In 1983 the British government created Chevening as an international award scheme aimed at developing what it calls “global leaders.” It is funded and directed by the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and includes both scholarships and fellowships for individuals selected by British embassies around the world.
The Chevening website itself states:
Chevening offers a unique opportunity for future leaders, influencers, and decision-makers from all over the world to develop professionally and academically, network extensively, experience UK culture, and build lasting positive relationships with the UK.
The website also states that (our emphasis):
Chevening Awards are an important element in Britain’s public diplomacy effort and bring professionals, who have already displayed outstanding leadership talents, to study in the UK. The objective of Chevening is to support foreign policy priorities and achieve FCO objectives by creating lasting positive relationships with future leaders, influencers, and decision-makers.
In other, simpler and more frank terms, Chevening is a means of producing agents of British influence through the indoctrination of foreigners involved in their respective nation’s media, politics, policy making and analysis.
And while Chevening has only been around since 1983, the tool of imperialism it represents is quite ancient.
Roman historian Tacitus (c. AD 56 – after 117) would adeptly describe the systematic manner in which Rome pacified foreign peoples and the manner in which it would extend its sociocultural and institutional influence over conquered lands.
Far from simple military conquest, the Romans engaged in sophisticated cultural colonisation.
In chapter 21 of his book Agricola, named so after his father-in-law whose methods of conquest were the subject of the text, Tacitus would explain:
His object was to accustom them to a life of peace and quiet by the provision of amenities. He therefore gave official assistance to the building of temples, public squares and good houses. He educated the sons of the chiefs in the liberal arts, and expressed a preference for British ability as compared to the trained skills of the Gauls. The result was that instead of loathing the Latin language they became eager to speak it effectively. In the same way, our national dress came into favour and the toga was everywhere to be seen. And so the population was gradually led into the demoralizing temptation of arcades, baths and sumptuous banquets.
And perhaps the most striking observation of all made by Tacitus was as follows:
The unsuspecting Britons spoke of such novelties as ‘civilization’, when in fact they were only a feature of their enslavement.
Centuries later, Chevening alumni boast openly about their scholarships and fellowships. It is included in their bios on social media and prominently featured in biographies and résumés that accompany editorials and job applications.
They believe it to be a high rung upon the ladder of civilisation that they have reached, when in reality, it is nothing more than a modern-day feature of indoctrination, manipulation and exploitation.
Chevening Alumni’s Busy Hands
Chevening and programmes like it have built cadres for British, European and American influence around the world. Many alumni of these programmes head US-European funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). They also lead or support opposition movements and political parties aimed at commandeering the political and media machinery of foreign nations across the developing world.
In Thailand, a particularly acute example of this is Khoasod English commentator Pravit Rojanaphruk, who eagerly boasts of his various foreign fellowships and scholarships, including his status as a 2001-2002 Chevening scholar.
While he claims to be a journalist, his work consists entirely of political commentary and bias couched behind activism coupled with overtly pro-American and European editorials expounding notions of Western democracy and human rights.
He regularly agitates against the current Thai government which ousted the US-European backed political party of Thaksin Shinawatra in 2014. When his agitation attracts legal prosecution, he is regularly accompanied by staff from the British and American embassies as well as representatives from the European Union and Canadian diplomatic missions in Thailand.
It is loyal and persistent agents of British influence like Pravit Rojanaphruk that Chevening was created to produce.
Of course, those who have gone through Chevening’s indoctrination process are not necessarily confined for life by this modern-day feature of “enslavement.”
The Roman Empire brought many young people to Rome for their indoctrination. While the majority of them would certainly and dutifully pursue Roman cultural colonisation upon returning home, some simply used the opportunity to understand the inner workings of this foreign oppressor on a deeper level.
Their intimate knowledge of the Roman Empire gave rise to some of the most disruptive and persistent rebellions Rome faced and would eventually contribute to Rome’s ultimate collapse.
While Chevening and programmes like it including Reuters fellowships and the US State Department’s Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) are likely to turn out agents of Western influence wielded against the developing world, it may also help sow the seeds to the collapse of the very special interests behind these invasive and manipulative programmes.
For people across the developing world, such “opportunities” seem like a ladder to heaven and strong cognitive dissonance insulates them from ever seeing the truth that these programmes truly represent. A better informed society in general, however, may help insure those targeted by this form of modern-day imperialism stand a better chance of using it rather than being used by it.
November 12, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular | Chevening Awards, UK |
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During an interview with Al Jazeera television, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai linked the emergence of Islamic State group in the region to U.S. interventions.
“In my view, under the full (United States) presence, surveillance, military, political, intelligence, Daesh has emerged,” he said.
Karzai also noted that that the United States is colluding with Islamic State group in Afghanistan in order to allow the terrorist group to thrive in the war-torn country, according to PressTV.
“And for two years, the Afghan people came, cried loud about their suffering, of violations. Nothing was done,” Karzai said.
A year after securing control over large swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014, Islamic State group began to establish itself in the eastern province of Nangarhar in Afghanistan. From there the group has carried major attacks on the Central Asian country.
Karzai went on to assert that after the U.S. military dropped the GBU-43/B MOAB — the largest non-nuclear bomb detonated since World War II — in Nangarhar’s Achin District, Islamic State group fighters seized control of “the next district.” It was the first time the U.S. military dropped the 21,600 pound bomb, which contains an Australian made explosive called H6 and has an explosive equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, according to Inverse.
The incident “proves to us that there is a hand” aiding the emergence of Islamic State group and “that hand can be no one else but them (the United States) in Afghanistan,” Karzai concluded.
He condemned the U.S. government for using Afghanistan as a “testing ground for new and dangerous weapons” and welcomed a recent call by Fatou Bensouda, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, to open an inquiry into war crimes committed in Afghanistan.
“She’s right to open an investigation,” Karzai said, adding that he will cooperate with the investigation, even if it probes his own complicity in such crimes.
November 12, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Da’esh, United States |
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The officials are called one by one to lay wreathes, a ceremony of mechanical efficiency. With each laying comes the sense of wonder at how this could happen. Political figures are the first to vote in parliaments and side with the executive when it comes to wars. The temptations of human drives to tempt, and then succumb to death, were there long before Sigmund Freud identified them.
In the Australian capital, there were many wreaths, so many uniformed, deodorised dignitaries distant from the cries of battle and the horror of engineered slaughter. There were the expected, the usual, the normal: the most medalled of them all, the Governor General, the various Chiefs of Army, Navy and Air Force.
There was the Chief Justice of the Australian High Court making her appearance. There was even the ceremonial didgeridoo player. Various associations also featured: those dealing with the incapacitated; the matter of war widows, the issue of legacies. It seemed like a vast who’s who of the military complex, which is exactly what it was.
The Australian response here is, in some ways, more tragic than most. Retained, generally white Ghurkhas for imperial causes (there were those of other races in the Australian armed forces at points), they flitted between theatres to be slaughtered at the behest of not-so-grand strategies that mangled the word “freedom” and confused it for politics. In battle, such a word has little meaning, about as significant, in fact, as a wreath. What matters is survival.
Across media networks, the word freedom was uttered as an automatic response, a genetically programmed insistence that the deaths of the Great War had been somehow necessary and, importantly, productive.
That disposition was sown by such figures as King George V, who had issued a request to the people of the British Empire to suspend ordinary activities for two minutes on the hour of the armistice “which stayed the worldwide carnage of the four preceding years and marked the victory of Right and Freedom”.
In 1997, the Australian Governor-General, Sir William Deane, proclaimed that November 11 be deemed Remembrance Day, insisting that a minute’s silence be observed at 11 am on November 11 each year, a pause to reflect, more broadly, sacrifices made by the Australian armed forces.
Modern representatives of this view abound, and they are, unsurprisingly, effusive in the veterans’ organisations. There were the remarks, for instance, of Richard Embleton from the Geelong Returned and Services League, who reflected on the tens of thousands of wool poppies laid out before Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance. “You only have to look around Australia [to see] how free we are and how important it is.”
To justify mass murder and death, the word sacrifice has become the indispensable substitute for political folly, the ultimate apologia for the misguided and sanctimonious. Consider the words of Finance Minister, Mathias Cormann’s commemorative address. “In Belgium, around 13,000 Australians paid the ultimate price – it is a price that those who lived there and their descendants have not forgotten in the last 100 years.”
For Cormann, being himself Belgian-born, the fallen had particular significance. Australian soldiers had, in effect, come to defend the land of his ancestors. “In the country of my birth, Australians marched to defend and to die for the land of my family.”
But would it be that commemorations were the sombre stuff of true reflection, a genuine appraisal of flaws, errors and disaster. The New South Wales Governor, David Hurley, suggested that current and future generations “interpret through their own lens and their own filter” the legacy of the Great War.
Such lenses and filters have yet to be changed. An example of its ossification, and fixation, is the cult of poppies, an effort of mass indoctrination that has done everything to dissuade modern generations from pondering the errors of their ancestors’ ways.
To not wear the unfortunately misused flower invites criticism and crucifixion from the veneration police. When the world football federation FIFA decided to ban the poppy from the shorts of the Scotland and England teams in 2016, ripples of propagandistic hysteria made their way through converts.
“Our football players,” claimed British Prime Minister Theresa May with clichéd consistency, “want to recognise and respect those who have given their lives for our safety and security.” England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland used the symbol in defiance, and were duly fined.
The reasoning from FIFA was unusually relevant: the poppy was a political symbol, and therefore an inappropriate part of sporting attire. Unfortunately, the organisation went back on its ban this year, a reversal pressed upon them by the UK football authorities.
To that end, each ceremony retains, in its message, the promise of future war, the next murderous gamble and suicidal play of politics and the failings of the opportunistic classes. The ones slaughtered are rarely the ones making the decisions. The ideologue remains desk bound; the bureaucrat stays behind to order things far from the front line.
The Great War, the war to end all wars, is touchingly remembered by some but genuinely ignored in its lessons. It sowed future revolutions, and produced more conflicts, notably the greatest of them all, the Second World War. It saw the destruction of the aristocratic classes – for many, a good thing; and the death of a generation. It brought, to Australia, a melancholic disposition. It introduced, into European life, pessimism and depression even as it uprooted the established social order.
To best remember and commemorate the fallen and those “caught up” – an expression always used in November every year – the resort to needless wars and destructive foreign interventions could be a start. That start, notably among such countries as Australia, has yet to be made. War retains an intoxicating sweetness for those who have never tried it.
Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne and can be reached at: bkampmark@gmail.com.
November 12, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Australia |
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It is always tempting. The Syrian war is coming to an end, and the losses to those who bet on the losing side – suddenly in the glare of the end-game – become an acute and public embarrassment. The temptation is to brush the losses aside and with a show of bravado make one last bet: the masculine “hero” risks his home and its contents on a last spin of the wheel. Those in attendance stand in awed silence, awaiting the wheel to slow, and to trickle the ball forward, slot by slot, and to observe where it comes to rest, be it on black, or on the blood-red of tragedy.
Not only in romances, but in life, too. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) has wagered all on black, with his “friends” – President Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and Trump himself daring MbS on. Trump, in his business life, once or twice has staked his future on the spin of the wheel. He too has gambled and admits to the exhilaration.
And in the shadows, at the back of the gaming room, stands Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. The idea of going to the casino was his, in the first place. If the hero lands on black, he will share in the joy, but if it is red … never mind: Bibi’s home is not forfeit.
Let us be clear, MbS is severing all the various fetters that hold the Saudi kingdom together and intact. Saudi Arabia is not just a family business: it is also a confederation of tribes. Their diverse interests were attended to, primordially, through the composition of the National Guard, and its patronage. The latter henceforth reflects, no longer, the kingdom’s diverse tribal affiliations, but the security interests of one man, who has seized it for himself.
Ditto for the various cadet branches of the al-Saud family: the carefully judged sharing out of spoils amongst the many family claimants is finished. One man is clearing the table of everybody’s smaller stakes. He has snapped the wires connecting the Court to the Saudi business élite – and is slowly slicing away the Wahhabi religious establishment, too. They have been effectively kicked out of the partnership, which they founded jointly with ibn Saud, the first monarch of Saudi Arabia who ruled during the first half of the last century, also known as King Abdul Aziz. In short, no one has a stake left in this enterprise, but MbS – and no one it seems, has rights, or redress.
Why? Because MbS sees the Saudi political and religious leadership of the Arab world slipping, like sand, through the king’s fingers, and he cannot bear the thought that Iran (and the despised Shi’a), could be the inheritor.
Transforming Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia, therefore, has to be transformed from a sleepy, declining kingdom, into an instrument for blunting Iranian power. This, naturally resonates with an American President who seems, too, more and more preoccupied with reasserting U.S. prestige, deterrence and power in the world (rather than adhering to the non-interventionist narrative of the Campaign). At The American Conservative’s conference in Washington last week, editor Robert Merry, a staunch realist and prolific author, mourned that: “There is no realism and restraint in American foreign policy in the Trump era.”
All wars are costly, and money is needed (and is being seized accordingly through MbS’s arrest of his rivals on corruption charges). But Saudi Arabia traditionally (since the Eighteenth Century), has waged all its power struggles via one particular (and effective) tool: fired-up Wahhabi jihadism. And that, in the wake of the Syrian debacle, lies discredited, and no longer available.
So now, Saudi Arabia has to craft a new instrument, with which to confront Iran: and the Crown Prince’s choice is truly ironic: “moderate Islam” and Arab nationalism (to counter non-Arab Iran and Turkey). Mohammad Abd-el Wahhab must be turning in his grave: “moderate” Islam in his rigorous doctrine, led only to idolatry (such as that practiced by the Ottomans), and which, in his view, should be punished by death (see here).
In fact, this is the riskier part of MbS’s gamble (though seizing Prince Walid bin Talal’s mammoth fortune has grabbed most attention). King Abdel Aziz faced armed rebellion, and another king was assassinated for departing from the Wahhabist principles on which the state was founded – and for embracing westernized modernity (viewed by pure Wahhabis as idolatry).
The gene of Wahhabist fervor cannot be exorcised from Saudi society by simply commanding it gone. (Abdul Aziz finally only overcame it, by machine gunning its adherents, dead).
But, embracing “moderate Islam” (i.e. secular Islam), and threatening to confront Iran, probably was done with one eye on wooing President Trump to support MbS’s ousting of his cousin, Prince Naif, as Crown Prince – and the other eye on the P.R. potential to portray Iran as “extremist” Islam to a White House whose world view of the Middle East has been shaped by Bibi Netanyahu whispering in the ear of Jared Kushner, and by the prejudices of a circle of advisers disposed to see Iran in terms of one singular understanding, rather than in its diverse aspects. Netanyahu must be congratulating himself on his clever ploy.
Netanyahu’s Coup
No doubt about it: it has been a coup for Netanyahu. The question though, is whether it will turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory, or not: whichever it is, it is highly dangerous to throw grenades into combustible material. This U.S.-Israeli-Saudi-UAE project is, at bottom, an attempt to overturn reality, no less – it is rooted in a denial of the setback suffered by these states by their multiple failures to shape a New Middle East in the Western mode. Now, in the wake of their failure in Syria – in which they went to the limits in search of victory – they seek another spin of the roulette wheel – in the hope of recouping all their earlier losses. It is, to say the least, a capricious hope.
On the one hand, Iran’s strength across the northern Middle East is not tentative. It is now well rooted. Iran’s “strategic space” includes Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Yemen – and increasingly – Turkey. Iran has played a major role in defeating ISIS, together with Russia. It is a “strategic partner” of Russia, while Russia now enjoys broad sway across the region. In a word, the political heft lies with the north, rather than with the weakened, southern tier.
If there be some notion that Russia might be induced to “rein in” Iran and its allies across the region to mollify Israeli concerns, this smacks of wishful thinking. Even if Russia could (and it probably cannot), why should it? How then will Iran be rolled-back? By military action? This, too, seems a stretch.
Israel’s military and security echelon, in the wake of the 2006 war on Lebanon, is likely only to contemplate a war (with anyone other than Palestinians), that is short (six days or less); does not result in heavy Israeli civilian or military casualties; and can be won at a low cost. Ideally, Israel would also expect full American buy-in (unlike in 2006). The Pentagon has little appetite for putting boots on the ground again in the Middle East, and Israelis are aware of this. And Saudi Arabia alone, cannot threaten anyone militarily (as Yemen has amply demonstrated).
Can Saudi Arabia squeeze Lebanon economically and impose political pressure on any Lebanese government? Of course: but economic pressure likely will hurt the Sunni, middle and business classes, harder than the 44 percent of the Lebanese population who are Shi’a. Generally, the Lebanese have an aversion to external interference, and American sanctions and pressures will be more likely to unite Lebanon than divide it. (This is the old, old story of imposed sanctions.) And at a guess, the Europeans will neither willingly support the de-stabilization of Lebanon nor the abandonment of JCPOA, the 2015 agreement to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
So what may be the outcome? At a guess, Saudi Arabia, already a society with many repressed tensions, may simply implode under the new repression (or MbS might somehow be “removed” before the tensions combust). America and Israel will not emerge strengthened, but rather will be viewed as less relevant to the Middle East.
Robert Malley, the former Middle East adviser in the last administration, warns of the danger of a potential regional explosion: “Fear is the one thing preventing it—but could also precipitate it.”
Alastair Crooke is a former British diplomat who was a senior figure in British intelligence and in European Union diplomacy. He is the founder and director of the Conflicts Forum.
November 11, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Benjamin Netanyahu, Iran, Israel, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, United States, Yemen, Zionism |
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The truth of corporate journalism, and the great irony of its obsession with ‘fake news’, is that it is itself utterly fake. What could be more obviously fake than the idea that Truth can be sold by billionaire-owned media dependent on billionaire-owned advertisers for maximised profit?
The ‘mainstream’ worldview is anything but – it is extreme, weird, a product of corporate conformity and deference to power. As Norman Mailer observed:
‘There is an odour to any Press Headquarters that is unmistakeable… The unavoidable smell of flesh burning quietly and slowly in the service of a machine.’ (Mailer, ‘The Time Of Our Time’, Little Brown, 1998, p.457)
A prime example of ‘mainstream’ extremism is the way the UK’s illegal wars destroying whole countries are not an issue for corporate moralists. Physicians for Global Responsibility estimate that 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan alone. And yet it is simply understood that UK wars will not be a theme during general elections (See here and here). By contrast, other kinds of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ are subject to intense scrutiny.
Consider the recent resignation of Defence Secretary Michael Fallon and his replacement by Prime Minister Theresa May’s Chief Whip, Gavin Williamson. Fallon resigned after it was revealed that he had ‘repeatedly touched the broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer’s knee at a dinner in 2002’.
Fallon was damaged further by revelations that he had lunged at journalist Jane Merrick:
‘This was not a farewell peck on the cheek, but a direct lunge at my lips.’
The Commons leader Andrea Leadsom also disclosed that she had complained about ‘lewd remarks’ Fallon had made to her.
Sexual harassment is a serious issue, despite the scoffing of some male commentators. In the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens shamefully dismissed women’s complaints as mere ‘squawking’.
But it is strange indeed that, while harassment is rightly deemed a resigning offence, other ‘inappropriate behaviour’ leaves ‘mainstream’ commentators completely unmoved.
Fallon voted for both the 2003 war that destroyed Iraq and the 2011 war that wrecked Libya. He voted for war on Syria. He voted for replacing the Trident nuclear missile system. Earlier this year, he even declared that Britain would be willing to launch a nuclear first strike.
After he was made Secretary of Defence in July 2014, Fallon oversaw the supply of weapons to Saudi Arabia waging war on Yemen. Two years later, Campaign Against Arms Trade reported that UK sales to Saudi Arabia since the start of the war included £2.2 billion of aircraft, helicopters and drones, £1.1 billion of missiles, bombs and grenades, and nearly half a million pounds’ worth of tanks and other armoured vehicles. British sales of military equipment to the kingdom topped £1.1bn in the first half of this year alone.
In December 2016, Fallon admitted that internationally banned cluster munitions supplied by the UK had been used in Saudi Arabia’s bombing campaign. Six months earlier, Amnesty International had reported that British-made cluster bombs were being used in attacks on civilians that had claimed the lives of children. For none of these horrors did Fallon resign.
So what kind of conflict are these weapons fuelling? The Guardian reports this week:
‘Yemen is in the grip of the world’s worst cholera outbreak and 7 million people are already on the brink of famine.’
In July, Reliefweb reported:
‘The scale of the food crisis in conflict-ridden Yemen is staggering with 17 million people – two thirds of the population – severely food insecure and seven million of these on the verge of famine.’
Director-General of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation, José Graziano da Silva, has described Yemen as the UN’s ‘largest humanitarian crisis today’, noting that conflict and violence have disrupted agriculture, with violence intensifying in areas most short of food. In December 2016, a study by UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, found that at least one child was dying in Yemen every 10 minutes. The agency found that, since 2014, there had been a 200 per cent increase in children suffering from severe acute malnutrition, with almost half a million affected. Nearly 2.2 million children were in need of urgent care.
This week, the Saudi-led coalition declared it would close Yemen’s borders to prevent an alleged flow of weapons from Iran, after it intercepted a missile attack by Houthi rebels near Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Johan Mooij, Yemen director of Care International, commented:
‘For the last two days, nothing has got in or out of the country. Fuel prices have gone up by 50% and there are queues at the gas stations. People fear no more fuel will come into Hodeidah port.’
He added:
‘People depend on the humanitarian aid and part of the cholera issue [is] that they do not eat and are not strong enough to deal with unclean water.’
There have been ‘daily airstrikes in Sana’a,’ Mooij said, adding: ‘People fear the situation is escalating.’
On Monday, the UN’s World Food Program said that, out of Yemen’s entire population of 28 million people, about 20 million, ‘do not know where they’re going to get their next meal’. These are Fallon’s millions, May’s millions, the ‘mainstream’s’ millions.
In the Independent, Mary Dejevsky made the only mention of Yemen in an article discussing Fallon’s resignation that we have seen in the national corporate press:
‘In the Middle East [on Fallon’s watch], the UK made great efforts to maintain its alliance with Saudi Arabia – and the arms sales that went with it – playing down the desperate plight of Yemen which was a by-product of this policy.’
Mass death, Iraq and Libya destroyed, millions of lives torn apart, profiteering in the billions from the torture of an impoverished, famine-stricken nation – none of this was deemed worthy even of mention in considering the record of Fallon and his ‘inappropriate behaviour’.
As for his replacement, the Guardian’s Andrew Sparrow tweeted a link to his blog piece titled: ’10 things you might not know about Gavin Williamson’. Vital facts included news that the new Defence Secretary ‘kept a pet tarantula called Cronus on his desk’, ‘likes hedgehogs’, ‘is only 41’, and ‘went to a comprehensive school’.
Sparrow was adhering to the journalistic convention that parliamentary politics should be depicted as a light-hearted, Wodehousian farce. It is all a bit of a laugh – everybody means well. Despite Williamson’s lethal new role, the word ‘war’ was not mentioned.
Preoccupied with spiders and hedgehogs, Sparrow found no space to mention that Williamson ‘almost always voted for use of UK military forces in combat operations overseas’. He voted for war in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. He voted against the Yemen motion put before the House of Commons in October 2016 that merely called on the Government to suspend its support for the Saudi Arabia-led coalition forces in Yemen until it had been determined whether they had been responsible for war crimes. The motion was defeated by 283 votes to 193, telling us everything we need to know about the ‘mainstream’s’ much-loved myth that British policy is motivated by a ‘responsibility to protect’.
The BBC’s political editor Laura Kuenssberg tweeted a link to the BBC’s own comedy profile, which also discussed the tarantula and other nonsense, and made no mention of Williamson’s record on war. We asked Kuenssberg:
‘Will you be asking him if he has any regrets on voting against the Yemen motion to suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, given the vast civilian crisis?’
We received no reply.
The extreme cognitive dissonance guiding ‘mainstream’ moral outrage was again highlighted by the Guardian columnist Gaby Hinsliff, who tweeted:
‘Can’t help thinking that now would be quite a good time for the first ever female defence secretary, really’
We asked:
‘What difference would it make to the civilians dying under our bombs in Yemen and Syria? Isn’t that the key issue on “defence”?’
Hinsliff did not reply. But the answer, of course, is that it would make no difference at all.
November 11, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Michael Fallon, UK |
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The postponing of an Israeli Knesset bill that would have annexed major illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank to the Jerusalem municipality is the result of behind-the-scenes US and, possibly, European pressure. But the story of the so-called “Greater Jerusalem law” does not end there.
Israel wants to maintain an absolute demographic Jewish majority in Jerusalem, including in occupied and illegally annexed Palestinian East Jerusalem. There is enough support in the Knesset and among the public to ensure that coveted Jewish dominance. But the political balances, and possible drawbacks, are just too delicate and great for Israel to get exactly what it wants, even if there is a clear consensus among Israeli Jewish politicians and the public to permanently change the status of the city.
One of the factors that the Israeli government is considering is the support of the Donald Trump administration. How far will Trump go to support Israeli transgressions, while continuing to advocate an “ultimate deal” – his own version of finding a political resolution to the conflict resulting from Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine?
True, the Trump administration has done its utmost to reassure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of its undying loyalty. Trump’s last visit to Israel was a major step in that direction, where US commitment to Israel’s security and future were made abundantly and repeatedly clear. Moreover, the joint US-Israel push against the United Nations and its smaller institutions – like UNESCO and UNHRC – led by US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, aims to torpedo future international initiatives that are critical of Israel’s military occupation of Palestine.
Yet, on the other hand, using back channels and without much fanfare, Trump has been promoting his own plan for “regional peace”, marks of which are still unclear.
While Israel is routinely allowed to slowly alter the landscape of occupied Palestinian areas, construct walls and expand its illegal settlements, an explicit, major plan to annex large regions of the West Bank would have ignited the kind of backlash that could likely bring an end to Trump’s Middle East politicking and complicate his relations with various Arab governments.
The “Greater Jerusalem law” would have done just that.
According to Israeli commentator Shlomo Elder the idea of expanding Jerusalem’s municipal borders “to increase the city’s population and to ensure its Jewish majority” was proposed by hardline Likud party member Yisrael Katz in 2007. It was deferred then, due to the fear of a strong international reaction.
The idea did not die. It morphed into a movement and politicians from all ideological backgrounds joined in, fearing that, in the future, Israel will lose the “demographic war” in Jerusalem, as well as in the rest of historic Palestine.
“Save Jewish Jerusalem” was launched in 2016 and quickly enlisted the support of politicians, academics and other well-regarded Israelis, all united by their fear that they “would wake up with a Palestinian mayor in Jerusalem.”
So, when the “Greater Jerusalem law” was introduced earlier this year, it seemed like the logical evolution of a current that has been on the rise for years.
The bill proposed to expand the municipal boundaries of Jerusalem to include major illegal Jewish settlements in the West Bank, including Ma’aleh Adumim and the Gush Etzion settlement cluster. Moreover, it endeavored to bring 150,000 Jewish settlers into Jerusalem as eligible voters, who would have naturally tipped the political scene more to the right. Concurrently, the law would have further demoted the status of 100,000 Palestinians, who would find themselves in a political grey area.
The authors of the bill were hardly discrete about its intentions. One of the two authors is Katz himself, who is now a minister in Netanyahu’s right-wing government. Explaining the motives behind the bill, Katz blatantly said: The bill aims to “ensure a Jewish majority in the united city.”
Israelis agree. According to a national poll published on 3 November, 72 per cent of Israeli Jews want Israel to maintain control over Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem; 68 per cent want Jews to be able to pray in these holy sites; and 58 per cent support Katz’s initiative to expand the Jerusalem municipal boundaries and merge major illegal Jewish settlements under one municipality.
While members of the Israeli government (the majority in the Knesset) work towards the same goal of expanding illegal settlements, ensuring Israel’s uncontested control over Jerusalem and thwarting Palestinian aspirations for an independent state, their political approaches are not always the same.
While paying lip service to peace, Netanyahu has no intentions of allowing a Palestinian state to ever take shape, and is tactically working to ensure a complete physical partition between East Jerusalem and the West Bank, while, simultaneously linking major settlement blocs to Jerusalem.
One of such efforts includes the recent decision to completely destroy two Palestinian villages of Khan Al-Ahmar (located in the E-1 corridor which connects Jerusalem to Ma’aleh Adumim) and Susya. The ethnic cleansing plan was described by Israeli rights group B’Tselem as “virtually unprecedented”.
But Netanyahu had to temporarily flout his own method of “creeping annexation” of Palestinian land to join the burgeoning movement championed by Katz and others, who call for wholesale annexation and dramatic steps to ensure Jewish dominance.
By doing so, he was prepared to deal with another popular Palestinian revolt, similar to the one that culminated last July in protest of Israel’s closure of Al-Haram Al-Sharif/Al-Aqsa compound.
However, pressure emanating in Washington, which reportedly took place just as the Knesset’s ministerial committee on legislation was preparing to approve the bill on 29 October, ended the Israeli maneuver for now.
It was Netanyahu’s office that postponed the bill again, fearing to upset the special relationship he has managed to espouse under the Trump presidency.
So, at least for now, Israel will resume its ‘”creeping annexation” tactics, paying no heed to international protests, and oblivious to the injustice inflicted on Palestinians. But, of course, the battle in the Israeli Knesset is not over, and more aggressive efforts at driving Palestinians out, while slowly annexing their land, are likely to follow.
– Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of Palestine Chronicle. His forthcoming book is ‘The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story’ (Pluto Press, London). Baroud has a Ph.D. in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter and is a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara
November 10, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Israel, Palestine, Zionism |
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Part I of a 3 Part Series: The Canada Syndrome
There seems to be little common ground between Canadian natives and mainstream Canadian society. Canada’s uniqueness in world culture is thanks to its natives, who are regularly trotted out in ceremonies related to international events such as the Olympics, and now featured in the composition of the new Canadian ten dollar bill. But they remain at the bottom of the mainstream pecking order economically. Justice Thomas Berger wrote in 1966: “They began by taking the Indians’ land without any surrender and without their consent. Then they herded the Indian people onto reserves. This was nothing more nor less than Apartheid, and that is what it still is today.” First Nations children in western countries live in Third World conditions, with an estimated 80% of urban Aboriginal children under the age of 6 living in poverty.
In a famous anecdote, Justin Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, cynically told Marlon Brando when the American actor wanted to discuss native rights: “There are differences in the way we treated our natives,” he said. “You hunted them down and murdered them. We starved them to death.” Trudeau meant actual physical starvation, not just cultural starvation, echoing what the Canadian historian James Daschuk has called “the politics of starvation.” The policy in North America towards natives can be put simply: confiscation of 90% of lands, assimilation and/or death.
John Ralston Saul argues for the “originality of the Canadian project”, that contained elements of a rejection of the Enlightenment project of Europe/the US, which was based on secular rationality and liberal revolution. Canada was never a monolithic nation state, but rather based on consensus, supposedly incorporating the native philosophy of man as part of nature. In A Fair Country: Telling Truths About Canada (2008), he argues that Canada is a “Metis civilization”, not a European one. “We are a blend of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, but the driving ideas underneath are the Aboriginal ones.”
Saul argues that Canada was ‘founded’ as a modern nation not in 1867 but in 1701 with the Great Peace of Montreal between New France and 40 First Nations of North America. This treaty, achieved through negotiations according to Native American diplomatic custom, was meant to end ethnic conflicts. From then on, negotiation would trump direct conflict, it was thought, and the French would agree to act as arbiters during conflicts between signatory tribes. The paradigm is a confederation of tribes, consensus, the Aboriginal circle, “eating from a common bowl”. The treaty is still valid and recognized as such by the Native American tribes involved.
Saul’s claim sounds good, but the fact is most Canadians know nothing about their fellow Canadian natives. Typically, natives are most visible as a large segment of the homeless, especially in Toronto. According to Homeless Hub, a third of homeless, and in some areas up to 90%. Just as Canada and other rich nations face a flood of refugees from third world countries, as a formerly colony, Canada still has to come to terms with its own colonial train wreck.
Canada Syndrome: Stockholm syndrome on steroids
Canada is, in fact, a colonial settler civilization, much like Britain’s other white offspring: South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, and Palestine-Israel, built on ‘ethnic cleansing’; i.e., murder, terror, forced resettlement, outright theft of land, and apartheid. The settlers identified not with the natives, but with their British motherland, blind to the reality they were now part of. A cultural version of the Stockholm syndrome, where the victim identifies with the kidnapper.
There is little ‘Metis’ about Canada, except for the precious treaties, which have been honoured more in the breech. After the dust settled (circa WWII), the results in all the colonies were much the same, with the settlers refusing to acknowledge their criminal behaviour, and grades varying from ‘C’ for New Zealand, to ‘D’ for Canada and Australia, and ‘F’s for South Africa and Palestine-Israel.
South Africa holds a special place in Canadian colonial history. Major General Sir William Otter is revered as the ‘father’ of Canada’s army. He gained his stripes leading a battalion of British troops to oppose the Cree Metis North West Rebellion of 1885 led by Poundmaker and Big Bear. His role in crushing that revolt inspired the Montreal Daily Star to coin the term Otterism as a “synonym for merciless repression.” His next step to fame was to lead a thousand troops of the Royal Canadian Infantry Regiment in the Boer War (1899-1902), when British and colonial troops forced hundreds of thousands of blacks into concentration camps. This prompted King Edward VII to knight him and Canadian Prime Minister Robert Borden to appoint him kapo of Canada’s internment camps during WWI. His grandson, Desmond Morton, a leading military historian, wrote a glowing tribute to him in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Desmond is a lifelong NDPer, showing how deep the Canada Syndrome infects even the supposed anti-imperialist socialist in Canada. Only the communists were outspoken anti-imperialists and anti-racists throughout the 20th century, and they suffered the same ‘Otterism’ that the natives did.
Richard Sanders outlines the “settler syndrome” in Press for Conversion! (March 2016) as a much better characterization of them all. It is a “Culture-bound psychosis so deeply rooted in Canada’s mainstream identity, that it remains difficult to remedy.” It is “marked by a loss of contact with reality”, irrational, refusing to acknowledge the devastation wrought in the name of imperialist ideology, in Canada’s case “Canadian exceptionalism”. It is inherently racist, devaluing other cultures, treating them with suspicion, akin to the antisocial personality disorder, as described in Health Canada’s Report on Mental Illnesses in Canada. Mainstream psychiatrists dismiss such bigotry as a cultural problem rather than an indication of psychopathology, but it is clearly both an individual and mass psychological sickness.
It allowed devout Christians to create and enforce the criminal residential school system to wipe out the last traces of native culture. True, natives were starving by the 1920s, and were ‘ripe for the picking’, and the Christian missionaries were given the role of welfare provider before the days of government financed welfare, so the natives had no choice. The churches were really just handmaidens of the imperialist policy and not to be specially condemned.
Recent expressions of repentance for the sins committed on behalf of the colonial regime are welcome but only scratch the surface of meaningful change. The underlying psychosis remains. “Captives of culture-bound psychoses like the Canada Syndrome are ardent nationalists who remain blind to the official myths that have abducted them, … the Stockholm syndrome on steriods”.
‘Real whites’ vs British
By the early 20th century, First Nations and Metis reached their low point: from roughly 2 million, they had been reduced over 90% to 150,000, the same shocking statistic as in the US. Since WWII and especially after 1960, when improved sanitation in reserves and medicare lowered the infant mortality rate, populations have rebounded ten times, to 1,400,685 in 2011, representing 4.3% of the total Canadian population. While physical starvation has abated as a policy, poverty abounds and cultural starvation destroys native languages and traditions. The dominance of western commercial culture continues this slow death.
In 1910, the Chiefs of the Shuswap, Okanagan and Couteau tribes presented (French Canadian) Prime Minister Wilfred Laurier with a letter which looked to the French colonial legacy of the 1701 Great Peace of Montreal.
We speak to you the more freely because you are a member of the white race with whom we first became acquainted, and which we call in our tongue ‘real whites’. The ‘real whites’ we found were good people. They did not interfere with us nor attempt to break up our tribal organizations, laws, customs. Nor did they stop us from catching fish and hunting. They acknowledged our ownership of the country, and treated our chiefs as men.
Little did the chiefs realize what would soon be in store for all natives, with the nice French and maudit anglais Liberals/Conservatives putting their common policy of forcible assimilation into high gear. The Gradual Civilization Act in 1857, and the Indian Act, first passed in 1876, spruced up with amendments in 1920, making compulsory ‘education’ at residential schools, and in 1927, prohibiting natives from hiring lawyers to pursue land claims (repealed in 1951). This paralleled the US policy, but more aggressively, given the larger population of natives proportional to the settler population.
Though population rebounded after WWII, the 60s “Sweep”, the last gasp of this forced assimilation, continued to forcibly take Aboriginal children and placed them in white foster homes within the child welfare system, leading to unstable families and destroying children’s lives.
Oka, Ipperwash, Gustafsen, Caledonia
Laurier bitterly disappointed native leaders, as the “real white” influence in Canadian politics had given way to British colonialism after 1763. There were never massacres on the scale of Wounded Knee, but after 300 years, there is little evidence of the claim that Canada was any better than the US in its relations with the natives. There is little to differentiate the provinces in their relations to natives. The most visible conflict in Quebec in recent times was at Oka in 1990, in Ontario at Ipperwash in 1995, and in BC at Lake Gustafsen, also 1995. There are road blockades across Canada continually going up to protest encroachment on lands claimed by natives as part of broken treaties, or in the case of BC, promises to land that were never formalized.
Tecumseh
There are heroes who fought for rights — Tecumseh, Joseph Brant, Louis Riel — all tragic. Brant holds a special place for Canadians in southwestern Ontario, for the agreement he inspired and signed in 1784, made famous by its promise of ‘six miles deep’, meaning the land on both sides of the Grand River. These Six Nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Cayuga,Seneca, Onondaga,Tuscarora) unified under the Great Tree of Peace. During the American Revolution, (native) Captain Joseph Brant led many from the Iroquois Confederacy to ally with the British.
For their loyalty to the Crown, the Six Nations were deeded a tract of land along the Grand River. But, as happened to all the other Nations (there are 50 distinct nations and 614 First Nations bands), most of the land would be stripped from them, reduced to present 46,000 acres of what the federal government calls the “Six Nations Reserve No. 40”, including the village of Ohsweken, between the cities of Brantford, Caledonia, and Hagersville.
Eric Walberg is a journalist who worked in Uzbekistan and is now writing for Al-Ahram Weekly in Cairo. He is the author of From Postmodernism to Postsecularism and Postmodern Imperialism. His most recent book is Islamic Resistance to Imperialism.
November 10, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Canada |
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Whatever their plans, the stakeholders in the Middle East must remember that clever plans to remake the Middle East have hitherto been remarkable for their inability to anticipate countermoves by opposing forces.
Tension is increasing all across the Middle East and the United States is again falling into a trap set up by its so-called allies to act against its own interests by getting deeply involved in what might turn out to be an escalating conflict. The recent victories by the Syrian Army and its Russian allies, which suggest that the active phase of the Syrian civil war will soon be drawing to a close, means that the perennial unrest in the region will be shifting gears and possibly leading to new conflict in areas that have until now been quiet. The lack of any real American policy for the region will enable the Saudis and Israelis, who have hegemonistic dreams of their own, to manipulate a casus belli, quite likely starting in Lebanon, where Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri recently resigned his office and fled to Saudi Arabia, claiming that he was fearing for his life due to his resistance to Iran’s influence over his country.
Hariri headed a coalition pulled together in 2016 that included nearly all of Lebanon’s main parties, including Hezbollah. It took office in a political deal that made Michel Aoun, a Maronite Christian who has an understanding with Hezbollah, president. The inclusion of Hezbollah and the presence of a friendly Aoun was seen as a victory for Iran.
The Hariri resignation was certainly carried out in collusion with Riyadh, to include the damning of Iranian influence as his reason for leaving. It suggests that the Saudis and Israelis, who have been hyperbolically claiming that Tehran is about to take control of much of the Middle East, are feeling confident enough to move towards some kind of showdown with the Mullahs. As a first step, expected deteriorating sectarian interaction between Sunni and Shi‘ite Muslims in Lebanon will eliminate any possibility of a bipartisan and functioning government, providing a pretext for foreign intervention to stabilize the situation.
The United States is clearly privately approving the Israeli and Saudi moves, as Washington, Riyadh and Tel Aviv have all adamantly opposed the existence of the Lebanese coalition dominated by Aoun and Hezbollah’s Nasrullah because of the Hezbollah presence. The next step will be for Israel fighter aircraft to increase their incursions into Lebanese airspace in light of the alleged instability north of the border derived from the claims by Hariri that he was about to be assassinated. The activity would be intended to provoke a Lebanese response that would escalate into an incident that will lead to a major strike to bring the Beirut government down. The ultimate objective is to create a Saudi and Israeli-led grand Sunni alliance, which might be a fantasy, to pushback Iranian influence in the entire region. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, opposed by the Saudis because it is Shi’a and by Israel because of its missile arsenal, would be targeted as the first marker to fall.
A supportive Washington role in the conflict will of course be indispensable and there is every sign that it would be forthcoming, with grand strategists like Generals Mattis and McMaster no doubt envisioning a roll-up of Shi’as starting in Lebanon and working eastward while the Saudis continue their aggression against Yemen to counter alleged Iranian interference in that area. Israel will also undoubtedly step up its attacks on Syrian Army positions, claiming that it is striking Hezbollah, to further complicate any countermoves by the Iranians. Israel has made it very clear that it will attack any Iranian military positions that are established in Syria.
It is important to recall that clever plans to remake the Middle East have hitherto been remarkable for their inability to anticipate countermoves by opposing forces. Bashar al-Assad has survived an onslaught directed by the very same alignment now out to reverse a perceived Iranian-led Shi’a ascendancy and Hezbollah proved so successful against Israel that Israeli war plans now rule out any action on the ground due to the high casualty levels experienced in 1990-2000. The US would be playing a supporting role in any conflict, but might well suffer collateral damage if Iran is drawn in directly, a development that could easily lead to armed conflict between Washington and Tehran.
November 10, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Hezbollah, Lebanon, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, United States |
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The campaign to discredit Kaspersky Lab dates back to 2010 when the Russian based cybersecurity firm uncovered the origin of the Stuxnet malicious computer worm which ruined Iran’s civilian nuclear centrifuges, experts in the field told RT.
Kaspersky Lab, founded in Moscow in 1997, has been a world leader in cybersecurity for decades. The private company takes pride in working outside of any government’s sphere of influence when it comes to cyber espionage. Americans believe that US intelligence agencies consider the Russian firm a competitive challenge, the experts pointed out.
“Kaspersky is highly reputable. It has been operating for a couple of decades. It has 400 million users around the world, including until very recently the American government,” former MI5 analyst Annie Machon told RT. “So of course if they are doing it, other countries are going to do it to a competitor corporation around the world too. Obviously, the CIA would be interested in a very successful Russian based company that offers protection on the internet.”
“Kaspersky [has] one of the most successful security teams worldwide. Don’t forget that Kaspersky was the security firm that first of all discovered the NSA linked group of activities involved in cyber espionage activities worldwide,” Pierluigi Paganini, the head of cybersecurity at Grant Thornton Consultants, told RT.
The Russian company became one of the targets amidst the ongoing anti-Russian hysteria in the US, which centers around the unproven allegations of Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections. In September, the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) ordered all government agencies to stop using Kaspersky products and remove them from computers, citing “security risks.”
And while Kaspersky Lab is actively cooperating with the US authorities, on Thursday, WikiLeaks published a source code for the CIA hacking tool ‘Hive,’ which was used by US intelligence agencies to imitate the Kaspersky Lab code and leave behind false digital fingerprints. Exposing the CIA’s impersonation of Kaspersky Lab is just a part of WikiLeaks’ Vault 7 and 8 revelations which shed light on the CIA’s electronic surveillance methods and cyber warfare tools.
“What is important in this specific story is the complexity, the effort spent by the US intelligence to make hard the attribution. Kaspersky is the actual victim of these activities. There is a government agency, the CIA that conducted cyber espionage activities to also use false flag in its operation in order to make harder the attribution,” Paganini explained.
Kaspersky Lab remains one of the few companies in the world that can expose the CIA’s scheming, and that is why the Russian company is facing so much backlash, Machon believes.
“We have Kaspersky saying ‘We can do this-we can prove some of these hacks are not Russian, they are American’ when it comes to the presidential elections. And so they needed to discredit them, and I think that this new application of a virus at state level, a very aggressive virus that would discredit a very proven brand around the world it’s exactly what the Americans would want and the Israelis also would want,” the former MI5 operative pointed out.
The campaign against the Russian cybersecurity firm goes back to 2010; when Kaspersky Lab revealed the origin of the Stuxnet virus which the company said likely came from American and Israeli intelligence services, Machon told RT. The alleged American/Israeli cyber espionage operation was designed to target industrial control systems used in infrastructure facilities to affect their automated processes. Stuxnet reportedly ruined almost one-fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges Tehran had been using to develop civilian atomic power.
“Stuxnet was deployed against the centrifuges that enriched the uranium and nobody knew where it came from. It seemed to be very weaponized at the state level. And it was actually Kaspersky that unveiled who had developed it. And it was American and the Israeli intelligence agencies,” Machon told RT. “So ever since then, it has sort of been daggers drawn between these two competing sides [Kaspersky vs CIA]. Kaspersky has been very much in crosshairs of both American and Israeli intelligence agencies.”
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November 9, 2017
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | CIA, Israel, Kaspersky Lab, Stuxnet |
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House Concurrent Resolution 81 (H.Con.Res.81) is sponsored by Representatives, Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Walter Jones (R-NC), Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.), Thomas Massie (R-KY), and 39 other lawmakers. The resolution commands an end to U.S. participation in the Saudi-led war in Yemen.
The sponsors of this resolution contend that such participation, which began in March 2015, was never authorized under the War Powers Act of 1973. Per the War Powers Act, any congressman can pose a legal challenge and is guaranteed a floor vote on the issue. This is known as a privileged resolution.
On November 1st, the night before the vote was scheduled to take place, House leadership swiftly pushed through a Rules Committee vote, denying the resolution’s privileged status. Thus, preventing the guaranteed floor vote.
What was their justification? Apparently, the House Rules Committee feels that the war in Yemen has yet to ‘rise to a level’ where the War Powers Act is applicable.
After preventing the vote on H.Con.Res.81, the House Leadership has said it shall permit a ‘compromise’ resolution on the war in Yemen. The debate, scheduled for the week of November 13th, will discuss the legality of U.S. involvement in the war. The vote will be non-binding.
Five peace activist groups, heavily engaged in promoting the resolution, said just after the Rules Committee vote:
“We remind the House leadership that under the War Powers Resolution of 1973,
“‘introduction of United States Armed Forces ’includes the assignment of member of such armed forces to command, coordinate, participate in the movement of, or accompany the regular or irregular military forces of any foreign country or government when such military forces are engaged…’
U.S. refueling of Saudi-UAE planes bombing Houthi targets in Yemen meets that definition.’”
Therefore the War Powers Act, clearly applies to the war on Yemen.
The House leadership is lying to the American people, supporting the continuation of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, violating the War Powers Act, and attempting to prevent Congress from stopping yet another illegal and unconstitutional war.
Conservatively, since the beginning of 2017, at least 10,000 people have been killed in this war. The heroic and indispensable Yemeni journalist Nasser Arrabyee has said the toll could be as high as 60,000 deaths.
The Saudis are ruthlessly bombarding the Yemenis and their civilian infrastructure. The coalition wants to cripple the people of Yemen to the point of submission. Their end goal is to force Yemen’s civilians to stop supporting the northern tribesmen if only to alleviate their suffering.
U.S. involvement is most critical to the Saudi effort in this war. The U.S. military is training Saudi Arabian forces. The U.S. is refueling the coalition’s warplanes not just in the air with tanker sorties, but also on its bases peppered throughout the region.
As of February, according to an article written by Oriana Pawlyk for Military.com :
“Saudi Arabian coalition jets bombing Houthi rebel sites in Yemen increasingly turn to U.S. Air Force tankers for refueling support almost two years after the conflict began. Since April 2015, the Air Force has logged 1,778 tanker sorties for the operation, Air Forces Central Command spokeswoman Capt. Kathleen Atanasoff told Military.com on Tuesday. That includes 1,069 over the past year, an increase of 360, or 50 percent, from the 709 in the previous period. ‘These operations are ongoing, with aircraft refueling occurring daily,’ Atanasoff said in an email. The service’s tankers such as KC- 135 Stratotankers and KC-10 Extenders participated in 7,564 refueling ‘events’ with coalition aircraft, with ‘about 54 million pounds of fuel off-loaded in support of Saudi operations in Yemen,’ Atanasoff said.”
Donald Trump, doing his best Barack Obama impression, has been more than happy to sell the Saudis hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons to continue their genocide. These include planes, ships, rockets, precision-guided bombs, cluster bombs, etc. American defense contractors, particularly Lockheed Martin and Boeing, are likewise more than happy to rake in their handsome profits from Yemen’s destruction. With Jared Kushner playing the role of matchmaker for Mohammed bin Salman and Marillyn A. Hewson (CEO of Lockheed), the profits will surely escalate.
However, the Saudis have another powerful ally in this war, al Qaeda. This certainly makes the upcoming debate on Yemen a great opportunity for the House to finally get around to discussing the legality of high treason. Or more specifically, fighting another war for al Qaeda.
In addition to the coalition’s sadistic air campaign, Yemini civilians are threatened and attacked on the ground day in and day out by Sudanese mercenaries, al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and a local Islamic State affiliate. All of whom support the coalition.
In an article published in The Hill, Gareth Porter and retired Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s Chief of Staff) said:
“U.S. intelligence and counter-terrorism officials have regarded AQAP as even more of a foreign terrorist threat to the United States than ISIS. It mounted efforts to bring down U.S. airlines three times between 2009 and 2012, and nearly succeeded twice. But the Saudi/UAE war in Yemen has made them the most powerful indigenous armed group in southern Yemen, with more money, arms and territorial control than ever before. The Saudi-led coalition and the forces of the Saudi backed former regime have allied openly with AQAP and even fought alongside them. As a result of the war AQAP is now poised for the first time to compete for national power in Yemen.”
See the map below of the military situation in Yemen as of this July for an idea of just how much territory AQAP has consolidated. The areas shaded white are controlled by AQAP, the pink areas are controlled by Hadi-loyal forces, and the green areas are controlled by the Houthi/Saleh alliance:
This is further evidence that U.S. involvement in the Saudi war is illegal. When asked for a justification for U.S. involvement in the Saudi/UAE war, both Barrack Obama and Donald Trump’s administrations have cited the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF). That AUMF permits military action only against those entities who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11. In other words, military action is only permitted against al Qaeda. Yet, this war is being fought on behalf of al Qaeda against their enemies, the Houthis.
Indeed, Asher Orkaby made the point in Foreign Affairs that, “far from being aligned with extremists, the Houthi movement has repeatedly clashed with the Islamic State and AQAP”. So, in addition to the fact that this war was never authorized under the War Powers Act, it is also clearly not covered under the current AUMF.
Since the Obama administration, this is at least the third major conflict wherein the U.S. has found itself aligned with, fighting along side, arming, and/or supporting al Qaeda. This was official policy notably during the regime change operation in Libya and in the failed regime change operation in Syria. It is very important to note that if things had gone to plan in Syria, al Qaeda would have almost certainly taken Damascus.
Neoconservatives are now calling for a new AUMF to explicitly define ‘the enemy’ more broadly as proponents of so called, ‘radical Islam’. The ‘radical Islam’ handle is a red herring callously promoted by the fake news establishment. It is meant to dumb down and obscure the realities of these conflicts for domestic audiences. The cynical neoconservatives are pleased to have Americans view all Arabs and Muslims as one homogenous and terrifying collective. Most Americans are designedly oblivious to the differences between Sunnis, Shiites, and other branches of Islam. It is in the interests of the War Party for American voters to see such radically opposed groups as Daesh and Hezbollah as cut from the same cloth. This is obviously done in order to prevent rational discussion of these conflicts from ever taking place. For if the American people were well informed of the consequences of U.S. policy abroad, especially in the Middle East, they would probably not even passively support their regime’s policies.
In 2013, popular sentiment from people of all political stripes helped to prevent Obama’s would have been Iraq-style invasion of Syria. I believe one of the primary reasons for this was the effectiveness of the famous ‘I will not fight for al Qaeda in Syria’ social media campaign undertaken by active military personnel. Americans do not want to support and subsidize al Qaeda in Syria, Libya, Yemen, or anywhere else for that matter. The reason these horrific policies persist is not the peoples’ apathy, it’s their ignorance.
This is a particularly indefensible war, even by U.S standards. If they choose to, this is a war the American people can end. The establishment is certainly not comfortable publicly debating and defending their Yemen policy. Exposing the realities of this conflict and ending the war in Yemen could trigger an anti-war domino effect. Not since the Vietnam War has there been more fertile soil for an American anti-war movement.
Please continue to call your Congressmen and women and tell them to vote against the war on November 13th. Give them some good talking points for the debate. Please share, retweet posts from Yemenis on the ground, post news items, write blog posts, write articles, and speak your mind about the war in Yemen on social media. Do not be afraid to talk about the U.S.-Saudi/AQAP alliance. We have the truth on our side.
November 9, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Islamophobia, Militarism, Solidarity and Activism, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, Middle East, Saudi Arabia, United States, Yemen |
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The ICC prosecutor’s decision to pursue a probe into alleged war crimes in Afghanistan is “completely political” and won’t amount to anything, law professor Francis Boyle believes. He said it will be a “cold day in hell” before any Americans are prosecuted.
The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced last week that her request to launch an investigation had been handed over to a pre-trial court. She said that if her request is granted, the probe will focus “upon those most responsible for the most serious crimes committed in connection with the situation in Afghanistan.”
However, Francis Boyle, an international law professor at the University of Illinois, told RT that while Bensouda is likely to get approval for the investigation, the move is simply a “propaganda stunt.” He added that Bensouda has no desire to go after any Americans who committed war crimes.
“You have to understand, this is all political,” said Boyle. He noted that the African country of Burundi has already pulled out of the ICC, and South Africa has voiced the same intention.
“So she’s in a position and the court is in a position that almost all of Africa is going to pull out of the ICC because the only people in the dock over there are black, tin-pot dictators from Africa,” Boyle said. He called the court a “Western, racist, imperial tool” which is being used against Africa.
Because of this, the so-called “white man’s court” will not be going after Americans, Boyle said. “It will be a cold day in hell” before we see Bensouda doing so, he added. Boyle noted that the ICC has “never gone after the Americans, the NATO states, Britain, Israel, despite clear-cut jurisdiction to do so.”
Boyle went on to accuse the US government of committing a Nuremberg crime against peace by “invading Afghanistan and attacking it and blowing them back to the Stone Age and killing a million Afghans.” He added that “I doubt very seriously Bensouda is going to deal with any of that.”
“The United States illegally and criminally invaded Afghanistan and attacked and destroyed them… and then they set up all these torture campus over there, they’ve been torturing these poor people forever. And at a minimum, the United States has probably killed a million Afghanis [sic] since October 2001,” he said.
“The Americans should have been investigated a decade ago at least,” said Boyle, who filed an ICC complaint against former US President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, among others, in 2010, over their policy of “extraordinary rendition perpetrated upon about 100 human beings.” He added that “the American government knows full well they’ll be able to sabotage her [Bensouda], stop her. Nothing’s going to come of it.”
However, Boyle predicted that Bensouda would likely come back with a verdict that it was actually the Taliban who was responsible for crimes. “Or she might apportion blame, but that’s ridiculous too…if you read all the United Nations reports of human rights violations coming out of Afghanistan, they all blame the Taliban. And it’s a joke.”
Although the ICC statement doesn’t name specific parties that would be subject to the investigation, a report released by the prosecutor’s office last year said there is “reasonable basis” to believe crimes were committed by US military forces deployed to Afghanistan, and in secret detention facilities operated by the CIA. It also points the finger at the Taliban and Afghan government forces.
Boyle noted that although the US can technically be prosecuted by the court – despite not being a member – the ICC “pretty much do what they’re told to do,” citing money received from Europe, Japan, and South Korea, as well as the influence of America.
Meanwhile, the United Nations mission in Afghanistan said earlier on Thursday that at least 10 civilians may have been killed in an airstrike in the north city of Kunduz last week, despite a US military investigation stating that no evidence of civilian deaths had been found.
Boyle previously served on the board of Amnesty International USA and drafted legislation for the Biological Weapons Convention, known as the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, which was signed into law after being unanimously approved by both chambers of the US Congress.
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November 9, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Afghanistan, Africa, CIA, ICC, NATO, United States |
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The mainstream media and the acolytes of the U.S. national-security establishment continue to emphasize that there are no “smoking guns” in the tiny (2 percent) of the 50-year-old JFK records that President Trump, the National Archives, and the CIA have recently permitted the American people to see.
Of course, these people define “smoking gun” as a videotaped confession or a memorandum summarizing how and why the CIA orchestrated the November 22, 1963 regime-change operation. If the released records don’t contain a confession or such a memorandum, then in the minds of the people that means the official narrative must stand: A lone-nut former U.S. Marine communist with no motive suddenly decided to kill the president.
Even with the tiny release of records, however, it is possible to draw logical inferences that show the falsity of the official narrative. This type of analytical analysis, however, only works for people who have a critical and analytical mindset. It doesn’t work for people whose mindset is one of deference to authority and inconceivability that the CIA would be willing to protect national security with a domestic regime-change operation.
The records that the National Archives just released included a secret FBI analysis on civil-rights leader Martin Luther King. The thrust of the analysis is that King was a communist, and an immoral communist at that. In a November 4, 2017, article entitled “In the Latest JFK Files: The FBI’s Ugly Analysis on Martin Luther King, Jr., Filled With Falsehoods,” the Washington Post writes:
The 20-page document, dated March 12, three weeks before King was assassinated in Memphis, is included in the latest trove of government files about President John F. Kennedy’s assassination, which the National Archives released Friday. It alleges that King’s political ideologies and the creation of his civil rights organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, were heavily influenced by communists, specifically the Communist Party USA. The FBI document went into great detail about one of King’s most trusted advisers, Stanley Levison, a New York lawyer and businessman who served as a top financier for the Communist Party years before he met King in 1956.
One big question that arises, of course, is why the FBI chose to keep this 50-year-old analysis secret from the American people until now.
One possibility, of course, is that the FBI was just embarrassed about having published such a report.
A second possibility, however, is that the FBI orchestrated the assassination of King and decided that the analysis would constitute evidence of motive. After all, don’t forget, this was the era of the Cold War, when the CIA was targeting communists for assassination. Before anyone cries, “Conspiracy theory, Jacob!” let’s not forget that in a civil lawsuit brought by King’s family, after weighing all the evidence the jury found, in its official verdict, that government agencies conspired to kill King.
Does the FBI analysis on King have any bearing on the Kennedy assassination?
Actually, yes. That’s where critical thinking, circumstantial evidence, inferential thinking, and common sense come into play.
The FBI analysis on King reflects the national-security establishment’s overwhelming obsession with Russia (i.e., the Soviet Union) and communists during the Cold War. It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of this anti-communist obsession—it is 1000 times greater than the national-security establishment’s and mainstream media’s obsession with Russia today. Think of the Korean War. The McCarthy hearings. The search for communists in the Army and the State Department. The invasion of a country that never attacked the United States (Cuba). Regime-change operations, including assassination, in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba, Congo, and, later, Chile. The U.S. invasion of Vietnam.
Not to mention COINTELPRO, MKULTRA, secret hiring of Nazis, infiltration of the U.S. Communist Party and the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, prosecution of members of the U.S. Communist Party, and other totalitarian-like domestic programs to protect America from communists and communism.
The focus on King was all part of this anti-communist obsession. The FBI, especially its head J. Edgar Hoover, was absolutely, totally convinced that King was a communist, which is why they spied on him, wiretapped him, smeared him, and even blackmailed him in an attempt to get him to commit suicide. In fact, Hoover was convinced that the entire civil-rights movement was a secret front for the international communist conspiracy.
Okay, so you have the picture? Communists are bad. Communists are trying to take over America. Spy on them. Infiltrate their organizations. Kill them or try to destroy them. Or try to get them to commit suicide.
Now, here’s a funny part. That Washington Post article concludes with the following sentence: “The FBI document was among the 676 files that the National Archive released Friday. Among the recent disclosures are more than 500 never-before-seen CIA files that contain information about Lee Harvey Oswald….”
Why is that funny? Because it shows how obtuse the mainstream press can be when it comes to Lee Harvey Oswald. They just leave it at that!
This is where common sense, logic, and an analytical and critical mindset come into play.
What does the official narrative say about Oswald? Doesn’t it say that he was a communist?
Let’s review the facts.
Oswald gets interested in communism and joins the Marines, an institution that hates communists and kills communists. He is stationed in Japan at the military base that houses the top-secret CIA U-2 spy plane. He learns fluent Russian while in the military. Fellow soldiers laughingly refer to him as “Osvaldovitch.”
And yet, no one does anything to him, notwithstanding the national anti-communist crusade that is ferreting out and destroying communists everywhere!
Does that make any sense?
Oswald travels to Moscow, enters the U.S. Embassy, announces that he wishes to renounce his citizenship, and says that he is going to reveal everything he learned in the military to the Russians. He ends up living in Russia, marrying a woman whose uncle was a colonel in the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Oswald changes his mind and decides he now wants to return to the United States, with his Red wife. U.S. officials let him back in and even help him to return.
He moves to Dallas, where he hangs out with right-wing people rather than fellow-traveler, left-wing, commie types. He gets a job at a photography business that develops top-secret photographs for the CIA.
He moves to New Orleans, where he somehow gets a job with business owned by a right-wing, anti-communist American. He is seen at the offices of a former FBI agent, who seems to be connected to U.S. intelligence. He openly proselytizes for one of the organizations that the FBI and CIA are trying to destroy, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. He even stamps one of his FPCC pamphlets with the return address where the FBI agent had his office. He approaches a secret CIA anti-communist front organization, the DRE, and offers to help train its members.
Oswald travels to Mexico City, where he visits with the Cuban and Soviet embassies. He supposedly meets with one of the top assassins for the Soviet Union.
Okay, you get the picture?
Now, think about what they did to Martin Luther King, who arguably wasn’t a communist at all. Think about what they did to Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood 10. Think about what they did to all the people hauled up to testify before Sen. McCarthy and forced to answer whether “they are now or ever have been members of the Communist Party.” Think about all the communists they targeted for assassination. Think about all the communists they killed in Korea and Vietnam. Think about what they did to Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, and Communist Cuba. Think what they did to Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende, and Lamumba.
Now, ask yourself: What did they do to a supposedly real, died-in-the-wool, honest-to-goodness, self-avowed American communist named Lee Harvey Oswald?
Answer: They did nothing! Nothing at all. No COINTELPRO. No harassment. No abuse. No prosecution or persecution. No torture. No jailing. No military tribunal. No hauling before a federal grand jury. No criminal indictment for treason. No humiliation. No nothing!
And here’s the thing: It’s not as if they didn’t know about Oswald. In fact, as Jefferson Morley figured out several decades after the Kennedy assassination, a small section of the CIA, headed by CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, was secretly monitoring Oswald’s movements in the weeks leading up to the JFK assassination.
Why not harass, abuse, prosecute, or persecute this supposed communist? Why not treat him like they treated Martin Luther King and other people they were convinced were communists?
There can be only one logical answer: Oswald wasn’t a real communist. Instead, he was exactly what some people were saying he was after the assassination: He was a U.S. intelligence agent who had been trained to behave as a communist in order to infiltrate the Soviet Union, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and perhaps even Cuba as part of the CIA’s many assassination programs against Fidel Castro. In fact, recently released records among the two percent that were released also reveal that the CIA was in fact using secret agents to infiltrate communist organizations.
And don’t forget: Oswald vowed to give all his military secrets to the Russians. Would U.S. officials really ignore that threat, especially given that CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers was shot down while flying a CIA U-2 spy plane illegally flying over Russia while Oswald was living in Russia? Not a chance! Look at how they have treated Edward Snowden who simply revealed illegal acts of the NSA to the world.
So, why would the CIA be secretly monitoring Oswald and, equally important, why keep that secret from the American people for decades? Indeed, once the CIA learned that Oswald had supposedly met with a top Soviet assassin, why not report that to the Secret Service?
Indeed, where are the telephone recordings and photographs of the CIA’s Mexico City surveillance of Oswald? Why was Lyndon Johnson told that someone had impersonated Oswald in Mexico City? Why are the CIA and the National Archives still keeping the CIA’s records on Oswald’s trip to Mexico City secret from the American people?
There is only one answer that makes any sense: Oswald was exactly what he said he was after he was arrested. He was a “patsy” — a person who was being framed by the people around him. In order to make the frame-up succeed, they needed not only to fortify his bona-fides as a “communist,” they also needed to watch him carefully to make sure that he hadn’t figured out that he was being set up.
As Jefferson Morley recently pointed out at JFKfacts.org, “Pre-assassination communications about the unimportant Lee Oswald went straight to the top of the agency, i.e., to James Angleton.”
Needless to say, however, the mainstream media and the acolytes of the CIA are pointing to a recently disclosed CIA record that denies that Oswald was a U.S. intelligence agent.
Well, duh!
Let’s not forget one important thing about the CIA: It lies. Everyone knows it. In fact, lying is one of the core features of the CIA.
For example, recall CIA Director Richard Helms. He intentionally and knowingly lied under oath to Congress about the CIA’s role in instigating the Chilean coup in 1973. Perjury. He lied to protect “national security,” which meant protecting the secrecy of what the CIA had done to bring regime change to Chile.
Even though other CIA officials clearly knew that Helms had committed perjury, they intentionally and knowingly let the perjury stand. The need for secrecy was considered of paramount importance.
Moreover, when Helms returned to the CIA after being caught and sentenced, he was treated by his fellow CIA operatives as a hero and a patriot. They thought his lying was great. They even passed a hat around to help him pay his fine.
At the risk of belaboring the obvious, if they would lie to protect the secrecy of their regime-change operation in Chile, why wouldn’t they lie to protect the secrecy of their regime-change operation here in the United States on November 22, 1963?
Indeed, let’s not forget the last word in the title of the recent Washington Post article about the FBI’s analysis of Martin Luther King: “In the Latest JFK Files: The FBI’s Ugly Analysis on Martin Luther King, Jr., Filled With Falsehoods.”
November 8, 2017
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Timeless or most popular | CIA, FBI, JFK Assassination, United States, Washington Post |
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