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BBC Censors Video Showing Syrian Rebels Forcing Prisoner to Become Suicide Bomber

By Paul Joseph Watson | Infowars | August 23, 2012

The BBC has sensationally censored a news story and a video showing Syrian rebels forcing a prisoner to become a suicide bomber, a war crime under the Geneva Conventions, presumably because it reflected badly on establishment media efforts to portray the FSA as glorious freedom fighters.

The video, a copy of which can be viewed above (the original BBC version was deleted), shows Free Syrian Army rebels preparing a bomb that is loaded onto the back of a truck to be detonated at a government checkpoint in the city of Aleppo.

The clip explains how the rebels have commandeered an apartment belonging to a Syrian police captain. The rebels are seen sneering at photos of the police captain’s family while they proclaim, “Look at their freedom, look how good it is,” while hypocritically enjoying the luxury of the man’s swimming pool.

The video then shows a prisoner who the rebels claim belonged to a pro-government militia. Bruises from torture on the prisoner’s body are explained away as having been metered out by the man’s previous captors. The BBC commentary emphasizes how well the rebels are treating the man, showing them handing him a cigarette.

However, the man has been tricked into thinking he is part of a prisoner exchange program when in reality he is being set up as an unwitting suicide bomber. The prisoner is blindfolded and told to drive the truck towards a government checkpoint.

“What he doesn’t know is that the truck is the one that’s been rigged with a 300 kilo bomb,” states the narrator.

The clip then shows rebels returning disappointed after it’s revealed that the remote detonator failed and the bomb did not explode.

The BBC narrator admits that forcing prisoners to become suicide bombers “would certainly be considered a war crime.”

New York Times reporters who shot the video claim they had no knowledge of the plot. A longer version of the clip is posted on the New York Times You Tube channel. The title of the clip glorifies the rebel fighters as “The Lions of Tawhid”.

Within hours of the story being published, it was subsequently sent down the memory by the BBC. Attempts to reach the original article URL are greeted with a 404 Not Found page.

In addition, a You Tube version of the same video originally posted on the official BBC News 2012 channel was also removed. Although the You Tube page for the video states that it was removed after a “copyright claim by British Broadcasting Corporation” this is a bogus reason, because the video was not uploaded by a third party, it was posted on the official BBC channel, as the screenshot below proves.


“Copyright claim” is a bogus reason for the video’s removal because it originally appeared on the official BBC News Channel, and was not uploaded by a third party.

It seems clear that the only reason for the video to be removed would be because senior BBC news editors felt the story reflected badly on the propaganda campaign to characterize the Syrian rebels as venerable and proud freedom fighters, when in reality as we have documented they have been guilty of massacres, kidnappings, torture and other acts of brutality.

This represents a clear effort to hide evidence of Syrian rebels, who the Obama administration recently pledged to support with taxpayer dollars, engaged in war crimes.

In addition, the fact that the rebels, under the direction of Al-Qaeda fighters, are building bombs and carrying out terrorist attacks is something the NATO-aligned media is keen not to emphasize.

This is by no means the first time the BBC has been caught manipulating the news in an effort to propagandize for western military involvement in Syria.

Back in May we exposed how the BBC has used a years-old photo of dead Iraqi children to depict victims of an alleged government assault in the town of Houla.

The photographer who took the original picture, Marco Di Lauro, posted on his Facebook page, “Somebody is using my images as a propaganda against the Syrian government to prove the massacre.” Di Lauro told the London Telegraph he was “astonished” the BBC had failed to check to authenticity of the image.

Should the copy at the top of this article also be deleted, an alternate version of the BBC video with added commentary under fair use is embedded below.

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August 23, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Video, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Cyprus displeased at reports that British bases provide help to Syrian rebels

Xinhua – August 23, 2012

NICOSIA – Cyprus said on Thursday it had asked Britain to give an official explanation for a Sunday Times report alleging that the British Sovereign Bases in Cyprus provide intelligence to Syrian rebels which helped them deal effective strikes against the Syrian army.

Foreign Minister Erato Kozakou-Markoulli told the state radio that she had instructed the Cypriot High Commissioner (Ambassador) in London to make a demarche to the British Foreign Ministry asking for official information on the report.

“It is a very serious issue if the Bases are being used for purposes other than those explicitly set out in the Treaty of Establishment,” Markouli said.

She said she expected a British reply by the end of the day.

Markoulli added that the 1960 Treaty of Establishment under which Cyprus was granted independence states that two bases retained by Britain can only be used for defensive purposes.

British paper the Sunday Times claimed on Sunday that British agents operating in the British bases were collecting intelligence on Syrian army movements which is then channeled through Turkey to forces fighting the the Syrian army.

A spokesman for the British High Commission in Cyprus on Monday refused to confirm or deny the report, citing the official government position not to comment on intelligence or operational matters.

August 23, 2012 Posted by | Illegal Occupation | , , , | Leave a comment

Jewish Settler’s Vehicle Rams Child in Hebron Hit and Run

By Saed Bannoura | IMEMC & Agencies | August 23, 2012

An Israeli settler driving in Jaber Neighborhood, in the southern West Bank of Hebron, hit a Palestinian child then drove off in what appears to be a ramming attack, medical sources reported.

Nasser Qabaja, a Red Crescent official in Hebron, said that the child was moved to an Israeli hospital upon request of her family.

Medical sources said that the child suffered moderate injuries, and that she suffered various cuts and bruises.

Late in January this year, an Israeli driver hit a Palestinian teenager at a checkpoint near Jerusalem, and then drove off in an apparent ramming attack.

Some of the witnesses present at the scene were able to document the license number of the vehicle, but Israeli police did not take the information when it was presented to them.

Although several previous ramming incidents have been reported to the Israeli police and military, no investigations of these incidents have been carried out by the Israeli authorities.

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August 23, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | 1 Comment

Israel: South Africa labeling decision ‘discrimination’

Ma’an – 23/08/2012

BETHLEHEM – Israel on Wednesday denounced South Africa’s cabinet decision to label goods from illegal Israeli settlements as produced in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In a statement, the Israeli foreign ministry said the decision “is without precedent, as no such measure has ever been adopted in South Africa or in any other country. It constitutes therefore a blatant discrimination based on national and political distinction.”

The statement added: “Israel and South Africa have political differences, and that is legitimate. What is totally unacceptable is the use of tools which, by essence, discriminate and single out, fostering a general boycott. Such exclusion and discrimination bring to mind ideas of racist nature which the government of South Africa, more than any other, should have wholly rejected.”

The ministry said South Africa’s ambassador would be summoned Thursday.

August 23, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation | , , , , | 1 Comment

Ban Ki-moon to attend NAM summit in Tehran: UN spokesman

Press TV – August 22, 2012

The United Nation Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will attend the upcoming Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit in Iran despite pressures from the US and Israel, UN spokesman Martin Nesirky says.

Nesirky said that Ban would “discuss frankly” the Syrian crisis but believed that Iran must be part of the solution.

Reuters reported earlier on Wednesday that according to several UN diplomats, Ban would attend the upcoming summit in Iran’s capital, Tehran.

“It’s a very important bloc of nations. Of course the SG [secretary-general] is going. He can’t not go,” Reuters quoted a diplomatic source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying.

This is while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month urged the UN secretary general not to attend the summit.

The US has also been trying to dissuade NAM member states, particularly the UN chief, from attending the summit.

The 16th summit of the NAM member states will be held in the Iranian capital August 26-31.

The Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei will address the Tehran NAM summit during which the Islamic Republic will assume the rotating presidency of the movement for three years.

NAM, an international organization with 120 member states and 21 observer countries, is considered as not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc.

NAM’s purpose, as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979, is to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries.”

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , , | 1 Comment

First Amendment Violations to Watch for at the RNC and DNC

By Jay Stanley, ACLU Speech, Privacy and Technology Project | August 22, 2012

We know that photographers have been having problems all over the country with police harassment, and that demonstrators’ free speech rights have also been under assault. But with the Democratic and Republican political conventions coming up, we have all too much reason to expect that free speech rights will be swallowed up in the vortex of those events, which have become constitutional black holes in recent years.

Chris Hansen, our senior First Amendment attorney, has been litigating First Amendment cases for many years, including landmark cases such as Reno v. ACLU, and a number involving the free speech rights of protesters. I asked him to give me an overview of the situation, and he said that we’ve been seeing three big problems that come up increasingly at all these kinds of events:

1) “Free Speech Zones.” People wishing to express themselves are being sent to distant locations—euphemistically called “Free Speech Zones”—so they are inaccessible to the audience at the event. (There is one legitimate Free Speech Zone we don’t have a problem with, it’s called the United States of America.)

2) Arrests. People are simply being swept up and arrested, essentially for no reason at all, in order to clear the streets. Cities figure that they can just deal with the ensuing litigation later. They don’t much care that they don’t have grounds to arrest people, they just sweep the streets.

3) Surveillance. Unjustified surveillance is common, both prior to and during the event. Recent stories suggest that there is a lot more infiltration of protest organizers taking place than we had realized at first. But then there’s also the surveillance that takes place at the event, where often everything is filmed. Even worse are the new restrictions on what you can carry into the demonstrations, which give the police the authority to search you as you go in.

These rights violations are happening repeatedly, despite lawsuits that are filed and won after the event is over. Chris tells me, “the cities view it as a cost of doing business.”

Consciously and intentionally violating the law and Constitution is apparently viewed as a legitimate tactic by the same police and officials who are supposed to be enforcing the law. Chris Hansen adds,

It’s an accelerating pattern, and a remarkably consistent pattern. In other words, there don’t seem to be significant city-by-city variations in police behavior; there seems to be a playbook for police departments that they’re all using.

Chris says that when attorneys for protesters try to seek legal protection in advance, the cities respond by using various tricks they have learned to get around legal oversight. For example, with respect to the free speech zones, he says:

We’ve tried. Part of the problem is the city often won’t tell you until the last minute where you’ll be allowed to demonstrate. So if you go into court six months before the event, the city says, “we haven’t made any decisions yet,” and the judge says “well, how can I decide this in the abstract?” But if you wait for the police to announce the location right before the event, the judge often says, “I don’t have time to second-guess the city, I’m just going to let it go.”

So the cities have learned that if they keep the location information secret up until the very last minute, for the most part judges aren’t going to second-guess their decision, so they end up sending you six miles away, under a bridge. That’s the classic example, in Boston, where they were literally under the highway.

It’s sad and ironic that the political conventions, which at some level are supposed to represent democracy and freedom, have become empty, stage-managed, institutionalized, Soviet-style show events, while simultaneously becoming the occasion to sell out real individuals’ actual, ground-level free speech rights as a “cost of doing business.”

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Do You Really Need That Statin?

This Expert Says No

By Martha Rosenberg | Dissident Voice | August 22nd, 2012

Statins are medications which lower cholesterol by inhibiting an enzyme involved in its production by the liver and other organs. First approved by the FDA in 1987, statins are arguably the most widely prescribed medicine in the industrialized world today–and the most profitable, representing $26 billion a year in profits to the drug industry. In fact, Lipitor was the world’s best selling drug until its patent expired recently. Yet, most trials that prove statins’ effectiveness in preventing cardiac events and death have been funded by companies and principle investigators who stand to benefit from their wide use. In February, the FDA warned that statins can increase users’ risk of type 2 diabetes and memory loss, confusion and other cognition problems.

Barbara H. Roberts, M.D., is Director of the Women’s Cardiac Center at the Miriam Hospital in Providence, Rhode Island and Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. She spent two years at the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) where she was involved in the first clinical trial that demonstrated a beneficial effect of lowering cholesterol on the incidence of heart disease. In addition to The Truth about Statins: Risks and Alternatives to Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs, she is also author of How to Keep from Breaking Your Heart: What Every Woman Needs to Know about Cardiovascular Disease.

Martha Rosenberg:  Statins have become so popular with adults middle-aged and older in industrialized countries, they are almost a pharmaceutical rite of passage. Yet you write in your new book there is little evidence they are effective in many groups and no evidence they are effective in one group, women without heart disease. Worse, you provide evidence, including stories from your own patients, that they are doing serious harm.

Barbara Roberts: Yes. Every week in my practice I see patients with serious side effects to statins and many did not need to be treated with statins in the first place. These side effects range from debilitating muscle and joint pain to transient global amnesia, neuropathy, cognitive dysfunction, fatigue and muscle weakness. Most of these symptoms subside or improve when they are taken off statins. There is even growing evidence of a statin link to Lou Gehrig’s disease.

MR:  One patient you write about caused a fire in her home by forgetting that the stove was on. Another was a professor who experienced such memory loss on a statin he could no longer teach; others ended up in wheelchairs. The only thing more shocking than the side effects you write about is the apparent blindness of the medical establishment to them. Until half a year ago, there were practically no warnings at all.

BR: There is no question that  many doctors have swallowed the Kool-Aid. Big Pharma has consistently exaggerated the benefits of statins and some physicians used scare tactics so that patients are afraid that if they go off the statins, they will have a heart attack immediately. Yet high cholesterol, which the statins address, is a relatively weak risk factor for developing atherosclerosis. For example, diabetes and smoking are far more potent when it comes to increasing risk.

MR: One group you say should not be given statins at all because there is no benefit and significant risk is women who have no heart disease.

BR: In three major studies of women without diagnosed heart disease, but who were at high risk (in one of these studies, each participant had to have high blood pressure and three other risk factors), 40 women out of 4,904 on statins had either a heart attack or cardiac death, compared to 44 women out of 4,836 on placebo. That is not a statistically significant difference. Since the likelihood of experiencing a statin side effect is about 20 to 25 percent, the risk of putting a healthy woman on a statin far outweighs the benefit. Still, statins are routinely given to this group because the guidelines are shaped by Big Pharma. The guidelines are not supported by the evidence and in the case of healthy women I don’t follow them.

MR: You give a story in your book about your 92-year-old patient who had a total cholesterol of 266,  triglycerides of 169, HDL cholesterol of 66, and LDL cholesterol of 165. Her primary care doctor wanted her to take a statin, but you did not feel she needed to because she had no evidence of heart disease, had never smoked, did not have high blood pressure and was not diabetic.

BR: Yes, and today she is 103 and a half and doing fine, never having taken a statin.

MR: In The Truth About Statins you explain pretty clearly how studies have made statins look more effective and safer than they are. How has this been done?

BR:  First of all, the studies are of short duration and some of them even have a “run in” phase during which people are given the drug to see if they tolerate it. If not, they are not enrolled in the study.  Secondly, study subjects are cherry-picked to exclude the very elderly, people with liver or kidney disease or those with any chronic illness that might “muddy” the results–

MR: In other words, the very people who will be taking them?

BR: Yes, and, of course, patients will also be staying on the drugs for life unlike trial subjects. Then, the data from the studies are usually given in terms of relative rather than absolute risk. The absolute risk of a cardiac event is only reduced by a few percentage points by statins and in some patients, like the women without heart disease we just talked about, the reduction is not even statistically significant. In some studies surrogate endpoints like inflammation or artery thickness are used but a favorable change in surrogate markers does not always translate into clinical benefit. In addition, many studies use composite end points which include not only “hard” end points like heart attack or death (which are pretty hard to misdiagnose) but also “softer” end points like the “need” for revascularization or the occurrence of acute coronary syndromes. For example, studies may be performed in many countries with very different rates of revascularization procedures, making use of this as an end point very problematic.

MR: This brings to mind the JUPITER trial which enrolled people without heart disease, with normal levels (less than 130) of LDL or bad cholesterol, but evidence of increased inflammation as measured by the hsCRP test and treated them with placebo or rosuvastatin. JUPITER stood for “Justification for the Use of Statins in Prevention” and both the study and its principle investigator were funded by AstraZeneca, who makes the statin Crestor. The principal investigator also holds the patent for the hsCRP blood test. Why was JUPITER regarded as medical science and not marketing?

BR: Actually the JUPITER study was criticized to some extent. But you have to remember that medical journals depend upon Big Pharma for their ads and reprint orders just as medical centers and medical professionals rely on Big Pharma for funding. It is a Round Robin situation that probably won’t change until the patients, doctors and the public demand change. As for CRP, it can also rise if a patient has a cold, bronchitis or is taking post menopausal hormones.

MR: You are very outspoken about the problem of industry shaping  and influencing medical practice yet you also admit that you accepted Big Pharma money yourself.

BR:  In 2004, Pfizer asked me to become a speaker, specifically on Lipitor. I told the drug rep who invited me to be a speaker that I would be interested in giving talks on gender-specific aspects of cardiac disease, but not in just talking about their statin and I gave lectures in restaurants and hospitals. Despite the fact that Pfizer was sponsoring my talks, I never failed to point out that there was no evidence that Lipitor–or any statin–prevented cardiac events in women who did not have established cardiovascular disease. They tolerated this until one day a regional manager came to one of my talks and then I was disinvited. I was on the speaker’s bureau for another company, Abbott, but when they began to insist that I use their slides rather than my own, I gave up being on any Big Pharma speaker’s bureaus. I write in my book that even though my interactions with drug and device companies complied with ethical guidelines it does not mean I was not influenced.

MR: In journalism, when a reporter takes money from someone she is writing about, she is regarded as no longer a reporter but a publicist. Yet doctors who consult to Pharma are not judged as harshly and most contend they are not influenced by industry money….

BR: They are wrong.  An article in the American Journal of Bioethics in 2003 found that gifts bestow a sense of indebtedness and influence behavior whether or not the recipient is directly conscious of it. More recently, research presented at a symposium at Houston’s Baylor College of Medicine called the Scientific Basis of Influence and Reciprocity mapped actual changes in the brain when gifts are received.

MR: I was surprised to find recipes in your book and even more surprised by some of your dietary recommendations such as avoiding a low-fat diet and eating a lot of olive oil. A lot of experts have recommended a low-fat diet.

BR: The first thing I prescribe to my patients who have low levels of the “good” or HDL cholesterol is two to three tablespoons of olive oil a day and in every case the HDL increases. Olive oil is rich in polyphenols which have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. Several studies have shown that the Mediterranean diet reduces total mortality and especially death from cardiovascular disease yet it gets little media attention. The Mediterranean diet is a plant-based  diet that includes colorful vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, cheese, nuts, olive oil, seafood, red wine with meals, and very little meat.

MR: You indict professional medical associations like the American Heart Association (AHA) for profiteering at the public’s expense by calling harmful foods healthful in exchange for corporate money.

BR: For years, the AHA preached the gospel of the low-fat diet, calling it the “corner- stone” of its dietary recommendations though there was, and is, no evidence of its benefit. The AHA rakes in millions from food corporations for the use of its “heart-check mark.” Some of the so called heart healthy foods it has endorsed include Boar’s Head All Natural Ham which contains 340 milligrams of sodium in a 2-ounce serving and Boar’s Head EverRoast Oven Roasted Chicken Breast which contains 440 milligrams of sodium in a 2-ounce serving. High sodium intake raises blood pressure which increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. In addition, studies have shown that eating processed meat increases the risk of diabetes and atherosclerosis.

MR: You are not afraid to express strong opinions. You say that the AHA has “sold its soul,” that medical centers conducting drug trials for Big Pharma have become “hired hands” and that one university medical center is Big Pharma’s “lapdog.” Are you afraid of retaliation from Big Pharma, medical centers or the colleagues you work with?

BR: I haven’t received any communiqués from Big Pharma. A few colleagues have expressed dismay, but I am thick-skinned and hard-headed and don’t care what they say. My main concern is the health and safety of my patients.

~

Martha Rosenberg is a columnist/cartoonist who writes about public health. Her first book, titled Born with a Junk Food Deficiency: How Flaks, Quacks and Hacks Pimp the Public Health, has just been released by Prometheus Books. She can be reached at: martharosenberg@sbcglobal.net.

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$tatin Nation trailer1

For more preview clips, please click here

Film Synopsis:

We are told that cholesterol is a major cause of heart disease. At least 40 million people are currently taking cholesterol-lowering medications, known as statins, and millions more people are avoiding foods that contain saturated fat and cholesterol.

The basic idea is that dietary saturated fat raises cholesterol levels, and these two substances somehow clog-up our arteries, causing a heart attack. This idea is often referred to as the diet-heart hypothesis.

However, a numbers of doctors and researchers have been challenging this hypothesis for decades, and the latest heart disease statistics reveal some alarming facts. Such as:

● People with high cholesterol tend to live longer

● People with heart disease tend to have low levels of cholesterol

● Cholesterol-lowering of a population does not reduce the rate of heart disease

In addition, despite their widespread use, and description as “wonder drugs” statin medications do not extend life for the majority of people who take them.

Cholesterol-lowering has become a huge global industry, generating at least $29 billion each year. Have the facts about heart disease, cholesterol and cholesterol medications been distorted by pharmaceutical companies  and food manufacturers keen to increase their profits?

If the focus on cholesterol has been a mistake, then the greatest cost is associated with the lost opportunity to tackle heart disease.

Producer/Director:   Justin Smith

Editor and Motion Graphics:   Justin Keating

Director of Photography:   Stephen Ellis

3D Animation:  Tim Greenfield

Sound Design:  Graham Donnelly

August 22, 2012 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , , , | 1 Comment

What is wrong with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)

By Carolina Rossini and Maira Sutton | EFF | August 21, 2012

EFF has been fighting against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) intellectual property chapter for several years. This agreement poses a great risk to users’ freedoms and access to information on a global scale.

We have created this infographic to capture the most problematic aspects of TPP, and to help users, advocates and innovators from around the world spread the word about how this agreement will impact them and their societies. Right-click and save the image for the PNG file, or you can download the PDF version below.

We thank Lumin Consulting for working with us on this project.

Take Action TPPAttached Documents

tpp.pdf

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics | , , , , , | 1 Comment

NY Times and the Myth of ‘U.S. Ideals’

By Peter Hart – FAIR – 08/22/2012

There’s nothing quite like the demise of a U.S-allied dictator to get the Paper of Record talking about the “clash” between U.S. “ideals” and the actual policies the country carries out.

Today’s New York Times (8/22/12) carries the headline “Ethiopian Leader’s Death Highlights Gap Between U.S. Interests and Ideals,” under which Jeffrey Gettleman lays out the case that the United States kept Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi, who died early this week, in the “good guy” column despite our normally idealistic approach to world affairs. Gettleman writes that Zenawi

extracted prized intelligence, serious diplomatic support and millions of dollars in aid from the United States in exchange for his cooperation against militants in the volatile Horn of Africa, an area of prime concern for Washington.

But he was notoriously repressive, undermining President Obama’s maxim that “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.”

But, Gettlemen explains:

Despite being one of the United States’ closest allies on the continent, Mr. Meles repeatedly jailed dissidents and journalists, intimidated opponents and their supporters to win mind-bogglingly one-sided elections, and oversaw brutal campaigns in restive areas of the country where the Ethiopian military has raped and killed many civilians.

The real trick is the first word: “Despite.” Readers are supposed to see these as unusual characteristics for a leader backed by the United States, which of course would much rather the world be governed by those who respect international law and human rights.

That supposed commitment is difficult to locate. After his death, Gettleman reports,  Hillary Clinton

praised his “personal commitment” to lifting Ethiopia’s economy and “his role in promoting peace and security in the region.” But she made no mention of his rights record and gave only a veiled reference to supporting “democracy and human rights” in Ethiopia.

Gettleman deserves some sort of award for this passage:

Ethiopia is hardly alone in raising difficult questions on how the United States should balance interests and principles.

Saudi Arabia is an obvious example, a country where women are deprived of many rights and there is almost no religious freedom. Still, it remains one of America’s closest allies in the Middle East for a simple reason: oil.

In Africa, the United States cooperates with several governments that are essentially one-party states, dominated by a single man, despite a commitment to promoting democracy.

One could spend considerable time compiling a list of the tyrants, dictators and human rights abusers the United States has supported, from Suharto in Indonesia to Mubarak in Egypt. Or consider the Reagan-era policies of Latin America, which saw the United States supporting strongmen and fielding armies to overthrow governments we didn’t care for.

Elite institutions like the Times need to maintain the comfortable fiction that the United States has a unique and laudable commitment to spreading democracy and human rights. Most people with a passing knowledge of U.S. history would know that there are too many exceptions to this rule to make it a rule at all. Thus, every now and then, an article like this is written to demonstrate that there is in fact some awareness that the United States does not practice what it preaches. An effective propaganda system requires these small openings.

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

South Africa’s Unfinished Revolution and the Massacre at Marikana

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford | August 22, 2012

When thousands of miners went on strike at South Africa’s largest platinum mine, in Marikana, they were confronting not only the London-based owners, but the South African state, which since 1994 has been dominated by the African National Congress (ANC); COSATU, the Congress of South African Trade Unions; and the South African Communist Party. This week, the full weight of the state was brought down on the Black miners, 34 of whom were massacred by police gunfire. Many of the survivors face charges of murder in the earlier deaths of two policemen and eight other miners.

The National Union of Mineworkers, whose representation the strikers rejected, and the Communist Party head in the region claim the strikers are at fault, that they have committed the sin of choosing an alternative union to argue their case for higher wages and, therefore, deserve severe punishment. They are “anarchists,” say these two allies of the South African state, and guilty of fomenting “dual unionism” – which is now, apparently, a capital crime. With a straight face, the Communist Party had the gall to call on all South African workers to “remain united in the fight against exploitation under capitalism.”

That is precisely what the Marikana miners were doing – the struggle they gave their lives for. However, since the peaceful transition to state power to the ANC and its very junior partners, the COSATU unions and the Communist Party, in 1994, the South African state has had different priorities. The “revolution” was put on indefinite hold, so that a new Black capitalist class could be created, largely from the ranks of well-connected members of the ruling party and even union leaders. It is only logical that, if the priority of the state is to nurture Black capitalists, then it must maintain and defend capitalism. This is the central contradiction of the South African arrangement, and the massacre at Marikana is its inevitable result.

The 1994 agreement between Nelson Mandela’s ANC and the white South African regime was a pact with the devil, which could only be tolerated by the masses of the country’s poor because it was seen as averting a bloodbath, and because it was assumed to be temporary. But, 18 years later, the arrangement has calcified into a bizarre protectorate for foreign white capital and the small class of Blacks that have attached themselves to the global rich. Apologists for the African National Congress regime will prattle on about the “complexity” of the issue, but the central truth is that South Africa did not complete its revolution.

The fundamental contradictions of the rule of the many by the few, remain in place – only now, another layer of repression has been added: a Black aristocracy that has soaked itself in the blood of the miners of Marikana.

South Africa remains the continent’s best hope for a fundamental break with colonialism in its new forms. But, as in all anti-colonial struggles, the biggest casualties will occur in the clash between those who truly desire liberation, and those who are intent on an accommodation with the old master.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Venezuelan State Enterprises Sign Agreement to Develop Orinoco Region

By Tamara Pearson | Venezuelanalysis | August 21st 2012

Mérida  –  Yesterday President Hugo Chavez met with over a thousand workers in the large hall of the Caruachi Hydroelectric Complex of the Guyana Venezuela Corporation (CVG) to sign an agreement to begin the organisation and construction of the Orinoco Axis of Development.

Representatives of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA and CVG signed the agreement to collaborate in the creation of this “axis of development” in the Orinoco area, one of several such axes in specific regions that Chavez has proposed in his plan for 2013-2019. CVG is a mostly worker co-managed entity that extracts and processes primary material such as iron, gold, and bauxite.

Chavez said the strategy was to unite the north and south of the Orinoco zone. That is, to unite the Orinoco Oil Belt to the north of the river, which holds the world’s largest oil reserves, with the Industrial Mining Belt to the south of it. However, Chavez said the area also includes 600,000 hectares where agricultural production can be fostered. The axis will have an area of around 100,000 square kilometres in total.

The union between PDVSA and CVG is the result of years of discussion, Chavez said, “and is related to large historical objectives which we have proposed for ourselves… and the need for planning… in the long and medium term”.

CVG president Rafael Gil Barrios explained to the press today that the PDVSA-CVG agreement is already being concretised, including the creation of mixed companies (smaller companies run by the two larger main ones) such as Petro San Feliz. CVG will own 10% of this company, of the 70% of stocks that PDVSA already owns.

Steel projects, Workers and Mercosur

Workers from CVG, from the Sidor steel plant, and from PDVSA attended the meeting with Chavez, during which he also approved US$ 324 million for Sidor, to go towards increasing its production. That includes $18.5 million to update rust removal technology and $250 million for a project to install machinery for round billet mould assembly. The steel tubes produced from this machinery will benefit the petroleum industry in the Orinoco oil belt. The financing comes from agreements with China.

Chavez asked workers to audit the projects and to protest when work is taking too long or is halted. His comment comes as some cement workers have voted to go on national strike “against the policy of the Chavez government of freezing collective contracts in order to please the capitalists”, as stated by the Revolutionary Socialist Current two days ago.

“Just like when you all protest, and rightly so, when for example, the dividends don’t arrive… so I approved Bs 600 million recently for such loans,” Chavez said, adding that, “Workers have the right to protest in a thousand ways, but not damaging the production of … the [state owned] companies of Guayana… there are mafias who buy off the workers…and their managers… they have to be denounced.”

The president also emphasised the importance of the axis and its region in Venezuela’s incorporation into the trade bloc, Mercosur, formalised in July.

“We have to start to construct the railroad from the Caribbean (Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela) to Manaos (in the Brazilian Amazon)… this is vital and Guayana’s role in that is vital,” Chavez said and also announced that he was forming a new presidential commission to deal with Venezuela’s integration into Mercosur. The commission will consist of mostly selected members of his cabinet and is presided by Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro and Mercosur executive secretary Isabel Delgado.

Nicolas Maduro, added, “This large economic force, this mining, industrial, petroleum, agricultural force is our country’s direct relationship with Mercosur… the Mercosur commission starts today (Monday) and they have oriented us towards forming a Business Council and a Worker Council of Mercosur”.

“There’s a lot of motivation to increase the productive and exporting potential Venezuela has in the large market of South America, which is Mercosur,” Maduro concluded.

The government re-nationalised the Sidor steel plant in 2008, and CVG workers in July 2009 proposed a model of production and workers control which Chavez supported, called Plan Socialist Guayana 2009-2019.  The plan involved transforming the state owned CVG and its companies into socialist companies, and in 2010 CVG workers elected the directors of the respective companies that make up the corporation for the first time.

Ramirez confirmed as president of PDVSA and increased oil production

Today Chavez also announced that the president of PDVSA, as well as the minister of petroleum and mining, Rafael Ramirez, will remain president of PDVSA for the upcoming management period of 2013-2019.

Chavez made the announcement during a meeting in Monagas state with the workers of the Orinoco Oil Belt there. He also outlined plans to increase petroleum production in Venezuela generally to 6 million barrels a day by 2019, said that the government is currently “investing around 5 billion dollars in the belt” and that over the next 6 years the government aims to invest $100 billion.

Ramirez informed that the Venezuelan state has received US$ 383,223 million through petroleum taxes over the last thirteen years. This income was a result of fiscal reforms the government implemented from 2002 in the petroleum sectors. Before those reforms, transnationals in the petroleum sector only payed taxes of 1%, a figure the government increased to 33% in 2002.

Chavez said this money has been invested in education, health, agriculture, and housing.

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Fletcherism and Fakery: Guarding Obama’s Left Flank

By Glen Ford | Black Agenda Report | August 22, 2012

Bill Fletcher and Carl Davidson are two Left opportunists with a problem. Unlike four years ago, when Fletcher co-founded Progressives for Obama, their guy now has a record – and it is indefensible. Solution: nullify the issues right up front in the title to their reworked rationale for backing the Bill of Rights-destroying, Wall Street-protecting, Africa-bombing, regime-changing corporate Democrat. Their August 9th  Alternet article, “The 2012 Elections Have Little To Do With Obama’s Record … Which Is Why We Are Voting For Him” frames the campaign as a contest between “revenge-seeking” white supremacists and – well…those of us who are not revenge-seeking white supremacists. The facts of the Obama presidency – his actual behavior on war, austerity, and civil liberties – are deemed irrelevant, and the president himself becomes a mere stage prop in the battle against “Caligula,” the Republicans.

Fletcher and Davidson want Blacks and progressives to respond with hysteria to GOP “irrationalism,” to keep the traditional Democratic base in the Obama camp through raw fear.They claim the current campaign “will be unlike anything that any of us can remember.” In truth, the abject Black failure to make a single demand of Obama, and the vapid excuses and rationalizations for the Left’s political collapse in his presence, then and now, makes 2012 very much resemble 2008. Back then, Fletcher & Co. wrote:

“Barack Obama’s very biography reflects the positive potential of the globalization process that also contains such grave threats to our democracy when shaped only by the narrow interests of private corporations in an unregulated global marketplace. We should instead be globalizing the values of equality, a living wage and environmental sustainability in the new world order, not hoping our deepest concerns will be protected by trickle-down economics or charitable billionaires. By its very existence, the Obama campaign will stimulate a vision of globalization from below.”

Four years later, we are admonished to forget the facts as they actually transpired – and as we at BAR predicted – and pretend the current campaign is a crusade against the Tea Party, with Obama as the incidental beneficiary.

Right-wing populism is the bogey man, in opposition to which we must re-embrace Obama. The GOP isn’t just racist, it is “irrational,” crying for “a return to the past.” They write:

“Obama represents an irrational symbol for the political right, and a potent symbol that goes way beyond what Obama actually stands for and practices. The right, while taking aim at Obama, also seeks, quite methodically and rationally, to use him to turn back the clock.”

Of course, the meaning of the term reactionary is to “turn back the clock,” a promise Republicans have been making for 50 years. And racism is fundamentally irrational, causing white supremacists to see that which is not there, be blinded to facts that are right in front of their noses, and to invent whole narratives of history. But, this time is different, Fletcher and Davidson insist, because the Right is so intensely focused on the symbolism of Obama, the Black man – and so “irrational” about it that they make up ridiculous things about him, like his non-citizenship.

Therefore, our response, as progressives, must be to forge a “common front based on resisting white revanchism… on political misogynism, on anti-‘freeloader’ themes aimed at youth, people of color and immigrants, and a partial defense of the so-called 1%.” The fact that Obama is demonstrably not a part of that common front must not dissuade us from joining his campaign. If the Right has made Obama its symbolic focus, we must, in response, make him the focus of our “common front.” If the Right hates Obama with an irrational passion, we must hug him to our breasts.

Just in case the logic of such reasoning escapes you, Fletcher and Davidson remind us that the Republicans are not merely irrational – they are crazy like Caligula.

“November 2012 becomes not a statement about the Obama presidency, but a defensive move by progressive forces to hold back the ‘Caligulas’ on the political right. It is about creating space and using mass campaigning to build new grassroots organization of our own. It is not about endorsing the Obama presidency or defending the official Democratic platform. But it is about resisting white revanchism and political misogynism by defeating Republicans and pressing Democrats with a grassroots insurgency, while advancing a platform of our own, one based on the ‘People’s Budget’ and antiwar measures of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. In short, we need to do a little ‘triangulating’ of our own.”

So, it’s not about “endorsing the Obama presidency” – but about voting for Obama while claiming that the facts of what he did as president don’t matter. It is about the nonsense of “creating space” so that the Left can do what it ought to do anyway, but which it didn’t do in the two years leading up to the 2008 election, or in the first two and a half years of the Obama presidency, until the Occupy Wall Street activists came out of left field in disgust with both parties’ subservience to finance capital. The anti-war movement seems largely to oppose only Republican wars.

The great fallacy, here, is that Democratic presidents in general, and Obama in particular, somehow create “space” for progressive activism. Movements create space for themselves, by acting. Only charlatans preach that progressive movements must install preferred personalities from the menus of the ruling circles before they can find space to move.

The great tragedy of the Obama era, is that his presence has had the effect of shutting down progressive – and, most dramatically, Black – opposition to the prevailing order. This does not happen by the magic of charisma. Political operatives identified with the Left work diligently to maintain such silence – people like Fletcher and Davidson, who are once again guarding the left flank for Obama, whose great legacy has been to create vast political space for Wall Street and the Pentagon, with a minimum of resistance from white progressives, Blacks and the rest of the Democratic base.

That’s why we at BAR call Obama the more effective evil.

Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

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August 22, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

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