Despite these election results, parties representing financial interests and the corporate media insist that austerity measures must go ahead.  At a time when real wages are steadily declining and unemployment has reached levels not seen for more than fifty years, the supporters of finance capital insist that the problem is public debt. They demand cuts to social services, public employment and wages and salaries.

For majorities who depend on income from labour—not on profits from capital—austerity is not a solution.  It is the problem. The one per cent, or 0.1 per cent, who depend on income from capital, insist the people are wrong. The interests of capital, regardless of the costs to others, must come first.

Austerity has led to steadily rising unemployment and declining markets in most European countries. Its most devastating effects are in Greece.  Public employment, pensions and other social services have been gutted. The country’s assets are being plundered.  Public utilities are being sold off to corporations from other countries. A quarter of the population—half of people under thirty—are unemployed. Still the supporters of capitalist interests claim that Greece has been living beyond its means.  The only way that the country can expect to get any new money is if it cuts back its profligate spending.

In fact, Greece is one of the poorer countries in Europe.  Its social services do not come close to matching the coverage, quality or cost of the social services of more prosperous countries like Germany and France. The funds that Greece gets if it agrees to austerity measures do not go to Greece, but to the banks that hold the credits that were used to pay for past government expenditures—including the Olympics. The banks that hold these debts are mainly in Germany and France and but also in the U.K., U.S., Switzerland, and elsewhere.

Faced with a 60 per cent vote against austerity in Greece, the capitalist strategy is to hope that the lure of power can induce enough of the elected representatives to switch sides and support the proposed cuts.  What the people of Greece are being pushed to do is to accept rising unemployment and worsening poverty to sustain global financial interests.  Past Greek governments can be blamed for allowing the country to descend into a state of debt peonage, but the primary blame is with the global financial institutions.  Due diligence would have made it clear that Greece could not realistically pay back the money loaned, even at the original low interest rates. As these loans were renegotiated at predictably higher rates it should have been obvious that paying back the loans was impossible.

Greece is a repeat of the U.S. sub-prime mortgage debacle. Low income, often unemployed people were enticed to purchase homes with little or no down payment at interest rates which for the first year or so were attractively low. The borrowers may or may not have been told that these rates would shortly rise dramatically, making it nearly impossible for these loans to ever be repaid. U.S. financial institutions who engaged in these irresponsible lending practices have not been held to account. European financial interests, backed by the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and transnational capital generally, continue on, pursuing their interests at the expense of public employees, social services, union conditions, and consumer income.

Dan Freeman-Maloy: In your book, you describe the determination of Israeli planners to develop closer ties with the European Union. Has Israel’s traditional policy of trying to limit European diplomatic involvement in the Middle East changed?

David Cronin: Yes and no.

In recent years, there has been quite a bit of strategic thinking undertaken by the Israeli foreign ministry. This was particularly the case when Tzipi Livni was in charge of that ministry.

One of the conclusions of that thinking was that Israel should not rely entirely on the US to defend its indefensible actions. There was a realisation that while the US remains the only superpower at the moment, other powers are emerging. The decision to “reach out” more to the EU was taken in that context. Israel is similarly seeking to engage more with China, India and Brazil, particularly with regard to sales of weaponry and surveillance technology.

There is a perception in some circles that European diplomats are hostile to Israel. In the first few months of this year, a series of leaked reports from EU representatives in East Jerusalem and Ramallah expressed frustration with the expansion of Israeli settlements. Yet it’s significant that these reports were drawn up by people who witness the results of Israel’s activities “on the ground”. The EU also has representatives in Tel Aviv and Brussels, who see things very differently and have been beavering away to increase cooperation between Israel and the Union.

We occasionally see newspaper articles in which Israeli ministers accuse the EU of meddling in Israel’s affairs or suggesting that the EU is biased towards the Palestinians. Yet if you dig even a tiny bit beneath the surface, you will see that this apparent tension is at odds with the real picture. The real picture is one where the EU has become so close to Israel that, I would argue, it has become complicit in Israel’s crimes against humanity.

DF: Not long after Operation Cast Lead, then NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer made a cordial visit to Israel (where his hosts drew a parallel between Israeli operations in Gaza and NATO operations in Afghanistan). You report that NATO-Israel relations may be set to deepen.

DC: We should never forget that in 2010, Israel killed eight Turkish citizens and one Turkish-American in international waters, while these activists were taking part in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla. I’m not an expert on these matters but my understanding is that this attack was tantamount to an act of war against Turkey, a member of NATO.

I think it’s fair to say that if Iran had done something comparable, NATO would have reacted forcefully. Yet Israel has a so-called “individual cooperation programme” with NATO since 2006, under which both sides share sensitive information; the scope of the programme was extended in 2008. Israel’s relationship with NATO has remained strong despite how the alliance condemned the flotilla attack. Shortly before Gabi Ashkenazi stepped down as head of the Israeli military last year, he was treated to a farewell dinner by senior NATO officers in Brussels. He also was called in to give NATO advice on how to fight the war in Afghanistan.

And Israel is taking part in a NATO operation in the Mediterranean called Active Endeavour. Originally, this was supposed to be an “anti-terrorism” initiative in response to the 11 September 2001 atrocities. But it has subsequently been broadened to cover immigration. What this means is that Israel is helping Western governments, especially Greece, to prevent vulnerable people fleeing poverty and persecution from reaching Europe’s shores. It’s quite disgusting.

DF: Turning back to the EU specifically, where does the recent Conformity Assessment and Acceptance of Industrial Products (ACAA) agreement fit in the broader struggle around Europe’s preferential trade ties with Israel?

DC: ACAA sounds dull and technical. But it is deeply political.

This is an agreement reached between the EU and Israel, whereby quality checks carried out by the Israeli authorities on manufactured goods would have the same status as similar checks carried out by authorities within the EU. At the moment, it’s limited to pharmaceutical products but it could easily be extended to other goods.

This agreement is a top priority for the Israelis because once it enters into force, Israel would take an important step towards being integrated into the EU’s single market.

To their credit, some members of the European Parliament (MEPs) have been asking difficult questions about ACAA for a few years. And this has meant that the Parliament has not yet approved the agreement. It’s not clear when the Parliament will make a final decision about the matter. There was a discussion at the Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in the past couple of weeks, where it was decided to delay holding a vote on the dossier until legal assurances are provided on the question of whether or not the agreement would apply to Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

It’s significant that the Israelis have hired a top public relations firm, Kreab Gavin Anderson, to help with their efforts to break the deadlock on ACAA. Kreab’s Brussels office is headed by a guy who used to be the chief adviser to MEPs with the Swedish Conservative Party. It cannot be a coincidence that one of the MEPs most vocal in supporting ACAA, Christoffer Fjellner, belongs to that party. He is arguing that if the agreement is not approved, Europeans will have less access to medicines. This is scaremongering, in my view, and is hypocritical because Fjellner is very supportive of the big players in the global pharmaceutical industry, who are actively seeking to use intellectual property issues to prevent the poor in Africa, Asia and Latin America from having access to affordable medicines.

DF: Even people writing for quasi-official EU publications have felt compelled to question ‘the sincerity of repeated declarations encouraging Palestinian unity’ from official spokespeople. How have EU donor and diplomatic policies contributed to fragmenting Palestinian politics?

DC: Those declarations have zero credibility.

The EU always claims that it wishes to promote democracy around the world. In 2006, an election took place in Palestine. The EU’s own observation team found the election to be free and fair and something of a model for the Arab world. And then the EU decided to ignore that election because in its eyes the “wrong” party – namely Hamas – won.

I’m personally not a fan of either Hamas nor Fatah but if Hamas won a democratic mandate, that should be respected.

It’s a classical colonial attitude for an imperial power to show preference for one side in an occupied territory over another. Divide and rule. That’s exactly what’s been happening in recent years. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian Authority president, and Salam Fayyad, the so-called prime minister, lack any democratic mandate. Yet they are treated as real darlings by the EU and US. Why? Because rather than resisting the occupation, they accommodate it.

In particular, they are also happy to pursue the kind of neo-liberal economic policies that are treated as sacrosanct in Brussels and Washington. Salam Fayyad used to work for the International Monetary Fund and has clearly been inculcated with its ideology.

DF: Can you describe the EUPOL COPPS programme and its relationship to the US training of PA forces in the West Bank?

DC: This is another “divide and rule” case.

The EU’s police mission for Palestine (COPPS) was originally supposed to apply to both the West Bank and Gaza. But in practice it only applies to the West Bank because the Union refuses to deal with the Hamas administration in Gaza.

What has happened is that the EU is in charge of training civil police and the US has been charged of training more militarised police units in areas under control of the Palestinian Authority. We are told that this is helping the Palestinian Authority get ready to assume the responsibilities of statehood. This is nonsense. One of the key aims of the these training missions is to boost cooperation between the PA police and Israeli forces. So the EU is really helping Palestinians to police their own occupation.

Worse again, it has been documented that police loyal to Fatah have used brutal methods – including torture – against their political rivals. Even though these police are trained by the EU, the Union says nothing about these human rights abuses. This silence is shameful.

DF: Germany is reportedly in the process of selling Israel a sixth partially subsidized ‘Dolphin’ submarine. What’s the significance of these sales?

DC: I’d put these sales in the context of wider military cooperation between the EU and Israel.

As well as helping to arm Israel, Europe is helping Israel to sell its weaponry abroad. The British Army has been using Israeli unmanned warplanes, or drones as they are generally called, in Afghanistan, for example. The ethical question of using weapons that have been “battle-tested” in an obscene manner isn’t even broached in “polite society”. Drones were used extensively to kill and maim innocent civilians during Operation Cast Lead, Israel’s attack on Gaza in 2008 and 2009.

What’s also significant is that Israeli arms companies are receiving scientific research grants from the Union. These include Elbit and Israel Aerospace Industries, the two suppliers of drones used in Cast Lead. At the moment, Israel is taking part in 800 EU-financed research projects, which have a total value of 4 billion euros. This means that my tax is helping to subsidise Israel’s war industry.

DF: Historically, France has been seen as the European power most likely to challenge the US monopoly on diplomatic initiative in the Middle East. Is this reputation still deserved?

DC: Definitely not.

Jacques Chirac demonstrated occasionally that he could be independent of the US when he was president. But Nicolas Sarkozy has been much more of an “Atlanticist” – for example, he decided that France should participate more fully in NATO than it has for a number of decades.

I’m answering this question a few days before the second round of voting in France’s presidential election. If Francois Hollande wins, then I don’t predict any major changes in terms of France’s policy on Israel-Palestine. I hope, however, that I am proved wrong.

Hollande has been quite happy to pander to the Zionist lobby in France. Both he and Sarkozy turned up at the annual dinner of CRIF, the biggest pro-Israel lobby group in Paris, earlier this year. It was clear that Hollande wasn’t there to denounce Israel’s crimes.

DF: The Greek government brazenly cooperated with Israel in blocking the ‘Freedom Flotilla II’ from challenging the Gaza blockade last summer. You’ve suggested that specific US-Israeli pressure (‘possibly even financial blackmail’) was at work, but that the incident was also a ‘logical consequence of a process that was already underway’.

DC: Yeah. This is quite closely connected to the question you asked about NATO. Greece and Israel have been working together in NATO operations a lot recently.

George Papandreou, the former Greek prime minister, was quite happy to court Israel. When it became clear that relations between Israel and Turkey had soured, Papandreou sniffed an opportunity for Greece to replace Turkey as Israel’s key ally in the Mediterranean.

Even though Greece has been going through an economic nightmare, the Athens authorities have decided to take part in a series of military operations with Israel over the past few years. Let’s not forget that Greece has been spending more on the military as a proportion of national income than most countries in Europe. You can see why the Israeli arms industry would be interested in cultivating stronger links with Greece because, even though Greece is in the doldrums financially, it’s still spending much more than it should be on weapons, while cutting back drastically on essential services like healthcare.

DF: One of your recent articles notes that many of the British officers deployed in post-WWI Palestine were veterans of the Black and Tans, the colonial force infamous for its brutality in Ireland. How has the Irish anti-colonial experience affected Irish politics on the Palestine question?

DC: Among the Irish public, there is a huge amount of sympathy for the Palestinians. The Ireland Palestine Solidarity Campaign has been described by some Zionist watchdogs as the best organised Palestine solidarity group in the world. That’s very interesting because the IPSC relies almost entirely on volunteers.

The Dublin government is a different story. In the current Irish government, there are at least three strong supporters of Israel. These include the ministers for defence and education.

Last year, a number of Irish activists were abducted by Israel as they tried to sail to Gaza. The response of the Dublin government was extremely weak. The Irish foreign minister, Eamon Gilmore, even attended a ceremony film festival sponsored by the Israeli government soon after that incident. He appears to regard avoiding or minimising tension with Israel as a priority.

Furthermore, it should be borne in mind that it’s Ireland’s representative at the European Commission, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn, who is administering the research grants to Israeli arms companies I mentioned earlier. She won’t even acknowledge that giving money to firms profiting from human rights abuses is problematic.

DF: In 2010, the European Centre for Constitutional and Human Rights issued a report criticizing EU maintenance of ‘anti-terrorist’ blacklists that effectively function ‘as ideological and political tools for undermining the right to popular resistance and self-determination.’ How do these lists constrain European politics on Palestine, and are there active campaigns to get them overturned?

DC: This is an important issue.

Israel has lobbied successfully over the past decade to have both the political and military wings of Hamas placed on the EU’s “anti-terrorist” blacklist. EU officials and governments have, as a result, been able to say “we don’t talk to terrorists”, even when the “terrorists” have a democratic mandate. I note, however, that there have been press reports lately indicating that Hamas has had some contacts with European governments. So perhaps this is changing a little bit. But in general, there is an enormous double standard, when the EU is happy to embrace Israel, a state that uses violence and intimidation against civilians on a daily basis, yet brands those who resist Israeli oppression as “terrorists”.

DF: Finally, in recent years the gap between European government support for Israel and public opinion has sometimes been so wide that the EU leadership has issued official apologies to Israel for polling results. What opportunities does this gap provide for strategic Palestine solidarity?

DC: The European public is way more critical of Israel than our governments are. This offers real hope.

The Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel was only launched in 2005. And it has made enormous progress. Veolia, the major French corporation, has ignominiously lost a number of major contracts around the world, for example. Why? Because of public outrage at how Veolia is involved in constructing a tramway that would effectively be reserved for Israeli settlers in East Jerusalem. This illustrates how supporting Israeli apartheid can prove bad for business if ordinary people monitor what corporations get up to and protest.

The BDS campaign is often compared to the one undertaken against South Africa. As it happens, the call for boycott was originally made by South African political activists in the 1950s. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that it had a major impact internationally. So the Palestinian BDS campaign has achieved in seven years what it took the South African campaign three decades to achieve.

The challenge now is to maintain the momentum – and intensify the pressure on Israel and its “corporate sponsors”.

1. Cronin maintains a blog.

The answer, even though they see over and over again that austerity leads to collapse of the economy, the answer over and over [from politicians] is more austerity.

— Joseph Stiglitz, Asian Financial Forum, January 17, 2012

It has been a busy weekend. France finds itself with a new president, its first socialist leader since François Mitterand left office in 1995. Greek voters flocked to the parties of the anti-bailout movement with indignant enthusiasm. The liberals seem to be holding on, narrowly, in Serbia.

The true effigy in burning after the elections is austerity itself, a doctrine that has assumed the form of biblical doctrine in the hands of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Sarkozy was its co-progenitor, though his failings were far more profound than his dalliance with the German leader.

And that doctrine has shown itself to be flawed. Le Monde (May 4), prior to the election on Sunday, suggested that embracing austerity was dangerous and poisonous, the sure guarantee of electoral suicide. The mood in Europe was changing towards those “drastic cuts in state expenditures, raising taxes, reforming the labour market and so on. More growth will bring higher tax revenues that are necessary to service the public debt.”

Whether François Hollande actually makes the difference is questionable. Sarkozy, for one, can hardly be said to have suffered a comprehensive defeat. The National Front candidate Marine Le Pen refused to endorse either two of the frontrunners. Hollande was in the end fortunate that the centrist François Bayrou endorsed him on Friday. Promises have been made to raise taxes with an acknowledgment that economic growth is essential.

The austerity doctrine took its predictable hammering in the Greek elections, with both New Democracy and the main socialist party Pasok getting respective pastings. Austerity has been made a condition of EU-IMF assistance, not to mention the country remaining in the eurozone. The voters felt otherwise. Yiorgos Vrassidis, a voter who directed his ballot to Syriza, the grouping of the Radical Left, made his intentions clear: “The politicians who got us in to this mess continue to mock us. Neither of them will do anything, all they are interested in is pulling the wool over our eyes so they can get into power again”. (Guardian, May 6). The bailout has been termed everything from being “barbaric” to a constituted “economic Fourth Reich”.

Alex Tsipras, Syriza’s leader, has vowed to do something that will shake Brussels to the core – suspend the servicing of Greece’s debt altogether and add a ‘pro-growth’ clause to the repayment arrangements. But the options presented to voters, according to the Greek left-liberal newspaper To Vima (May 4) have merely suggested that the country’s politicians have run out of ideas. Lies are in ample supply, even if the money is not. “The only thing they don’t talk about is reality”. Greece has two options: abide by the wishes of the creditors (the austerity credo), which will reduce it to a rump state economically on par with Romania or Bulgaria; or abandon the program altogether, which would lead to “an even greater shock”. The German magazine Der Spiegel (May 6) is steadfast in its glumness. “It’s clear that there is no alternative to austerity.”

There is little need to speculate too much about where things will go with such notions as the fiscal pact Merkel has endorsed, or the technocratic gospel that holds sway over budgets. The tight pocket is not necessarily the most feasible one and constrained spending has shown itself to be disastrous. The institutional arrangements for the euro, for one, were not sound to begin with, and fracturing is inevitable. Cutting something that is shrinking has the tag of suicide written all over it, but it is a suicide that European governments have been propelled towards for some time now.

The electoral reality has shown that austerity has been willed a slow death, but so have the victors who have profited from voter dissatisfaction. They are only bound to disappoint. As the Nobel Prize-winner Joseph Stiglitz notes, “Politics is at the root of the problem”.

Calling the audience “my brothers and sisters,” he praised the troops for their courage, patriotism, and endurance in fighting the endless battle in Afghanistan, a nation with no air force, navy, or organized military. He pointed out what brave warriors this generation of Americans had turned out to be.

Seven of the members of the audience expressed some concern when Obama announced that he might carry out a series of midnight drone attacks on Paris, France, within the week, because of a series of concerns that had been brought to his attention. Several unnamed members of his National Security Legal Staff had informed him that a known socialist might actually win the upcoming French election. In addition, French authorities had announced that their NATO forces were threatening to withdraw from several of the war zones that Obama had in mind for them.

But the straw that broke the camel’s back was a report from Homeland Security that three known terrorists had slipped into Paris sometime during the previous four months. Secretary of Defense, Leon Panetta and Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, both strongly urged his quick response to these threats, and expressed their total support for the proposed action. Clinton pointed out that at her urging, his Cabinet was 100% behind the President.

“National Security” was the explanation given for the proposed bombing of Paris, and no further clarification was needed in light of that rationale. Department of Justice head, Eric Holder, reiterated that the President has the authority to bomb large cities regardless of public opinion, given that President Bush was allowed to level Fallujah during the Iraq War, and Obama already had received authority to destroy any city in Pakistan or Afghanistan, according to his mood at the time. Congress had shown that they were unwilling to prevent the bombing or destruction of any place on earth, other than the hidden locations of their family vacation homes on tropical islands throughout the globe.

Extrapolating from the legal memos produced by Professor Adolph Yoo, at Berkeley, and Justice Benito Bybee, appointed as a Federal Judge to the Court of Appeals, the President explained that since the torture of individuals had been approved by the Supreme Court and Congress, destroying entire cities was clearly authorized as well. The Federal Courts had consistently supported the use of extraterritorial extraditions (“renditions” in Pentagon parlance), for purposes of torturing enemies of the U.S. abroad, and had thereby given the green light for Obama to use whatever force was deemed in the national interest against any other terrorists worldwide.

The seven military personnel who balked at the announcement were immediately discharged from the service without benefits, and told that if they publicly discussed their reasons for questioning the President’s decision to destroy Paris, they would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Bradley Manning was used as an example of what they would have in store, if they so much as uttered a word about the propriety of the destruction of the French capital.

One of the embedded reporters at the news conference expressed some concern regarding the destruction of monuments such as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Jeu de Paume, and some of the other well-known tourist destinations of Paris, but Obama assured the reporter that the action was necessary, if “Americans are to rid the world of terrorism.” He also hinted that the use of technologically advanced concussion bombs, which would kill all living creatures in the Paris area, might leave standing some of the buildings Americans had grown to love. With that assurance, 96% of the American people responded by signing petitions to “support our troops,” and promised to vote either Republican or Democratic in the upcoming election. Since both political parties had the same foreign policies, nobody in government was left to oppose the President.

Such figures were not anticipated.  The gains made by Le Pen demonstrate that she is more than a mere spoiler. More significantly, it shows on par, if not better performance, than that of her father’s effort in 2002, when Jean-Marie found himself a terror of the establishment, and particularly of the socialists.  The socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was well and truly trounced, leaving French voters with the agony of voting for Jacques Chirac in an effort to keep the founder of the National Front out.

Marine Le Pen’s suggestions are colourful and, in many cases, appealing.  The electorate has not been swung by accusations of insanity levelled against her by the supporters of the Front de Gauche contender Jean-Luc Mélechon, who may in time become a damp squib, despite previously doing a nice and inspiring line in rhetoric.  In fact, it might be said that his efforts have gone some way to invigorating what was threatening to be a tedious electoral race.  Those votes cast in his favour will probably be gobbled in subsequent runoffs by the main socialist candidate, François Hollande, who Mélechon described as being as ‘useful as the captain of a pedalo in a storm.’

The euro has taken a true trashing, as has its institutional framework, and capitalising on hostility has been the Far Right’s trademark in these elections.  Le Pen has promised to abandon the Common Agricultural Policy, to leave the Schengen zone as a matter of formality, and reduce legal immigration to France to a paltry 10,000 a year.  Nicolas Sarkozy has found himself having to play the game of the Right as well, making himself something of an insincere replica.  Inside Sarko is a Le Pen waiting to get out with a certain cruel dedication. Witness, in view of this, the expulsion in 2011 of 32,912 illegal immigrants from France.  His election platform, however, has one more zero in terms of allowing legal immigrants into the country.

The socialists should also have every reason to be worried.  The centre-left Hollande may have obtained 28.6 percent of the vote to Sarkozy’s 27.1 percent, but Le Pen’s voters find themselves as arbiters of the broader electoral consequences at stake.  Blue collar votes have been heading Le Pen’s way, notably from the pools of the estranged unemployed. In some circles, the issue of Europe ranks less than the issue of chronic employment.  The threat of abstention amongst the voters remains ever present, despite the French sense of political engagement.

Whoever wins will find escaping the viciousness of austerity hard to avoid.  Neither of the main candidates is what he claims to be – Hollande having shed his militant stance on protectionism, and Sarko no longer the obsessive high priest of neoliberalism.  While the French will continue to indulge the sense of singularity, their politicians will offer another reality – one where technocratic austerity reigns supreme in a country where public debt levels hover around 90 percent.

Fourteen years ago when the Swedish hardcore four-piece split up, it was a bit unceremonious. Punk bands have a propensity for going out with a whimper rather than a bang. Their final US gig was in a Harrisonburg, Virginia basement and was shut down by the local police. Not exactly befitting a band who had named their album The Shape of Punk to Come.

Since then, however, the title has proven correct. Odd time-signatures, alternate tunings, electronic sampling and the usage of revolutionary Situationist imagery made Shape far from your typical punk album. It was more in the vein of the Clash or Nation of Ulysses–using the spirit of punk as an excuse to subvert some of the genre’s most ingrained standards. Hardly a surprise then, that like Nation of Ulysses and Fugazi, Refused were political revolutionaries too.

The Shape of Punk to Come is now regarded as one of the most influential albums ever made–not just in punk, but music as a whole in the last 25 years. The “new noise” that the group attempted to forge (“how can we expect anyone to listen if we’re using the same old voice?”) clearly resonated with more than a few people out there.

To be sure, the members of group haven’t been twiddling their thumbs since its demise. Some went back to school and got degrees or started new bands. Dennis Lyxzen, the group’s frontman, formed the (International) Noise Conspiracy and continued to explore that indescribable nexus between rock and revolution. There was always, however, a feeling of that “we never did The Shape of Punk to Come justice back when it came out.”

Indeed, there does remain a lot of unfinished business. Namely that business itself has gotten a lot uglier, a lot more cut-throat and brutal even as it’s proven itself to be a lot more resilient. When Refused called it quits in 1998, it was easy to think that the whole rotten system was on its last legs. The Asian economy was in shambles, and the revolutionary rumblings in Indonesia might be spreading. The general strikes in France a few years before had given rise to a slogan: “the world is not for sale.” Globalization was being proven a sham, and a world-wide movement was taking shape that made it seem a more humane order was right around the corner.

As we all know now, that’s not exactly how it played out. Even as Refused’s star ironically continued to rise in the years after their breakup, humanity’s prospects got dimmer. The alter-globalization movement sputtered out as America puffed its chest into Afghanistan and Iraq. Even as capitalism hobbled its way through the panic of ‘08, it managed to be arrogant and brazen. They created the crisis, and yet we bear the brunt.

Alongside this is the interminable decline of the big-time music industry. It bears mentioning that even as The Shape of Punk to Come became near iconic among musical misfits of varying stripes, Refused were never on any of the “big four” record labels. The condescending, formulaic and whitewashed approach of label CEOs doesn’t square with reality for most people.

And so the amazing thing about Refused getting back together in the here and now isn’t how ill-timed and hackneyed it so often seems to be when bands reunite. Quite the opposite; if anything, the songs of Shape are more relevant, more hard-hitting, more resonant than they’ve ever been. Yesterday’s buzzwords of “national security” and “war on terror” have been pushed to the side in favor of “occupy,” “indignados” and “Tahrir.” In straightforward terms, the same people whose fates appeared sealed just a few years ago have found a voice; the impossible has now, once again, become possible.

One of the common slogans of the Situationists by whom Lyxzen and company have long been inspired is the “revolutionizing of everyday life.” In other words, even the most mundane and apparently co-opted entities under this system have the potential to be turned back in on itself, re-appropriated for the cause of true liberation. There might be more than a little truth to this. Recent surveys have revealed that despite the inexorable fall in both living standards and album sales, ticket sales — even to expensive mega-fests like Coachella — continue to rise.

It doesn’t take too much speculation to figure out why: in a world where so much is denied, even a vague experience of affirmation and communal feelings has no price tag. Cynical booking agents and promoters might laugh at a band playing Coachella having “a bone to pick with capitalism.” But when they make it clear that they also have “a few to break,” there’s a good bet that many of this forgotten generation felt it in every fiber of their being. Indeed, a world of affirmation might be worth a few fractured knuckles.

 … she becomes the endless scream in the breaking news,
which was no longer breaking news, when
the aircraft returned to bomb a house with two windows and a door.

— The Girl/The Scream, Mahmoud Darwish, 1941-2008

March was another month of tragic, needless lives lost, the searing grief of mothers and fathers for lost sons and daughters.

Shockingly stark, however, has been the impression that for the powers-that-be, for a swathe of public in the West, some deaths are indisputedly regarded as more tragic, more noteworthy than others.

On March 6th, six British soldiers were killed in Afghanistan. Corporal Jake Hartley (20) and Privates Anthony Frampton (20) Christopher Kershaw (19) Daniel Wade (20) and Daniel Wilford (20), and Sergeant Nigel Coupe (33) died when their armored vehicle was blown up. The resulting fire reportedly burned all night.

More youthful annihilations in an invasion and occupation, illegal, ill-conceived and long lost. Human sacrifices at the altar of political ego, dying because the powerful would rather throw away the lives of others than “lose face” one hundred and twenty-five  months since the “war” started.

In the US, five of the six would have been too young to even legally order a drink in a bar, but are old enough to die for monumental imperial folly, regional foothold –  and a pipeline.

Before the month ended two more British servicemen were shot, and yet another blown to eternity.

In Parliament Prime Minister Cameron paid vacuous tribute. They died, he said, “keeping our country safe.” What nonsense! There are no Afghan hordes massing across the English Channel, planning invasion with near antique rifles – some so ancient they have Queen Victoria’s insignia on them, relics from another historic British folly.

Prince Harry, cavorting round the Caribbean, filling in time before returning to Afghanistan in an Apache Attack Helicopter – with fire power of 632 rounds a minute, plus up to sixteen Hellfire missiles – to wipe out more villagers, and their homes, hung his head and declared himself  “devastated.” Flags in their home and base towns in the UK flew at half mast.

Five days later, on March 11th, there was a massacre of seventeen Afghan villagers by an American soldier, or, say numerous eye witnesses, soldiers. Nine of the victims were children, the youngest two years old.

The names have been gathered, but to date, their ages not matched with them. Mohamed Wazir lost five daughters: Masooma, Farida, Palwasha, Nabia, and Estmatullah, and his son, Faizullah.

The other known names are: Mohamed Dawood, Khudaydad, Nazar Mohamed, Payendo, Robeena, Shatarina, Zahra, Nazia, Essa Mohamed and Akhtar Mohammed. The name of the seventeenth victim is, so far, unknown.

The wounded have names too: Haji Mohamed Naim, Mohamed Sediq, Parween, Rafiulla, Zardana, Zulheja. Since they were taken to a US military medical facility, little is known of their condition.

John Henry Browne is attorney for Staff Sergeant Robert Bales, the only person, so far, accused of the atrocities – which, allegedly, involved attempting to set fire to the bodies, having covered them with materials and doused them with gasoline. Browne claims that US forces have obstructed him and colleagues from reaching and questioning the survivors.

Ironically, the killings and attempted body burnings were a near carbon copy of the US murders in Mahmudiya, Iraq, six years before, almost to the day. (March 12th, 2006.)

President Obama called Aghanistan’s Hamid Karzai to express his condolences and to assure him that the “tragic incident does not represent the exceptional character of our military and the respect that the United States has for the people of Afghanistan.”

Coming a month after “respectful” representatives of the US military had chucked over a hundred Holy Qurans into a burn pit, a large group of Marine snipers had been photographed posing with a flamboyant Nazi flag, and less than two months after they had been filmed urinating on dead Afghans, the Nobel President’s assurances surely sounded somewhat wanting on the sincerity front.

That impression may have been confirmed when just two days after the killings and pictures of the little broken bodies and their relatives, laid in battered pick-up trucks for their last journey, to their burial – the haunted faces of the male relatives saying more than any words – Obama and David Cameron were pictured, carefree, smirking, sharing jokes and munching hotdogs in Ohio.

Cameron, who had arrived in Washington that day, was whisked off in Air Force One to the annual US college basketball tournament, “March Madness” in Dayton to watch Kentucky’s Hilltoppers challenge Mississippi’s Delta Devils. Ohio is a swing state that is a vital plank of his strategy to win a second term in November, observe commentators.

User-friendly front page pictures of jollying at a game surely beat those of small US victims, over which Obama had declared himself “heartbroken”, in an increasingly unpopular quagmire, which a March CNN/ORC poll showed just 25% of Americans supporting.

David Cameron flew back to the UK just in time to temporarily attempt diversion from an avalanche of self-inflicted domestic problems by leaping to support fellow Libya destroyer, France’s Nicholas Sarkozy. (Even by the woeful record of British Prime Ministers, Cameron and his Croesus-rich Cabinet cronies are so out of touch with the real world, they would make Marie “let them eat cake” Antoinette look like a representative of the far left.)

On March 19th, another tragedy struck more children, a father, and their   families.

At a Jewish school, the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse, France, a gunman, Mohammed Merah, shot dead Jonathan Sandler, a Rabbi and teacher at the school, his two sons, Gabriel and Arieh, aged three and six, and Miriam Monsonego, the seven year-old daughter of the school Principal, Yaacov Monsenego. An un-named seventeen year-old boy was wounded.

President Sarkozy said: “Barbarity, savagery and cruelty cannot win, hate cannot win …One can imagine that the bloodthirsty madness was linked to racism.”

Ironically, the gunman, of Algerian origin, with a Muslim background, three days earlier, had, it seems, killed three soldiers, in nearby Montaubon. Two were Muslim. He has been repeatedly quoted as saying he was driven by the plight of the Palestinian people and of what he perceived as the West’s war against Islam. George W. Bush’s declared: “Crusade” returns to haunt.

David Cameron told Sarkozy: “People across Britain share the shock and grief that is being felt in France, and my thoughts are with the victims, their friends and their families….†You can count on my every support in confronting these senseless acts of brutality and cowardice.”

A minute’s silence was held across France for the victims. A book of condolence was opened at the French Embassy in Washington, and when those who had dual French-Israeli nationality were flown back to Israel for burial, accompanied by their relatives, they were joined by French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe.

Mohammed Merah’s story is becoming as hard to unravel of that of Staff Sergeant Bales in the Afghanistan carnage. However, Merah is predictably being labeled an Islamic terrorist, whilst Bales has been whisked out of Afghanistan. His lawyer cites memory loss and post traumatic stress disorder.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy faces his electorate in April and May, and with France’s finances and Libya threatening to take their toll, no sympathy stone is, seemingly, left unturned.

“What must be understood”, he said: “is that the trauma of Montaubon and Toulouse is profound for our country, a little …  a little, like the trauma that followed in the United States and in New York after the September 11, 2001 attacks”, he told “Europe 1” radio. Loss and grief as chutzpah which out-does chutzpah.

It is surely coincidence that nineteen people have been arrested in France, in connection with the murders. Exactly the same number as the 9/11 hijackers.

When London’s underground system and a bus was struck by explosives on July 7th, 2005, former New York Mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, happened to be in town and did the rounds of media outlets, telling listeners that this was “London’s 9/11.” These shameful political non-senses trivialize losses of enormity, and all who are left to pick up the pieces of, and struggle with, the fractured, often broken, emotional aftermath.

Willfully ignored is cause and effect. Soldiers are dispatched to countries of which they know nothing, for oil and other interests, having been trained to see those in lands they occupy, uninvited, as lesser beings. Always thus, they attach derogatory names to other nationalities, sneer at lives, culture, beliefs and dress. Above all they are trained to kill.

Those who react to this injustice are simply “terrorists”, “a tragic incident”, or “collateral damage.”

Three tragedies, leaving holes in many hearts, but two, clearly, so much greater.

When will Western politicians and their allies address their own: “barbarity, savagery and cruelty … the bloodthirsty madness” their: “senseless acts of brutality and cowardice”, their murderous meddling. Their crimes against humanity?

And far away, in those little villages in Afghanistan, traumatized surviving children are repeatedly asking their parents: “Are the Americans coming back?” (And, yes, they do say “Americans.”)

The lethal handiwork of 23-year-old Mohamed Merah, the Algerian man wanted for the a spate of killings – the deaths of three French paratroopers, three Jewish school children and a rabbi – has propelled the President into a rather extremist, not to mention suspicious, frame of mind. ‘Anyone who regularly consults internet sites which promote terror or hatred or violence will be sentenced to prison.’ For Sarkozy, the internet must be a dark enclave of consultation and plotting, a breeding ground of permanent subversion.  When a person searches out particular sites, suspicion should arise.  Reading the anarchist cook books list of deadly recipes is bound to turn the visitor into a mad bomb throwing deviant.  ‘Don’t tell me it’s not possible.  What is possible for paedophiles should be possible for trainee terrorists and their supporters, too.’

One glaring problem in this line taken by Sarkozy lies in the field of policy itself.  The law becomes the famously touted ass largely through application and definition.  A policy can produce invidious outcomes because of unclear meanings or nebulous terms.  Defining which sites are the arbiters of ‘extremist’ matter is the first priority of authorities.   (Read: any group or subject they don’t like.)  As it is also their deemed prerogative, a good deal of arbitrariness can be thrown in as to what is dangerous and what isn’t; what corrupts and what purifies.  One person’s extremist disposition is another’s mild mannered teddy bear.  After all, the Muppet show has been deemed by such wise men as Fox’s Eric Bolling to be a communist enterprise, while the insipid, child oriented Happy Feet 2 has been dubbed ‘Kiddie Karl Marx’ (Guardian, Dec 6, 2011). Such idiocy is charming, until it turns into the dull, half-witted language of legislation.

Presumably, a regular visitor to opera sites falls foul of the Sarkozy triad – there is very little in that genre that lacks hatred, violence of terror.  High society types awaiting time in the nick because they decided to go through booking online tickets for Tosca.  The cupboard of cultural artefacts would be somewhat threadbare without those not so secret herbs and spices.  The same goes for publications, political promotions and policies.

The focus on layering the internet with a surveillance system in recent years has become more intense.  It has become the medium for recruitment, an easy means of access to nab followers for every single ideology or inclination in current circulation.  A UK parliamentary report by the Home Affairs Committee (January 31, 2012) examining online radicalisation described the effects of what ‘Sheikh Google’ might do in converting and recruiting young men and women.  That committee, however, shied away from a heavy handed approach to those who did dabble on the search engine.

The extremist nonsense Sarkozy is peddling demonstrates a false focus, though the rationale is already part of French law, given the punitive regime of anti-paedophilia rules that involve heavy penalties for regular visitors to prohibited web sites.  The site is less relevant than the visitor.  Curiosity will be criminalised.  A click renders you liable; several clicks, certified.  Lucie Morillon of Reporters Without Borders is rightly asking the question whether Sarkozy intends installing ‘a global internet surveillance system in France’ (Morning Star Online, March 23). In what must have been the understatement of the week, she also observed that, ‘Trying to criminalise a visit – a simple visit – to a Web site, that’s something that seems disproportionate.’

Perhaps more free speech, rather than less, would be a better solution, enabling members to counteract the agents of terrorism with more conviction. For Sarkozy, the heavy stick of law enforcement is proving far more attractive.

We have met the enemy and he is us.

— Walt Kelly, 1913-1973

It was political analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, in November 2006, who wrote in detail of US plans for the Middle East.

“The term ‘New Middle East’, was introduced to the world in June 2006, in Tel Aviv,†by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East’”, he wrote.

Sanity dictated that this would be a U.S. fantasy rampage too far and vast – until realization hit that the author of the map of this New World, planned in the New World’s “New World Order”, was Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, who, in one of the most terrifying articles ever published, wrote in 1997:

There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines …The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.  (My emphasis.)

At the time, Peters was assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he was responsible: “for future warfare.” His plans for Iraq worked out just fine – unless you are an Iraqi.

A month after Nazemroaya’s article was published, William Roebuck, Director for the Office of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, was composing an end of year strategy for Syria from his study in the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, where he was been based between 2004-2007, rising to Deputy Chief of Mission.

The subject title was: “Influencing the SARG (Syrian Arab Regime Government) in the end of 2006.”

“The SARG ends 2006 in a much stronger position domestically and internationally (than in) 2005.” Talking of President Assad’s “growing self-confidence”, he felt that this might lead to “mistakes and ill-judged  … decisions … providing us with new opportunities.” Whilst “additional bilateral or multilateral pressure can impact on Syria”, clearly he had even more ambitious plans:

This cable summarizes our assessment of … vulnerabilities, and suggests that there may be actions, statements and signals, that the USG (US Government) can send that will improve the liklihood of such opportunities arising.

The proposals would need to be “fleshed out and converted in to real actions and we need to be ready to move quickly to take advantage of such opportunities.” (no, not le Carre, Forsyth, or Fleming, “diplomat” in Damascus.)

“As the end of 2006 approaches” wrote Roebuck, “Bashar appears … stronger than he has done in two years. The country is economically stable …regional issues seem to be going Syria’s way.”

However, “vulnerabilities and looming issues may provide opportunities to up the pressure on Bashar … some of these vulnerabilities “(including the complexities with Lebanon) “can be exploited to put pressure on the regime. Actions that cause Bashar to lose balance, and increase his insecurity, are in our interest.”

The President’s “mistakes are hard to predict and benefits may vary, if we are prepared to move quickly and take advantage of opportunities …”

A “vulnerability”, wrote Roebuck, was Bashir al Assad’s protection of: “Syria’s dignity and international reputation.” Pride and “protection”, clearly a shocking concept.

In the light of the proposed Tribunal into the assassination of Lebanon’s former Prime Minister, Rafic Hariri (14 February 2005) killed with his friend, former Minister of Economy Bassel Fleihan and twenty colleagues and bodyguards in a huge bomb detonated under his motorcade, this “vulnerability” could be exploited.

Unproven allegations have pointed the finger at Israel, Syria, Hezbollah and myriad others as behind another Middle East tragedy, but Roebuck regarded it as an “opportunity to exploit this raw nerve, without waiting for the formation of the Tribunal.”

Another idea outlined under a further “vulnerability” heading, was the growing  alliance between Syria and Iran. “Possible action”, was to “play on Sunni fears of Iranian influence.” Although these were “often exaggerated”, they were there to be exploited:

Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here … are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should co-ordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention to the issue.

Concerned Sunni religious leaders should also be worked on. Iraq-style divide and rule model, writ large.

The “divide” strategy, of course, should also focus on the first family and legislating circle, with “ targeted sanctions (which) must exploit fissures and render the inner circle weaker, rather the drive its members closer together.”

The public should also be subject to “continual reminders of corruption … we should look for ways to remind …”

Another aspect to be exploited was “The Khaddam factor”.

Abdul Halim Khaddam was Vice President from 1984-2005, and acting President in 2000, during the months beween Bashir al Assad’s accession and his father’s death.

Thought to have Presidential ambitions himself, there was a bitter split between Khaddam and al Assad after Hariri’s death. Allegations of treasonous betrayal by Khaddam have validity.

The ruling party, writes Roebuck:

…follow every news item involving Khaddam, with tremendous emotional interest. We should continue to encourage the Saudis and others to allow Khaddam access to their media … providing him with venues for airing the SARG’s dirty laundry.

As a result, anticipated was “an over reaction by the regime that will add to its isolation and alienation from its Arab neighbours.”

On January 14th, 2006, Khaddam had formed a government in exile, and had predicted the end of the al-Assad government by the year’s end.

He is currently regarded as an opposition leader, and has claimed, on Israel’s Channel 2 TV,  receiving monies to help overthrow  the Syrian government from the U.S. and E.U.

The ever creative Mr Roebuck’s further plans included, “Encouraging rumours and signals of external plotting.” To this end “Regional allies like  Egypt and Saudi Arabia should be encouraged to meet with figures like Kaddam  and Rifat (sic) al Assad, with appropriate leaking of the meetings afterwards. This … increases the possibility of a self-defeating over-reaction.”

Rifaat al Assad, Bashir’s uncle, was in charge of the Defence Brigade, who killed up to thirty thousand people in, and flattened much of, the city of Hama, in February 1982. So much for endlessly trumpeted concerns for “human rights violations.” Rifaat al Assad lives in exile and safety in London. Khaddam lives in Paris.(v)

Here is a serious cause for concern for the overthrow-bent. “Bashar keeps unveiling a steady stream of initiatives on reform and it is certainly possible he believes this is his legacy to Syria …. These steps have brought back Syrian expats to invest …  (and) increasing openness.”

Solution? “Finding ways to publicly call in to question Bashar’s reform efforts.” Indeed, moving heaven and earth to undercut them, is made clear.

Further, “Syria has enjoyed a considerable up-tick in foreign direct investment”, thus, foreign investment is to be “discouraged.”

In May of 2006, complains Roebuck, Syrian Military Intelligence protested: “what they believed were U.S. efforts to provide military training and equipment to Syria’s Kurds.” The Iraq model yet again.

The answer was to “Highlight Kurdish complaints.”  This, however, “would need to be handled carefully, since giving the wrong kind of prominence to Kurdish issues in Syria, could be a liability for our efforts … given Syrian … civil society’s skepticism of Kurdish objectives.”

In “Conclusion”, this shaming, shoddy document states, “The bottom line is that Bashar is entering the New Year in a stronger position than he has been in several years”, meaning “vulnerabilities” must be sought out. “If we are ready to capitalize, they will offer us opportunities to disrupt his decision-making, keep him off balance – and make him pay a premium for his mistakes.”

The cable is copied to The White House, U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Treasury, U.S. Mission at the UN, U.S. National Security Council, CENTCOM, all Arab League and EU countries.

The only other U.S. Embassy copied in is that in Tel Aviv. When William Roebuck worked at the Embassy in Tel Aviv (2000-2003) embracing the invasion of Iraq year, he “narrowly missed assassination.” Perhaps someone there too thought he was hard to warm to.

In 2009, he was Deputy Political Consul In Baghdad “leading efforts to support the critical 2009 Iraqi elections.” The “free and fair, democratic” ones, where people were threatened with the deaths of their children even, if they did not vote the “right” way.

The result was Nuri al Maliki’s premiership, complete with his murderous militias, the man under whose Ministry of the Interior, U.S. soldiers discovered tortured, starving prisoners.

The Damascus cable comes courtesy Wikileaks.  Lt. Colonel Peters called, on Fox News, for founder, Julian Assange, to be assassinated. The forty second clip is worth the listen.

The Colonel also writes fiction and thrillers under the name Owen Patterson. Perhaps he is living the dream.

The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.

—  J.Edgar Hoover, 1895-1972

Smelled any proverbial rats lately? If not, you have not been paying attention. There are plenty about.

Consider, for instance, this:

“Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now” and “must step aside …” Hilary Clinton (Asia Times,  February 9, 2012)

“I strongly condemn the Syrian government’s unspeakable assault  … and I offer my deepest sympathy to those who have lost loved ones.  Assad must halt his campaign of killing and crimes against his own people now.  He must step aside …” said President Barack Hussein Obama.

Yet responsibility for US victims, in their hundreds of thousands, spanning Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Somalia, in Guantanamo, Bagram, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, are wholly unaccountable — and uncounted.

Responsibility for tyrannicide (including the horrific, state sponsored assassinations of Osama bin Laden and others, including Libya’s Head of State, Colonel Gaddafi) have seemingly entered a Presidential memory hole.

“This (Syria’s) is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime. There is no way it can get its credibility back either internationally or with its own people”, Britain’s little Foreign Secretary, William Hague, chimed in obediently from the Washington script on Sky News.

“Because the regime is so intransigent, because it is conducting ten months unmitigated violence and repression – more than 6,000 killed, with 12,000 or 14,000 in detention and subject to every kind of torture and abuse – it is driving some opponents to violent action themselves”, concluded Hague.

Hypocrisy reigns supreme. Walking distance from Hague’s office, “living in style and protection”, is Bashar Al Assad’s Uncle Rifaat, under whose Defence Brigades onslaught killed up to perhaps 30,000 people in the city of Hama, which was also partially destroyed Falluja style. The thirtieth anniversary of  a truly terrible event is commemorated today, February 25. (See Robert Fisk, Independent, February 25, 2012.)

Of Libya, in March 2011, Obama stated:

Going forward, we will continue to send a clear message: The violence must stop. Muammar Gaddafi has lost legitimacy to lead, and he must leave. Those who perpetrate violence against the Libyan people will be held accountable. And the aspirations of the Libyan people for freedom, democracy and dignity must be met.

An anomaly (apart from the script similarity): In Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya,  deaths resultant from US-UK and “allied” actions are “impossible to verify” by Washington and Whitehall.

Indeed, this month the (UK) Parliamentary Select Committee on Defence issued a Report, after an Inquiry into operations in Libya, stating that:

Britain has no way of knowing how many civilians died in the Libyan conflict as a result of Nato bombing.

Back in March 2011, however, the exact figure of Gaddafi’s victims was “known.” Coincidentally, it was also exactly 6,000, stated a “political analyst” — using remarkably similar State Department  phraseology.

As under Saddam Hussein in Iraq (with no diplomatic presence), in Libya, and now little in Syria, with no point of contact bar, seemingly a satellite dish fitter in Coventry, England, alleged to be the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights”, exact death and casualty figures are always miraculously available.

A new nemesis appears on the horizon — or “Arab street” — and precise numbers are trumpeted. Yet when Western forces, “Viceroys”, “Intelligence” services, “mentors” and myriad general meddlers, mercenaries and marauders pitch up, murder and occupy, none are available.

Of course, no proposed invasion (sorry, “humanitarian intervention”) regime change and accompanying mass slayings would be complete without forces of a wicked tyrant switching off electricity to babies’ incubators.

For anyone who has forgotten the details, the (1990-1991) Iraq model went like this: vast US government employed PR agency, Hill and Knowlton (“we create value by shaping conversations: we start them, we amplify them, we change them. We can connect seamlessly with all of your audiences…”) produced a fifteen year old girl called “Nayirah”, a “Kuwaiti with first hand knowledge of … her tortured land.”

I volunteered (tears) at the Al Addan Hospital .. I saw the Iraqi soldiers ..with guns, they took fifteen babies out of incubators, left them on the cold floor and took the incubators.

Strangely, no one asked why she didn’t pick them up and wrap and tend to them, or checked who she really was.

She was the daughter of Saud al Sabar, the Kuwaiti Ambassador to US. The incubators’ story, of course, was a complete fabrication.

October 10th 1990, Amnesty presented evidence against Iraq with Hill and Knowlton at the Congressional Human Rights Caucus on Capitol Hill. Amnesty International trustingly endorsed the incubator story, apparently never investigating who “Nayirah” was, and in a charged situation, whether propaganda might not be rampant.

Amnesty US Executive Director, John Healey, compounded the incubator baby story in testimony to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs on 8th January 1991. The carpet-bombing of Iraq began nine days later.¹

Amnesty, enjoined by Human Rights Watch, are amongst the most enthusiastic champions of Syrian intervention and onward to Armageddon. Glen Ford writes all you ever need to know.

The first Syria incubator baby story surfaced last August. “Syrian government troops”, had cut the electricity. It was quickly exposed as beyond questionable.

A similar story came up on February 8  with numbers varying from eighteen poor mites to a subsequent eighty. With both tales, as the Iraq version, no distraught parents, extended family were found, no funeral gatherings. Then the stories, too, quietly vanished.

Coincidentally, the current Speaker of the eighty eight Member Arab Inter-Parliamentary union, which backs intervention in Syria, is Kuwaiti, Ali Al-Salem Al-Dekbas, calling for all Syria’s Ambassadors to be expelled, confrontation with Russia over its stance — and in remarkable US-speak, for swift intervention to stop the Syrian government “killing (their own) people.” (Reuters, February 4, 2012.)

The new Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, is Suzanne Nossel, formerly Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Assistant for International Organization Affairs at the State Department. She has also previously worked for Human Rights Watch.

She “… has launched several campaigns against Iran, Libya and Syria.”

The allegation that Kuwait gave Amnesty $500,000 for backing the Iraq incubator baby story has never gone away, but the little island, once famously called ”an oil company posing as a state”, with population just  2,595,628 (July 2011) which  includes 1,291,354 non-nationals, also has powerful American-proxy clout.

In 1999, an agreement was signed between the USA and Kuwait for a permanent US force to be stationed there, in twelve facilities (there are a further eight “spares”, seemingly not currently in use.)

The agreement for the bases, incidentally, was named “Operation Desert Spring.”

Here is a further coincidence. In March 2010, Libya was voted, near unanimously, on to the UN Human Rights Committee, after a glowing Report on human rights progress. After a ferocious campaign by Geneva-based UN Watch not only were they expelled from it, but nineteen months later, their country lay in ruins, their leader lynched and most of his family dead.

Last November, Syria was elected to the Committee and the fifty eight Member Arab board added their votes to the country’s place on UNESCO panels.

UN Watch railed that:

Western democracies, unanimously elected Syria to a pair of Committees – one dealing directly with human rights issues – even as the Bashar al-Assad regime maintains its campaign of violence against its own citizens.

Syria’s Committee places, as Libya before it, died a quick unnoticed death.

Amnesty’s Ms Nossel, unsurprisingly, has spoken at a number of events with UN Watch Director, Hillel Neuer, a Montreal born attorney, whose career has included serving as a judicial law clerk for Justice Itzhak Zamir at the Supreme Court of Israel.

In March last year, there seemed a glimmer of hope that the US and “allies”, would back away from repeating the tragic disaster that was unfolding in Libya – and had already struck Afghanistan and Iraq.

Secretary of State Clinton committed on CBS  (March 27, 2011) that the US would not intervene in the way it had in Libya.

Now, it seems, a miracle is needed, as it emerges Saudi Arabia and Qatar are among those subsidizing insurgents with vast sums – as French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe announced that the EU is about to further tie the government’s hands by freezing the assets of the Syrian Central Bank from February 27. Syria is already under a crippling raft of sanctions.  France was, of course, one of the leading and most enthusiastic cheerleaders for the destruction of Libya.

At the same “Friends of Syria” Conference in Tunis (February 24, 2012) UK Foreign Minister William Hague declared that the UK recognized the insurgents and Hilary “We came, we saw, he died” Clinton called Russia and China ”despicable” for their veto at the UN, which may well have blocked further “intervention.”

The US said it will consider military assistance to the insurgents – a representative of the insurgents said they were already receiving “western aid.”

With “friends” like these, Syria certainly needs no enemies.

The US has, of course, “despicably”, vetoed thirty five UN peace Resolutions relating to the Middle East including  on “Operation Cast Lead”, the 2008-2009 Israeli Christmas-New Year onslaught on Gaza, and Israel’s 2006 blitzkrieg of Lebanon.

A “new world map”

Chillingly, no outrage, or cries of “despicable” has been given to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement in Switzerland the day before the Tunisia conference that there: “would be no Lebanon in the new world map. ”

He stated, further, that an Israeli strike against Lebanon would be supported by the United States and Gulf States countries.

There surely is a wildlife park of elephants in the room. Given George W. Bush’s “Crusade”, the belief by extreme right Israeli circles in their control of the Middle East “from the Nile to the Euphrates” and General Wesley Clark’s revelations of 2007 that the Pentagon planned “(taking) out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”, there is an obvious question, sparked by Prime Minister Netanyahu’s confidence over a Lebanon attack:

Are these AIPAC and Israel’s wars?

1. John R. Macarthur,  Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War , 17 December 1993, Chapter 2, pp. 54-59

United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the double veto a “travesty”. Then Clinton duly incited “friends of democratic Syria” to keep working for regime change, which was the object of the resolution. The copyright for this idea is held by the liberator of Libya, neo-Napoleonic French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who said Paris was already working to create a NATOGCC “Friends of the Syrian People Group” in charge of implementing the Arab League’s regime change plan.

Right on cue, Paris puppet Burhan Ghalyun, the head of the Syrian National Council (SNC) – the opposition umbrella group – also summoned these countries “friendly to the Syrian people”. Everybody knows who they are; the US, Britain, France, Israel and GCC members Qatar and Saudi Arabia. With “friends” like these, the “Syrian people” certainly don’t need enemies.

Those ‘disgusting’ BRICS

United States ambassador to the UN Susan Rice – a top cheerleader of R2P, also known as humanitarian bombing – called the double veto “disgusting”.

Even the venerable stones of the Umayyad mosque in Damascus know that only Washington has the right to wield veto power at the UN – overwhelmingly to protect the state of Israel’s right to kill Palestinian men, women and children with tanks and shelling without bothering about pesky UN resolutions.¹

Russia, vocally – and China, silently – had been adamant for weeks; forget about a UN resolution for regime change in Syria, or worse yet, opening the doors for a Libya-style NATO humanitarian bombing.

Russia has its own geopolitical reasons to consider Syria a red line; Syria hosts Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean, in the port of Tartus; and Syria buys Russian weapons. But, in fact, all the five BRICS – plus the overwhelmingly majority of the developing world – are in synch; forget about regime change-enabling UN resolutions, promoted by the usual suspect Western trio US-Britain-France and – the summit of hypocrisy – devised by the “democratic” House of Saud and Qatar.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov will be in Damascus this Tuesday to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and discuss a serious plan to try to end the bloodshed. Lavrov has calmly explained the reasons for the Russian veto.

He had sent Russian amendments to the draft resolution directly to Clinton; “The rationality and objectivity of these amendments should not cause anyone’s doubt.” But to no avail; the resolution remained “unilateral” – demanding nothing from Syrian anti-government armed groups. Lavrov stressed, “No president with self-respect, no matter how treated, will agree to surrender inhabited localities to armed extremists without resistance.” Imagine if Homs was in Texas.

Still, the SNC now holds Moscow and Beijing “responsible for the escalating acts of killing and genocide”, and facilitators of a “license to kill”. Lavrov is imperturbable; “We have repeatedly said that we are not protecting Assad but international law. The prerogative of the UN Security Council does not envision interference in internal processes.”

Homs: Who’s killing whom?

Syria’s UN ambassador Bashar Ja’afari strongly denied the opposition’s accusation of regime forces bombing the Khadiliya neighborhood in Homs with tanks and artillery and killing over 200 people – arguing that “no sensible person” would launch such an attack the night before the UN Security Council was discussing a resolution. Without any preliminary investigation, France called it a “massacre” and a “crime against humanity”. Like France’s performance during the Algerian war?

To understand what’s at stake, it’s crucial to keep in mind who’s defecting from the Syrian army. Syria’s top military – also members of the Ba’ath Party – are almost all Alawis, the folk Shi’ite sect (10% of the overall population). They are not defecting.

The defectors are overwhelmingly Sunni troops (70% of the overall population); they are forming militias, Libya-style, heavily infiltrated by mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, and fighting government troops. The government’s response has been to target the neighborhoods where the families of these defectors live. The center of Homs nowadays is controlled by the rebels.

So what’s really happening on the ground in Homs? Here are sections from a crucial e-mail sent by a trusted Syrian Christian source:

Many Syrians are ecstatic about the double veto but Homs is very worrying. The opposition spread news about a massacre just before the vote and they quoted numbers in the hundreds … unbelievably quoted by all news channels (all based on “activists”) without any verification, only to bring the number down to something like 33 later. They never showed any bombing or taking people under rubble or any injured people … just clean-bodied men with their hands and feet tied up and shot mostly once and only in their underwear. Whatever the Syrian government has in its arsenal it seems there are very intelligent bombs that can strip and tie up people then shoot them in the head!!

The thing that we know fully well is that there are no army presence in Homs. My parents left the city then came back Saturday morning on the day of the alleged massacre and there was nothing. They usually call a hotline (115) and ask if the roads are safe and security operator will tell you to come to Homs or not. This time they told them to come and indeed there was nothing to be seen or heard. This of course doesn’t mean that most of the city and particularly the old city is under the control of the gunmen. Our old neighborhood where I grew up (the Christian Bustan al-Diwan) was completely taken over by the gunmen. YouTube videos show how the FSA cleared the army roadblock in the previous neighborhood (Bab al-Dreib) and then proceeded to destroy the one guarding our neighborhood.

People in my neighborhood did not complain of any major harassment or problem, however the “revolutionaries” did indeed break into a couple of homes that their people left either days earlier or at the time, also into a school, Homs Newspaper (operated by the Orthodox church for more than 100 years) and a few other restaurants but no other complaints. I mean, considering what these FSA do to Alawites, then the Christians are really getting very fair treatment so far.

What many believe now is that the bodies shown tied up and shot in Khalidiya and which are alleged to be “men, women and children” killed by a bombardment of the Syrian army were nothing but kidnapped Syrian soldiers. Add to them kidnapped Alawites who were not liberated (or actually exchanged). When the FSA kidnap some people, Alawites started to kidnap in return to exchange the prisoners. This doesn’t always work and some people who weren’t “exchanged for” turned up dead in Khalidiya.

All in all up to this point there really isn’t any offensive by the Syrian army on the city. The rebels continue to attack other checkpoints. People are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs. It’s devastating for me to see my neighborhood become another battleground and many of my friends leaving.

All this dovetails with an explanation by fine journalist Nir Rosen, author of the indispensable Aftermath: Following the Bloodshed of America’s Wars in the Muslim World; Homs is essentially a question of rebels seizing government checkpoints – and government forces shelling a few neighborhoods with mortars. According to Rosen:

There was no fighting in Homs, just shelling from these safe locations (from the point of view of the regime), suggesting they are unable to actually attack Khalidiya with regime fighters … No opposition fighters were killed in the attack. And up to 130 people in Khaldiyeh were killed and 800 wounded (like I said not fighters). Now that’s a lot of people but if you were watching the news … you would think that Homs was destroyed while in fact this attack can also be seen as a sign of the regime’s weakness in the city.

Compare this with my Syrian source worried that “people are completely in the dark as to what the government is thinking regarding Homs”.

Imagine an armed insurrection in a mid-sized city in the US; the whole world saw how peaceful Occupy Wall Street was dealt with by billionaire mayor Michael Bloomberg. The “disgusting” BRICS have made it clear; there will be no NATOGCC humanitarian bombing of Syria. But NATOGCC may be succeeding in its plan B: to plunge Syria into civil war.

• First published at Asia Times.

1. Here’s a partial summary of US vetoes at the UN

Essentially, the GCC created an Arab League group to monitor what’s going on in Syria. The Syrian National Council – based in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) member countries Turkey and France – enthusiastically supported it. It’s telling that Syria’s neighbor Lebanon did not.

When the over 160 monitors, after one month of enquiries, issued their report … surprise! The report did not follow the official GCC line – which is that the “evil” Bashar al-Assad government is indiscriminately, and unilaterally, killing its own people, and so regime change is in order.

The Arab League’s Ministerial Committee had approved the report, with four votes in favor (Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and GCC member Oman) and only one against; guess who, Qatar – which is now presiding the Arab League because the emirate bought their (rotating) turn from the Palestinian Authority.

So the report was either ignored (by Western corporate media) or mercilessly destroyed – by Arab media, virtually all of it financed by either the House of Saud or Qatar. It was not even discussed – because it was prevented by the GCC from being translated from Arabic into English and published in the Arab League’s website.

Until it was leaked. Here it is, in full.

The report is adamant. There was no organized, lethal repression by the Syrian government against peaceful protesters. Instead, the report points to shady armed gangs as responsible for hundreds of deaths among Syrian civilians, and over one thousand among the Syrian army, using lethal tactics such as bombing of civilian buses, bombing of trains carrying diesel oil, bombing of police buses and bombing of bridges and pipelines.

Once again, the official NATOGCC version of Syria is of a popular uprising smashed by bullets and tanks. Instead, BRICS members Russia and China, and large swathes of the developing world see it as the Syrian government fighting heavily armed foreign mercenaries. The report largely confirms these suspicions.

The Syrian National Council is essentially a Muslim Brotherhood outfit affiliated with both the House of Saud and Qatar – with an uneasy Israel quietly supporting it in the background. Legitimacy is not exactly its cup of green tea. As for the Free Syrian Army, it does have its defectors, and well-meaning opponents of the Assad regime, but most of all is infested with these foreign mercenaries weaponized by the GCC, especially Salafist gangs.

Still NATOGCC, blocked from applying in Syria its one-size-fits-all model of promoting “democracy” by bombing a country and getting rid of the proverbial evil dictator, won’t be deterred. GCC leaders House of Saud and Qatar bluntly dismissed their own report and went straight to the meat of the matter; impose a NATOGCC regime change via the UN Security Council.

So the current “Arab-led drive to secure a peaceful end to the 10-month crackdown” in Syria at the UN is no less than a crude regime change drive. Usual suspects Washington, London and Paris have been forced to fall over themselves to assure the real international community this is not another mandate for NATO bombing – a la Libya. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described it as “a path for a political transition that would preserve Syria’s unity and institutions”.

But BRICS members Russia and China see it for what it is. Another BRICS member – India – alongside Pakistan and South Africa, have all raised serious objections to the NATOGCC-peddled draft UN resolution.

There won’t be another Libya-style no fly zone; after all the Assad regime is not exactly deploying Migs against civilians. A UN regime change resolution will be blocked – again – by Russia and China. Even NATOGCC is in disarray, as each block of players – Washington, Ankara, and the House of Saud-Doha duo – has a different long-term geopolitical agenda. Not to mention crucial Syrian neighbor and trading partner Iraq; Baghdad is on the record against any regime change scheme.

So here’s a suggestion to the House of Saud and Qatar; since you’re so seduced by the prospect of “democracy” in Syria, why don’t you use all your American weaponry and invade in the dead of night – like you did to Bahrain – and execute regime change by yourselves?

•  First published at Asia Times.

Jose Marti was among the glorious legion of patriots who. throughout the second half of the 19th century, fought against the loathsome colonialism brandished by Spain for 300 years. Marti most clearly foresaw such a dramatic destiny and expressed this view in the last lines he would write prior to engaging in tough combat against a well-equipped and battle-hardened Spanish column. He declared that the primary objective of his struggles were “… preventing in time, by Cuba’s independence, that the United States should expand through the Antilles and pounce with that added strength on our lands of America. Everything that I have done up to now and will do in the future shall be done for this purpose.”

Today one cannot be a patriot or a revolutionary without thoroughly understanding this profound truth.

Without a doubt, the mass media, the monopoly of technical resources, and the substantial funds earmarked for misleading and making the masses mindless today represent considerable but not insurmountable obstacles.

Cuba showed that —despite being a factory of Yankee colonialism with widespread illiteracy and generalized poverty— it was possible to stand up to the country that threatened to definitively take over the Cuban nation. No one can argue that at the time there was a national bourgeoisie that was opposed to the empire. In fact, the Cuban bourgeoisie at the time had developed such close ties to the empire that, shortly following the triumph of the Revolution, it sent 14,000 unprotected children to the United States based on the horrendous lie that Cuba was to abolish parental authority. History would come to remember this event as Operation Peter Pan and as one of the worst manipulations of children for political ends ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere.

Barely two days after the triumph of the Revolution the national territory was invaded by mercenary forces —made up of former Batista soldiers and sons of landowners and the bourgeoisie— armed and escorted by the United States with ships from the US Navy fleet including aircraft carriers with equipment ready for action. The defeat and capture of almost the entire force of mercenaries in less than 72 hours, and the destruction of their planes that were operating out of Nicaraguan bases and naval transportation means, represented a humiliating defeat for the empire and their Latin American allies who had underestimated the Cuban people’s capacity to fight.

Responding to the stoppage of oil supplies from the US, the previous total suspension of traditional Cuban sugar quotas in the US market, and the ban on trade in place for more than 100 years, the USSR began to supply fuel, to buy our sugar, to trade with our country and, finally, to supply the arms that Cuba could not acquire in other markets.

The idea of a systematic campaign of pirate attacks organized by the CIA, sabotages and military actions by groups created and armed by the US, before and after the mercenary attack and that would culminate with the United States’ military invasion of Cuba, gave rise to the events that pushed the world to the brink of total nuclear war that no sides or even humanity itself would have survived.

Those events no doubt cost Nikita Jruschov his job. He had underestimated his adversary, ignored opinions and information, and did not consult his final decision with those of us who were in the frontline. What could have been a significant moral victory became a costly political setback for the USSR. For many years the US continued to commit the worst crimes against Cuba and many, such as its criminal blockade, are still carried out today.

Jruschov made extraordinary gestures to our country. At the time I did not hesitate in strongly criticizing the agreement reached with the United States without consultation. But it would be ungrateful and unjust to not acknowledge his extraordinary solidarity at difficult and decisive junctures for our people in their historic battle for independence and their revolution in face of the powerful US empire. I understand that the situation was extremely tense and that he did not want to lose a minute when he made his decision to remove the missiles and the Yankees, very secretly, agreed to not carry out their invasion.

Despite all the decades that have passed and make up more than half a century, the Cuban fruit has not fallen into Yankee hands.

Current news from Spain, France, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Syria, England, the Malvinas and several other parts of the planet are serious and all foretell political and economic disaster due to the foolhardiness of the United States and its allies.

I will limit myself to just a few topics. I must point out that the campaign to select a Republican candidate as the possible future president of this globalized and far-reaching empire has become —I say this in all seriousness— the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been heard. But as I have things to do, I cannot dedicate any time to this topic. I knew it would be like this.

I prefer to analyze some other press dispatches that show the incredible cynicism generated by the decadence of the West. One of these reports, with amazing tranquility, tells the story of a Cuban “political prisoner” who, according to the article, died after a 50-day hunger strike. A journalist from Granma, Juventud Rebelde, radio or any other [Cuban] news agency might make a mistake writing on any given topic, but they would never make up a news story and fabricate a lie.

The article published in Granma confirms that the 50-day hunger strike did not take place. The prisoner was in jail for committing a common crime and sentenced to four years for an assault that left his wife’s face battered. The man’s own mother-in-law went to the police to request their help. All family members were aware of all the procedures taken regarding the medical care he received and were thankful of the efforts carried out by the specialist doctors who attended him. The article goes on to say that he received care at the best hospital in eastern Cuba, as any other citizen would have received. He died as a result of secondary multiple organ failure associated with an acute respiratory infection.

The patient had received all the available medical care from a country that possesses one of the best medical systems in the world and that provides these services free-of-charge, despite the empire’s blockade against our country. It simply represents a duty in a country where the Revolution proudly respects, as it always has for more than 50 years, the principles that gave it its invincible force.

Given their excellent relations with Washington, it would be best if the Spanish government went to the United States to take a look at what happens in Yankee prisons, their ruthless treatment of millions of prisoners, their electric chair policy, and the horrors committed against prisoners and public protesters.

On Monday, January 23, Granma published a full-page, hard-hitting editorial entitled Cuba’s Truths. The article details the exceptional degree of shamelessness in the latest campaign of lies launched against our Revolution by some governments “traditionally committed to anti-Cuban subversion.”

Our people are well aware of the standards that have governed over the irreproachable conduct of our Revolution since the first combat and that has never been sullied throughout more than half a century. They also know that they can never be pressured or blackmailed by their enemies. Our laws and regulations will invariably be abided by.

This is worthwhile to point out with total clarity and openness. The Spanish government and the beat-up European Union, in the midst of an acute economic crisis, should know what to abide by. It is a disgrace to read declarations from both regions in news reports that are full of shameless lies attacking Cuba. Try to save the Euro first if you can, try to resolve chronic unemployment that increasingly affects young people, and respond to the indignados who have only received attacks and constant beatings from the police.

We cannot ignore that those who currently govern in Spain are admirers of Franco, who sent members of the Blue Division along with SS and SA Nazis to kill Soviets. Close to 50,000 of them participated in the bloody attacks. In the most cruel and painful operation of that war, the Leningrad Blockade where one million Russian citizens died, the Blue Division were part of the forces that attempted to strangle the heroic city. The Russian people will never forgive that horrendous crime.

The right wing fascists led by Aznar, Rajoy and other servants of the empire must know about the 16,000 fatalities suffered by their predecessors of the Blue Division and the Iron Crosses that Hitler awarded the officials and soldiers of that division.

It is not a surprise then to see how the Gestapo police are treating the Spanish men and women who demand the right to work and bread in the country with the highest unemployment in Europe.

Why do the mass media outlets of the empire lie so shamelessly?

Those who control those media outlets are determined to deceive and make the world mindless with their gross lies, maybe believing that they represent the main recourse necessary to maintain the global system of domination and plunder, especially against those victims close to the mother country —the close to 70 million Latin Americans and Caribbean people who live in this hemisphere.

The fraternal republic of Venezuela has become one of the main targets of this policy. The reason is obvious. Without Venezuela, the empire would have imposed its Free Trade Agreement on all of the people of the continent living south of the United States; an area that holds the planet’s largest reserves of land, fresh water and minerals as well as great energy resources, which, when managed in solidarity with the other people in the world, constitutes resources which cannot and must not fall into the hands of transnationals that impose a suicidal and despicable system.

It is enough, for example, to look at the map to understand the criminal dispossession carried out against Argentina of a piece of its territory in the far south. In the Malvinas, the British employed their decadent military apparatus to assassinate inexperienced Argentine recruits dressed in summer clothing in the middle of winter. The United States and their ally Augusto Pinochet shamelessly supported England in this endeavor. Currently, with the London Olympics on the horizon, British Prime Minister David Cameron is once again proclaiming, as did Margaret Thatcher, his right to use nuclear submarines to kill Argentines. The British government is unaware that the world is changing and that the disdain felt in our hemisphere by the majority of the people against the oppressors is growing with each day.

The case of the Malvinas is not alone. Does anyone know how the conflict in Afghanistan will end? A few days ago US soldiers committed outrages against the bodies of Afghani combatants, killed by NATO drone aircraft.

Three days ago a European news agency published an article stating that Afghani President Hamid Karzai gave his support of a negotiated peace settlement with the Taliban, stressing that it must be resolved by citizens in his country. Hamid Karzai added that the peace and reconciliation process belongs to the Afghani nation and that no foreign country or organization can take away this right from Afghanis.

An article in the Cuban press written in Paris reported:

Today France suspended all its military training and support operations in Afghanistan and threatened to move up the date for the withdrawal of its troops after an Afghani soldier killed four French military officers in the Taghab valley in the province of Kapisa…Sarkozy gave instructions to Defense Minister Gerard Longuet to immediately travel to Kabul, and warned of the possibility of an early withdrawal of troops.

When the USSR and the Socialist Camp disappeared, the United States government thought that Cuba would not be able to support itself. George W. Bush had already prepared a counter-revolutionary government to preside over our country. The same day that Bush began his criminal war against Iraq, I requested that our authorities stop with the policy of tolerance towards the counter-revolutionary leaders in Cuba that had been hysterically calling for an invasion of Cuba. In reality, their actions constituted an act of treason against the Homeland.

Bush and his stupidities reigned for eight years at a time when the Cuban Revolution had already lasted for more than half a century. The ripe fruit has never fallen into the lap of the empire. Cuba will never become another force used by the empire to expand over the people of the Americas. Marti’s blood will not have been shed in vain.

France’s President Nicholas Sarkozy gains headlines, and mostly for appropriate reasons. He is in the news almost every day – marriage to a celebrity model, leading the charge against dispatched Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, whom he befriended months earlier, scuffling with Germany’s Prime Minister Angela Merkel over how to save the Euro and French banks, camera shots with the new baby, and at an October 7, 2011 meeting in Armenia stating that “Turkey’s refusal to recognize the [Armenian] genocide would force France to make such denials a criminal offense.”

Peoples who suffered genocide have the right to solicit compensation for displaced survivors from the guilty government and to seek means to correct the wrong. Others have an obligation to help. Nevertheless, knowing that President Sarkozy’s statement would irritate Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan and force him to reject the bill, there must be more to the French President’s actions and to the French National Assembly December 20, 2011 vote that proposed a year in jail and a fine of $58,000 to those publicly denying the alleged genocide.

Note: The expression ‘alleged genocide’ is used for impartiality. There is neither intention to deny genocide nor assent to a thesis that it did not occur.

What does the bill accomplish for France?

Is denial of an Armenian genocide a polarizing issue in France? Do citizens of La Patria openly debate Ottoman Empire responsibility for an alleged genocide that happened one hundred years ago? Does French jurisprudence need this bill to prevent a significant offense? The necessity to pass a law that makes it a crime to deny the alleged Armenian genocide is baffling. To whom is it directed and what is its purpose?

The bill will not help the victims; after all, they are gone. What happened in the Armenian part of Turkey almost a century ago is not a French issue, and therefore will neither resolve a present or future French problem nor change French life. It is doubtful that many citizens thought about the issue and argued a need for the bill.

The bill will create problems

Old wounds are opened, and with them renewed hatreds will occur. As the western world starts to overcome its prejudices and learns to appreciate the Turkish nation, Sarkozy shakes the world with accusations of criminal behavior by the almost ancient Ottoman government.

Just when Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has embarked on reconciliation with Armenia and his own Armenian citizens, a challenge interrupts the peace-minded progress. After decades of hostility, Turkey and Armenia signed an agreement in October 2009 to establish diplomatic relations and open their borders. Unfortunately, neither government has ratified the agreement due to the lack of settlement of a dispute between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, a territory that was formally inside Azerbaijan and, since a 1990s war, is occupied by ethnic Armenians.

The bill, written one hundred years after an event, makes it illegal for people to rebut accusations that their ancestors initiated genocide and considers them complicit in the atrocities if they defend their elders. The Turks are probably asking themselves: “If this bill is necessary, why aren’t there bills concerning complicity of many western powers in the mass killings of Indigenous populations in the Western Hemisphere, African populations throughout Africa, which includes slavery in the United States, Asians, most prominently in China, India, and the Philippines, and their own populations in Europe?”

Not stopping atrocities, and then criminalizing words that question the extent of the atrocities, smacks of duplicity; an attempt to hide failures by achieving political correctness. Isn’t there something wrong in a democratic nation when opinions can be made illegal and illegal deeds are not prevented?

Why aren’t remaining effects of previous genocides not directly countered?

Existing effects of previous genocides require more attention than bills that punish people for denying genocide. In North, Central and South America, Indigenous peoples who suffered genocide continue to struggle for cultural survival and to maintain their dignity. Inca and Mapuche from South America, Maya from Central America, and Indigenous peoples in North America remain disempowered in trying to regain the land and resources stolen from them and find themselves slowly decimated and slipping into obscurity. Grief still inhabits their faces and squalor is forced upon them.

Disadvantages arising from past actions have been, and always will, impede descendants of American slaves in their progress. While severe disadvantage is not easily overcome, advantage is capitalized and adds to advantage. African Americans deserve a compensation that enables them to overcome the disadvantages in order to achieve an equal status with White America.

Why are these victims of genocide not being properly helped? The answer is simple: the economic capital (a huge amount to right the wrongs done to the African Americans) will not return a positive political benefit. Note that these genocides are often denied with one statement – a natural course of history – and the detractors are not punished.

What motivated a bill that criminalizes denial of an alleged genocide?

Proving hidden motivations for passage of the bill cannot be easily justified or demonstrated. Frame the question in another context: Knowing that Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan would disregard President Sarkozy’s statement and vehemently reject the bill, how will others benefit from a bill that criminalizes denial of an alleged Armenian genocide?

Prime Minister Erdogan has taken independent stances that lead many to regard him his courage. His stances and moral attitude have generated opposition and disturbed those who envy his popularity. The French bill shifts the moral compass from Erdogan to Sarkozy and reduces the impact from Erdogan’s independent positions.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) has steered Turkey away from the severe nationalist polices of its militarist predecessors. The bill places Erdogan and his AKP Party in a difficult position. Accept the bill and lose favor with a great majority of the Turkish electorate. Reject the bill and give the appearance of following a renewed nationalist policy.

Those who view Turkey as too independent, too large, and too Muslim seek any excuse to keep Turkey out of the European Union. Add to the list Turkey’s unwillingness to recognize the Ottoman Empire’s culpability in the alleged Armenian genocide.

When friendly with Turkey, Israel rejected recognition of the alleged Armenian genocide. Now that the two nations are declared antagonists, is it possible that Israel, whose Knesset held a renewed discussion on recognizing the Armenian genocide, played a role in promoting the bill in order to embarrass Erdogan?

Armenia has an unresolved situation with Azerbaijan over the status of Nagorno-Karabakh. The Armenian lobby consistently works to keep the atrocity alive and direct sympathy to Armenia.

France has a law that calls genocide denial a criminal offense. People are questioning why the law is applied to the World War II holocaust and not to other genocides.

An Armenian lobby and contributors can play a significant role in the coming French presidential election.

The bill might backfire on President Sarkozy and damage French interests.

An injured Turkey, that has become dubious of a wounded European Union, might shift its allegiance and interchange from the western world to Russia, China and India. If that happens, NATO, who relies greatly on Turkey’s geo-strategic position, will find itself engaging a more difficult partner.

Preventing genocide and assisting its remaining victims has highest priority. However, perpetually aggravating hatred rather than pursuing reconciliation and using a genocide for enhancing a personal or national agenda create suspicion. Making criminals of those who recognize atrocities but deny that ancestors deserve to be included as purveyors of genocide is a controversial afterthought and an arm twister: “Say uncle or go to jail.”

The next day, the self-immolation was confirmed as a suicide: Lise Bonnafous had died from the third-degree burns that covered 95% of her body. So ended the life of this 44-year-old teacher who had been working for ten years at the Jean-Moulin Lycée at Béziers, one of the largest in the Languedoc-Roussillon region.

In a carefully worded statement the 280 teachers at the lycée declared: “This symbolic act has left us reeling and has caused us all much heart-searching (‘nous interroge tous’). This gesture is a call to solidarity for the entire staff and bears witness to the difficulty we have in accomplishing our mission.”

Teaching at the lycée was suspended as staff and students attempted to come to terms with this gruesome event. The teaching staff declared a strike of indefinite duration until responsibility for the tragedy could be established. The French teaching union SNES called for a “debate” concerning the tragedy and pressed the ministry of education for “an improvement in the general conditions of work for teachers, which have become considerably more demanding in the last few years”. Another union, SNALC, said that the suicide points to “an immense malaise in the entire profession”. The unions organised a “white march” (“marche blanche”) in Béziers on 18 October and a further march in Montpellier the following day.

Officials were quick to portray the suicide as the isolated act of a mentally unstable teacher. The French minister of education, Luc Chatel, referred to her “psychologically fragile state” and said that she had been receiving “pedagogical and medical treatment”. However, this claim is denied by colleagues: “Luc Chatel is lying, she was not being treated medically nor was she fragile, but she was conscientious, competent, she loved her work, and she had courage,” said a colleague, a certain F. Peru. Other colleagues pointed out that teachers generally have been reduced to a “fragile” state because of a steady deterioration in their conditions of work.

In any case, this was no ordinary suicide: rather, a symbolic act of self-immolation with all the horrifying impact on those involved, especially the eye witnesses. But even if one may deplore this self-inflicted violence and the trauma it has caused, one cannot ignore the context in which such an extreme act was carried out. Indeed, some of her colleagues regard her as a hero, and admire her for paying the supreme sacrifice in order to draw attention to the problems within the French education system. Morale among French teachers is after all low, as teachers are contending with a number of problems simultaneously, including government cuts, “reforms” (widely suspected as money-saving ploys) and increasingly disruptive behaviour on the part of students.

In the 2011 budget, 16,000 lycée posts are scheduled to disappear out of a total of 850,000 teachers. The increased class size (40 or more) is making effective teaching more difficult and also adding to the marking load for each teacher. The cuts are perceived as all the more perverse because they do not correspond to a decrease in the number of students.

Teachers feel abandoned and misunderstood, that they are not being listened to. They say that recent “reforms” have been introduced without their views being taken sufficiently into account. One symptom of this is that the one-year teacher-training course, in which students taught half-time and spent the rest of the time in training – has been abolished: from now on young teachers will be forced to face the classroom for the first time with almost no preparation. Instead, the trainees are obliged to attend a few “training sessions” throughout the year. Exactly what is taught in these sessions has emerged in a report about one such session held in Bordeaux on 3 December last year. Trainees were lectured on their rights and duties as civil servants – but were not given any actual training on classroom teaching. Instead, they “benefited” from a talk in which two army officers tried to persuade trainees to steer their students towards a career in the army!¹  “If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army,” said Frederick the Great. Towards what career is the French government trying steer its students, if not a military one?

Disruptive behaviour in the classroom is another concern, pointing to problems within society at large. Sometimes this leads to assaults on teachers, which are on the increase. The FNEC FP-FO teaching union links the increase in violence and incivility to the suppression of teaching posts and CPEs (a team of administrators responsible for disciplinary matters): more than 60,000 positions abolished since 2007. If the recent changes have a negative effect on student behaviour or performance, the cuts will have turned out to be a false economy.

The attempt to instil martial virtues is not the only example of insensitivity on the part of the educational authorities. Bad feeling has also been caused by the increase in bonuses paid to the rectors of education academies (the regional bodies responsible for implementing national education policy) at a time when less money is being allocated for teaching. In fact bonuses are a normal part of the benefits package of France’s top civil servants. In this case, however, the bonuses were doubly outrageous: first, they were being awarded to proviseurs in proportion to the number of posts or institutions they were able to abolish; second, for 2011 the bonus had been increased from 19,000 to 22,000 euros – money that could have been used to help pay the somewhat meagre salary of teachers. The issue of bonuses was highlighted when a retired lycée director, Michel Ascher, an officer in the order of “Palmes Académiques”, handed back his decoration in protest. In an open letter dated 22 December 2010 he publicly lambasted the French educational system as being concerned exclusively with money. Other holders of the same distinction quickly followed suit.

A sign that teaching resources are being stretched is that the rules governing the conditions under which teachers are supposed to work are being flouted. Several teachers have been assigned classes in schools from 35 to as many as 66 kilometres apart, even though the rules clearly state that the teacher may be asked to teach only in the same town or in a neighbouring one. This immediately creates extra work in terms of commuting and multiplication of meetings with staff and parents. Of course, a teacher has the right – after a months-long appeal process – to refuse these extra demands, but at a price. The proviseurs (lycée directors) wield a lot of power. They can put pressure on you to teach another subject instead of paying someone else who is qualified to do it; they can assign you to larger classes if you exercise your right to refuse to work more than two supplementary hours; or they can simply order you to teach those extra hours.

Other “reforms” are in the pipeline. A proposed new law would change the way lycées are inspected. Instead of the current independent inspectorate, the task of inspecting would fall to the directorate of the lycée itself. Apart from the fact that the work schedules of proviseurs and vice-proviseurs are already stretched, the proposal almost guarantees that the process will be carried out in a perfunctory way at best. At worst, favouritism, or the suspicion of favouritism, is an obvious danger, not to mention conflict of interest and lack of impartiality. Such a measure merely reinforces the suspicion among teachers that the so-called “reforms” are a thin disguise for money-saving ploys.

On suspects too that Sarkozy is playing to popular discontent with civil servants, the category to which lycée teachers belong. French bureaucracy is cumbersome and expensive, and civil servants are often seen as lazy, overpaid and over-protected. Anything that would bring their pay and conditions into line with the private sector is seen by many as a good thing. However, while it is true that some civil servants are well paid, this is not the case with most lycée teachers. Teachers face the added problem of a restrictive work schedule: whereas most workers can take time off then they please, teachers are obliged to turn up for the classes and cannot change their schedule. The stereotype of feather-bedded bureaucrats does not apply to teachers.

Secondly, Sarkozy wants to go one better than the private sector: in an effort to cut down on absenteeism, it is being proposed that civil servants forfeit one day’s pay for each period of sick leave. Apart from the measure’s obvious unfairness in criminalizing illness, it could have the reverse effect to the one intended: workers who are genuinely sick the first day could well decide to take a second or even a third day off in addition, even if they are not sick, just to get their “money’s worth”.

France is generally viewed as a “worker-friendly” country where employees receive generous social benefits and can be sacked only with difficulty. The reality, however, is that unhappiness at the workplace is a major problem in France. (It was probably a factor behind the recent strikes against pension reforms.) Renault was hit by a spate of workplace suicides a few years ago. France Telecom lost a staggering 58 of its employees to suicide within three years. In a grim premonition of the Lise Bonnafous case, one worker killed himself by setting himself on fire. Another “model” in the Bonnafous case could have been street vendor’s suicide that sparked off the revolution in Tunisia.

Both Renault and France Telecom were facing difficulties at the time the suicides occurred, and low morale would have been an issue even under the best management. In the specific case of France Telecom, it has been alleged that there was a policy of attempting to reduce staff without resorting to redundancies.[8] The suspicion must be that, precisely because redundancy is such a laborious and expensive process in France, in certain cases employers are resorting to ruthless tactics to slim down their workforce: making life hell for their employees in the hope that they will leave – unless, that is, they commit suicide first.

In the case of the French education system, however, the likely culprit is incompetence and lack of imagination rather than ruthless pursuit of profit. However you view the causes, Lise Bonnafous’s is by no means the first suicide among teachers: recent cases include a school director in July, two teachers in June, and in August a young trainee who had been dismissed. According to a study by Inserm (a public research institute) dating from 2002, the suicide rate among teachers in the national education system is unusually high, at 39 per 100,000 per year.

French teachers are hoping their educational system will not become another France Telecom.

1. “Des militaires pour former les profs stagiaires”, www.rue89.com/2010/12/15/des-militaires-pour-former-les-profs-stagiaires-180932, based on an eye-witness account given to a representative of the SNES of Lot-et-a-Garonne

How could the U.S. behave so recklessly, not realize it was responsible for the atomic arms race and for allowing and even moving others to obtain the bomb? Why does it not consider in its policies the argument that those most likely to use the bomb are more important than those who have the bomb? Answers to both these questions expose an almost purposeful U.S. policy to drive others to obtain the “doomsday explosive” and, if we concede the Islamic Republic is developing a bomb, give meaning to Iran’s determination to develop a nuclear weapon. A simple proposition can deaden that determination, and not only for Iran; the world’s major powers can give any nation that entertains a “first strike” a rethink: do it and get demolished.

The consequence of not facing down to India and Pakistan defines the real arms race; nuclear weapons in the military depots of nations that contain extremist elements who kill mercilessly and, if able to obtain the weapons, would apply them worldwide, including at the United States. Iran’s possibility of obtaining a nuclear capability is conjectural and not as significant as the actual; Pakistan has many bombs and Pakistan is politically stable. The laxity is emphasized by the lack of control on previous actions by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s (in)famous nuclear physicist.

In 2004, Dr. Khan indicated he had provided Iran, Libya, and North Korea with designs and centrifuge technology to aid in nuclear weapons programs. Where was the CIA when Khan roamed the world? Pondering about Iran, no doubt, and developing policies that have driven North Korea to develop a nuclear deterrent and motivating Iran to do the same.

Noting U.S. intensive hostility towards the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), coupled with its extensive military presence in Japan and South Korea, shouldn’t the Pyongyang leaders be apprehensive? Their apprehension inspired them to welcome previous treaties.

In October 1994, President Clinton negotiated the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework:

North Korea agreed to freeze its existing plutonium enrichment program and be monitored by the IAEA;
Both sides agreed to replace by 2003 North Korea’s reactors with light water reactors, financed and supplied by the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization (KEDO);
The United States agreed to provide heavy fuel oil to the DPRK for energy purposes until atomic energy was available;
The two sides agreed to move toward full normalization of political and economic relations;
Both sides agreed to work together for peace and security on a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula; and
Both sides agreed to work together to strengthen the international nuclear non-proliferation regime.

What happened to this anxiety relieving treaty? The charges, countercharges, truths, and distortions are difficult to unravel.

Not debatable is that the George W. Bush administration signaled North Korea with unfriendly intentions. Despite it being the most significant milestone in the treaty, the first reactor, promised for delivery by 2003, was pushed up until 2008 at the earliest. A leaked version of the Bush administration’s January 2002 classified Nuclear Posture Review mentioned North Korea as a country against which the United States should be prepared to use nuclear weapons.

After starts and stops, self-destruction of nuclear facilities and reconstruction of the same facilities, the DPRK proceeded to definitely develop nuclear weapons. Their arguments for this posture had validity. The United States did not meet its most important commitment, President George W. Bush designated North Korea as part of an “axis of evil,” the State Department continually equated not having a peace treaty with Pyongyang violations of human rights, and Washington carelessly inferred that, if hostilities developed, North Korea could expect a nuclear attack. What did the Bush administration expect of the ‘hermit state’ leaders? The U.S. State Department evidently imagined, by being conciliatory, Kim Jong IL would take advantage and secretly develop an atomic bomb. However, by not being conciliatory, it assured the DPRK would be provoked into securing a nuclear weapon.

Except for the United States’ offensive attack against Japan, the nuclear club nations that signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty developed the weapons as deterrents. The Soviet Union needed to neutralize USA power. Great Britain and France requisitioned a nuclear arsenal to defend against the Soviet Union. China had the greatest fear; it was surrounded by a world of enemies.

Of those who have not signed the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons — India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Israel — all, except Israel had deterrent as an immediate reason. India feared China, Pakistan feared India and North Korea feared the United States. When Israel allegedly started nuclear weapons developments in 1963, none of its antagonists were even thinking nuclear.

The United States claims that Iran must be stopped from obtaining nuclear weapons because Iran’s developments will provoke a Middle East nuclear arms race. However, by allowing Israel to develop the weapons, the U.S. and friends already stimulated the Middle East arms race. It is mainly due to the United States, Great Britain, and France that Israel has nuclear capability. As a consequence, Middle East nations sought means to neutralize the Israel bomb.

Saddam Hussein clearly expressed this dilemma in a speech he made at al-Bakr University, 3 June 1978.

“When the Arabs start the deployment, Israel is going to say, ‘We will hit you with the atomic bomb.’ So should the Arabs stop or not? If they do not have the atom, they will stop. For that reason they should have the atom. If we were to have the atom, we would make the conventional armies fight without using the atom. If the international conditions were not prepared and they said, “We will hit you with the atom,” we would say, “We will hit you with the atom too. The Arab atom will finish you off, but the Israeli atom will not end the Arabs.”¹

France started Israel on the road to nuclear capability with the sale of a nuclear reactor and uranium fuel.

“Franco-Israeli nuclear cooperation is described in detail in the book Les Deux Bombes (1982) by French journalist Pierre Pean, who gained access to the official French files on Dimona. The book revealed that the Dimona’s cooling circuits were built two to three times larger than necessary for the 26-megawatt reactor Dimona [supplied by France] was supposed to be — proof that it had always been intended to make bomb quantities of plutonium. The book also revealed that French technicians had built a plutonium extraction plant at the same site. According to Pean, French nuclear assistance enabled Israel to produce enough plutonium for one bomb even before the 1967 Six Day War. France also gave Israel nuclear weapon design information.”²

Great Britain paved the road for Israel to reach the bomb. When he was UK prime minister, Harold Wilson supplied Israel with plutonium.

“In Harold Macmillan’s time the UK supplied uranium 235 and the heavy water which allowed Israel to start up its nuclear weapons production plant at Dimona — heavy water which British intelligence estimated would allow Israel to make ‘six nuclear weapons a year.’”³

The United States looked the other way.

“After the United States discovered the Dimona reactor in 1960, U.S. nuclear specialists inspected Dimona every year from 1965 through 1969, looking for signs of nuclear weapon production. It is not clear what they found, but in 1968 the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reported to President Lyndon Johnson its conclusion that Israel had already made an atomic bomb. In 1969, Israel limited inspection visits by U.S. scientists to such an extent that the Americans complained in writing. Without explanation, the Nixon administration ended the visits the following year.”²

After tacitly agreeing to Israel’s nuclear weapon developments and permitting India and Pakistan to go nuclear, the United States engages Iran in a similar manner to its engagement with North Korea — provoking Iran to develop a bomb in another “lose-lose” situation.

Blind to the effects on Iran’s posture, the U.S. stages its military in adjacent nations to Iran, constantly harangues Iran about its human rights record and its despotic government and accuses Iran of all sorts of terrorist activities. None of the activities are specified nor does the charge consider that Iranians are mysteriously getting assassinated, their facilities are blowing up, their computers are attacked by the Stuxnet virus, and CIA spies are being uncovered and arrested by them and Hezbollah. Who are doing these nefarious activities? Aren’t they terrorists?

Although insurgents in Iraq carry U.S. weapons, the U.S., without proof, accuses Iraq of arming them. In Afghanistan, the U.S. rails against alleged Iranian assistance to the Taliban, although the Taliban is an enemy of Iran and is interfering with a myriad of business deals the Iranians are arranging with the Karzai government, with whom it is friendly. By deeds the U.S. is telling Iran: “If you want to survive, get yourself a deterrent.” The U.S. policies towards Iran, similar to most State Department policies, are counterproductive and push Iran to invest in nuclear weapons.

Shouldn’t the U.S. State Department consider in its policies the argument that those most likely to use the bomb are more important than those who have the bomb? Great Britain has the bomb, but there is no possibility it will use the weapon. There is little probability that even if about to be defeated, the DPRK will use the bomb — against whom, their own brethren? Only Pakistan radical elements and Israel can effectively use the bomb in an offensive manner; the former because they have suicidal tendencies, and the latter because it does not face nuclear retaliation.

Pakistan’s present government won’t use it, but it is entirely possible that anarchy in Pakistan can deliver bombs to radical groups that have no compunction against using the deadly weapon.

If Israel faces defeat, it could use the bomb. In several wars, especially during the December 2008 invasion of Gaza, Israel demonstrated a disregard for enemy life. Even if an engaged nation had a nuclear weapon, and presently none of Israel’s foes have a mass destruction device, Israel’s small size and closeness to Arab peoples give it an advantage in a nuclear war. The possibility of inflicting severe damage to innocent Arab populations hinders a retaliatory action. Israel’s principal reason to have the bomb is for the threat, real or imagined, it poses to any nation that counters its policies, including Iran, who is concerned about the possible loss of Muslim holy places in Jerusalem and is disturbed about Israel’s expansion and oppression of the Palestinian people.

In the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when Israel faced possible defeat, a fear existed that unless the United States assisted Israel with more armaments, Israel might use nuclear weapons against its adversaries. A large U.S. airlift of military aid finalized the battle in favor of Israel. A French official explained the situation.

In 1986, Francis Perrin, high commissioner of the French atomic energy agency from 1951 to 1970, was quoted in the press as saying that France and Israel had worked closely together for two years in the late 1950s to design an atom bomb. Perrin said that the United States had agreed that the French scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project could apply their knowledge at home provided they kept it secret. But then, Perrin said, ‘We considered we could give the secrets to Israel provided they kept it a secret themselves.’ He added: ‘We thought the Israeli bomb was aimed against the Americans, not to launch it against America but to say ‘if you don’t want to help us in a critical situation we will require you to help us, otherwise we will use our nuclear bombs. ‘⁴

The Islamic Republic cannot use nuclear weapons for an offensive purpose. Any attempt to do that and Iran’s enemies will extinguish the Islamic Republic in a flash of the radioactive light. Its bomb can only neutralize other bombs.

Which leads to the only ways to halt nuclear proliferation in the Middle East — either dismantle all existing bombs or neutralize them.

Better yet — signal that a first nuclear strike by any nation will be met by a severe strike on that nation with conventional weapon from the great powers of the United Nations Security Council. Give them an offer they can’t refuse. Not far fetched!

1. Conflict Records Research Center (CRRC) Record No. SH-PDWN-D-000-341, “Speech at al-Bakr University,” 3 June 1978
2. Israel’s Nuclear Weapon Capability: An Overview, The Risk Report, Volume 2 Number 4, July-August 1996
3. Secret sale of UK plutonium to Israel, Meirion Jones, BBC Newsnight, 10 March 2006
4. Ibid

In the late 1960s I was traveling low budget, working in vineyards, hitchhiking, sleeping under bridges or in youth hostels, visiting medieval castles.  After six months in Europe, I went to North Africa and the Middle East, then back to see more of Europe.  I got a ride on a Greek freighter, working my way, washing pots and pans in the galley.  The ship was headed for the French port of Marseilles. The month was May.

But as we neared our destination, the ship changed course.  ”The port is closed,” the captain said. “There’s a strike.”  He spoke little English and I understood no Greek, so that was all I knew for the moment.  We were now heading for Genoa, Italy, where we docked the next day.  There I left the ship and set about to see Italy.  I was thinking of going to Rome, but I’d barely set foot on land when I heard news of something really big happening in France.  It wasn’t just a local dock strike in Marseilles.

Being the incorrigibly curious person that I am, I had to see it, whatever it was, and the place to see it was obviously Paris.  So I set out northward, hitchhiking up through Switzerland and into France, where I lucked out and got a ride all the way to Paris.  I was doubly fortunate in that the driver was a Britisher who had spent much of his life studying French history, specializing in the late 19th century.  ”This is 1871 all over again,” he told me.

What happened in 1871?  I wanted to ask, but was too embarrassed to reveal my ignorance of French history.  I could nevertheless look around me now and see that the whole country was shut down, clearly in a state of extreme upheaval.

The driver turned on the radio from time to time, and we heard President Charles de Gaulle making an impassioned speech to the nation. Not understanding French, I only caught the closing line. “Vive la république!”  Then they played La Marseillaise.

“He’s finished,” the driver told me.  ”Just like Louis Napoleon.”  He spoke with the assurance of one who knew his subject.

We passed fields and vineyards.  When we got to the toll roads, we were asked by the local toll-keepers for donations to support the strike.

It was evening when we reached Paris. Darkness had fallen, and a loud banging sound of explosions could be heard from not too far away.  ”Do you think they’re shooting it out?” I asked.  The driver shook his head.  He looked worried

“Let me off here,” I said.  ”I have to see what’s happening.”

“That wouldn’t be wise,” he advised me.

The explosions were somewhere off to the right.

I promised him I would be careful, and, thanking him for the ride, I set out in the direction of the blasts.  Looking back at my youthful curiosity, I still shudder at my presumptions of immortality.  Having already passed through so many ostensibly dangerous places, I’d come to feel as though I were a non-material being, a ghost-traveler, immune to the hazards of the road.

The dark streets were empty, and all the lights in the buildings seemed to be off.  I could hear the hollow knocking of my footsteps on the pavement, and I wondered where all the people were.  After walking a few blocks, I came to a broad avenue where a large crowd was gathered.  As I got closer, I saw they were behind a barricade fashioned of cobble stones and whatever was at hand.  Making my way to the front of the crowd, I saw in the distance a phalanx of riot police.  They were launching bombs or grenades in our direction which burst with a very loud sound and a flash of light.  I guessed that they were intended for psychological effect, as they didn’t seem to be causing physical damage or injuries.  Nobody seemed bothered by them.

Finally the gendarmes charged, and everybody ran up side streets, then regrouped.  I watched this repeated several times over.  Finally, late in the night, I found a space on the floor of a large crowded hall where I could unroll my sleeping bag.  I think it was in the Sorbonne University, which was occupied by the students.

In the morning I went out to see what was going on.  Everything was fairly quiet, with only a few cars on the streets.  The gendarmes were nowhere to be seen, not even the traffic cops who normally stood in the intersections. In their place were the demonstrators, the students and workers, directing the traffic. That sight impressed me, a world of no gendarmes.  They had been driven from the streets, and the world of Paris was now in the hands of the demonstrators.

It was an eerily calm and peaceful world. Shops and stores were closed.  No windows seemed to be broken.  Debris littered the streets, and there were still the remains of barricades here and there.  Nobody manning them now, the police being gone.

I thought of the riots which were then taking place in so many in U.S. cities, where there’d been burning and looting, but there was none of that here in Paris.  I marveled at the order and self-discipline of the French; truly a cultured people, who rioted without breaking windows.  I used the word “riot,” but was it a riot?  Or was it something else?

I saw it all, but I had no idea what I was looking at.  A revolution?  Was this what a revolution looked like?  Surely it couldn’t be a revolution, but what was really going on around here?

Being unable to speak French, I finally found someone who spoke English, and I asked, “What’s happening?”  The guy looked at me as though I were the biggest idiot he’d ever in his life encountered, and he said: “Can’t you see for yourself?”

Finally I looked up Bernard, a friend who lived in the Latin Quarter.  I’d met him a couple years earlier, on my way to Japan.  He’d been out in the demonstrations of the night before. Since he was a friend, I felt I could ask him the question nobody else seemed willing to answer.  ”What is going on?” I asked him. “Can’t you see for yourself?” he replied.

I stayed a few more days in Paris, then set out for England.  But on reaching the port of Calais, I found that it too was closed.  Why had I even bothered to go to Calais?  I should’ve known it would be shut down like the rest of France.

So I went a different way; I went to Germany and up through Scandinavia.  Eventually, I came back to France, and everything seemed to be pretty much back to normal.  Gendarmes were directing traffic at intersections, just as they always had.  It was like nothing had happened  The massive, nationwide strike, shutdown, whatever it was, was over.  Gone.

On some streets, artists were vending posters with revolutionary slogans.  That was all.  As before, it was useless to ask my friend.  ”You can see for yourself,” he would have said.

Later I learned the tragedy of what had happened.  The nation-wide strike I’d witnessed had been more than a protest; it had been a bid for change, in effect, a revolution, that failed because the very large French Communist Party, which controlled the unions and dominated the left, had taken over the strike and sent the workers back to work.

The May rebellion took place more than forty years ago, but the story of what happened in France was enough to make me eternally suspicious of the establishment left–whether it’s the allegedly radical Communist Party, or the supposedly progressive wing of the Democratic Party.  Others seem to feel the same way today.  When Occupy Wall Street came into existence last September, activists carefully steered clear of the Democratic Party, the party which has offered so much hope and delivered so much disappointment.  And so Occupy has established itself outside of our broken political system, and this has been key to its instant traction and phenomenal growth as a movement about occupying public space, buildings, and our imaginations.

Vive la France?  Vive l’Amérique?  Mais non! Vive Occupy!  Vive le monde!

To some people, the European Central Bank seems like a fire department that is letting the house burn down to teach the children not to play with matches.

So wrote Jack Ewing in the New York Times last week.  He went on:

The E.C.B. has a fire hose — its ability to print money. But the bank is refusing to train it on the euro zone’s debt crisis.

The flames climbed higher Friday after the Italian Treasury had to pay an interest rate of 6.5 percent on a new issue of six-month bills . . . the highest interest rate Italy has had to pay to sell such debt since August 1997 . . . .

But there is no sign the E.C.B. plans a major response, like buying large quantities of the country’s bonds to bring down its borrowing costs.

Why not?  According to the November 28th Wall Street Journal, “The ECB has long worried that buying government bonds in big enough amounts to bring down countries’ borrowing costs would make it easier for national politicians to delay the budget austerity and economic overhauls that are needed.”

As with the manufactured debt ceiling crisis in the United States, the E.C.B. is withholding relief in order to extort austerity measures from member governments—and the threat seems to be working.  The same authors write:

Euro-zone leaders are negotiating a potentially groundbreaking fiscal pact . . . [that] would make budget discipline legally binding and enforceable by European authorities. . . . European officials hope a new agreement, which would aim to shrink the excessive public debt that helped spark the crisis, would persuade the European Central Bank to undertake more drastic action to reverse the recent selloff in euro-zone debt markets.

The Eurozone appears to be in the process of being “structurally readjusted” – the same process imposed earlier by the IMF on Third World countries.  Structural demands routinely include harsh austerity measures, government cutbacks, privatization, and the disempowerment of national central banks, so that there is no national entity capable of creating and controlling the money supply on behalf of the people.  The latter result has officially been achieved in the Eurozone, which is now dependent on the E.C.B. as the sole lender of last resort and printer of new euros.

The E.C.B. Serves Banks, Not Governments

The legal justification for the E.C.B.’s inaction in the sovereign debt crisis is Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty, signed by EU members in 2007.  As Jens Eidmann, President of the Bundesbank and a member of the E.C.B. Governing Council, stated in a November 14 interview:

The eurosystem is a lender of last resort for solvent but illiquid banks. It must not be a lender of last resort for sovereigns because this would violate Article 123 of the EU treaty.

The language of Article 123 is rather obscure, but basically it says that the European central bank is the lender of last resort for banks, not for governments.  It provides:

1.  Overdraft facilities or any other type of credit facility with the European Central Bank or with the central banks of the Member States (hereinafter referred to as ‘national central banks’) in favour of Union institutions, bodies, offices or agencies, central governments, regional, local or other public authorities, other bodies governed by public law, or public undertakings of Member States shall be prohibited, as shall the purchase directly from them by the European Central Bank or national central banks of debt instruments.

2.  Paragraph 1 shall not apply to publicly owned credit institutions which, in the context of the supply of reserves by central banks, shall be given the same treatment by national central banks and the European Central Bank as private credit institutions.

Banks can borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, the minimum rate available for banks.  Member governments, on the other hand, must put themselves at the mercy of the markets, which can squeeze them for “whatever the market will bear”—in Italy’s case, 6.5%.

The Real Reason Eurozone Countries Are Drowning in Debt

Why should banks be able to borrow at 1.25% from the E.C.B.’s unlimited fountain of euros, while the tap is closed for governments?  The conventional argument is that for governments to borrow money created by their own central banks would be “inflationary.”  But private banks create the money they lend just as government-owned central banks do.  Private banks issue money in the form of “bank credit” on their books, and they often do this before they have the liquidity to back the loans.  Then they borrow from wherever they can get funds most cheaply.  When banks borrow from the E.C.B. as lender of last resort, the E.C.B. “prints money” just as it would if it were lending to governments directly.

The burgeoning debts of the Eurozone countries are being blamed on their large welfare states, but these social systems were set up before the 1970s, when European governments had very little national debt.  Their national debts shot up, not because they spent on social services, but because they switched bankers.  Before the 1970s, European governments borrowed from their own central banks.  The money was effectively interest-free, since they owned the banks and got the profits back as dividends.  After the European Monetary Union was established, member countries had to borrow from private banks at interest—often substantial interest.

And the result?  Interest totals for Eurozone countries are not readily accessible; but for France, at least, the total sum paid in interest since the 1970s appears to be as great as the French federal debt itself.  That means that if the French government had been borrowing from its central bank all along, it could have been debt-free today.

The figures are nearly as bad for Canada, and they may actually be worse for the United States.  The Federal Reserve’s website lists the sums paid in interest on the U.S. federal debt for the last 24 years.  During that period, taxpayers paid a total of $8.2 trillion in interest.  That’s more than half the total $15 trillion debt, in just 24 years.  The U.S. federal debt has not been paid off since 1835, so taxpayers could well have paid more than $15 trillion by now in interest.  That means our entire federal debt could have been avoided if we had been borrowing from our own government-owned central bank all along, effectively interest-free.  And that is probably true for other countries as well.

To avoid an overwhelming national debt and the forced austerity measures destined to follow, the Eurozone’s citizens need to get the fire hose of money creation out of the hands of private banks and back into the hands of the people.  But how?

Governments Cannot Borrow from the E.C.B., but Government-owned Banks Can

Interestingly, Paragraph 2 of Article 123 of the Lisbon Treaty carves out an exception to the rule that governments cannot borrow from the E.C.B.  It says that government-owned banks can borrow on the same terms as privately-owned banks.  Many Eurozone countries have publicly-owned banks; and as nationalization of insolvent banks looms, they could soon find themselves with many more.

One solution might be for the publicly-owned banks of Eurozone governments to exercise their right to borrow from the E.C.B. at 1.25%, then use that liquidity to buy up the country’s debt, or as much of it as does not sell at auction.  (The Federal Reserve does this routinely in open market operations in the U.S.)   The government’s securities would be stabilized, keeping speculators at bay; and the government would get the interest spread, since it would own the banks and would get the profits back as dividends.

Taking a Stand in the Class War

In a November 25th article titled “Goldman Sachs Has Taken Over,” Paul Craig Roberts writes:

The European Union, just like everything else, is merely another scheme to concentrate wealth in a few hands at the expense of European citizens, who are destined, like Americans, to be the serfs of the 21^st century.

He observes that Mario Draghi, the new president of the European Central Bank, was Vice Chairman and Managing Director of Goldman Sachs International, a member of Goldman Sachs’ Management Committee, a member of the governing council of the European Central Bank, a member of the board of directors of the Bank for International Settlements, and Chairman of the Financial Stability Board.  Italy’s new prime minister Mario Monti, who was appointed rather than elected, was a member of Goldman Sachs’ Board of International Advisers, European Chairman of the Trilateral Commission (“a US organization that advances American hegemony over the world”), and a member of the Bilderberg group.  And Lucas Papademos, an unelected banker who was installed as prime minister of Greece, was Vice President of the European Central Bank and a member of America’s Trilateral Commission.

Roberts points to the suspicious fact that the German government was unable to sell 35% of its 10-year bonds at its last auction; yet Germany’s economy is in far better shape than that of Italy, which managed to sell all its bonds.  Why?  Roberts suspects an orchestrated scheme to pressure Germany to back off from its demands to make the banks pay a share of their bailout.

Europe is in the process of being “structurally readjusted” by a private banking cartel.  If its people are to resist this silent conquest, they need to rise up and, using the ballot box and public banks, throw out the new banking hegemony before it is too late.

Not that you lied to me but that I no longer believe you has shaken me.

– Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“This morning we reminded the Israeli ambassador how much we deplore the consequences of this raid for the head of our consulate and his family,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.

Immediately a pretext was added: “While we recognize Israel’s need to ensure its security, …”

Why is it that the security of the perpetrator of violence is emphasized but the victim of the violence’s security is not mentioned? Why is the violence deplored when one’s own group members die at the hands of violence but so little is said when out-group victims die? Many would call this racism.

Gaza is under a siege that is illegal and immoral. It is immoral because of the principle which holds that any actions against an enemy must be targeted solely against that enemy such that civilians are not put at risk. The Israeli actions target indiscriminately — not separating combatants from non-combatants.

As for Israeli violence against Palestinians, any and all violence from the Israelis is unjustifiable and immoral — even on the pretext of Palestinians having fired rockets into Israel.

Why? Because Israel was established through the dispossession of an indigenous people, the Palestinians, whose land was occupied. Only if dispossession and occupation are deemed acceptable actions can the responses of Israeli be justified. Hence, since the Palestinians were dispossessed, and since their land was occupied, then Palestinian actions against the siege, dispossession, and occupation are justifiable. The principle is that the dispossessed and occupied have the inalienable right to resist such dispossession and occupation. If the dispossessed/occupied/oppressed do not have the right to resist, then what is to stop dispossession, occupation, and oppression?

Lies Do Not Shake Friendships in Empire

As French president Nicolas Sarkozy made known in Cannes recently, Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “a liar” and a person he “cannot stand.” Sarkozy subsequently wrote to Netanyahu to affirm his friendship, despite their “differing views on the Middle East.”

Their differences are mild in comparison to their similarities. Israel and France are allies. What does this mean for the Palestinians? It does not matter because the Palestinians are people in the way of Eretz Israel.

Empire is not built on moral principles — and lies, even between imperialist allies, are just part of Empire’s endgame.

The title of an article in the Sun declared: ‘Dead dog.’ (October 24, 2011)

The Daily Star reported that Gaddafi’s son Mutassim had been filmed smoking a cigarette and drinking water shortly after being captured. The paper took up the story:

But in graphic images that have baffled UN investigators, he is then shown dead, lying next to Mad Dog, with bullet holes in his neck and stomach.

In his report, “Mad Dog” “was the name journalist Gary Nicks used to refer to the executed Libyan leader. Nicks continued: ‘New footage emerged yesterday of Mad Dog’s dying words to a baying mob.’

Gaddafi and his son were not the only victims of the mob. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported that between six and ten people appeared to have been executed at the scene of the Libyan leader’s capture. Around 95 bodies were found in the immediate vicinity, many of them victims of Nato air strikes. In fact, it is clear that NATO, with the assistance of special forces (although ground troops were strictly forbidden by UN resolution 1973), had maintained a no-drive zone around Sirte: a crucial factor facilitating the murder of Gaddafi.

CBS reported 572 bodies ‘and counting’ in Sirte, including 300, ‘many of them with their hands tied behind their backs and shot in the head’, collected and buried in a mass grave.

HRW reported the massacre of 53 people by anti-Gaddafi fighters at the Mahara hotel in Sirte. Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at HRW, commented on the atrocity:

This latest massacre seems part of a trend of killings, looting, and other abuses committed by armed anti-Gaddafi fighters who consider themselves above the law.

The BBC covered the massacre on its News at Ten (October 24). Wyre Davies reported:

Some say Gaddafi’s home town is where transitional government forces took their revenge; collective punishment for Gaddafi’s own crimes. A vivid and graphic example of that in Sirte today. The bodies of 53 Gaddafi supporters, discovered shot with their hands tied.

The segment lasted 20 seconds, with commentary on the massacre and footage of the bodies lasting 10 seconds. As one surviving resident of Sirte asked:  “What would people in Europe and America say if Gaddafi was doing this?”

The answer is hardly in doubt — wall-to-wall coverage and volcanic outrage. Gaddafi was certainly a vicious tyrant responsible for gross human rights abuses. But callous indifference to human suffering was supposed to be the reason he was so beyond the pale, so unlike “us”.

Channel 4 anchor Matt Frei responded to the massacre in a style familiar from his years as the BBC’s Washington correspondent:

You could say even about this regime, this government, that they don’t have a second chance to make a first impression. So just how worried are they?

When “our side” is responsible, even a massacre becomes, first and foremost, a PR problem.

The response from Ian Black, the liberal Guardian’s Middle East correspondent, to the torture and extrajudicial killing of Gaddafi was a stark:  “good riddance”.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, giggled with CBS journalists as she joked about Gaddafi’s murder:  “We came, we saw, he died.”

Incongruous laughter appears to be a trait.

British prime minister David Cameron also found mirth amid the gore in a speech celebrating the Hindu festival of Diwali:

Obviously, Diwali being the festival of a triumph of good over evil, and also celebrating the death of a devil [audience laughter], perhaps there’s a little resonance in what I’m saying tonight.¹

One of our regular message board posters, Chris Shaw, expressed his “despair and horror at the footage of a 69 year old man being beaten, tortured and murdered by a mob”.² The natural response of a feeling human being, one might think.

By contrast, Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Telegraph: “the one thing Gaddafi retained to the very end was his ability to put on a show… [His] demise was as box-office as his 42-year rule”.

We suspect that most journalists are not actually unfeeling brutes. They are conformists wary of the high price they can be made to pay for even the suspicion that they might be ’apologists’ for an official enemy. A risk that has increased markedly in our age of ‘political convergence’, deprived as it is of any established mainstream political dissent.

Cameron’s First Military Victory

As ever, the broadcast media rushed to vindicate their warrior-leaders. Indeed, on August 22, the BBC’s deputy political editor, James Landale, was a month early in describing Downing Street’s satisfaction “that all David Cameron’s critics, who said that this couldn’t be done – that aerial bombardment would not work – have been proved wrong”.³

Last week, Landale’s senior colleague, Nick Robinson, brought viewers up to date, assuring them that Downing Street “will see this, I’m sure, as a triumphant end”. (News at Six, October 20, 2011) Robinson added:

Libya was David Cameron’s first war. Colonel Gaddafi his first foe. Today, his first real taste of military victory.

We are living in strange times when a senior BBC journalist can portray the fighting of endless wars as the normal way of things, as though Cameron had taken some kind of prime ministerial rite of initiation.

In an interview with new UK defence secretary, Philip Hammond, BBC ‘rottweiler’ John Humphrys asked:

What apart from a sort of moral glow – and there’s nothing wrong with that – have we got out of it?⁴

The BBC’s chief political correspondent, Norman Smith, commented:

I imagine, privately, David Cameron must surely feel vindicated because the Libyan enterprise was a big political risk.⁵

As ever, an ostensibly neutral BBC reporter endorsed what he was supposed only to be reporting: Cameron “must surely feel vindicated”. How could he possibly feel otherwise?⁶

In Washington, the BBC’s Ian Pannell thought hard and joined the mainstream herd:

I think President Obama is feeling that his foreign policy strategy has been vindicated – that his critics have been proven wrong.

An editorial in the Telegraph agreed:

His death vindicates the swift action of David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in halting the attack on Benghazi and supporting the rebellion.

A Tweet from someone called Micah Zenko made more sense to us: “Qaddafi summarily executed is apt conclusion to false narrative of Libya intervention. No arms embargo, selective NFZ, boots on the ground.”

Zenco might also have mentioned the unnoticed irony that UN resolution 1973, which authorised the misnamed ‘no-fly zone’, was among other things: ‘Condemning…torture and summary executions.’

As though concluding a bed-time story, the Guardian’s Simon Tisdall commented: “The Arab spring had claimed another infamous scalp. The risky western intervention had worked. And Libya was liberated at last.”

Andrew Grice, political editor of the Independent, applauded: “Mr Cameron took risks on Libya – but they paid off… Mr Cameron proved the doubters wrong… By calling Libya right, Mr Cameron invites a neat contrast with Tony Blair.”

Murdoch’s Times observed that only the ‘political courage’ of Sarkozy and Cameron had prevented disaster at ‘the beginning of another genocide’.⁷

In Murdoch’s grim fantasy world, any nation obstructing Western corporate control is, by happy coincidence, either perpetrating or planning ‘genocide’.

Jesus And Buddha – Hang Your Heads In Shame!

The comparative mythologist, Joseph Campbell, once commented on a striking feature of modern propaganda:

It’s been largely based on denigrating somebody over there and saying we’ve got to go in and knock them out. The main awakening of the human spirit is in compassion and the main function of propaganda is to suppress compassion, knock it out. Well, it’s in public journalism all the time now, too.⁸

Compassion is a threat because it is politically incorrect, resistant to robotic demonising by the cheerleaders of hate. Compassion is a spontaneous trembling of the heart based on an awareness of shared humanity, shared suffering, shared Being. And yet, even the normally insightful Glenn Greenwald, clearly appalled by the murders in Libya, reminded readers of something he had previously written:

No decent human being would possibly harbor any sympathy for Gadaffi, just as none harbored any for Saddam.

We Tweeted him: “Jesus and Buddha hang your heads in shame!”

Greenwald replied:

I had this debate when I first wrote that – it doesn’t mean you don’t object to what’s done to them: they’re just not sympathetic.

How easily we forget that compassion - even for a vicious, hated enemy -has long been recognised as one of the highest, most precious achievements of human civilisation.

As the Buddhist sage Je Gampopa commented:

Those who are hurt by others in return for the goodness they show them, yet, despite this, still act beneficially towards them, are the finest humans in the world: people who can return good for bad.⁹

Does anyone doubt that a Jesus or a Buddha would not merely have harboured sympathy for Gaddafi but would have intervened to save his life? And who would dare claim that doing so would make them ‘apologists’ for tyranny?

Philosopher A.C. Grayling sounded a rare note of dissent:

In accepting the pragmatic case for shooting malefactors, just as we shoot mad dogs, we state that we do not wish to pay the high cost of living according to law and civil liberties. We champion our Western principles about the rule of law and the rights of individuals, we thus say, only until they become a burden and an inconvenience; and, when they do, we summarily shoot people in the head instead.

The “inconvenience” requires explanation. In truth, if they are to survive, ‘Third World’ leaders are most often obliged to prioritise Western corporate interests over the needs of local people (see our discussion of John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man). This rankles with the victims, of course, and so Western clients typically have numerous skeletons in their human rights cupboard – hidden with Western military, financial and diplomatic help. These skeletons can be brought to light in a moment, if the client strays. A compliant media is always on hand to declare the crimes “Hitlerian”, “genocidal”, “exceptional”, and surely justifying whatever violent measures Western governments deem fit for the preservation of civilisation: in reality, the preservation of their control of the target nation.

In the rush to celebrate Cameron’s ‘first taste of military victory,’ the UK media ignored or downplayed a whole host of problems with the war, including:

– The fact that even establishment think tanks like the International Crisis Group reported that NATO and the ‘rebel’ Libyan National Transitional Council (NTC), rather than the Gaddafi regime, had rejected all peace initiatives out of hand:

UNSC resolution 1973 emphatically called for a ceasefire, yet every proposal for a ceasefire put forward by the Qaddafi regime or by third parties so far has been rejected by the TNC as well as by the Western governments most closely associated with the NATO military campaign… neither the TNC nor NATO has made a ceasefire proposal of its own and there has yet to be a meaningful attempt to test Qaddafi’s seriousness or pose conditions on acceptance that would subject a putative ceasefire to effective independent supervision.¹⁰

– The fact that there was no UN mandate for regime change, even though this was very obviously NATO’s illegal aim.

– The striking lack of evidence - not least from other towns recaptured by pro-government forces - that Gaddafi planned to commit a massacre in Benghazi.

– “Rebel” estimates of 50,000 dead as a result of the war as far back as the end of August. The Guardian’s Seumas Milne is a rare, honest voice in noting that “while the death toll in Libya when NATO intervened was perhaps around 1,000-2,000 (judging by UN estimates), eight months later it is probably more than ten times that figure.” Milne added:

If the purpose of western intervention in Libya’s civil war was to “protect civilians” and save lives, it has been a catastrophic failure.

– The bombing of Libyan state TV by British aircraft in July, which reportedly killed a number of journalists and was condemned as a war crime by Reporters Without Borders, UNESCO and the International Federation of Journalists.

– The reduction of Sirte, previously a city of 100,000 people, to a smoking ruin as a result of several weeks of siege. The assault included daily indiscriminate bombing, the cutting off of water, food, medicine and electricity supplies, the shelling of a hospital, widespread looting and massacres. Aid agencies described how the attack had created a humanitarian crisis.

– The widespread racist persecution of black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans by anti-Gaddafi forces. Amnesty International reported that ‘black Libyans and sub-Saharan Africans are at high risk of abuse by anti-Gaddafi forces’. (Many thanks to Peter, for providing much of this list on the Media Lens message board. A longer list is archived here)

Any horrors to come are likely to be reported in brief as the media eye swivels inexorably towards the next target of “humanitarian intervention”.

1. BBC News at Ten, October 20, 2011
2. Media Lens message board, October 24, 2011
3. Landale, BBC News at Six, August 22, 2011
4. Humphrys to Hammond, BBC Radio 4 Today, October 21, 2011; go to 3:13
5. BBC News Online, 16:34, October 21, 2011
6. Ibid.
7. Campbell, The Hero’s Journey, HarperSanFrancisco, 1991, p.220
8. Leading article, Death of a Dictator, The Times, October 21, 2011
9. Gampopa, Gems of Dharma, Jewels of Freedom, Altea, 1994, p.155
10. ICG, Popular Protest In North Africa and the Middle East, (V): Making Sense of Libya, Middle East/North Africa Report N°107 – 6 June 2011, pp.28-29