of his young dupes by proclaiming, "We don't make a distinction between civilians and non-civilians, innocents and non-innocents. Only between Muslims and unbelievers. And the life of an unbeliever has no value. It has no sanctity."

The current "secular" Prime Minister Hashim Thaci, when he served as KLA warlord was identified in media reports as having operational links to the al-Qaeda network. Such reports are not surprising when one considers that for earlier U.S./NATO "service" in Bosnia, bin Laden himself was rewarded a Bosnian passport by the "democratic" government of former Nazi and Islamist ideologue, Alija Izetbegovic.

As the Afghan-Arab database of disposable intelligence assets streamed into Kosovo, often from Albania with the active assistance of narcotrafficking gangsters under NATO supervision, they replenished the ranks of Thaci's terrorist army.

Michel Chossudovsky writes,

Mercenaries financed by Saudi Arabia and Kuwait had been fighting in Bosnia. And the Bosnian pattern was replicated in Kosovo: Mujahadeen mercenaries from various Islamic countries are reported to be fighting alongside the KLA in Kosovo. German, Turkish and Afghan instructors were reported to be training the KLA in guerrilla and diversion tactics. ... According to a Deutsche Press-Agentur report, financial support from Islamic countries to the KLA had been channelled through the former Albanian chief of the National Information Service (NIS), Bashkim Gazidede. "Gazidede, reportedly a devout Moslem who fled Albania in March of last year [1997], is presently [1998] being investigated for his contacts with Islamic terrorist organizations." ("Kosovo 'freedom fighters' financed by organised crime," World Socialist Web Site, 10 April 1999)

These links are hardly casual. On the contrary, as Peter Dale Scott avers,

The closeness of the KLA to al-Qaeda was acknowledged again in the Western press, after Afghan-connected KLA guerrillas proceeded in 2001 to conduct guerrilla warfare in Macedonia. Press accounts included an Interpol report containing the allegation that one of bin Laden's senior lieutenants was the commander of an elite KLA unit operating in Kosovo in 1999. This was probably Mohammed al-Zawahiri. (The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, p. 169)

Agim Ceku another "Prime Minister," committed massive war crimes in the Croatian region of Krajina when employed by the Croatian army as a brigadier general. As a key planner of Operation Storm, Ceku's forces massacred Serbs and presided over the largest ethnic cleansing during NATO's Yugoslavian destabilization campaign. Some 250,000 Serbs fled for their lives as Ceku's black-uniformed shock troops, many adorned with symbols of the Nazi Ustasha puppet regime during World War II were driven from Croatia.

According to Gregory Elich,

The invasion of Krajina was preceded by a thorough CIA and DIA analysis of the region. According to Balkan specialist Ivo Banac, this "tactical and intelligence support" was furnished to the Croatian Army at the beginning of its offensive. ... Two months earlier, the Pentagon contracted Military Professional Resources, Inc (MPRI) to train the Croatian military. According to a Croatian officer, MPRI advisors "lecture us on tactics and big war operations on the level of brigades, which is why we needed them for Operation Storm when we took the Krajina." Croatian sources claim that U.S. satellite intelligence was furnished to the Croatian military. Following the invasion of Krajina, the U.S. rewarded Croatia with an agreement "broadening existing cooperation" between MPRI and the Croatian military. U.S. advisors assisted in the reorganization of the Croatian Army. Referring to this reorganization in an interview with the newspaper Vecernji List, Croatian General Tihomir Blaskic said, "We are building the foundations of our organization on the traditions of the Croatian home guard" -- pro-Nazi troops in World War II. ("The Invasion of Serbian Krajina," Emperors Clothes, no date)

Following on the heels of this sterling "victory," Ceku became KLA commander in 1999 and "Prime Minister" in 2006. There is an outstanding Interpol warrant for his arrest according to Michel Chossudovsky.

The KLA: "Trained-up fierce" by Germany's KSK

As in Bosnia Herzegovina and Croatia, the Kosovo Liberation Army was secretly armed by America and Germany and remains what it has always been, a creature of Western intelligence services.

Christopher Deliso observes,

In 1996, Germany's BND established a major station in Tirana...and another in Rome to select and train future KLA fighters. According to Le Monde Diplomatique, "special forces in Berlin provided the operational training and supplied arms and transmission equipment from ex-East German Stasi stocks as well as Black uniforms." The Italian headquarters recruited Albanian immigrants passing through ports such as Brindisi and Trieste, while German military intelligence, the Militaramschirmdienst, and the Kommando Spezialkräfte Special Forces (KSK), offered military training and provisions to the KLA in the remote Mirdita Mountains of northern Albania controlled by the deposed president, Sali Berisha.

In 1996, BND Chief Geiger's deputy, Rainer Kesselring, the son of the Nazi Luftwaffe general responsible for the bombing of Belgrade in 1941 that left 17,000 dead, oversaw KSK training of Albanian recruits at a Turkish military base near Izmir. (The Coming Balkan Caliphate, Westport: Praeger Security International, 2007, pp. 37-38)

Hypocritically, while Washington had officially designated the KLA a "terrorist organization" funded by the heroin trade, the Clinton administration was complicit with their German allies in the division of the Serb province along ethnic and religious lines.

By 1998, the KLA took control of between 25 to 40 percent of the province before Serb forces wrested the KLA-held areas back. Facing imminent defeat, the Kosovo Liberation Army and allied mujahideen fighters appealed to Washington, citing the imminent danger of "ethnic cleansing" by the Serbs. Laughable on the face of it, Albanians constitute fully 90 percent of Kosovo's population, and in fact, it was the Serbs, Roma and Jews who were being brutalized by KLA hit squads, their homes torched, their churches and synagogues sacked. It was the dismantling of the KLA's terrorist infrastructure by the Yugoslav People's Army that was the trigger that prompted direct military intervention by NATO in 1999.

As in Iraq, the 78 day U.S. bombing campaign targeted critical civilian infrastructure in Serbia: bridges, factories, power plants, electrical transmission hubs, communications centers. Throughout Serbia and Kosovo itself, the U.S. scattered tons of radioactive depleted uranium munitions and tens of thousands of cluster bombs. The U.S. attack, ostensibly to "protect" Kosovo's population from Serb depredations caused some 800,000 civilians to flee NATO's devastating raids.

For Washington, drunk on the illusion that its policies had hastened the collapse of a bureaucratized and rotten Soviet system, the dismemberment of Yugoslavia would again represent the triumph of the so-called "free market" and "democracy" under the umbrella of a new international order administered by World Bank/IMF "reforms": Francis Fukuyama's short-lived "end of history." While on the opposite pole of the same ideological dead end, political Islam's tactical alliance with the West was a means to establish a bridgehead for penetration into Europe via dodgy Saudi, Kuwaiti and Gulf "charities" in pursuit of their quixotic quest of establishing a "divine" (Islamicized) capitalist order rising from the ashes of a decadent West.

Two heads, same poisonous snake.

The KLA's Links to the International Heroin Trade

In Kosovo, Hashim Thaci's KLA served as the militarized vanguard for the Albanian mafia whose "15 Families" control virtually every facet of the Balkan heroin trade. Kosovar traffickers ship heroin originating exclusively from Asia's Golden Crescent. At one end lies Afghanistan where poppy is harvested for transshipment through Iran and Turkey; as morphine base it is then refined into "product" for worldwide consumption. From there it passes into the hands of the Albanian syndicates who control the Balkan Route.

As the San Francisco Chronicle reported,

Until the war intervened, Kosovars were the acknowledged masters of the trade, credited with shoving aside the Turkish gangs that had long dominated narcotics trafficking along the Balkan Route, and effectively directing the ethnic Albanian network.

Kosovar bosses "orchestrated the traffic, regulated the rate and set the prices," according to journalist Leonardo Coen, who covers racketeering and organized crime in the Balkans for the Italian daily La Repubblica.

"The Kosovars had a 10-year head start on their cousins across the border, simply because their Yugoslav passports allowed them to travel earlier and much more widely than someone from communist Albania," said Michel Koutouzis, a senior researcher at Geopolitical Drug Watch who is regarded as Europe's leading expert on the Balkan Route.

"That allowed them to establish very efficient overseas networks through the worldwide Albanian diaspora -- and in the process, to forge ties with other underworld groups involved in the heroin trade, such as Chinese triads in Vancouver and Vietnamese in Australia," Koutouzis told The Chronicle. (Frank Viviano, "KLA Linked to Enormous Heroin Trade," Wednesday, May 5, 1999, Page A-1)

It is hardly an accident that the meteoric rise of the Kosovar families to the top of the narcotrafficking hierarchy coincided with the KLA's sudden appearance in the area in 1997.

As Peter Klebnikov observed,

As the war in Kosovo heated up, the drug traffickers began supplying the KLA with weapons procured from Eastern European and Italian crime groups in exchange for heroin. The 15 Families also lent their private armies to fight alongside the KLA. Clad in new Swiss uniforms and equipped with modern weaponry, these troops stood out among the ragtag irregulars of the KLA. In all, this was a formidable aid package. It's therefore not surprising, say European law enforcement officials, that the faction that ultimately seized power in Kosovo -- the KLA under Hashim Thaci -- was the group that maintained the closest links to traffickers. "As the biggest contributors, the drug traffickers may have gotten the most influence in running the country," says Koutouzis. ("Heroin Heroes," Mother Jones, January/February 2000)

As is well-known, U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely on far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to facilitate the dirty work. Throughout its Balkan operations the CIA made liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and provide them with targets.

The rest is history, as they say.

Kosovo Today

Has anything changed in the intervening years? Hardly. In fact, the vise-like grip of the Albanian mafia over narcotics, human trafficking and arms smuggling has cemented the "15 Families" place atop Europe's hierarchy of crime, an essential arm of the capitalist deep state.

Considering NATO and the UN's lofty mandate to bring "peace and stability" to the region through "democracy promotion" and "institution building," what does the balance sheet reveal?

According to regional experts the outlook for Kosovo is grim. The economy is in shambles, unemployment hovers near 50 percent, a population of young people with "criminality as the sole career choice" populate a society tottering on the brink of collapse where the state is dominated by organized crime.

According to former New York Times reporter David Binder, citing a 124-page investigation by the Institute for European Policy commissioned by the German Bundeswehr,

"It is a Mafia society" based on "capture of the state" by criminal elements. ("State capture" is a term coined in 2000 by a group of World Bank analysts to describe countries where government structures have been seized by corrupt financial oligarchies. This study applied the term to Montenegro's Milo Djukanovic, by way of his cigarette smuggling and to Slovenia, with the arms smuggling conducted by Janez Jansa). In Kosovo, it says, "There is a need for thorough change of the elite."

Fat chance that happening anytime soon! Binder reports:

In the authors' definition, Kosovan organized crime "consists of multimillion-Euro organizations with guerrilla experience and espionage expertise." They quote a German intelligence service report of "closest ties between leading political decision makers and the dominant criminal class" and name Ramush Haradinaj, Hashim Thaci and Xhavit Haliti as compromised leaders who are "internally protected by parliamentary immunity and abroad by international law." They scornfully quote the UNMIK chief from 2004-2006, Soeren Jessen Petersen, calling Haradinaj "a close and personal friend." UNMIK, they add "is in many respects an element of the local problem scene."

The study sharply criticizes the United States for "abetting the escape of criminals" in Kosovo as well as "preventing European investigators from working." This has made Americans "vulnerable to blackmail." It notes "secret CIA detention centers" at Camp Bondsteel and assails American military training for Kosovo (Albanian) police by Dyncorp, authorized by the Pentagon. ("Kosovo Auf Deutsch," Balkan Analysis, November 18, 2007)

As we can readily observe in other climes, the interpenetration of the state by criminal elites serve as the preferred mechanism to cement a "public-private partnership" founded on corruption, maintained by brute force solely for purposes of resource extraction, pipeline politics, military bases and the geopolitical advantage gained over "market" rivals.

As the U.S. Embassy burns in Belgrade, all in all, its another "Mission Accomplished" moment for the United States.

Who Is Blocking Peace In Darfur?

2008-04-15T04:33:00.000-07:00

The tragic, years-long conflict that has raged in Sudan's three Darfur states, is again competing for headlines, as new estimates on the number of dead are being debated, and yet another United Nations Security Council resolution (1591), is on the table. But neither haggling over figures, nor casting blame and meting out new punishment, is the issue: the issue is peace must be brought to the war-torn region. And for that to happen, key international players backing the rebels, must change course.

Jan Egeland, the former Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, and now advisor to Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, told Associated Press March 28 (www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23848444/) that he thought the figures he had given in 2006, of 200,000 dead, should be revised upward, to double that number. Although the anti-Sudan "genocide lobby" seized on the statement, demanding that Sudan allow new mortality studies to be conducted, Christina Bennett, a spokeswoman for Egeland's successor John Holmes, made the point that their organization was less concerned with statistics, and they were "working as hard as we can to assist the living." And a leading World Health Organization coordinator Richard Garfield, said that, on the basis of surveys conducted throughout last year, "Darfur is not experiencing the very high levels of mortality it was experiencing only a few years ago."

The numbers game has been cynically exploited by organizations and personalities who allege that the Sudanese government has been involved in genocide, i.e. systematic killing of the people of Darfur. These groups, led by "Save Darfur," represent largely a coalition of interests usually labelled the "Zionist lobby" in the U.S., the Christian fundamentalist right wing, and several misled African-American organizations.

(www.savedarfur.org/pages/organizational_members/). (1)

Prominent spokesmen of this grouping, like Board of Directors member John Prendergast, along with "independent" researchers like Eric Reeves of Smith College, have been unmasked as biased propagandists by Dr. David Hoile, author of "Darfur in Perspective." Hoile, who recently spoke on the issue at an international conference in Khartoum, has documented how such claims of genocide have been contradicted by the highly reputable Medecins Sans Frontiers, a doctors' organization which, unlike those claiming genocide, actually has thousands of personnel on the ground throughout Darfur.(2)

The same groups argue that the Sudanese government is deploying "Arab" militias against "black African Darfurians," an allegation belied by demographic facts, as documented by Hoile and dozens of others. The real nature of the conflict is far more simple, and yet more complex at the same time. Most important, it is a region populated by about 80 clans and tribes, both nomadic and sedentary, who have engaged in conflicts periodically over increasingly scarce water and land resources. Between 1932 and 2001, there were 36 such major conflicts, 25 of them between 1966-2000, which according to the Wali's office of North Darfur state, "were always in the control of Darafur's native, social and wise leadership."(3) However, beginning in the 1990s, the conflicts took on a completely new character, as political forces reorganized tribal groups into rebel movements, challenging not each other, but the federal government.

A crucial development was the declaration of the Darfur Liberation Army in 2002 against the government and the transformation of the same group into the Sudan Liberation Army (SLA), which elected its leaders in October of that year: Abd al-Wahid al-Nur, of the Fur tribe, was chairman, Abdalla Abakkar of the Zaghawa was chief of staff, and Mansour Arbab, from the Massaleit, became deputy chairman. Earlier, another political rebel formation, the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) came into being, led by Dr. Khalil Ibrahim, reputedly close to the Zaghawa, and, more significant, close to Islamist leader Dr. Hassan al-Turabi.

In Hoile's analysis, Turabi is a central figure in the conflict. In 1999, after he had challenged the leadership of President Omar al-Bashir, and manuevred separately with rebel forces in the southern Sudan conflict, Turabi and the national leadership (largely made up of his students) parted ways; the National Congress party split in 2000-2001, and Turabi set up a separate Popular Congress Party, taking with him many in the youth movement, in the military wing and the financial apparatus. Turabi's support for the JEM was no secret, just as his relations with the Southern Sudanese rebels had also been common knowledge. In fact, the SPLA, then led by the late John Garang, agreed to train the Darfur rebels. This, however, was not the only political factor in the Darfur rebellion: if Turabi has been involved in the JEB, the SLA has enjoyed support from foreign forces from Eritrea, Chad and, reportedly, Libya. The ruling elite in Chad to which President Idriss Deby belongs, is made up of the Zaghawas, who are prominent in ther SLA. The French, who have been historically linked to Chad, are also on that side of the barricades.

Although the international press linked to the "genocide lobby," continued to churn out reports of Khartoum-backed Arabs against black Africans in Darfur, the fact that both the JEM and SLA were enagaged in killing policemen in 2003, indicated a different dynamic. In 2004, they were targetting development and education projects of the federal government. Attempts at peace were made by the Goverment of Sudan in 2002, when it convened a conference of Fur tribes and a year later, the Chad government offered to mediate. On April 8, 2004, a Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement was reached, whereby hostilites should cease, and in coordination with the international community, especially the African Union, global peace would be sought, while vital humanitarian goods would be delivered to the internally displaced. By October of that year, the AU had strengthened its peacekeeping force (AMIS) with African troops.

The problem was that the rebels did not want to talk of peace. In July 2004, both JEB and SLA refused to go to Chad for peace talks. A protocol signed in Abuja in August-September, ensured that the Sudanese government would endorse the deployment of 3,000 AU peacekeeping troops, but the rebels refused to sign a humanitarian aid agreement. Talks on peace continued on and off again, in Abuja through 2004 and 2005, until a declaration of principles was signed in Summer-Fall.

The problem today continues to be that the rebel forces, aided and abetted by their outside supporters, are refusing any program for peace. To grasp what is going on here, on must consider the fact that, also in 2005, the Sudanese government signed a Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) with the southern Sudanese rebels, ending a war that had devastated the country for decades. The CPA constituted a major achievement, entailing power and resource sharing. For years, Khartoum had sought and conducted talks with the rebels, in multiple venues, and the salient feature of the negotiations was that, just as progress seemed to be on the horizon, the SPLA/M representative(s), on advice of their international backers, would abandon the discussions.

The 2005 CPA itself was the outcome of a long negotiating process. It is absolutely crucial to note that, just as visible progress towards such an agreement was being made in 2003, suddenly the Darafur conflict escalated out of all proportion. It was as if those outside forces seeking to destroy the unity and sovereignty of Sudan, had opened up a new front once they saw that peace might be on the agenda between north and south. In the on-again-off-again talks between Khartoum and the Darfur rebels, a similar modus operandi has been adopted, as that seen in the talks with the SPLA/M. As soon as one group seems to agree with Khartoum, other groups say no; and then further splinter groups are hatched to adopt further, differentiated positions. Thus, for example, when the Sudanese government signed the Darfur Peace Agreement (DPA) on May 5, 2006, with the SLA group led by Minni Arkou Minawi, the other SLA faction of Abdel Wahid Mohammad al-Nur refused, as did the JEM. On July 15, Khartoum signed another agreement with a JEM faction led by Ibrahim Yahia Abdelrahman, but other groups refused. As a leading political figurte told me in Khartoum, the problem has been that the rebel groups, instead of coming together as two or three main factions to negotiate, continue to splinter and split, thus making talks impossible. Thus, when JEM leader Khalil Ibrahim, according to Sudan Tribune on March 19, called for separate talks with the Sudanese government, mediated by Kofi Annan, Khartoum refused, on grounds that if it, the government, negotiates with one voice, then only the existing AU-UN joint mechanism could be used.

Clearly, if peace is to be achieved, those foreign backers of the various factions must pressure their pawns to get serious. The peace treaty signed between Sudan and Chad on March 13 could provide the context for Chad, and its French friends, to seek a negotiated settlement to Darfur. France subsequently organized a meeting in Geneva between Abdel Wahid al-Nur and representatives of the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council, as well as the AU and UN envoys to Darfur. This was reportedly to present the rebels' demands for talks; to date, the rebels have demanded that all hostilities cease before they come to the negotiating table. At the same time, if al-Turabi is indeed still a factor behind the JEM, then recent reports (by Sudan tribune March 24) about a possible rapprochement between his Popular Congress Party and the government, may not be without significance. If international forces are not willing to contrinbute to a settlement, then the Sudanese government may seek a "domestic option," that is, to pursue peace through direct talks, in expectation of international endorsement after the fact.

Meanwhile, civilians in Darfur continue to suffer. The humanitarian aid effort underway is massive. According to reports presented at the Sudanese-European Forum, there are an estimated 250 aid organizations engaged, of which 78 are European NGOs. Their staffs have grown from 800 to 15,000 over recent years, including a large number of Europeans. Sudanese spokesmen stress that it would be important to hire more nationals and train them, than to import foreign staff. They also emphasize that, although the European Union contribution to aid has been impressive, such aid also carries with it the danger of rendering the economy dependant on outside help. Better, they say, would be to contribute technology, or to promote direct economic investments in the region, to revive the local economy. Instead of food aid, they say, send tractors.

The camps organized with EU help, for internally displaced persons, have, to be sure, provided shelter, food and basic social services; but if they become permanent, then the objective of helping IDPs to return to their homes, which all sides pursue, will be undermined. The Wali of North Darfur estimates that there are 163,315 IDPs in camps there, and another 287,276 outside camps, for a total of just under a half million IDPs. During 2007, reportedly 28,643 persons returned volontarily to their homes, and in the current year, 14,344 families have indicated their willingness to return. In accordance with the CPA which ended the north-south conflict, priorities have been placed on returning refugees to their homes in the south; yet, as the Sudanese press candidly reports, the task is rendered difficult by the lack of adequate infrastructure in the areas to which people want to return.

There is no doubt that these and related problems can be dealt with satisfactorily. The central question is establishing peace for the entire country, which means now, between Darfur and the central government. If the international backers of the various rebel groups were serious about peace, they would create the conditions for negotiations to take place among the representative parties, with the Darfur rebels speaking with one voice. If they do not do so, the conclusion must be that they are further committed to fomenting war, with all the human suffering that entails, in the interests of breaking up the nation of Sudan into several separate entities, in a regional geopolitical gamble aimed at destabilization and raw materials resources theft.

Notes

1) This author had the opportunity to witness how African-American political figures in the U.S. have been manipulated by such propaganda. In 1996, I accompanied two delegations of U.S. state legislators, mainly African-Americans, on fact-finding missions to Sudan, to investigate allegations of slavery, as launched by the British organization of Baroness Cox, Christian Solidarity International. The delegations visited the Nuba Mountains and other areas, and, after lengthy discussions with local leaders and inhabitants, concluded that the charges of slavery were hoked-up. It was later independently shown that Cox et al had actually organized some Sudanese individuals to pose as slave-traders, "selling" children, in return for greatly appreciated U.S. dollars. CSI was later divested of its status at the U.N.

2) Dr. David Hoile, Darfur In Perspective, Europe-Sudanese Political Action Council, 2005.

3) The delegates to the Sudanese-European Forum held in Khartoum, March 10-12, which this author attended, visited North Darfur on March 13, to meet with local officials and see the camp for IDPs there. As the representative of the General Secretariat's office, who briefed the group, noted, there have been over 415 external delegations which have visited the area between 2003 and 2007. These have included UN, AU, EU and US delegations, diplomats, government officials, media and medical personnel.

Oil for Iraqi citizens

2008-04-15T04:29:00.000-07:00

Precedent exists in international law that could explode the US occupation of Iraq, its genocidal strategy, and be a step towards healing the wounds of the Iraqi nation.

Some 4.7 million Iraqi citizens -- one fifth of the population -- have been forcibly displaced, within and outside their country, by the US occupation and the policies of the sectarian governments it installed since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. It is a human catastrophe, a national tragedy, and a destabilising factor for the region. This exodus has been labelled "the fastest growing humanitarian crisis on the planet", unprecedented in size since the 1948 Nakba that uprooted at least one million Palestinians from their land.

While propaganda boasts about some 25,000 returnees, the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the primary international agency responsible for refugees, warned last month that conditions for the safe return of Iraqis were not met on the ground and that the few who returned in November 2007 did not do so -- contrary to what the so-called government in Iraq pretends -- because of security improvements in Iraq, but rather because their means of survival are deteriorating gravely elsewhere. Among the main reasons leading some to return are harsh new restrictions on residency permits in hosting countries, denials of access to schooling and higher education for their children, and the depletion of emergency savings. Many returnees found that others were occupying their homes in Iraq, forcing them to look yet again for shelter. The government in Iraq finally acknowledged that it could not sustain massive return were it to take place.

The 4.7 million Iraqi refugees who fled for their lives, uprooted from their homes by the disproportionate force used by the occupation and campaigns of ethnic cleansing carried out by militias affiliated to its sectarian governments, are living testimony to the inhuman -- and anti- human rights -- American invasion and occupation of Iraq. At least 1.5 million Iraqis have been brutally murdered, thousands disappeared or detained, hundreds of thousands widowed. The modern Iraqi educated middle class, vital now and in the future to run the state, the economy, and build Iraqi culture, has been decimated. Following systematic assassinations, imprisonment, military raids and sieges, threats and discrimination, most of what remained of that class left the country. The absence of this middle class has resulted in the breakdown of all public services for the entirety of Iraqi society. No propaganda can call the occupation a success while so many people are suffering its consequences.

Of the 4.7 million displaced, four fifths are women and children. All have inadequate or non- existent access to security, food, shelter, education, sanitation, health, and basic necessities such as water and electricity. In addition to the brain drain that Iraq suffered since the start of the occupation, whether through systematic killings or displacement, refugee children are currently losing their universal right to education in being unable to attend schools. It is an individual tragedy for refugees and a disaster for the future of Iraq. UNHCR is dramatically under-financed to meet the needs of these millions displaced. It has made repeated pleas for enhanced international donations to support its basic functioning and the fulfilment of its humanitarian mission.

While Iraqi refugees cannot safely return home, they cannot wait until violence ends in Iraq for their needs to be met. The key hosting countries bearing the millions of displaced Iraqis are home already to large refugee populations and are developing economies. With their own citizens suffering unemployment, Iraqi refugees are denied work permits and permanent residency. In addition, these key hosting states are not signatories to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, and therefore not bound by its principles -- even in instances denying the customary international legal obligation of non-refoulement (prohibition on the expulsion of refugees to an area where they may face persecution). As a consequence, Iraqis are denied status, considered tourists with no recognised passport or residence, and left economically and socially vulnerable. All indicators of social desperation are present while reports of increasing resort to degrading means of survival keep arising.

According to international humanitarian and human rights law, the international community, the occupying powers, and the government in Iraq are legally bound to support and protect Iraqi refugees. Neither the occupation with the governments it has installed nor individual states and the international community have met their legal and moral obligations towards displaced Iraqis or the countries hosting them. Iraqi refugees are temporarily displaced Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, the right to benefit from national resources, and the right to return to their homes. They are protected persons under The Hague Regulations and the Geneva Conventions, as well as several instruments of international law that relate to refugees.

IRAQI INTERNATIONAL INITIATIVE ON REFUGEES: On 25 November 2007, the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees ( www.3iii.org ) issued a proposal to support, protect and defend refugees and their rights as Iraqi citizens by changing the financing system of responsible agencies and hosting countries. The proposal asks the UN Security Council to pass a resolution requiring that the Iraqi state allocate part of the revenue from Iraqi oil -- in proportion with the number of Iraqi citizens temporarily displaced -- for Iraqi refugees in hosting countries.

Such a resolution is urgently needed, legally justified and politically appropriate. It is the only efficient way for the country of origin and the international community to fulfil their legal and moral obligations towards both Iraqi refugees and hosting countries while preserving the rights of refugees and their dignity as Iraqi citizens. Further, such a resolution is not only justified but respecting of existing jurisprudence on state responsibility and refugee protection, while in accordance with the primary mission of the UN to preserve international peace and security, protect civilian populations and enhance human civilisation. No legal objection can be raised against this proposal. Moreover, an example of redistributing national resources equitably by means of a UN Security Council resolution exists in the case of Iraq.

In 1991, Turkey shut its borders to the flow of refugees coming mainly from northern Iraq, refusing to apply the principle of non- refoulement. As a consequence, the UN Security Council, realising this principle wasn't sufficient to protect the refugee population, instituted new practices in refugee protection. Article 8b of UN Security Council Resolution 986 of 1995 obliged the Iraqi state to allocate part of Iraqi national resources to the population not under the authority of the Iraqi government (the three northern governorates). This resolution was passed on humanitarian grounds, in order "to ensure equitable distribution of humanitarian relief to all segments of Iraqi society", including to Iraqi citizens who were residing in the three northern governorates that were not administratively supervised by the central government. Current Iraqi refugees are in the same situation of being outside the supervision of the central government governing Iraq.

UN Security Council resolutions 1314 and 1325 further emphasised the tendency in international jurisprudence on the protection of refugee populations to insist on the responsibility of states to assist civilians, including refugees and the displaced. This tendency is further reflected in UNHCR appeals and the final declaration of the World Summit in 2005. Resolutions 986, 1314 and 1325 created a legal precedent that obliges and allows the UNSC to draft and pass a resolution now requiring the allocation of a proportionate part of Iraqi oil revenues to current Iraqi refugees, so as to protect their human rights and in the knowledge that Iraqi oil is the property of all Iraqis, inside or outside Iraq, as established by UNSC Resolution 986.

UNDERCUTTING THE LOGIC OF VIOLENCE: As well as establishing the duty to protect, international jurisprudence on refugees often places emphasis on helping the country of origin to eradicate the causes of violence that displaces the population. The proposal of the Iraqi International Initiative on refugees adheres to this logic too. US policy towards Iraq, since 1991, has been to destroy its political, military and economic capacities in an attempt to divide it into three or more entities in order to seize its natural resources. The ethnic cleansing currently taking place under the orchestration of the US occupation is intrinsically linked to the latter's attempt to control Iraq's resources by promoting and manipulating sectarian identities.

From the first day of the occupation the US supported sectarian forces, themselves sufficiently weak, illegitimate and conflicted that they are unable to create a functioning state, therefore requiring the never-ending help, presence, protection and direction of the US itself. The so- called political process in which these forces participate is only tolerated so long as it oversees and ensures the dismantlement of the unified and sovereign Iraqi state, its institutions and infrastructure; dismembers Iraqi society and its social fabric along sectarian and confessional lines; and helps the occupation in repressing the national popular resistance of the Iraqi people. This strategy was pursued throughout the occupation as a means to destroy Iraq both as a state and as a nation, to subjugate its people into surrendering their national resources to US corporations and interests.

Yet despite 15 years of continuous attempts to subjugate Iraq and its people, whether through economic sanctions, war of aggression or occupation, US policy failed. By 2006, the occupation opted to delegate to the various sectarian forces and militias it had promoted the task of forcibly uprooting the local resilient population, thereafter seizing their resources. The political process and the ethnic cleansing it perpetrates is but an instrumentalised power struggle among various sectarian factions competing for the political and/or economic rewards granted by the occupation for depriving the Iraqi people of their sovereignty by displacing them and achieving local control over areas and attendant resources.

Whole areas have been purged of resident minorities by one militia or another, effectively changing the demographic make-up of entire regions and neighbourhoods, especially in Baghdad, while keeping one of the collaborating militia in control in any given locale, over the people and its resources. Though sectarianism starts with attacking minorities and the weak, it soon spreads to all components of society, as each can be, somewhere, a majority or a minority. The occupation itself changes its affiliations as it doesn't need to consider itself permanently bound to the respective agendas of each faction and defends only its own interest. This criminal strategy ensures a never-ending cycle of violence that can only be stopped by the end of its root cause: the US occupation. By now, all Iraqis have been affected -- all sections of Iraqi society have been forced to flee.

While the occupation uses forcible displacement as a means of blackmail to, alternately, terrorise the population, destabilise hosting countries and plunder Iraq's wealth, a UNSC resolution requiring the Iraqi state allocate the proportionate and legitimate share of Iraqi national wealth to Iraqi refugees would effectively deny the occupation its goals and deprive its sectarian forces of the benefits of displacing the population for economic or political gains. It would render the entire tactic of forcible displacement obsolete, as its victims would be guaranteed their share of national revenue by law as well as right.

THE OBLIGATION TO ACT: The UN Security Council, as the highest UN body, has the political, legal and moral duty and authority to act to protect the millions of displaced Iraqis. Following 13 years of disastrous UN-imposed sanctions that according to two former UN assistant secretary-generals satisfied the definition of genocide under international law, the UN Security Council failed to act to protect the state and people of Iraq, or condemn and censure those responsible for launching an illegal war of aggression against a member state of the United Nations. Its silence on the horrendous human and material cost paid by Iraqis since the illegal 2003 US invasion is not only shameful but also criminal.

A UNSC resolution on Iraqi refugees would end the complicity of the UN in this crime, expose the occupation's illegality and hypocrisy, as well as the barbaric and inhuman nature of the policies the US has been pursuing in Iraq since its illegal invasion in 2003. If we are to re- establish a peaceful international order, US imperialism must be constrained. It promotes sectarianism everywhere. It then uses the plight of those made refugees by sectarian violence as a political tool to blackmail and destabilise both countries of origin and hosting countries. Finally, it uses refugees as a justification for "humanitarian" intervention, regardless of state sovereignty, while obscuring the massive humanitarian crises it generates by its own sectarian policies.

As shown by UNHCR figures, most displaced Iraqis refuse to be treated as refugees. They consider being granted status and resettled a de facto victory for the occupation and its policies of pushing the population out of Iraq and depriving it of its national rights. All Iraqis know the occupation's plans have failed completely and cannot be recovered. As Iraqi citizens, they know they are sovereign over the resources of Iraq, now and in the future. Further, they are conscious collectively of the dramatic situation of their Palestinian sisters and brothers who, despite having been guaranteed the unalienable right of return by UN Resolution 194, have been denied return for nearly 60 years. While their right is being bargained by some and used as political blackmail by others, they are forced to live in camps and from international charity. Iraqis refuse to lose their rights in Iraq, or accept the humiliation of having to beg while they are sovereign over one of the most resource-rich countries in the world. They hope Iraq will be liberated soon, allowing them to return home safely.

Finally, a UNSC resolution as described would protect and defend the Iraqi people's rights while defending universal human values. It would enhance the permanent sovereignty of the Iraqi people over their national resources, thereby derailing the primary goals of aggressive imperialist states of forcing smaller states' economies, their population and resources, into submission by military means. This would be a victory for humanity worldwide while upholding the endangered superiority of law and the duty to protect human life above private or exclusive state, corporate and individual interests.

While protecting the sovereign rights of Iraq and its people, now and in the future, a UNSC resolution as described would condemn the feudal plague of sectarianism, binding the future and destiny of Iraqi citizens together as members of the same state and nation, benefiting equally from the distribution of its national resources. Unfortunately for the occupation, while there are religious and cultural differences among Iraqi refugees, all are Iraqi citizens with protected rights, and all are bound to each other by the past, present and future of their nation as well as their common situation and destiny. By considering and treating all as equal citizens of a unified state free from all forms of discrimination, whether ethnic, confessional or of gender, a UNSC resolution as described would pave the way for a sane basis for healing Iraq's wounds as a nation, also upholding the concept of citizenship -- the basis of any modern state -- against the occupation's current tribal, sectarian and feudal concept of identity. It would be a preventive action against the politics of divide and rule and the use of ethnic cleansing as a political instrument to control the common riches of a people.

The UNSC should draft and pass a resolution as described if it wants to rehabilitate itself from its consistent failure to uphold its own legal charter, protect the people of Iraq and state of Iraq, as well as international peace and stability. Such a resolution defends the principle of equality before law, the permanent sovereignty of people over their national resources, and the unalienable right of refugees to return to their homes, thereby giving the UNSC opportunity to break away from its perpetual double standards in the implementation of international justice.

Iraqis have paid a price that leaves one wordless in defending human life and values. Humanity should feel responsible for protecting these people in their heroic struggle for national liberation and take immediate steps to defend their rights and their sovereignty.

Tibet: Not You! You!!!

2008-04-15T04:24:00.000-07:00

"Hey! Take your hands off me! Not you! You!!!" - the voice of a young woman in the darkened cinema, an old joke.

"Hey! Take your hands off Tibet!" the international chorus is crying out, "But not from Chechnya! Not from the Basque homeland! And certainly not from Palestine!" And that is not a joke.

LIKE EVERYBODY else, I support the right of the Tibetan people to independence, or at least autonomy. Like everybody else, I condemn the actions of the Chinese government there. But unlike everybody else, I am not ready to join in the demonstrations.

Why? Because I have an uneasy feeling that somebody is washing my brain, that what is going on is an exercise in hypocrisy.

I don't mind a bit of manipulation. After all, it is not by accident that the riots started in Tibet on the eve of the Olympic Games in Beijing. That's alright. A people fighting for their freedom have the right to use any opportunity that presents itself to further their struggle.

I support the Tibetans in spite of it being obvious that the Americans are exploiting the struggle for their own purposes. Clearly, the CIA has planned and organized the riots, and the American media are leading the world-wide campaign. It is a part of the hidden struggle between the US, the reigning super-power, and China, the rising super-power - a new version of the "Great Game" that was played in central Asia in the 19th century by the British Empire and Russia. Tibet is a token in this game.

I am even ready to ignore the fact that the gentle Tibetans have carried out a murderous pogrom against innocent Chinese, killing women and men and burning homes and shops. Such detestable excesses do happen during a liberation struggle.

No, what is really bugging me is the hypocrisy of the world media. They storm and thunder about Tibet. In thousands of editorials and talk-shows they heap curses and invective on the evil China. It seems as if the Tibetans are the only people on earth whose right to independence is being denied by brutal force, that if only Beijing would take its dirty hands off the saffron-robed monks, everything would be alright in this, the best of all possible worlds.

THERE IS no doubt that the Tibetan people are entitled to rule their own country, to nurture their unique culture, to promote their religious institutions and to prevent foreign settlers from submerging them.

But are not the Kurds in Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria entitled to the same? The inhabitants of Western Sahara, whose territory is occupied by Morocco? The Basques in Spain? The Corsicans off the coast of France? And the list is long.

Why do the world's media adopt one independence struggle, but often cynically ignore another independence struggle? What makes the blood of one Tibetan redder than the blood of a thousand Africans in East Congo?

Again and again I try to find a satisfactory answer to this enigma. In vain.

Immanuel Kant demanded of us: "Act as if the principle by which you act were about to be turned into a universal law of nature." (Being a German philosopher, he expressed it in much more convoluted language.) Does the attitude towards the Tibetan problem conform to this rule? Does it reflect our attitude towards the struggle for independence of all other oppressed peoples?

Not at all.

WHAT, THEN, causes the international media to discriminate between the various liberation struggles that are going on throughout the world?

Here are some of the relevant considerations:

Do the people seeking independence have an especially exotic culture?
Are they an attractive people, i.e. "sexy" in the view of the media?
Is the struggle headed by a charismatic personality who is liked by the media?
It the oppressing government disliked by the media?
Does the oppressing government belong to the pro-American camp? This is an important factor, since the United States dominates a large part of the international media, and its news agencies and TV networks largely define the agenda and the terminology of the news coverage.
Are economic interests involved in the conflict?
Does the oppressed people have gifted spokespersons, who are able to attract attention and manipulate the media?

FROM THESE points of view, there is nobody like the Tibetans. They enjoy ideal conditions.

Fringed by the Himalayas, they are located in one of the most beautiful landscapes on earth. For centuries, just to get there was an adventure. Their unique religion arouses curiosity and sympathy. Its non-violence is very attractive and elastic enough to cover even the ugliest atrocities, like the recent pogrom. The exiled leader, the Dalai Lama, is a romantic figure, a media rock-star. The Chinese regime is hated by many - by capitalists because it is a Communist dictatorship, by Communists because it has become capitalist. It promotes a crass and ugly materialism, the very opposite of the spiritual Buddhist monks, who spend their time in prayer and meditation.

When China builds a railway to the Tibetan capital over a thousand inhospitable kilometers, the West does not admire the engineering feat, but sees (quite rightly) an iron monster that brings hundreds of thousands of Han-Chinese settlers to the occupied territory.

And of course, China is a rising power, whose economic success threatens America's hegemony in the world. A large part of the ailing American economy already belongs directly or indirectly to China. The huge American Empire is sinking hopelessly into debt, and China may soon be the biggest lender. American manufacturing industry is moving to China, taking millions of jobs with it.

Compared to these factors, what have the Basques, for example, to offer? Like the Tibetans, they inhabit a contiguous territory, most of it in Spain, some of it in France. They, too, are an ancient people with their own language and culture. But these are not exotic and do not attract special notice. No prayer wheels. No robed monks.

The Basques do not have a romantic leader, like Nelson Mandela or the Dalai Lama. The Spanish state, which arose from the ruins of Franco's detested dictatorship, enjoys great popularity around the world. Spain belongs to the European Union, which is more or less in the American camp, sometimes more, sometimes less.

The armed struggle of the Basque underground is abhorred by many and is considered "terrorism", especially after Spain has accorded the Basques a far-reaching autonomy. In these circumstances, the Basques have no chance at all of gaining world support for independence.

The Chechnyans should have been in a better position. They, too, are a separate people, who have for a long time been oppressed by the Czars of the Russian Empire, including Stalin and Putin. But alas, they are Muslims - and in the Western world, Islamophobia now occupies the place that had for centuries been reserved for anti-Semitism. Islam has turned into a synonym for terrorism, it is seen as a religion of blood and murder. Soon it will be revealed that Muslims slaughter Christian children and use their blood for baking Pitta. (In reality it is, of course, the religion of dozens of vastly different peoples, from Indonesia to Morocco and from Kosova to Zanzibar.

The US does not fear Moscow as it fears Beijing. Unlike China, Russia does not look like a country that could dominate the 21st century. The West has no interest in renewing the Cold War, as it has in renewing the Crusades against Islam. The poor Chechnyans, who have no charismatic leader or outstanding spokespersons, have been banished from the headlines. For all the world cares, Putin can hit them as much as he wants, kill thousands and obliterate whole towns.

That does not prevent Putin from supporting the demands of Abkhazia and South Ossetia for separation from Georgia, a country which infuriates Russia.

IF IMMANUEL KANT knew what's going on in Kosova, he would be scratching his head.

The province demanded its independence from Serbia, and I, for one, supported that with all my heart. This is a separate people, with a different culture (Albanian) and its own religion (Islam). After the popular Serbian leader, Slobodan Milosevic, tried to drive them out of their country, the world rose and provided moral and material support for their struggle for independence.

The Albanian Kosovars make up 90% of the citizens of the new state, which has a population of two million. The other 10% are Serbs, who want no part of the new Kosova. They want the areas they live in to be annexed to Serbia. According to Kant's maxim, are they entitled to this?

I would propose a pragmatic moral principle: Every population that inhabits a defined territory and has a clear national character is entitled to independence. A state that wants to keep such a population must see to it that they feel comfortable, that they receive their full rights, enjoy equality and have an autonomy that satisfies their aspirations. In short: that they have no reason to desire separation.

That applies to the French in Canada, the Scots in Britain, the Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere, the various ethnic groups in Africa, the indigenous peoples in Latin America, the Tamils in Sri Lanka and many others. Each has a right to choose between full equality, autonomy and independence.

THIS LEADS us, of course, to the Palestinian issue.

In the competition for the sympathy of the world media, the Palestinians are unlucky. According to all the objective standards, they have a right to full independence, exactly like the Tibetans. They inhabit a defined territory, they are a specific nation, a clear border exists between them and Israel. One must really have a crooked mind to deny these facts.

But the Palestinians are suffering from several cruel strokes of fate: The people that oppress them claim for themselves the crown of ultimate victimhood. The whole world sympathizes with the Israelis because the Jews were the victims of the most horrific crime of the Western world. That creates a strange situation: the oppressor is more popular than the victim. Anyone who supports the Palestinians is automatically suspected of anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial.

Also, the great majority of the Palestinians are Muslims (nobody pays attention to the Palestinian Christians). Since Islam arouses fear and abhorrence in the West, the Palestinian struggle has automatically become a part of that shapeless, sinister threat, "international terrorism". And since the murders of Yasser Arafat and Sheik Ahmed Yassin, the Palestinians have no particularly impressive leader - neither in Fatah nor in Hamas.

The world media are shedding tears for the Tibetan people, whose land is taken from them by Chinese settlers. Who cares about the Palestinians, whose land is taken from them by our settlers?

In the world-wide tumult about Tibet, the Israeli spokespersons compare themselves - strange as it sounds - to the poor Tibetans, not to the evil Chinese. Many think this quite logical.

If Kant were dug up tomorrow and asked about the Palestinians, he would probably answer: "Give them what you think should be given to everybody, and don't wake me up again to ask silly questions."

President Removes the Chief Justice. Why?

2008-04-10T21:40:00.000-07:00

In a rather shocking move, the President, Gen. Perzez Musharraf just dismissed the current Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry for alleged “misuse of authority.”

The president has submitted a case against Chaudhry to the Supreme Judicial Council. Musharraf had received “numerous complaints and serious allegations for misconduct, misuse of authority and actions prejudicial to the dignity of office of the chief justice of Pakistan,” and Chaudhry had been unable to give a satisfactory explanation, sources said. The report did not specify what he was accused of. The council is a panel of top Pakistani judges that adjudicates cases brought against serving judges and will decide whether the charges against Chaudhry merit his formal dismissal and whether he should be prosecuted.

Basing their story on the Associated Press of Pakistan, the BBC reports further:

Mr Chaudhry was summoned to explain himself to Gen Musharraf and Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz. His case was then referred to the Supreme Judicial Council which will decide if Mr Chaudhry should be prosecuted.

The move has shocked many, but signs of its coming can now be identified in hindsight. Mr. Chaudhry had served as the Chief Justice since 2005 and, on occasion, had taken steps that had irked the power structure in Pakistan.

Last June, the Supreme Court rejected a government move to sell 75 percent of state-owned Pakistan Steel Mills to a Saudi-Russian-Pakistani consortium for 21.7 billion rupees ($362 million). Mill workers claimed it was greatly undervalued. Also, Chaudhry has heard a landmark case brought by relatives of dozens of people believed taken into secret custody by Pakistani intelligence agencies. The chief justice has pressed the government to provide information on the detainees whereabouts. Talat Masood, a political analyst, said the removal of Chaudhry demonstrated the power of the military and suggested that Musharraf’s government wanted to have a “pliable judiciary” ahead of parliamentary elections expected later this year. Musharraf, who took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, is widely expected to seek another five-year term as president from parliament this fall.

Recently, an open letter from Advocate Naeem Bokhari addressed to the Chief Justice and making a number of allegations against him - some personal - has been circulating on the internet extensively. Over the last week, I received probably two dozen emails with that letter in it (many from our readers, and one from my mother!). It seems to have created a stir. Many readers have been writing that we do a post on that letter. I had not done so, just because the letter was a little puzzling to me and its motivations were not clear. I wondered also if there were hints of personal rivalries or issues. On the other hand it was a well-written and seemingly sincere letter from a person of known integrity. In retrospect, the way the letter ended was prophetic:

My Lord, this communication may anger you and you are in any case prone to get angry in a flash, but do reflect upon it. Perhaps you are not cognizant of what your brother judges feel and say about you. My Lord, before a rebellion arises among your brother judges (as in the case of Mr. Justice Sajjad Ali Shah), before the Bar stands up collectively and before the entire matter is placed before the Supreme Judicial Council, there may be time to change and make amends. I hope you have the wisdom and courage to make these amends and restore serenity, calm, compassion, patience and justice tempered with mercy to my Supreme Court. My Lord, we all live in the womb of time and are judged, both by the present and by history. The judgement about you, being rendered in the present, is adverse in the extreme.

In all honesty, one has to wonder, however, whether it was that letter and other recent media focus on the Chief Justice that led to the removal of the Chief Justice, or whether these were merely instruments designed to prepare the way for this removal?

In either case, a removal of the Chief Justice in this way and for such reasons and at this time is a sad, sad development that will be one more blow to the hopes of the development of an independent judiciary in Pakistan.

http://globalsecuritycouncil.blogspot.com

Democracy Day in Pakistan Promises No Pardon for Musharraf

2008-04-10T21:36:00.000-07:00

Pakistan's newly-elected Parliament meets on Monday, March 17, to form a new government. Monday is "democracy day" ending the eight years of military rule. Former Army Chief Pervez Musharraf, however, refuses to step down and claims to be the nation's lawful President. Close to a two-thirds majority of the Parliament and an overwhelming majority of lawyers of Pakistan see Musharraf as a usurper. Facing a hostile Parliament and an uncompromising Bar, Musharraf would offer to make a deal. He would relinquish power if he could safely leave the country (and perhaps fly away to the United States).

This essay argues that Pakistan's Parliament must not pardon Musharraf, openly or secretly. The people of Pakistan want their day in court.

Musharaff's Crimes

The lawyers of Pakistan see Musharraf as a criminal who unlawfully occupies the nation's highest office. Musharraf has committed numerous crimes. Two, however, stand out. On November 3, 2007, Musharraf suspended the Constitution exercising the non-existent powers of the Army Chief. Neither the Constitution, national laws, nor the Military Code confers power on the Army Chief to proclaim emergency and suspend the Constitution. Musharraf has presumptively committed the constitutional crime of high treason and his continuing occupation of the office of President is unlawful.

The Constitution mandates that the Parliament "by law provide for the punishment of persons found guilty of high treason." In exercising this power, however, the Parliament must respect international standards and the national criminal justice system that confer numerous rights on criminal defendants. Article 10 of the Constitution, which Musharraf suspended during the November 2007 Proclamation of Emergency, requires that the person in custody be "informed of the grounds for such arrest. . . and not be denied the right to consult and be defended by a legal practitioner of his choice."

In addition to perpetrating the crime of high treason, Musharraf committed the crime of massacre. In July, 2007, after prolonging a manufactured showdown with seminarians in the Red Mosque located in Islamabad, Musharraf ordered the killings of innocent men, women, and children trapped within the Mosque. In asserting the rule of law, the Supreme Court ordered an investigation of the massacre. Compounding his crime, Musharraf charged the Supreme Court with supporting terrorism. And exercising the non-existent powers of the Army Chief, Musharraf fired and arrested numerous top judges of the high courts, including the Chief Justice who still has not been freed. Musharraf's lawyers will have to explain to the trial court whether the Army Chief, in committing the crime of massacre, has the authority to openly subvert the integrity and dignity of the judiciary.

Resisting Foreign Pressure

In prosecuting Musharraf for high treason and other crimes, the new Pakistani government might come under some foreign pressure to pardon Musharraf. Except for the United States, however, many nations would see Musharraf's criminal prosecution as Pakistan's internal matter. European nations will not support a despised dictator. China rarely caters to losers and is unlikely to raise the issue with the new government. Saudi Arabia will not rescue a self-appointed reformer of Islam. India will only harm Musharraf if it supports him.

That leaves the United States in the field alone. The Bush administration may pressure Pakistan's new government to pardon Musharraf. Soon after the February elections, Bush encouraged Musharraf to stay as Pakistan's Head of the State. That commitment has now dramatically weakened, and rightfully so. The United States cannot risk alienating the people of Pakistan and the new government for the sake of a former dictator who has lost the military uniform, popularity, and constitutional legitimacy. For pragmatic American policymakers, Musharraf has outlived his utility; and the time is ripe to ditch a useless operator.

As a possible favor to Musharraf, the Bush administration might ask the new government for his safe exit to the United States. Many in the Bush administration, however, will vote against pressuring the new government to do so because Musharraf has been a duplicitous ally, frequently caught running with the hare and hunting with the hounds. Certainly Musharraf has killed Muslim militants in Pakistan but not in sufficient numbers to have earned a White House medal of gratitude.

Suppose the Bush administration coerces the new Pakistani government to furnish a safe passage for Musharraf. In such a case, Pakistan's democracy must resist pressure, assert its sovereignty, and persuade the Bush administration that Musharraf's prosecution for high treason will support and not hurt US interests. If Musharraf is prosecuted for constitutional subversion without American interference, the people of Pakistan will appreciate American commitment to democracy in the Muslim world. If persuasion does not work, saying no to Bush is good for America and a matter of self-respect for Pakistan.

In sum, strong democracies punish constitutional subversions but week democracies do not. And by punishing constitutional subversions, democracies are further strengthened. Pakistan needs to make a strong decision. Fortunately, the usurper is positioned as a sitting duck. He has lost all covers that shielded his raw powers. He is no longer the Army Chief, and cannot order the armed forces to stand behind him. The "King's Party" that propped his lawlessness for years cannot help for it has been thoroughly defeated in the general elections. The Constitution cannot guard Musharraf because Musharraf, as the President's oath requires, did not "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan." The Parliament must hold Musharraf accountable.

http://globalsecuritycouncil.blogspot.com

Cuba : Transitions without End

2008-04-10T14:55:00.000-07:00





" The victory of the Revolution is a rampart that ensures that never again will Cuba become the most sordid brothel our planet has ever known linked to a criminal gambling and drug infested inferno of the colonial occupiers." Comandante Ernesto Che Guevara, 1 May 1959. Invariably, after every speaking engagement on Latin America. the question was raised about Cuba’s fate after the exit of the Comandante from the political stage. The question was not malicious although among my listeners there were those who believed , or prayed for, that the departure of Fidel Alejandro Castro Rua, born (1926) in the former province of Oriente on his father’s farm (Manacas) ,marks the terminal point of the socialist revolution. Throughout the ages and by the very nature of our existence it is part of our normal being to ask that basic question: from whence have we come and whither are we are going? There are many that have personalized one of the most momentous historical metamorphoses of all times. Fidel Castro and the Revolution that he incubated and flung into battle with such resounding surprises and successes for more than a half a century cannot be abstracted from the role of the masses as the energizing dynamic of change. The personalization of leaders as the drive wheel of change is erroneous as it assumes that the makers of history are exclusively the leaders of social and political movements. Such a muddled perception is the incarnation of the Fuhrerprinzip of Nazism that sweeps aside the seminal role of ordinary peoples that battle to defend the Revolution and build on it. It deliberately eviscerates the world of labour: workers, farmers, professionals, the men and women that comprise the armed forces. In short, it ignores the creators of wealth as the engine of change. History is about numbers and very big numbers that dramatically erupt onto the political stage at certain nodal points in response to the contradictions of our time stemming from irrepressible convulsions . The revolutionary that is Fidel Castro is thus inseparable from the masses that catapulted him into the fires of national struggle from the Moncada Barracks to the liberation of Havana, in much the same way as Gandhi and Mandela in their freedom struggles; and no less so Lenin and the October Revolution. Thomas Carlyle enriched our understanding of this duality when he wrote in his classic depiction of the French Revolution: "Hunger and nakedness and nightmare oppression lying heavy on twenty-five million: this, not the wounded vanities or contradicted philosophies of philosophical advocates, rich shopkeepers, rural nobles, was the prime mover in the French Revolution; as the like will be in all such revolutions, in all countries." The penetrating insight of Marx with its sublime message of hope and struggle as humanity faces up to the exigencies of smashing the inherited mould of capitalism, a system of class power, privilege, profit and exploitation, illumines the compulsive sweep of revolutionary change. "History does nothing; it possesses no immense wealth, fights no battles. It is rather man, real living man who does everything, who grapples with everything and who fights." As a teacher and writer (and Spanish speaker) I tracked the Revolution’s trajectory spanning more than half a century. I was never a member of any political body nor was I ever enamored by the phony cult of objectivity. In those decades, I talked to its peoples from all walks of life. I met its leadership. I participated in its seminars and conferences. It was in those years of agony and ecstasy that I witnessed the unending twists and turns of its ascendancy. In those years, I also encountered the hate-filled émigrés, who had chosen the path of counter-revolution, dishonor and mendacity, ensconced in Miami and elsewhere. To grasp the nature of the transition – and that is the crucial word of this lecture - that has reshaped the nation’s psyche it is well to recall that the Revolution was generated as a reaction against the exploitation and sheer cruelty perpetrated by the US occupation and its domesticated political Quislings that reigned through the instrumentalities of unadulterated state terrorism since the consummation of the conquest in 1898. Listen well to the Comandante’s words framed on the eve of the freedom upsurge . Its relevance to the new transition is all too obvious. "Some have insisted that the only way out for Cuba was to guarantee private investments. That , we are told, would solve the whole problem. But foreign capitalists had these guarantees in Cuba for fifty years , and similar guarantees in practically every other country of the American continent. Did these guarantees solve the pressing problems confronting its peoples? Did they solve the problem of mass unemployment, education, public health? Indeed, what did they solve in all these fifty years? Joblessness straddling more than one third of the labour force, poverty, hunger and chronic malnutrition…" I recall on one of our walks on the Malecon with my friend the late Renato Constantino, a celebrated Philipino resistance fighter, philosopher and writer pointing his hand to the waters of the bay in the direction of Florida and saying: " Over there, just a couple of kilometers away. I believe it’s around 90 kms. There is the super-colonial Goliath , that has flung everything against this bastion of a socialist David and what we’ve seen is that the power of the imperio has been clubbed. Why? You know the answer. What Voltaire said about God applies no less so to Cuba: If Cuba did not exist we would have had to invent it." What Renato was saying was that the White Man’s world of the imperio cannot coexist with Cuba; and hence, in their view, it must be destroyed. It is toxic and contagious. Its sheer capacity to survive and strike back owed nothing to a world of miracles and Shamans. What Bush, his acolytes and predecessors mean by transition is something quite different from the meaning emblazoned in the theory and praxis of the Revolution? It reminds me of the words of Ho Chi Minh formulated after the breakdown of the Fountainbleau negotiations in 1946. " Words have different meaning for different people. If you spit in the face of the colonialists they will always call it rain." We cannot speak of the multi-faceted transitions in Cuba without studying the grim transition of imperialism. They are inter-related. American capitalism has leapt into the big transition, that of recession, galloping fast towards the Big Depression. The credit seizures and foreclosures are gobbling up jobs and earnings at an alarming tempo. Panic stricken stock markets are plummeting with many major financial institutions going bust. The industrial capacity of US capitalism has withered. What remains of its colossal industrial heritage, a legacy mainly of the decades 1865-1914, is being swiftly offshored. Detroit, the once proud citadel of industrial might is now a wasteland. Its financial structures are wobbly, shackled with uncontrollable debt: household, corporate and government that continues to burgeon exponentially. Americans and foreigners have lost confidence in the greenback that is swiftly ceasing to be a store of value. Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad hammered the point when he said: "the dollar is nothing but a worthless piece of paper." A contention that few will contest. Its claim to be the world’s reserve currency is a fairy tale. Credit flows are drying up . Banks are dumping their assets into collapsing markets. Defaults and bankruptcies are soaring. In sum, US financial capitalism is in the throes of an implosion. Uncle Sam is an enfeebled mendicant living off borrowed time and borrowed money. But not for long can this game continue. The empire has over 700 military overseas bases in over 130 countries but its effective power is shrinking day by day. This then is the big contrast with Cuba’s transition. Its growth in real terms has steadily topped 6%over the last six years. The brutalizing years of the Special Period have largely been vanquished. The economic and spiritual revolutions in Cuba are nothing short of mind-boggling that bear no comparison with any Latin American countries. Let there be no illusion. Cuba is a Third World nation. It still is a poor country. The wages of its labour force are still abysmally low. The exploitation of man by man has vanished. Of pivotal importance, however, is that it has now achieved full employment, a reality once regarded as the unattainable Nirvana. Illiteracy, malnutrition and mendicancy have ceased to exist. Its life expectancy is almost on a par with Japan and Sweden, as against 56 in Batista’s neo-colony. Its infant mortality rate is on a par with Canada and has already outstripped that of the United States. These are the transitions that the media masters of the corporate gulag chose to eliminate from their specious references on transitions. I well remember the Revolution’s formative years when the white-skinned medical personnel bolted the country boasting that medicine is dead and the only thing that will take its place is Voodoo. In their imbecilic gasp of triumph they had forgotten to say that their political cronies had plundered the nation’s Treasury and dispatched its pickings to the land of the ex-colonial master. Cuba now has around 90,000 students spanning the entire range of medical care. This nation which, according to its unbending liquidators, has abolished ‘human rights’ has set its goal of becoming the paramount medical science citadel in the world. There are now over 12,000 students in ELAM: La Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina, one of the world’s top educational establishments. Over the next decade it will be graduating with Venezuela more than 100,000 Latin American and Caribbean doctors within the integration framework of ALBA: Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. Together with Venezuela, Operation Miracle was launched designed to restore vision to no fewer than 6 million in all of Latin America and the Caribbean. These astounding numbers would have been inconceivable without a socialist order and the discipline and sacrifices that moved in tandem with it. Tens of thousands of Cuban medical and non-medical personnel are working in 27 countries under difficult physical conditions. In his visit to Cuba in 2007, in which he decorated the 140 medical personnel, General Pervez Musharaf ( a fervent ally of the empire) was not indulging in hyperbole when he noted: "Yours was one of the greatest acts of solidarity that humanity has ever known. We thank President Castro and the Cuban people. You came thousands of miles away, in the depth of one of the most severest winters, to heal and save the lives of thousands of our people stricken by that appalling natural disaster. You even brought your own medical equipment and medicines. There is not a single village in our country that has not heard of your heroic deeds and sacrifices. These awards are a modest token to express our gratitude. You gave everything but took nothing in exchange except our love. The word thanks , you will understand, is too small a tribute to convey the immensity of our debt and feeling towards you." The systematic state terrorist onslaughts against Cuba pre-date 1962 that marked the start of the official embargo that has endured with no respite for almost half a century .Attempts to quarantine Cuba have failed. Year after year in the UN General Assembly just two countries, the United States ( plus its two Pacific island protectorates) and Israel voted for the embargo’s perpetuation. Its cumulative cost according to foreign minister Roque approaches $100bn. And yet, notwithstanding the permanent war including several aborted attempts at assassination of the president, Cuba has lurched forward prodigiously , not only in its dispensation of education and medical aid to countries on many continents, but as a fraternal catalyst in the liberation struggle. No country in the world has given as much to Africa as Cuba has done and continues to do. A gift sealed with the blood of its peoples. Nelson Mandela touched on one of the energizing roles of Cuba when he spelt out in his homage to the Comandante during his visit to South Africa following the liquidation of the Apartheid regime. "We and all the peoples of the Free World are honored to have you here. And by the Free World we refer to the peoples whose blood has been shed profusely to liquidate imperialism. Consider South Africa as your land. We shall not forget the decisive role you played militarily in destroying the South African army. You came thousands of miles to participate in the freedom struggle with us. You fought nobly, unstintingly and shed your blood to ensure our freedom. Without you our freedom would not have been consummated." Obviously such views were in contrast to the architects of Cuba’s annihilation. These avalanches of death-dealing hatred had nothing to do with the familiar claptrap that the island of socialism had repudiated all the vestiges of human rights and democracy. The heights of vulgarity scaled by the practitioners of exterminism were exhibited by General Alexander Haig, one of President’s Reagan’s henchmen, when he fulminated in a meeting of the National Security Council : "You just give me the word and I’ll turn that fucking little island into a parking lot." If this is not an exhortation to the Holocaust then words have no meaning. The mass exterminism propounded by Haig was not galvanized because of the apprehensions of the upshot of another Bay of Pigs. It was because even at that time Cuba had made yet another dramatic transition: it had become militarily invulnerable. This was matched by the decline of the imperio and its military over-reach that exposed its soft underbelly. To this was added an event of the greatest importance , the alliance with Venezuela concretized in the words of Chavez: "An attack against Cuba will be countered by an immediate cut-off of oil. More important is that it will lead to a flow of blood including the blood of Bolivarian patriots since revolutionary Cuba and Venezuela are blended in the war against imperialism. It will be an horrendous war if the imbeciles that rule the imperio are so dumb as to unleash it. And I need hardly say that it will be a devastating counterpunch that overspills the confines of Cuba." For the first time in the history of the Americas a black man was calling the shots. In yet another of his preachments on Cuba’s transition, Bush excoriated Barack Obama for declaring that if he’s elected he would talk to everyone. In a regime in which the very mention of dialogue is anathema Bush flatly pontificated that "there can be no dialogue with the Castro tyrant that has brought nothing but disaster and poverty to his people and eliminating all traces of human dignity and freedom." This is quite a mouthful from a man that continues to prattle endlessly about human dignity when in his own backyard the American prison population stands at 2.3 million with no signs of tapering off. According to the Pew Report it now has 750 prisoners per 100,000 as against 79 per 100,000 in Switzerland. One in 15 African Americans are behind bars, as against I in 75 for Hispanics and 1 in 106 for whites. Is Bush oblivious to the crimes against humanity in the war that he has waged against Iraq in which more than one million Iraqis have been killed and wounded? In addition, their factories, farms, homes and infrastructure have been smashed. The cost of that war has moved from billions to trillions of dollars seen from the American side of the balance sheet. The numbers are misleading in that they do not include the costs to the people of Iraq. Indeed, the policies of US exterminism was neatly encapsulated in the pithy comment of the British dramatist and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter " You either do as I say or I’ll kick your ass in." Because of its refusal to have its ass kicked in Cuba has been condemned to the chopping block. To be sure there are no presidents since 1945 that are not indictable on war crimes charges. Bush launched one more of his transitions when his administration created a Cuba Transition Coordinator bossed by Cleb McCarry, former ambassador to Afghanistan. On 10 July 2006, a report of the Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba demanded immediate action "to ensure the failure of the Castro’s regime succession strategy." There was nothing new in this verbose report. It was framed as an ultimatum that bluntly stated that the land and industrial and financial sectors must be denationalized. The Roman Church and its prerogatives must be fully restored including its extensive land holdings and the end of the separation of Church and State.. It was a blueprint for the return of the neo-colonial occupation from 1898-1959. Noteworthy is that its goals could be succinctly summarized in an utterance made more than 50 years ago by an American oilman at the peak of the oil bonanza in Venezuela. "Here in Venezuela you have the right to do what you like with your capital. This right is dearer to me than all the political rights in the world." The Economist, that militant mouthpiece of Big Capital (it’s owned by the Pearson Trust) hollers for US intervention to halt the nationalist and socialist offensives gathering speed in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua. "To put it bluntly , Latin America needs more Lula da Silvas [and his version of neo-liberalism] and fewer Chavez’s and Morales’s. This is where the United States could help." The imperial masters , however,do not require such morsels of advice because it is central to the applied logic of state terrorism. As we have seen, institutional changes have been a permanent trait of the Revolution and the current debates and their implementation do not mark a qualitative change in their direction. It is but yet another phase of the greatest importance given the immense strides and complexity of the national economy. Cuba today is a power house of modern science and technology embracing bio-technology, electronics, engineering, information technology, the chemical and petrochemical industries, mining, the iron and steel industry, etc. To that inventory we should simply say that Cuba stands at the summit of world educational attainment. The debate on the new transition In Cuba has reached a frenzied pace and straddles the problem of optimizing capital and labour resources. No holes are barred in these debates on the extent of administrative incompetence and corruption, and the theft of national assets. The current projects call for a massive overhaul of the bureaucracy whose swollen numbers are a deterrent to the nation’s productive advance. These changes now underway demand a decentralization of economic decision making slated to boost productivity. The changes will require an overhaul of wholesale and retail price structures, wage payments and incentive payments, subsidies and the prevailing rationing system The latter was never designed to be a permanent fixture of a socialist order. These changes call for, as President Raul Castro stated in his 26 July 2007 policy statement, for the elimination of a host of prohibitions and red tape. Illustrative is the case of the dairy industry and specifically milk distribution. There are no overall directives engulfing the entire economy. Experimentation is proceeding on a piecemeal basis in various municipalities and then gradually extended. In the case of milk distribution this has resulted in savings of over $40 million and in addition huge savings in fuel costs. This is how Fidel puts it in his Reflections of 16 January. "We do not intend to give anything to those who could be producing but do not produce, or who produce very little. We shall reward the merits of those who work with their hands and their minds." The question is obviously open: to what extent will these transitions, that cut deeply into the flesh of Cuba’s socialism, engender enhanced inequalities in a society whose egalitarianism is legendary.? Our query will soon be answered by unfolding events. There are well-intentioned critics who propagate that Cuba should embrace the free market magic and its propertied social relations from whence it follows that the Chinese model is appropriate. One recalls Deng Xiaoping’s epic outburst. "To be rich is glorious" Deng’s ideas and their reverberations have been discussed in depth for several years in Cuba. But let us be realistic. What is Deng’s rallying cry other than a resounding clamour for the restoration of capitalism? A visit to China’s cities and countryside and the monstrous inequalities between them and within them is amply confirmatory of the workings of the system. Its millionaires have become billionaires. China and Cuba belong to two opposed universes. China’s level of inequality, measured by the Gini coefficient, is similar to that of American capitalism. The capitalist reality of the islands of Hong Kong and Macao owned and dominated politically by a cabal of at most a dozen mega capitalist families that are entrenched through marriage, extended family connections and their daily economic wheelings and dealings would suggest that the Cuban leadership and its people will not be following this road. Thus the relevance of the Chinese capitalist model to Cuba smacks of total irrealism. Our lectures on transitions both within imperialism and Cuba are taking place not in an abstract world but in a world where capitalism - and American capitalism in particular – is traversing one of the most cataclysmic upheavals since the Great Depression of the l930s. The resultant of this tragedy is beyond the scope of these lectures. But what I believe will be the most important conditioner of the future direction of socialism in Cuba are the ethical foundations on which it reposes. This is enshrined in what I conceive to be one of the most penetrating manifestos in Cuban history. It is the definition of the Revolution so masterly articulated on 1 May 2000 by the Comandante that merits quotation at length. http://globalsecuritycouncil.blogspot.com

CIA Operation "Pliers" Uncovered in Venezuela

2008-04-10T14:42:00.000-07:00

Psyop aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow President Chavez

Last night CNN en Español aired the above image, which captions at the bottom "Who Killed him?" by "accident". The image of President Chavez with the caption about killing him below, which some could say subliminally incites to assassination, was a "production error" mistakenly made in the CNN en Español newsroom. The news anchor had been narrarating a story about the situation between Colombia and Venezuela and then switched to a story about an unsolved homicide but - oops - someone forgot to change the screen image and President Chavez was left with the killing statement below. Today they apologized and admitted it was a rather "unfortunate" and "regrettable" mistake. Yes, it was.

On a scarier note, an internal CIA memorandum has been obtained by Venezuelan counterintelligence from the US Embassy in Caracas that reveals a very sinister - almost fantastical, were it not true - plan to destabilize Venezuela during the coming days. The plan, titled "OPERATION PLIERS" was authored by CIA Officer Michael Middleton Steere and was addressed to CIA Director General Michael Hayden in Washington. Steere is stationed at the US Embassy in Caracas under the guise of a Regional Affairs Officer. The internal memorandum, dated November 20, 2007, references the "Advances of the Final Stage of Operation Pliers", and confirms that the operation is coordinated by the team of Human Intelligence (HUMINT) in Venezuela. The memo summarizes the different scenarios that the CIA has been working on in Venezuela for the upcoming referendum vote on December 2nd. The Electoral Scenario, as it's phrased, confirms that the voting tendencies will not change substantially before Sunday, December 2nd, and that the SI (YES) vote in favor of the constitutional reform has an advantage of about 10-13 points over the NO vote. The CIA estimates abstention around 60% and states in the memo that this voting tendency is irreversible before the elections.

Officer Steere emphasizes the importance and success of the public relations and propaganda campaign that the CIA has been funding with more than $8 million during the past month - funds that the CIA confirms are transfered through the USAID contracted company, Development Alternatives, Inc., which set up operations in June 2002 to run the USAID Office for Transition Initiatives that funds and advises opposition NGOs and political parties in Venezuela. The CIA memo specifically refers to these propaganda initiatives as "psychological operations" (PSYOPS), that include contracting polling companies to create fraudulent polls that show the NO vote with an advantage over the SI vote, which is false. The CIA also confirms in the memo that it is working with international press agencies to distort the data and information about the referendum, and that it coordinates in Venezuela with a team of journalists and media organized and directed by the President of Globovision, Alberto Federico Ravell.

CIA Officer Michael Steere recommends to General Michael Hayden two different strategies to work simultaneously: Impede the referendum and refuse to recognize the results once the SI vote wins. Though these strategies appear contradictory, Steere claims that they must be implemented together precisely to encourage activities that aim toward impeding the referendum and at the same time prepare the conditions for a rejection of the results.

How is this to be done?

In the memo, the CIA proposes the following tactics and actions:

Take the streets and protest with violent, disruptive actions across the nation
Generate a climate of ungovernability
Provoke a general uprising in a substantial part of the population
Engage in a "plan to implode" the voting centers on election day by encouraging opposition voters to "VOTE and REMAIN" in their centers to agitate others
Start to release data during the early hours of the afternoon on Sunday that favor the NO vote (in clear violation of election regulations)
Coordinate these activities with Ravell & Globovision and international press agencies
Coordinate with ex-militar officers and coupsters Pena Esclusa and Guyon Cellis - this will be done by the Military Attache for Defense and Army at the US Embassy in Caracas, Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO)

To encourage rejection of the results, the CIA proposes:

Creating an acceptance in the public opinion that the NO vote will win for sure
Using polling companies contracted by the CIA
Criticize and discredit the National Elections Council
Generate a sensation of fraud
Use a team of experts from the universities that will talk about how the data from the Electoral Registry has been manipulated and will build distrust in the voting system

The CIA memo also talks about:

Isolating Chavez in the international community
Trying to achieve unity amongst the opposition
Seek an aliance between those abstentionists and those who will vote "NO"
Sustain firmly the propaganda against Chavez
Execute military actions to support the opposition mobilizations and propagandistic occupations
Finalize the operative preparations on the US military bases in Curacao and Colombia to provide support to actions in Venezuela
Control a part of the country during the next 72-120 hours
Encourage a military rebellion inside the National Guard forces and other components

Those involved in these actions as detailed in the CIA memo are:

The CIA Office in Venezuela - Office of Regional Affairs, and Officer Michael Steere
US Embassy in Venezuela, Ambassador Patrick Duddy
Office of Defense, Attack and Operations (DAO) at the US Embassy in Caracas and Military Attache Richard Nazario

Venezuelan Political Parties:

Comando Nacional de la Resistencia
Accion Democratica
Primero Justicia
Bandera Roja

Media:

Alberto Federico Ravell & Globovision
Interamerican Press Society (IAPA) or SIP in Spanish
International Press Agencies

Venezuelans:

Pena Esclusa
Guyon Cellis
Dean of the Simon Bolivar University, Rudolph Benjamin Podolski
Dean of the Andres Bello Catholic University, Ugalde
Students: Yon Goicochea, Juan Mejias, Ronel Gaglio, Gabriel Gallo, Ricardo Sanchez

Operation Tenaza has the objective of encouraging an armed insurrection in Venezuela against the government of President Chavez that will justify an intervention of US forces, stationed on the military bases nearby in Curacao and Colombia. The Operation mentions two countries in code: as Blue and Green. These refer to Curacao and Colombia, where the US has operative, active and equipped bases that have been reinforced over the past year and a half in anticipation of a conflict with Venezuela.

The document confirms that psychological operations are the CIA's best and most effective weapon to date against Venezuela, and it will continue its efforts to influence international public opinion regarding President Chavez and the situation in the country.

Operation Tenaza is a very alarming plan that aims to destabilize Venezuela and overthrow (again) its legitimate and democratic (and very popularly support) president. The plan will fail, primarily because it has been discovered, but it must be denounced around the world as an unacceptable violation of Venezuela's sovereignty.

http://globalsecuritycouncil.blogspot.com

Parody of Justice: Toronto 18 Suspects undergo Trial by Media

2008-04-10T14:39:00.000-07:00

Feels like June 2nd all over again

The trial of the only remaining youth in the Toronto 18 case commenced last week in a Brampton courtroom. The new details disclosed in the Crown factum filed in the case elicited depressingly new emotional lows in all of the accused and their families. Reminiscent of that fateful day in June, 2006, the media sensationalism started all over again, with the reporting of incomplete evidence and outrageous headlines. Having attended the entire preliminary hearing, I must confess my shock and disbelief at the fact that these allegations continue to be presented in a manner which precludes the public from seeing a complete or accurate picture.

In our legal system, a preliminary hearing is held for the purpose of determining if there is enough evidence to warrant having an accused person proceed to trial. It gives the accused person and his lawyer an opportunity to learn what evidence the police and prosecution plan to use against them. At the end of the preliminary hearing, the judge decides if there is enough evidence to put the accused on trial, and then the case would proceed to the Superior Court. Unfortunately, in the case at hand, in what can reasonably be seen as an attempt to keep alive the climate of fear and sensationalism, the prosecution abruptly halted the preliminary hearing before the defense lawyers had an opportunity to begin to test and challenge the evidence. As some media have reported based on statements from the informant and others, the preliminary hearing was not going as planned by the prosecution; they were far from proving anything coming even close to an Al Qaeda inspired homegrown terror plot. As lawyer Michael Moon has publicly stated the “evidence” lacks any substance and reveals nothing more insidious than a bunch of guys talking, camping and goofing around.

Against this backdrop, the prosecutors were able to pull out their “wild card” and abruptly end the preliminary hearing. This strategic move unfairly gives the government the ability to keep up the drama and prolong the climate of fear. As documented by leading researchers, the psychology of fear is an effective tool against an uninformed and apathetic public. This is clearly evident from the superficial facts and out-of-context statements being thrown out to an unsuspecting, trusting and fearful public. These young men and youth, who are supposed to be innocent until proven guilty according to our own fundamental democratic right, have been painted as foreign and threatening.

I feel obligated to respond to the recent splash of terrorist allegations and to provide some balance and context (with the limited information that I am allowed to disclose as a result of the publication ban). I direct my comments more specifically to two recent articles that got extensive exposure: 'Alleged Toronto terror plot detailed in court' by Isabel Teotonio (Toronto Star, March 26, 2008) and Video calls for defeat of 'Rome' in Canadian terror case by Collin Freeze (The Globe and Mail, March 26, 2008). My comments are as follows:

1) It is alleged that these teens/young adults were planning “the plotting of an attack "much greater" in scale than the London 2005 bombings that killed 52 people”. As stated in the material released by Justice Sproat in the factum of Michael Moon, this is ncorrect. These men were incapable of doing so based on the fact that they lacked the financing and the planning required to plot, let alone, carry out something this outrageous. Moreover, they did not undergo any real training. There is almost a total reliance on the informants in this case by the RCMP and CSIS, which hopefully the public will see as
the case unfolds.

2) “According to the allegations, the so-called Toronto 18 were attempting to secure a safe house to store weapons and practice military drills, and embarking on a mission to destroy the West “one they should be willing to die for.” This is extremely sensationalized, and exaggerates and decontextualizes the actual evidence. If this is in reference to the trip to Opasatika, then, as stated in the material released by Justice Sproat in the factum of Michael Moon, discussion about Operation BADR, during this trip were even described by Mubin Shaikh (the government’s own agent) as “fanciful plans” and constituted a very very minor portion of a 20 + hour trip.

3) “Storming Parliament Hill and beheading politicians.” This entire conversation, as Michael Moon suggested in ‘Terror schemes exaggerated, lawyer says’ by Colin Freeze (The Globe and Mail, March 27, 2008) referred to a 10 hour long car ride, and the conversations during this ride which were completely innocuous and reveal nothing more than a bunch of guys camping and horsing around. Their level of knowledge and sophistication is almost laughable given the seriousness of the allegations against them. In fact, they did not even know the name of the prime minister, and there were no maps, pictures, plans, any course of action, computers, or anything that would suggest they were really plotting something, let alone a terrorist attack. As stated in the material released by Justice Sproat, in the factum of Michael Moon, they lacked the finances and the plans to carry out such deeds.

4) The fragments of conversations that are presented are problematic. The reference to the London bombings and the quotes used are cut and pasted with the elimination of any laughter, and the context of how it is said. Moreover, the public is even more in the dark in that the demeanor and backdrop against which these statements are made are not visible. These decontextualized quotes and statements leave a far more sinister image then would actually be supported if these conversations are presented in the proper context.

5) It has been reported that there were videos of “terrorist indoctrination,” in which the accused are exhorted to wage battle in the new empire of "Rome" in North America, "whether we get arrested, whether we get killed." This video as stated in the material released by Justice Sproat, in the factum of Michael Moon, must be considered in the context of a "hapless `F-Troop,' who ventured into the deathly cold of winter without a proper tent, or in fact sufficient or proper supplies of any kind, was reduced to sleeping in the vehicles at night to prevent freezing to death; trooping off to Tim Horton’s multiple times per day for coffee and use of the bathroom, tending the fire, and marching with the primary purpose of staying warm”.

6) As described in the press, “the accused attended two training camps. One was a 12-day camp near the town of Washago, Ont., where they practiced military-style exercises in camouflage gear and undertook firearms training with a 9-mm firearm. The second was a two-day camp at the Rockwood Conservation Area, where they donned camouflage clothing and made a propaganda-style video of their military drills.” As made clear in the material released by Justice Sproat, in the factum of Michael Moon, these
were not training camps and there was nothing even vaguely military about these camps except that which was orchestrated by Mubin Shaikh, the government’s own agent.

Based on the foregoing and what I have seen in court during the preliminary hearing there is nothing to justify a belief that there was a danger to Canada. Indeed this is reinforced by the fact that much of the “evidence” and training appears to come from the government’s own discredited agent, Mubin Shaikh, and the fact that the ordering, delivery and control over the fertilizer rested fully in the hands of another government agent and the RCMP.

The unbalanced and sensational media coverage of the case and Islam, the growing trend of Islamophobia and the resulting hatred against Muslims clearly disadvantage and prejudice the accused. In fact, those who are identified closely with Islam are easily associated with terrorism through guilt by association and the presumption of guilt. The restrictions imposed by the publication bans preclude an effective voice in opposition to this hatemongering. As a result Muslims have to relive the sensationalist propaganda and the characterization of innocent boys and young men (after all they are all to be treated as innocent until proven guilty, which seems more and more difficult as time passes and the prosecution continues to use the media for misinformation and propaganda) as ‘scary monsters’. This only creates an environment that further marginalizes Muslims (particularly those who are seen as openly practicing) and makes it all the more difficult for the accused to be tried in a fair, open and expeditious manner.

As a born and raised Canadian, who believes in the freedom and equality of all people, I am seriously appalled at the way a young Canadian’s life can be portrayed as a scary troubling demon, i.e. an Al Qaeda inspired terrorist based on scant evidence, out of context statements, one’s religiosity and even one’s political views. Like any other Canadian, now I patiently await to see, if justice will see the light of day given the cloud hanging over the head of the accused and their families as a result of the biased release of information, reported without question, by the media who, for the most part, only seem interested in sensationalism and pushing their “product.” In all fairness, I must add that the job of journalists is made all the more difficult as a result of the publication ban and I must also note that some have tried to give voice to the accused and bring some balance. I hope and pray that this will increase as the cases progress so that the accused can get their day in court for fair, transparent and expeditious trials and not trial by media.

Is the Hillary Clinton campaign being deliberately sunk?

2008-04-10T14:34:00.000-07:00

American Presidential politics are at best a cynical business. The outcome is typically determined, at least since the ill-fated campaign of George McGovern in 1972, by major corporate lobbyists and behind-the-scenes money interests who have little interest in national issues other than their own. Now, with the sudden departure of Hillary Clinton’s main campaign strategist, Mark Penn, it is clear that the powerful interests originally backing Clinton have decided to end the game with her.

On the surface the issue was a discovered conflict of interest between Penn and Hillary over Penn’s outside consulting for the government of Colombia on a policy which Hillary stated she opposed. Penn had agreed to be hired as a high-price lobbyist by Colombia to help secure Congressional passage of a bilateral US-Colombia free trade bill that US unions claim would cost American workers hundreds of thousands of jobs. Hillary desperately needed trade union support to win the primary in Pennsylvania, and unions are strongly opposed to the US-Colombia trade deal.

The curious career of Mark Penn

The figure of Mark Penn is revealing as to what the machine of Hillary Clinton represents in terms of power politics. Penn had been a political adviser of the Clintons since managing Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election fight. His firm ran the election polls that helped define Clinton’s campaign strategy, itself a cynical modern US electoral innovation, updating with high tech means the motto, “tell the people what they want to hear.” Penn’s polling firm, Penn, Schoen and Berland (PSB) has been used by Britain’s Tony Blair, Italy’s Silvio Berlusconi, by Menachim Begin in Israel and Senator Joe Lieberman to shape election strategy.

Ex-Clinton adviser Mark Penn is master of ‘polling as a political weapon’

James Carville, Penn’s rumored replacement is married to Bush adviser Mary Matalin: political incest?

PSB has played a pioneering role in the use of polling operations, especially "exit polls," in facilitating various US-backed “Color Revolutions” in Serbia and elsewhere. Its primary mission is to shape the perception that the group installed into power in a targeted country has broad popular support. The PSB group began work in Serbia during the period when Mark Penn, was President Clinton's top political advisor.

Manipulating exit polls

The PSB website boasts that they, “have played critical roles behind the scenes of the elections in Serbia and Zimbabwe, helping the opposition parties craft strategies, messages and organize a credible and effective campaign that has enabled them to weaken the dictator, his political party, and eventually throw him out of power. The introduction of cutting edge political and communications techniques is as well as the advice of the best Western political consultants and image makers, is as potent a weapon as the planes, bombs, and intelligence technology used in such conflicts as the Persian Gulf War, Bosnia, Kosovo, and, most recently Afghanistan.” In short, PSB is at the cutting edge of the modern politics of images.

In 2004 it was PSB which ran the “exit polls” in Venezuela asserting even as voting was still open, that their polls showed “major defeat for Chavez.” The opposite was the case with Chavez winning an overwhelming 59%. Investigation revealed that Penn’s PSB had emailed and faxed their poll results to international media four hours before polls were to close proclaiming, on the basis of the fraudulent polls that Chavez had lost. That was in violation of Venezuelan election law and was intended to rally international support behind a campaign to declare Chavez guilty of vote fraud and organize a recall. It backfired and PSB came under public fire as a result.

Referring to Mark Penn, the influential Washington Post once referred to him as “the most powerful man in Washington you've never heard of." According to PSB’s website, Penn helped elect 15 overseas Presidents in the Far East, Latin America, and Europe. Clients include heads of state or opposition politicians in Greece, Turkey, Israel, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic, Bermuda and Yugoslavia.

About the “permanent establishment”

Mark Penn is exemplary of what US political insiders refer to as a person of the “permanent establishment,” the shadowy institutions and insiders behind the curtains who really determine critical policy issues and shape the choices gullible voters then are given to “democratically choose among.”

It has been referred to by strategists since the time of Edward Bernays as the “illusion of choice.” Penn is above political party, serving the interests of what some call the permanent establishment. As a case in point, he also is CEO of the influential global public relations firm, Burson-Marsteller, which includes among clients the largest US mortgage lender, Countrywide Financial and Blackwater Inc. the Republican led mercenary security firm that has been accused of repeated killings of innocent Iraqi civilians. Penn’s firm was to make sure the “image” of such clients remained positive to the US public.

political incest?

More interesting is that “Democrat” Penn’s Burson-Marsteller Worldwide owns BKSH & Associates, a major political lobbying firm run by Charles R. Black, Jr. counsellor to Republican Presidents. Black now works full time for the campaign of Republican John McCain. In other words, Black heads a firm whose boss is “Democrat” Clinton top strategist, at the same time Black is Republican opponent John McCain’s top strategist.

In turn, Penn’s firm, Burson-Marsteller is owned by British advertising and Public Relations giant, WPP Group which employs as lobbyists a former Republican National Committee chairman, Ed Gillespie; a former House of Representatives Republican leader, Robert S. Walker, top Republican fundraiser, Wayne L. Berman and the former media adviser to George W. Bush, Mark McKinnon.

In the wake of the resignation of Mark Penn, reports in Washington are that James Carville, former 1992 campaign adviser to Bill Clinton, to Tony Blair and Israel’s Ehud Barak, will assume the role of campaign strategist. It is worth noting that Carville is also deep in Washington political incest. While Carville was running the 1992 Clinton strategy, Carville’s fiancee, Mary Matalin was running the campaign strategy of President George Herbert Walker Bush. As the old expression goes, US politics at least, has indeed strange bedfellows.