Organizations covering a wide ideological spectrum representing a myriad of issues protested the NATO Summit May 20 and 21, decrying a behemoth military industrial complex that has grown with NATO’s transformation into the world’s police.

“We want to bring an end to the war machine,” said John Beacham coordinator of the Act Now to Stop War and End Racism (ANSWER) Coalition in Chicago, “It’s causing so much destruction around the world,” he added.

NATO is being used to protect the same financial interests of many nations involved in the trans-Atlantic slave trade who used profits from slavery to become members of the powerful global elite. A swarm of activist groups came to protest, believing those global financial interests, and determination of military targets to be related.

“NATO is a colonial operation. I think it’s very directly related and the U.S. is the most powerful colonial or neo-colonial country to ever exist,” Mr. Beacham told The Final Call. “The European powers of NATO really can’t do anything without the U.S. All the strings are being pulled here, all the decisions are being made here about which country to attack next, and whether it is possible.”

With their own countries facing severe economic woes and still reeling from the effects of costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, The United States and the United Kingdom rank first and second in terms of NATO financing. There are nearly 40 other nations—though not actually a part of the Alliance—that work with NATO, on a variety of issues of common interest, such as the development of more lethal military weapons systems, and Western Europe’s relationship with East Asia, the South Pacific and North Africa.

British Prime Minister David Cameron having just left Camp David after attending the G8 Summit was among those in town for the NATO summit. Newly-elected French President Francois Hollande, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian PM Mario Monti were also with Pres. Obama at the G8 Summit and joined him for the NATO Summit. Although Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was present at the G8 Summit, a tense relationship exists between NATO and Russia, therefore no Russian representatives attended the NATO Summit.

Robert G. Bell, Senior Civilian Representative of the Secretary of Defense in Europe and the Defense Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, was very clear regarding what he thought was most important during the weekend summit. “When we talk about capabilities in a military alliance like NATO, we are talking about the hardware that make up a military: the fighter jets, helicopters, ships, and other systems,” wrote Mr. Bell on the U.S. State Department’s official blog. “The United States and our 27 NATO Allies make up the most effective alliance in human history,” he continued, adding summit topics included “discussion of the Alliance Ground Surveillance system, an Alliance Missile Defense capability.”

NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen addressed the Chicago Young Atlanticist Summit May 19, which ran parallel with the NATO Summit. Organized by the United States Atlantic Council and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the “Atlanticists Summit” included students from NATO member nations, high-level NATO officials, scholars and think-tank analysts.

“We face a wide range of security challenges,” Mr. Fogh Rasmussen told the students. “And we will take the necessary decisions to ensure that our alliance can meet those challenges.”

Then, sounding a paranoid alarm that could have been spoken verbatim by any Israeli right-winger or American neo-con, the NATO Secretary General said, “In today’s world, threats know no borders and respect no country’s sovereignty.”

Mr. Fogh Rasmussen’s words ignore NATO’s continued global military actions, which impinge upon the sovereignty of other nations. It is precisely the type of rhetoric causing NATO’s critics to label them “warmongers.”

A May 14 Human Rights Watch report titled “Unacknowledged Deaths: Civilian Casualties in NATO’s Air Campaign in Libya,” was highly critical of NATO’s air strikes in Libya which were responsible for dozens of civilian deaths, including women, children and other non-combatants in the externally instigated civil conflict. HRW charges NATO with failure to investigate unlawful attacks, and ignoring those civilian deaths.

In a June 2011 press conference, Minister Louis Farrakhan sharply condemned the NATO-led “coalition of demons” as they unleashed brutal bombing raids during their regime change operation in Libya. NATO’s punishing air assault decimated the Libyan cities of Tripoli, Sirte, and ultimately led to the assassination of long-time Libyan leader Col. Muammar Gadhafi.

Many observers believe had it not been for the American government’s outside interference and NATO acting as the de facto Air Force for the Libyan opposition, Col. Gadhafi and Libya’s Bedouin tribal leaders could have resolved amongst themselves whatever disagreements existed prior.

Numerous anti-war groups have ramped up calls for NATO leaders to be charged with sponsoring and carrying out war crimes. In his writings, Gerald Perreira, who served as an executive member of the World Mathaba based in Tripoli, refers to NATO as the “North Atlantic Terrorist Organization” describing them as neo-colonial enforcers on a global crusade.

“Originally created to check the spread of Soviet Communism into Western Europe, this European organization has now reinvented itself as an enforcer and defender of White supremacy,” writes Mr. Perreira. “Since the onset of colonialism, hundreds of years ago, West Europeans have carried out a policy of genocide and plunder throughout the world. NATO comprises these same old tribes of Europe organized under a modern day umbrella.”

Rev. Jesse Jackson echoed the concerns of many protesters regarding NATO’s growing reach.

“NATO is going to be challenged to change its policies,” said Rev. Jackson. “Bombing Libya was just wrong, and they are going to other African countries and they shouldn’t,” he added.

Brock Macintosh, 23, and a veteran of the Afghanistan War is a vocal opponent of the growing military actions of NATO and the war profiteers.

“It’s a shame that because 3,000 civilians died in New York City, the response was to go to war in Afghanistan where now 33,000 civilians have died,” he said. Afghanistan exit?

Also present in Chicago at the NATO Summit for high-level talks was embattled Afghan President Hamid Karzai. U.S. President Barack Obama said by 2014, Afghans would largely be in charge of their own security. American troop withdrawal has already begun.

“Our mission will change from combat to support,” the president said in a recent speech dealing with Afghanistan’s future. “By 2014, this process of transition will be complete, and the Afghan people will be responsible for their own security.”

Mr. Fogh Rasmussen echoed his sentiments stating, “By the end of 2014, Afghans will be fully in charge of their own security. That is when our ISAF mission will come to an end. This does not mean the end of our commitment,” he said. NATO’s only goal is aiding in the establishment of “freedom, democracy and the rule of law,” he added.

President Obama came to Chicago for the NATO summit after hosting the Group of Eight (G8) Summit at Camp David May 18, and 19. Originally, the G8 Summit was also scheduled for Chicago, however, in a surprise move, the president announced in March his decision to change its location. Talks surrounding the financial crisis gripping the eurozone dominated G8 discussions, along with the continued pressure apparently designed to instigate military aggression directed at the Islamic Republic of Iran.

While the president maintains his decision to change locations was not based on security concerns, the switch caused considerable embarrassment for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, and Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

Supt. McCarthy, who leads the country’s second largest police force, is also the city’s highest paid employee with an annual salary of $260,000. He was seen throughout the weekend walking amongst the protesters, freely accessible, and directly delivering commands to the officers on post throughout the downtown area.

“This is an international city people came here to protest,” Supt. McCarthy told reporters. “I expect that the organizers are going to be true to their word and I expect that other people are going to engage in spontaneous protests and that’s okay. We’ve prepared for it, we’ve drilled for it, we’ve paid for it, we’re ready for it, we just have to go and execute it.”

Several days before and during the NATO Summit, heavy parking and traffic flow restrictions were put in place. Chicago residents experienced numerous traffic problems and disruptions in the public transportation system, which carries on an average weekday 1.64 million riders to various destinations in the Chicago metropolitan area. Bomb-squad units were also called upon to detonate a suspicious package on one of the rail lines.

Angered by NATO’s continued involvement in Afghanistan and subsequent destabilization of Libya, organizers with the ANSWER Coalition maintain the movement towards war with Iran and military intervention in Syria should be vociferously and vehemently opposed. For months, anti-war organizers stated they planned to “hit the streets to protest the warmongers at the NATO summit in Chicago” and they backed up their words with actions.

Numerous protests broke out on the days leading up to the NATO Summit, the largest taking place May 20, the day of the official beginning of the summit. Several smaller protests were also held in front of the home of Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

Snipers were perched on rooftops around the site of the NATO Summit to secure that area, as well as Soldier Field, the location where the NATO leaders posed for their group photograph.

When asked if he would continue working to facilitate the protests, specifically the planned veteran’s protest in which they sought to return their medals to NATO leaders, he said the CPD would continue to assist the law-abiding protesters to the best of their ability.

“I have incredible respect for anybody who served this country on that level and I think we have an obligation to do that for John Q. Citizen and certainly in the case of veterans, we owe them probably a little bit more,” said Supt. McCarthy.

In a particularly moving demonstration, over 40 veterans of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq returned their “War on Terror” medals and other commendations as they denounced NATO, the United States government, and the military industrial complex that sent them to fight war. Many protesters could be seen crying as one by one, the soldiers told their stories then hurled their medals into the street.

All remained spirited and generally peaceful until a group of protesters described by other protesters as Anarchists began to surge towards police in an attempt to gain access to the main area surrounding McCormick Place, where the high-level government officials were meeting.

A tense hour-long standoff began. Waves of riot police in full armor with helmets, batons and shields moved towards the crowd. Additionally, two sonic weapons called “sound cannons” were moved into position, as the protesters were surrounded. According to CPD officials, they are capable of emitting pain-inducing sonic output of up to 150 decibels, protesters and journalists quickly scrambled to grab earplugs, however, the sound cannons were not used.

At one point, officers removed their helmets and briefly placed their gas masks on, presumably in preparation for chemical dispersants to be released in efforts to disperse the crowd. None were used however, the stalemate did end in violence with several protesters being beaten bloody, arrested, and carried off. After about two hours, the crowd had largely dissipated.

Although they would not reveal their identities, masked members of the so-called Black Bloc told The Final Call they believed that it was time to “take the next step” since in their view, the protest were not getting the results they desired. When asked what results were sought, they were unclear, repeating criticism of capitalism and the “NATO-led war machine.”

Later that evening, another protest was held on Michigan Avenue in front of the Art Institute of Chicago where First Lady Michelle Obama held an exclusive dinner and tour for NATO officials. More arrests occurred with officers reportedly being doused with urine and feces by protesters. Four police officers were wounded in various melees.

Mr. Beacham told The Final Call that by having NATO in Chicago, President Obama and U.S. officials were solidifying the relationship with the European “junior partners” in global gangsterdom, and the heavily armed police units brought in to maintain order are supporting them.

“These are the real gangsters there’s no doubt about that,” said Mr. Beacham pointing in the direction of the NATO Summit’s meeting place. “The real gangsters are meeting right there—NATO—and they are protected by tens of thousands of gangsters in blue.”

Seventy-seven-years-old, Jimbo had a vending business selling pretzels, among other stuff, and worked at a factory making vent windows for Ford trucks. Like me, he has also washed windows, making a few bucks per job. In winter, water would sometimes freeze nearly as soon as it’s splashed on the pane, but thanks to global warming, this is becoming less of a problem.

A Chicago bus stop billboard: “I’m all for global warming if it will keep the city from being so damn cold.” Across the street is the Greenway Self Park garage, with a green VW bug emitting green leaves instead of ozone-killing exhaust on its very cool, I guess, sign.

Born and raised in Kensington, Jimbo still lives there. He gets $780 a month in Social Security, but his rent eats up $760. So much for piece-of-shit Kensington?! What in the fuckin’ UN is this world coming to? If I want to be chased around by goons toting submachine guns, then body slammed onto the ground, I’ll go to Chicago during the NATO summit.

With only 20 bucks a month to diddle with, Jimbo must beg, though he can also move to a cheaper neighborhood, such as the exburbs of Kabul or Baghdad, for example, but since he’s already well into his post-Cialis years, I don’t think Blackwater would hire him.

“Jimbo,” I said, “I keep hearing that black women are the most generous at giving money on the streets. Is that true?”

“Absolutely!”

“Why do you think that is?”

“I don’t know, but I think it’s because they’re more used to taking care of people.”

“Hummm. What about guys in suits? Do they give you money?”

“Those guys are the worst! Most of them won’t come near me because they think I might give them a disease or something.”

“That’s interesting.”

“The regular people, the working class people, are the ones who give me money. Black people give me money.”

“All black people, or just black women?”

“All black people, but, like you said, black women are the best. When I grew up in Kensington, I was told that black are this and that, that they’re no good, but now that I have to beg, I can tell you that black people treat me very nice.”

For over a century, Kensington had dozens of factories cranking out machine parts, carpets, textiles and glass. Now, it is an unholy mess, like all former industrial enclaves across America. Jimbo, “Many of my neighbors in Kensington get a government check at the beginning of each month, then a week later, they’re broke. You should go up there and see how it is.”

“I’ve been up there, many times.”

“You’ll see how how bad it is, the drug dealing.”

“And the prostitution.”

“Yes, that too. When people are broke, they’ll do anything. There used to be so many factories up there, but they’re all gone.”

In Kensington, a flyer is taped to a pillar of the elevated train, “HEALTH ALERT!!! THERE IS A prostitute By the name of SHERI Pitts that is HIV Positive. If you know her whereabouts please contact the Health Department. Description: 5’4” 95 lbs Blk Female. Tatoo on left Arm “Chocolate Sheri.” Tattoo on Right (Butt) Cheek “Sexy.” #173-60-6501. She NEEDS to be Stopped. She is spreading this Desease!!!”

The next time you’re in Kensington to help out the local economy, shine a flash light on her left cheek, and if you can make out “Sexy” in tribal, shaman, precious, voodoo or gothic script, just calmly smile and say, “I’m sorry, Chocolate, but it doesn’t look like our loving union can be gracefully consummated this night, or the next, or ever, though as a member of NATO, that master alliance of pale and well-armed people, I will try and try again. Oh, fuck it, let’s just fuck! Since it was me who made you sick in the first place! We’re destined for this death embrace, you maroon terrorist seductress!”

I’m sorry to use intercourse as an analogy for aggression, but I was railroaded into it by English itself, for what other language is so promiscuous with such couplings, as in I will fuck you up, fuck you over or fuck with you? In English, to fuck is to hate, if not kill, as in fuck Libya, Syria and Iran, or, if you prefer, fuck Israel, Wall Street, the CIA and the Pentagon!

In Chicago, white masters are plotting on how to fuck with us all, including the lower whites. As expected, they’ve framed a few white youths and locked them up on bogus charge of terrorism. This is to condition the public to see poor whites, especially those with tattoos, nose rings or dread locks, as also the enemy. Like brown foreigners and native blacks, young disaffected whites will be branded as indiscriminate mass murderers who just want to blow things up because they hate “our way of life.” Thanks to the FBI, they have been prevented from collapsing a bridge in Cleveland and torching Obama’s Chicago campaign headquarters, but they might go after your local strip mall or International House of Pancakes next. If not dealt with most severely, they’ll splatter corn-syrup all over your transfat-padded faces! Instead of getting a job giving blow jobs, for example, these confused whiners would rather enlist in Occupy, which, the gobblement will soon tell you, is actually an offshoot of Al Qaeda supported by Iran and a trust fund left behind by Bin Laden.

Meanwhile, Jimbo begs because he can’t pay his bills otherwise. He also admits that he likes to sit in a cheapo restaurant every now and then to enjoy a $7 hoagie or cheesesteak, some fried chicken or a plate of pork lo mein, “So I can live like a real white man!”

NATO has always been a war-making institution lacking in accountability to the peoples of the nations it claims to represent. But NATO at least once claimed a defensive purpose that it neither claims nor represents any longer.

NATO has militarized the nations of Europe against the will of their people, now maintains hundreds of nuclear weapons in non-nuclear European nations in blatant violation of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and is threatening Russia with missile base construction on its borders.

Having fought aggressive wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, NATO remains in Afghanistan, illegally, immorally, and to no coherent purpose. The people of the United States, other NATO nations, and Afghanistan itself, overwhelmingly favor an end to NATO’s presence, while Presidents Obama and Karzai, against the will of their people, work to commit U.S. forces to at least 12.5 more years in Afghanistan.

NATO provides the United States with a pretense of global coalition and legality. Approximately half of the world’s military spending is U.S., while adding the other NATO nations brings the total to three-quarters. The head of the Pentagon, Leon Panetta, recently testified in Congress that a war could be made legal by working through either the United Nations or NATO. While no written law supports that claim, it is a claim that has served its intended purpose. NATO also serves as a false legal shield, protecting the U.S. military from Congressional oversight.

The U.S. dominated NATO holds up the past year’s war on Libya as a model for the future, with an eye on various potential victims, including Syria and Iran. In so doing, NATO serves as the armed enforcer of the exploitative agenda of the G-8, which has fled Chicago for the guarded compound at Camp David.

NATO’s interests are neither democratically determined nor humanitarian in purpose. NATO does not bomb all nations guilty of humanitarian abuses. Nor does NATO’s bombing alleviate human suffering, it adds to it. Saudi Arabia is not a target. Bahrain is not a target. Ben Ali and Mubarak were not targets. An analysis of NATO’s real motivations reveals a desire to control the global flow of oil, to support dictators who have supported U.S./NATO wars, prisons and torture operations, to back Israel’s expansionist agenda, and to surround and threaten the nation of Iran.

The killing and destruction engaged in by NATO in Libya was illegal, immoral, and counter-productive as is its aggression in Afghanistan. NATO’s wars have not brought democracy, peace, or human rights anywhere.

Libya is not a model for future NATO action. There is no model for future NATO action. NATO has lost its reason to exist if it ever had one. Veterans For Peace joins with our brothers and sisters in Europe, who are also rallying nonviolently against NATO, in calling for its elimination.

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.

Not really. Goldman now expects the BRICS countries to account for almost 40% of global gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050, and to include four of the world’s top five economies.

Soon, in fact, that acronym may have to expand to include Turkey, Indonesia, South Korea and, yes, nuclear Iran: BRIIICTSS? Despite its well-known problems as a nation under economic siege, Iran is also motoring along as part of the N-11, yet another distilled concept. (It stands for the next 11 emerging economies.)

The multitrillion-dollar global question remains: Is the emergence of BRICS a signal that we have truly entered a new multipolar world?

Yale’s canny historian Paul Kennedy (of “imperial overstretch” fame) is convinced that we either are about to cross or have already crossed a “historical watershed” taking us far beyond the post-Cold War unipolar world of “the sole superpower.” There are, argues Kennedy, four main reasons for that: the slow erosion of the US dollar (formerly 85% of global reserves, now less than 60%), the “paralysis of the European project,” Asia rising (the end of 500 years of Western hegemony), and the decrepitude of the United Nations.

The Group of Eight (G-8) is already increasingly irrelevant. The G-20, which includes the BRICS, might, however, prove to be the real thing. But there’s much to be done to cross that watershed rather than simply be swept over it willy-nilly: the reform of the UN Security Council, and above all, the reform of the Bretton Woods system, especially those two crucial institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

On the other hand, willy-nilly may prove the way of the world. After all, as emerging superstars, the BRICS have a ton of problems. True, in only the last seven years Brazil has added 40 million people as middle-class consumers; by 2016, it will have invested another $900 billion – more than a third of its GDP — in energy and infrastructure; and it’s not as exposed as some BRICS members to the imponderables of world trade, since its exports are only 11% of GDP, even less than the US.

Still, the key problem remains the same: lack of good management, not to mention a swamp of corruption. Brazil’s brazen new monied class is turning out to be no less corrupt than the old, arrogant, comprador elites that used to run the country.

In India, the choice seems to be between manageable and unmanageable chaos. The corruption of the country’s political elite would make Shiva proud. Abuse of state power, nepotistic control of contracts related to infrastructure, the looting of mineral resources, real estate property scandals — they’ve got it all, even if India is not a Hindu Pakistan. Not yet anyway.

Since 1991, “reform” in India has meant only one thing: unbridled commerce and getting the state out of the economy. Not surprisingly then, nothing is being done to reform public institutions, which are a scandal in themselves. Efficient public administration? Don’t even think about it. In a nutshell, India is a chaotic economic dynamo and yet, in some sense, not even an emerging power, not to speak of a superpower.

Russia, too, is still trying to find the magic mix, including a competent state policy to exploit the country’s bounteous natural resources, extraordinary space, and impressive social talent. It must modernize fast as, apart from Moscow and St Petersburg, relative social backwardness prevails. Its leaders remain uneasy about neighboring China (aware that any Sino-Russian alliance would leave Russia as a distinctly junior partner). They are distrustful of Washington, anxious over the depopulation of their eastern territories, and worried about the cultural and religious alienation of their Muslim population.

Then again the Putinator is back as president with his magic formula for modernization: a strategic German-Russian partnership that will benefit the power elite/business oligarchy, but not necessarily the majority of Russians.

Dead in the Woods

The post-World War II Bretton Woods system is now officially dead, totally illegitimate, but what are the BRICS planning to do about it?

At their summit in New Delhi in late March, they pushed for the creation of a BRICS development bank that could invest in infrastructure and provide them with back-up credit for whatever financial crises lie down the road. The BRICS know perfectly well that Washington and the European Union (EU) will never relinquish control of the IMF and the World Bank. Nonetheless, trade among these countries will reach an impressive $500 billion by 2015, mostly in their own currencies.

However, BRICS cohesion, to the extent it exists, centers mostly around shared frustration with the Masters of the Universe-style financial speculation that nearly sent the global economy off a cliff in 2008. True, the BRICS crew also has a notable convergence of policy and opinion when it comes to embattled Iran, an Arab Sprung Middle East, and Northern Africa. Still, for the moment the key problem they face is this: they don’t have an ideological or institutional alternative to neo-liberalism and the lordship of global finance.

As Vijay Prashad has noted, the Global North has done everything to prevent any serious discussion of how to reform the global financial casino.¹ No wonder the head of the G-77 group of developing nations (now G-132, in fact), Thai ambassador Pisnau Chanvitan, has warned of “behavior that seems to indicate a desire for the dawn of a new neocolonialism.”

Meanwhile, things happen anyway, helter-skelter. China, for instance, continues to informally advance the yuan as a globalizing, if not global, currency. It’s already trading in yuan with Russia and Australia, not to mention across Latin America and in the Middle East. Increasingly, the BRICS are betting on the yuan as their monetary alternative to a devalued US dollar.

Japan is using both yen and yuan in its bilateral trade with its huge Asian neighbor. The fact is that there’s already an unacknowledged Asian free-trade zone in the making, with China, Japan, and South Korea on board.

What’s ahead, even if it includes a BRICS-bright future, will undoubtedly be very messy. Just about anything is possible (verging on likely), from another Great Recession in the US to European stagnation or even the collapse of the eurozone, to a BRICS-wide slowdown, a tempest in the currency markets, the collapse of financial institutions, and a global crash.

And talk about messy, who could forget what Dick Cheney said, while still Halliburton’s CEO, at the Institute of Petroleum in London in 1999: “The Middle East, with two-thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies.” No wonder when, as vice president, he came to power in 2001, his first order of business was to “liberate” Iraq’s oil. Of course, who doesn’t remember how that ended?

Now (different administration but same line of work), it’s an oil-embargo-cum-economic-war on Iran. The leadership in Beijing sees Washington’s whole Iran psychodrama as a regime-change plot, pure and simple, having nothing to do with nuclear weapons. Then again, the winner so far in the Iran imbroglio is China. With Iran’s banking system in crisis, and the US embargo playing havoc with that country’s economy, Beijing can essentially dictate its terms for buying Iranian oil.

The Chinese are expanding Iran’s fleet of oil tankers, a deal worth more than US$1 billion, and that other BRICS giant, India, is now purchasing even more Iranian oil than China. Yet Washington won’t apply its sanctions to BRICS members because these days, economically speaking, the US needs them more than they need the US.

The world through Chinese eyes

Which brings us to the dragon in the room: China.

What’s the ultimate Chinese obsession? Stability, stability, stability.

The usual self-description of the system there as “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is, of course, as mythical as a gorgon. In reality, think hardcore neo-liberalism with Chinese characteristics led by men who have every intention of saving global capitalism.

At the moment, China is smack in the middle of a tectonic, structural shift from an export/investment model to a services/consumer-led model. In terms of its explosive economic growth, the last decades have been almost unimaginable to most Chinese (and the rest of the world), but according to the Financial Times, they have also left the country’s richest 1% controlling 40%-60% of total household wealth. How to find a way to overcome such staggering collateral damage? How to make a system with tremendous inbuilt problems function for 1.3 billion people?

Enter “stability-mania.” Back in 2007, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao was warning that the Chinese economy could become “unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable.” These were the famous “Four Uns.”

Today, the collective leadership, including the next Prime Minister, Li Leqiang, has gone a nervous step further, purging “unstable” from the Party’s lexicon. For all practical purposes, the next phase in the country’s development is already upon us.

It will be quite something to watch in the years to come.

How will the nominally “communist” princelings — the sons and daughters of top revolutionary Party leaders, all immensely wealthy, thanks, in part, to their cozy arrangements with Western corporations, plus the bribes, the alliances with gangsters, all those “concessions” to the highest bidder, and the whole Western-linked crony-capitalist oligarchy – lead China beyond the “Four Modernizations”? Especially with all that fabulous wealth to loot.

The Obama administration, expressing its own anxiety, has responded to the clear emergence of China as a power to be reckoned with via a “strategic pivot” — from its disastrous wars in the Greater Middle East to Asia. The Pentagon likes to call this “rebalancing” (though things are anything but rebalanced or over for the US in the Middle East).

Before 9/11, the Bush administration had been focused on China as its future global enemy number one. Then 9/11 redirected it to what the Pentagon called “the arc of instability,” the oil heartlands of the planet extending from the Middle East through Central Asia. Given Washington’s distraction, Beijing calculated that it might enjoy a window of roughly two decades in which the pressure would be largely off. In those years, it could focus on a breakneck version of internal development, while the US was squandering mountains of money on its nonsensical “Global War on Terror.”

Twelve years later, that window is being slammed shut as from India, Australia, and the Philippines to South Korea and Japan, the US declares itself back in the hegemony business in Asia. Doubts that this was the new American path were dispelled by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s November 2011 manifesto in Foreign Policy magazine, none too subtly labeled “America’s Pacific Century.” (And she was talking about this century, not the last one!)

The American mantra is always the same: “American security,” whose definition is: whatever happens on the planet. Whether in the oil-rich Persian Gulf where Washington “helps” allies Israel and Saudi Arabia because they feel threatened by Iran, or Asia where similar help is offered to a growing corps of countries that are said to feel threatened by China, it’s always in the name of US security. In either case, in just about any case, that’s what trumps all else.

As a result, if there is a 33-year Wall of Mistrust between the US and Iran, there is a new, growing Great Wall of Mistrust between the US and China. Recently, Wang Jisi, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and a top Chinese strategic analyst, offered the Beijing leadership’s perspective on that “Pacific Century” in an influential paper he coauthored.

China, he and his coauthor write, now expects to be treated as a first-class power. After all, it “successfully weathered … the 1997-98 global financial crisis,” caused, in Beijing’s eyes, by “deep deficiencies in the US economy and politics. China has surpassed Japan as the world’s second largest economy and seems to be the number two in world politics, as well … Chinese leaders do not credit these successes to the United States or to the US-led world order.”

The US, Wang adds, “is seen in China generally as a declining power over the long run … It is now a question of how many years, rather than how many decades, before China replaces the United States as the largest economy in the world … part of an emerging new structure.” (Think: BRICS.)

In sum, as Wang and his coauthor portray it, influential Chinese see their country’s development model providing “an alternative to Western democracy and experiences for other developing countries to learn from, while many developing countries that have introduced Western values and political systems are experiencing disorder and chaos.”

Put it all in a nutshell and you have a Chinese vision of the world in which a fading US still yearns for global hegemony and remains powerful enough to block emerging powers — China and the other BRICS — from their twenty-first century destiny.

Dr Zbig’s Eurasian wet dream

Now, how does the US political elite see that same world? Virtually no one is better qualified to handle that subject than former national security adviser, BTC pipeline facilitator, and briefly Obama ghost adviser, Dr Zbigniew (“Zbig”) Brzezinski. And he doesn’t hesitate to do so in his latest book, Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power.

If the Chinese have their strategic eyes on those other BRICS nations, Dr Zbig remains stuck on the Old World, newly configured. He is now arguing that, for the US to maintain some form of global hegemony, it must bet on an “expanded West.” That would mean strengthening the Europeans (especially in energy terms), while embracing Turkey, which he imagines as a template for new Arab democracies, and engaging Russia, politically and economically, in a “strategically sober and prudent fashion.”

Turkey, by the way, is no such template because, despite the Arab Spring, for the foreseeable future, there are no new Arab democracies. Still, Zbig believes that Turkey can help Europe, and so the US, in far more practical ways to solve certain global energy problems by facilitating its “unimpeded access across the Caspian Sea to Central Asia’s oil and gas.”

Under the present circumstances, however, this, too, remains something of a fantasy. After all, Turkey can only become a key transit country in the great energy game on the Eurasian chessboard I’ve long labeled “Pipelineistan” if the Europeans get their act together. They would have to convince the energy-rich, autocratic “republic” of Turkmenistan to ignore its powerful Russian neighbor and sell them all the natural gas they need. And then there’s that other energy matter that looks unlikely at the moment: Washington and Brussels would have to ditch counterproductive sanctions and embargos against Iran (and the war games that go with them) and start doing serious business with that country.

Dr Zbig nonetheless proposes the notion of a two-speed Europe as the key to future American power on the planet. Think of it as an upbeat version of a scenario in which the present Eurozone semi-collapses. He would maintain the leading role of the inept bureaucratic fat cats in Brussels now running the EU, and support another “Europe” (mostly the southern “Club Med” countries) outside the euro, with nominally free movement of people and goods between the two. His bet – and in this he reflects a key strand of Washington thinking – is that a two-speed Europe, a Eurasian Big Mac, still joined at the hip to America, could be a globally critical player for the rest of the twenty-first century.

And then, of course, Dr Zbig displays all his Cold Warrior colors, extolling an American future “stability in the Far East” inspired by “the role Britain played in the nineteenth century as a stabilizer and balancer of Europe.” We’re talking, in other words, about this century’s number one gunboat diplomat. He graciously concedes that a “comprehensive American-Chinese global partnership” would still be possible, but only if Washington retains a significant geopolitical presence in what he still calls the “Far East” – “whether China approves or not.”

The answer will be “not.”

In a way, all of this is familiar stuff, as is much of actual Washington policy today. In his case, it’s really a remix of his 1997 magnum opus The Grand Chessboard in which, he once again certifies that “the huge Trans-Eurasian continent is the central arena of world affairs.” Only now reality has taught him that Eurasia can’t be conquered and America’s best shot is to try to bring Turkey and Russia into the fold.

Robocop rules

Yet Brzezinski looks positively benign when you compare his ideas to Hillary Clinton’s recent pronouncements, including her address to the tongue-twistingly named World Affairs Council 2012 NATO Conference. There, as the Obama administration regularly does, she highlighted “NATO’s enduring relationship with Afghanistan” and praised negotiations between the US and Kabul over “a long-term strategic partnership between our two nations.”

Translation; despite being outmaneuvered by a minority Pashtun insurgency for years, neither the Pentagon nor NATO have any intention of rebalancing out of their holdings in the Greater Middle East. Already negotiating with President Hamid Karzai’s government in Kabul for staying rights through 2024, the US has every intention of holding onto three major strategic Afghan bases: Bagram, Shindand (near the Iranian border), and Kandahar (near the Pakistani border). Only the terminally na๏ve would believe the Pentagon capable of voluntarily abandoning such sterling outposts for the monitoring of Central Asia and strategic competitors Russia and China.

NATO, Clinton added ominously, will “expand its defense capabilities for the twenty-first century,” including the missile defense system the alliance approved at its last meeting in Lisbon in 2010.

It will be fascinating to see what the possible election of socialist Fran็ois Hollande as French president might mean. Interested in a deeper strategic partnership with the BRICS, he is committed to the end of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The question is: Would his victory throw a monkey wrench into NATO’s works, after these years under the Great Liberator of Libya, that neo-Napoleonic image-maker Nicolas Sarkozy (for whom France was just mustard in Washington’s steak tartar).

No matter what either Dr Zbig or Hillary might think, most European countries, fed up with their black-hole adventures in Afghanistan and Libya, and with the way NATO now serves US global interests, support Hollande on this. But it will still be an uphill battle. The destruction and overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi’s Libyan regime was the highpoint of the recent NATO agenda of regime change in MENA (the Middle East-Northern Africa). And NATO remains Washington’s plan B for the future, if the usual network of think tanks, endowments, funds, foundations, NGOs, and even the U.N. fail to provoke what could be described as YouTube regime change.

In a nutshell: after going to war on three continents (in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Libya), turning the Mediterranean into a virtual NATO lake, and patrolling the Arabian Sea non-stop, NATO will be, according to Hillary, riding on “a bet on America’s leadership and strength, just as we did in the twentieth century, for this century and beyond.” So 21 years after the end of the Soviet Union — NATO’s original raison d’etre — this could be the way the world ends; not with a bang, but with NATO, in whimpering mode, still fulfilling the role of perpetual global Robocop.

We’re back once again with Dr Zbig and the idea of America as the “promoter and guarantor of unity” in the West, and as “balance and conciliator” in the East (for which it needs bases from the Persian Gulf to Japan, including those Afghan ones). And don’t forget that the Pentagon has never given up the idea of attaining Full Spectrum Dominance.

For all that military strength, however, it’s worth keeping in mind that this is distinctly a New World (and not in North America either). Against the guns and the gunboats, the missiles and the drones, there is economic power. Currency wars are now raging. BRICS members China and Russia have cordilleras of cash. South America is uniting fast. The Putinator has offered South Korea an oil pipeline. Iran is planning to sell all its oil and gas in a basket of currencies, none dollars. China is paying to expand its blue-water Navy and its anti-ship missile weaponry. One day, Tokyo may finally realize that, as long as it is occupied by Wall Street and the Pentagon, it will live in eternal recession. Even Australia may eventually refuse to be forced into a counterproductive trade war with China.

So this twenty-first century world of ours is shaping up right now largely as a confrontation between the US/NATO and the BRICS, warts and all on every side. The danger: that somewhere down the line it turns into a Full Spectrum Confrontation. Because make no mistake, unlike Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gaddafi, the BRICS will actually be able to shoot back.

1. See “The G-77 awakes,” Asia Times Online, April 17, 2012.

Targets across the country included Vice-President Mohammad Karim Khalili, airfields and police stations in three eastern provinces. About 20 insurgents were killed in the attacks, which injured at least 15 police officers and nine civilians.

US ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker dismissed the Taliban’s claim of responsibility: “Frankly, I don’t think the Taliban is good enough,” leaving unsaid who is. Crocker commended the NATO-trained Afghan forces, whose capability was “proven today by their professional and highly effective response in restoring order”.

A warning came from New Delhi’s Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies Director Dipankar Banerjee: “We’re only going to see an increase in these attacks. It helps [the militants] ensure political dominance in the new order as they slowly take over.” Talha said that Sunday’s strikes were just a preview of the fighting season to come. “We want to engage smaller numbers of well-trained fighters to make attacks on significant government, American and NATO targets.” He said the mastermind of the operation was Hajji Lala, the insurgency’s shadow governor of Kabul and its eastern-front military chief.

One big difference, according to Talha and other Taliban sources, was that this time the Haqqani network did not play a significant role in the operation. Rivalry has developed between the Taliban and its eastern partner in insurgency, although Jalaluddin Haqqani and his son Sirajuddin have in the past declared their loyalty to Taliban supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar. Talha says he’s hopeful that the Taliban and the Haqqanis will work together in the future. “With this coordination we can double of number and size of attacks across Afghanistan.”

Sunday’s attacks confirmed the ease with which the Taliban are able to infiltrate fighters, suicide bombers, explosives, rocket-propelled grenades and automatic weapons into the capital and the main towns of the three surrounding provinces. The Kabul government’s 300,000-strong security forces actually make this easier, Talha explained. “The bigger the Afghan police, army, and intelligence services grow, the less effective they become. Kabul’s intelligence and police are weaker than ever, allowing us to carry out these stunning episodes.”

A senior Kabul-government official in eastern Paktia province confirms this: “I fear our intelligence and security forces are becoming less coordinated while the Taliban’s coordination is getting better.” The problem is that the intelligence service, the police, and the army, controlled by Tajiks, are riven by ethnic rivalries and mistrust between them, Pashtuns and Uzbeks. “They do not coordinate with each other. This provides a golden opportunity for the Taliban to infiltrate and penetrate wherever and when they wish.”

American, Afghan and NATO officials undoubtedly will call the Taliban assault a failed offensive. But that is small comfort to most Afghans.

British parliamentarian Lord Nazir Ahmed added a note of whimsy to AfPak’s ongoing tragedy, when he announced a reward for the capture of US President Barack Obama and his predecessor George W Bush at a reception in Lord Nazir’s honour held by the business community of Haripur, Pakistan on Friday. Nazir said that placing a bounty on Lashkar-e-Taiba Chief Hafiz Saeed was an insult to all Muslims, and by doing so President Obama has challenged the dignity of the Muslim Ummah. Lashkar-e-Taiba is held responsible for the 2008 Mumbai bombings and is on the US terrorist list.

“If the US can announce a reward of $10 million for the captor of Hafiz Saeed, I can announce a bounty of 10 million pounds on President Obama and his predecessor George Bush,” Lord Nazir said. A terrorist tit-for-tat.

May Day, along with notions of radical worker action, has largely been ignored in the United States in recent years. But the time for complacency has passed.

While a worker walk-out may have been born from the secessio plebis of Ancient Rome, English Chartist and radical preacher William Benbow brought to modern times the idea of general strike as a “sacred month” in the first mass working-class labor movement. In 1877, the Great Railroad Strike began the first major labor action in the United States; centered in East Saint Louis, the strike shut down all industrial railway traffic through the National Stockyards, letting only passenger and mail trains through. In 1936, early in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, a series of strikes spread; half a million textile workers united in states across the country, dock workers and their associates in San Francisco, and radical Teamsters in Minneapolis all fought against the violence of police and armed strikebreakers. These strikes, and the unemployment councils that cropped up to encourage progressive change, pushed Roosevelt to enact bold reforms to the American system.

Over the course of two days in December of 1946, radical action brought the City of Oakland to a standstill. The general strike there inspired the anti-labor Taft-Hartley Act that President Truman called a “conflict with important principles of our democratic society,” even as he used it twelve times over the course of his presidency. The act essentially killed the general strike as a tactic for the labor movement.

The power of the working class, however, is not tied to mainstream organized labor.  Concessions by the AFL-CIO to the government’s National Labor Relations Board have made the organization little more than a special interest group for the Democrats, even as they pass anti-labor and anti-free speech legislation. While the working class needs the strength of militant unionization—the IWW Food and Retail Workers United union in the Pacific Northwest being a good example—the policies of the National Labor Relations Board are decidedly anti-worker. Capitulation of reactionary unions to NLRB demands, and to the Democratic Party, constitutes abandonment of the working class.

Knowing that union leadership would be refused the blessing of their Democratic Party masters, rank-and-file members of labor joined with the Occupy Movement to speak for themselves; in October 2011, the General Assembly of Occupy Oakland voted overwhelmingly to shut down the city on November 2nd in response to the military-style crackdown on demonstrators by eighteen different police agencies, including the critical wounding of Scott Olsen and Kayvan Sabehgi, two veterans of the war in Iraq. The convergence of radical labor and Occupy Oakland made it possible to shut down the Port of Oakland, the fifth-largest container port in the nation, disrupting millions of dollars of capitalist income. This is only the beginning.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking!

— William Butler Yeats

In December of 2011, Occupy Los Angeles called for a general strike on May Day, to “recognize housing, education, and healthcare as human rights.” This revival of May Day has been echoed by Occupations from wealthy Wall Street to poverty-stricken Oklahoma. Already, nationwide strikes have rocked other countries hit hard by the capitalist crisis, including Spain, Iceland, Portugal, and Greece.  Austerity measures in these countries have been enacted solely to appease unelected European Union technocrats, protecting the interests of wealthy investors and multinational banking cartels. The civil war that capitalism calls “peace” is intensifying universally; the May Day General Strike will be our response to their crisis.

On May 1st, 2012, we will revive the May Day the ruling class has tried to erase; we will celebrate International Workers’ Day in the United States as a political manifestation of class consciousness and international solidarity.

However, our demonstrations on May Day cannot be an exercise in paying homage to the past days of the global justice movement; instead, they must embody concrete preparation for the future. The anarchist concept of pre-figurative politics demands that we lay the foundations of future society solidly in the present. By retaking May Day, we stand in solidarity with a legacy of international struggle against neoliberal capitalism and authoritarian control. Values such as classlessness, autonomy, self-management, diversity, and mutual aid preclude borders; the internationalism of May Day is only one step in a long march towards an international solidarity.

The atmosphere across the globe seems pregnant with a revolutionary fervor unseen in recent years. The occupation at New York City’s New School in 2008 provided a glimpse into the possibilities of occupation when students seized their school building as a show of solidarity against the policies of a broken administration. The nascent student movement later reclaimed campuses across California, inspiring actions nationwide with the release of an influential text called “Communiqué from an Absent Future.” At the same time, organizers linked themselves to demonstrations in Greece over the police murder of a 15-year old anarchist in the neighborhood of Exarcheia.

With the European crisis beginning in late 2010 and Arab Spring blossoming in early 2011, international resistance to gutter government became not only widespread, but populist in nature. In Greece, the “I Won’t Pay” movement took shape as normal citizens ignored tolls, transit ticket costs, and bills for healthcare. Governor Scott Walker’s anti-labor actions designed to eliminate collective bargaining were met with thousands of people descending on the Madison, Wisconsin State Capitol. Later that spring, the May 15th movement known as los Indignados took over public squares in Spain and Greece and demanded a radical change to the political milieu.

Millions of people around the world are waking up to the realization that capitalism is a pyramid scheme.

Our unity with the workers of the world extends beyond May Day. Radical movements must seek more than an end to illegitimate and authoritarian governments; we demand the recognition of universal rights, respect of individual autonomy and local decision-making, and an end to coercive and subordinate relationships in all areas of our lives. As Bob Black writes inThe Abolition of Work:

To demonize state authoritarianism while ignoring identical, albeit contract-consecrated, subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst … Your supervisor gives you more or-else orders in a week than the police do in a decade.

Our struggle has to be more than mere conflict with a rigged economic system. Economics do not exist in a vacuum, but at the convergence of complex political, financial, and military interests. Historical, social, and legal dimensions come into play with the understanding that markets perpetrate inequities by favoring those with more power, wealth, and privilege. To avoid essentialism, we must strike hard at the intersections that prop up systemic inequality, even as we focus on unbridled market fundamentalism itself.

One of the most dangerous institutions that undergird capitalist economic structure is the military-industrial complex.

On May 20-21st, tens of thousands will gather in Chicago to demonstrate against the NATO military bloc. Serving as the armed will of the U.S. and Western Europe, NATO accounts for a staggering 70% of the world’s military spending, money that is used to control strategic resources of the Global South on behalf of a Western capitalist economic minority. While the majority of the planet lives on less than $2 per day, NATO swallows $2 billion per week on a war that nobody seems to want. The reasons are simple: poverty and wealth are functions of politico-economic entanglement; when resources abroad like oil or precious metals are determined to be matters of national security, the politics of who deserveswhat comes into play.

Contrast the billions spent by countries on weapons and war technology and the amount of money spent on help for the poverty-stricken children, women and men of the Global South. A stark picture is soon painted.

As spokesman for the Coalition Against NATO/G-8 War & Poverty Agenda, Andy Thayer reminds us that Richard Nixon, President of the US in ‘68, was no friend of the working class. However, even despite being “ideologically… far to the right of any previous post-WW II president, and a notorious racist and anti-Semite to boot,” Nixon enacted a series of measures “that marked him as by far the most “progressive” president since the Great Depression—far to the left of, yes, President Obama.” Despite his conservative principles, a mass movement of citizen agitation forced Nixon to enact Affirmative Action, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), expand food stamps, nominate a Supreme Court that gave us Roe v. Wade, and finally, a wind-down of the Vietnam War.

Young men and women who join the military, many for an education or a job opportunity, are being slaughtered around the world as the American Empire advances, using poor countries as proxy in many cases. As many soldiers refuse to reenlist, the temptation of tactical nuclear strike grows for the Pentagon. Without an immediate demand for disarmament, a global nuclear war is almost certainly on the horizon; already, we see the case built for attacks on Iran and North Korea. Thayer’s call for continuous and forceful action against warmongering is an urgent one; the opportunity to act against imperial militarism must be seized in Chicago as Obama takes the stage in his effort to make the NATO summit the centerpiece of his reelection campaign.

Chicago 1968 marked the beginning of the end for the Vietnam War. Exposing NATO’s military expansionist policies in Chicago 2012 may provide a valuable victory for Occupy Wall Street and for the global justice movement as a whole. War must be understood as a critical underpinning of the capitalist agenda.

The call for a general strike and the mobilization of opposition to NATO’s military stranglehold, however, must only be the beginning of a growing and sustained process of radical organization: of fellow citizens in the workplace, in our neighborhoods, and in our schools. Our movement must include the homeless, the working poor, the uneducated, the societal marginalized—those most disadvantaged by capitalist exploitation. Radical mo(ve)ments such as these serve as a wake-up call, not only to socio-political elites faced with a critical mass demanding change, but to the entirety of the working class who have realized the power they seek lies in their own direct action. Profound social transformation must be at the root of any economic recovery.

We live in a time when half-hearted notions of “reform” are served only as a recuperative mechanism for capitalist greed, where governments pledge that the only escape from financial crisis must come through workers surrendering their rights, where the commons is privatized and the rights of all are turned into a bargaining chip that benefits only a few. Women’s bodies are turned into battlegrounds as politicians fight for office. Social services, education, and jobs are being slashed in a scorched-earth campaign to preserve power.

Historically, government has failed in its responsibilities, unless forced by direct action: sit-ins and Freedom Rides for the rights of black people, strikes and boycotts for the rights of workers, mutinies and desertions of soldiers in order to stop a war. Today, we can be sure we will not see any change from the status quo … unless popular upsurge demands it. The best way to make our demands known? Hit capitalism in its pocketbook.

I’ll meet you at the barricades.

One of the more prevalent images in the current epoch is that of militarization. The armed forces now take part in Hollywood production (the recent film Act of Valor, for example), one of the top selling video game series, Call of Duty, promises the most authentic war experience, and the line between news and military action is blurred by the embedding of journalists in active units – a move that has the potential to disrupt objective reporting on the events that occur. Popular musicians appear in videos aimed at increasing the levels of military recruits, and the ever-changing military slogans enter common lexicon at a rapid pace. This conflation of military advertising is by no accident. Ever since the creation of so-called “military Keynesian”¹ during the Cold War, the armed forces industry has risen to be one of the key sectors of both the US and global economy. The financial aspects of the military, be it the armament, logistics, or marketing sectors, are indeed a business, and they have a product to sell – war.

The military image is conducted upon the utilization of symbols that are branded as the Other, the enemy that threatens the sanctity or livelihood of the nation’s population. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union was the Other, portrayed in a manner that contrasted sharply with the domestic propaganda of the American Way of Life. The image of the USSR was used to sell to the American public unprecedented weapons build-up, violent interventions overseas, and the importance of US global supremacy. The largest post-Cold War conflict, the current War on Terror, saw Islamic fundamentalism – and centrally Osama Bin Laden – become the dominant symbol of evil, and it was used to justify expensive and needless wars, not to mention the rolling back of vital civil liberties on the home front.

Yet Bin Laden is now dead, and the wars rage on, unmoored from their symbolic context. Contrived justifications are wearing thin on a population growing wearing from the deaths, the costs, and the gruesome stories pouring forth from the television. With the branded image, war cannot exist, and without the war a dominant aspect of the economy is threatened to its very roots.

Enter Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord and leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army – a roving band of guerrilla fighters that consists primarily of kidnapped children-turned soldiers. Fueled by a curious combination of nationalism, Christianity, and occultism, Kony’s crimes – which include the aforementioned kidnappings and militarization of the youth, child sex slavery, and the massacring of civilian populations – have led to his indictment for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and his placement on the US’s list of known terrorists in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. While the horrors Kony have visited upon Uganda have been some of the egregious human rights abuses in the modern era, his forces have subsequently thinned out and have left Uganda, becoming scattered across the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and the Central African Republic.²  Regardless, this pivotal fact has not fazed an effective international campaign calling for the US to intervene into Uganda to finally fulfill the ICC’s mandate.

Kony 2012

On March 5, 2012, a thirty minute video titled simply “Kony 2012” was released on the social media platform Vimeo, a higher quality alternative to Youtube. In the short half hour running time, the viewer is given a crash course in the developed world’s opposition to Kony, including action kits to buy, campaigns to conduct, and requests to make of government leaders. Set to the tune of pop music and dubstep, the film’s primary mechanism for informing the viewer of the situation in Africa is the director, Jason Russell, explaining to his five year old son that Kony “is a bad guy.”

The video went viral immediately, with over 16 million views by the close of March. The aim of the film – “to make Kony famous” – was accomplished with unprecedented success, catapulting the warlord’s name one truly heard around the world. It’s an exciting prospect – thanks to the internet, the global citizenry can partake in a legitimate dialogue over problems facing the world and not be obstructed by geographical boundaries or racial and gender differences. It’s the latest event in a long line of actions derived from the modern era’s new technological prowess, following closely on the heels of the Obama election campaign, the Arab Spring revolutions, and Occupy Wall Street. But while these instances veer from the top-down (Obama’s treatment of new media forms) to the bottom-up (Arab Spring and OWS’s decentralized ethos), the true position of Kony 2012 and the Stop Kony movement that it spearheads has yet to be truly seen. There is gradually emerging evidence, however, that the campaign to raise awareness about Kony, while playing an essential role for the emergent global society, may be more in line with top-down procedures connected directly to the military establishment.

Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, a program officer at Clark University’s Strassler Center” for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, has noted that the Kony 2012 film is conducted not as a thoughtful analysis; instead, she argues, it’s rooted in simplistic advertising-style systematics.³ Facts are cast aside for emotional appeals, and viewers are, in a way, talked down to as broad comparisons permeate social consciousness that equate Kony with Hitler and Osama Bin Laden. Such relations are inherently linked to a militarized mindset – while, yes, Kony, Hitler, and Bin Laden were and are violent figures, juxtaposing their images together simultaneously creates an aura of evil that, historically, has only been toppled by the utilization of military force. The enemy, keep in tune with wartime propaganda, is reconfigured in the national perception as the embodiment of evil, one that we, as a benevolent and enlightened populace, have a responsibility to unseat.

Such imagery-based maneuvering, especially the utilization of figures that have been the center of two of the US’s larger conflicts, could lead the Kony 2012 to be seen as an exercise in aspects of “pre-propaganda,” a little known yet effective procedure that helps condition a population into a certain mental framework. Jacque Ellul describe pre-propaganda’s function as helping to:

prepare man for a particular action, to make him sensitive to some influence, to get him into condition for the time when he will effectively, and without delay or hesitation, participate in an action. Seen from this angle, pre-propaganda does not have a precise ideological objective… It proceeds by psychological manipulations, by character modifications, by the creation of feelings or stereotypes useful when the time comes.⁴

The Stop Kony movement does carry with it a certain lack of concrete ideology. While the campaign does seek to raise awareness and to create a grassroots lobby to bringing Kony to justice before the close of 2012, the details are hidden behind vague terms such as “arrest,” and we are none the wiser as to what this truly details. Will it be, indeed, military intervention, or will it be some other action conducted in transnational comity? Perhaps the unwillingness to address such questions directly comes from the fact that much of the LRA consists of child soldiers and thus themselves the victims of human rights abuses. A conflict between well-trained Special Forces and children would certainly raise a few eyebrows.

It’s this very specter of international intervention that has caused some outcry against the film in Uganda – “Suggesting that the answer is more military action is just wrong,” says one blogger from the country.⁵  Other Ugandans have criticized the film’s presumptuous tone, noting that as time has gone on Kony’s forces have lost much of their might and have become scattered. A spokesman from the Uganda government went as far to state “It is totally misleading that the war is still in Uganda… I suspect that if that’s the impression that they are making, they are doing it only to garner increasing financial resources for their own agenda.” ⁶  Regardless, the anti-Kony movement is preparing to conduct a national “Cover the Night” campaign for late April, involving the plastering of high-visibility parts of US cities with awareness-raising posters.

So who are the organizations behind Kony 2012? As one would suspect, none of them are Ugandan institutions; instead, the coalition consists of powerful American bodies with deep pockets and political clout. Primarily, the organizations are Invisible Children, the Enough Project, and Resolve (Uganda).⁷  Invisible Children is the only one of the three which could be certifiably grassroots, being run by several young filmmakers who produced a 2006 documentary of the same name. However, Enough and Resolve “are closely related to one another and to the upper echelons of the US government’s foreign policy establishment.” ⁸

Michael Barker has observed the interrelated nature of the two organizations, writing in a piece for Swans Commentary that “the former acting executive director of Enough (Cory Smith) is the vice president of Resolve; while Peter Quaranto, one of the four individuals who founded Resolve with the aid of the Africa Faith and Justice Network, presently works in the office of the US State Department’s Special Envoy to Sudan.” Meanwhile, Resolve’s founding Executive Director Michael Poffenberger has worked at the USAID-funded Grassroots Reconciliation Group.

Enough, launched in 2007, is itself a joint project of two, well-entrenched political machines, the International Crisis Group (ICG) and the Center for American Progress (CAP),⁹ and is partnered with equally prolific international bodies such as Human Rights Watch, the Genocide Intervention Network, the aforementioned Grassroots Reconciliation Group, and the Save Darfur Coalition. Reflecting these partnerships, Enough’s governing body interlocks closely with quite a few of them – for example, the organization’s co-chair, John Prendegast, is an adviser to both the ICG and the Grassroots Reconciliation Group, a director for the Save Darfur Coalition, and an endorser of the Genocide Intervention Network. His co-chair, Gayle Smith, became a senior fellow at CAP after a time at USAID, the World Bank, and an advisory position at Save Darfur’s sister organization, Olympic Dreams for Darfur. These ties are certainly not indicative of sinister conspiracy; they do represent common interests in troubled reasons – yet one certainly has to ask what drives these interests. While a great deal of members surely are involved for altruistic reasons, a closer look at Enough’s parents, the ICG and CAP, reveal a connecting thread of militarized rhetoric and certainly deserve deeper scrutiny.

The origins of the ICG date back to the mid-1990s, when Mark Molloch Brown, a PR man turned World Bank vice president, was joined by Morton I. Abramowitz, a State Department official and board member of the International Rescue Committee to create a “conflict prevention” organization in (rather ironically) the build-up to the NATO airstrikes in Serbia. ¹⁰  The seed money was provided by the liberal billionaire philanthropist, who now has been a long-time fixture on the ICG’s executive committee. By the same token, his primary philanthropic vehicle, the transnational Open Society Institute (OSI) has been a longtime funder of the organization.

Sitting alongside Soros in the ICG’s administrative wings are a practical who’s who of the military and corporate establishments. Zbigniew Brzezinski, the hawkish national security adviser to former President Jimmy Carter, former Boeing executive Thomas Pickering, NAFTA negotiator Carla Hills, former International Monetary Fund deputy director Stanley Fischer, and former NATO Supreme Commander Wesley Clark have all served the ICG in some capacity. Thus, it’s not surprising that by the organization’s own admission, the impetus behind their creation was to “persuade governments to do what it believes has to be done – if necessary by taking military measures.” ¹¹

The ICG goes to great lengths to cloak their militarized viewpoint in a liberal and humanitarian veneer, aligning itself with the Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P). Under R2P, a concept that has received the endorsement of Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, the World Federalists, and other transnational moderate bodies, [developed] nations have a responsibility to intervene in the affairs of [underdeveloped] countries or regions in order to ‘protect’ the population from human rights abuses – ignoring that frequently these very abuses stem from US military’s fist or from the imposition of Western economic models. The R2P doctrine was injected into transnational diplomacy following its drafting at the International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty, which was chaired by the Australian politician Gareth Evans. Incidentally, Gareth Evans went on to act as president of the ICG.¹²

Despite its recognition from the foreign policy elite, the doctrine has been met with criticism by those who see the potentials for conflict of interest in its implementation. Noam Chomsky, in a talk given at the UN General Assembly, attacked the tendency for R2P adherents to act rather selectively in their invocations of the doctrine:

The natural interpretation of the timing gains support from the selectivity of application of R2P. There was of course no thought of applying the principle to the Iraq sanctions administered by the Security Council, condemned as “genocidal” by the two directors of the oil-for-food program, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, both of whom resigned in protest. Von Sponeck’s detailed study of the horrendous impact of the sanctions has been under a virtual ban in the US and UK, the primary agents of the programs. Similarly, there is no thought today of protection of the people of Gaza, also a UN responsibility, along with the rest of the “protected population” (under the Geneva Conventions), denied fundamental human rights.¹³

Chomsky goes on to point out that the R2P doctrine was never invoked during the crisis in East Timor, where Indonesian occupying forces (with US backing) were conducting ethnic cleansing against the region’s indigenous populations. Perhaps the silence was due to the fact that none other than Gareth Evans, at the time acting as Australia’s foreign minister, had signed lucrative contracts with the Indonesia government to drill in East Timor.¹⁴  Evans subsequently declared the Indonesian occupation as “irreversible” and flippantly commented that there were “zillions” of dollars to be made by the country’s joint oil programs.¹⁵

The Center for American Progress (CAP),¹⁶ on the other hand, is a relatively new US-based political advocacy organization, having been started in 2003 with financial backing from Hebert M. and Marion O. Sandler (the liberal philanthropists behind the investigative journalism non-profit, ProPublica). While Sandlers may have put up the money for CAP, it was John Podesta, President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff, who crafted the organization into a well-oiled political machine. Modeled on powerful right-wing institutions such as the Heritage Foundation, Podesta envisioned the CAP as a “think-tank on steroids”– its program follows closely with the consumer-propaganda mentality, hosting a “edgy website,” maintaining a daily-operating “war room” to crank out talking points, and the recruitment of “hundreds of fellows and scholars” to draw up policy recommendations.¹⁷

The CAP’s agenda is costly, yet the majority of its financial backers remain undisclosed by the organization. It is known, however, that they have received money from Wal-Mart,¹⁸ a corporation that been represented on Capital Hill by Podesta’s lobbying company, the Podesta Group.¹⁹  Major funding also comes, much like the ICG, from George Soros, with the OSI providing CAP with $30,000 in 2006 for “general support” and much more money ever since.²⁰ Thus it’s not surprising that the OSI maintains high profile ties with the CAP: Morton H. Halperin, the director of the U.S. Advocacy at the Institute is a senior fellow at CAP;²¹ his son, David Halperin, is the senior VP of CAP’s subsidiary organization, Campus Progress. Furthermore, CAP is also funded in part by the Democracy Alliance,²² a consortium of high-profile liberal philanthropists that includes Drummond Pike (founder of the Tides Foundation), Robert H. Dugger (chief economist for the American Bankers Association), Gara LaMarche (former vice president of U.S. Programs at the OSI), and Soros himself on its membership rosters.

The CAP worked with another Soros-funded venture in 2007, MoveOn, as part of the pro-Democrat Party coalition, Americans Against Escalation in Iraq (AAEI). A faux-grassroots movement that was taking its marching orders from inside the Washington Beltway, the AAEI utilized the rage surrounding the American offensive in Iraq as a rhetorical talking point to channel activists into support for Democrat political candidates. As journalist Matt Taibbi observed:

[M]uch of the [AAEI’s] leadership hails from a consulting firm called Hildebrand Tewes Consulting — whose partners Steve Hildebrand and Paul Tewes served as staffers for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. … This is the kind of conflict of interest that would normally be an embarrassment in the activist community. … The really tragic thing about the Democratic surrender on Iraq is that it’s now all but guaranteed that the war will be off the table during the presidential campaign. Once again — it happened in 2002, 2004 and 2006 — the Democrats have essentially decided to rely on the voters to give them credit for being anti-war, despite the fact that, for all the noise they’ve made to the contrary, in the end they’ve done nothing but vote for war and cough up every dime they’ve been asked to give, every step of the way.²³

In an extension of its support for Democrat Party politics, the CAP, much like MoveOn, was a primary supporter of the Obama campaign, working with yet another OSI-supported outfit, Media Matters, to launch a PR organization simply titled “Progressive Media.”²⁴  Not surprisingly, veterans from the AAEI, Tom Matzzie and Tara McGuinness, were tapped to help run the operation. Subsequently CAP has operated quite closely with the administration, endorsing and campaigning for President Obama’s health care plan. Earlier, John Podesta himself had been selected to serve as co-chairman of the Obama-Biden Transition Project.²⁵

Just as Matt Taibbi predicted, the utilization of anti-war rhetoric served only to capture the activist voting bloc, while expedited troop de-escalation and withdrawal was never even near the table. In an about-face characteristic of the Democratic Party as a whole, the CAP went from opposing Republican-led maneuvers in the Middle East to arguing for an increase in military efforts under Obama. Their recommendations for a more hawkish approach to Middle East policy came in a report titled “Sustainable Security in Afghanistan,” and was the subject of a CAP-hosted forum called “A New Way Forward in Afghanistan.” ²⁶  In a complete evisceration of so-called progressive credentials, the report’s authors include Lawrence Korb, a director of National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and former Vice President of Operations at the defense contractor Raytheon; and Frederick Kagan, a senior scholar at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and a former member of the notoriously militaristic Project for the New American Century.²⁷

Contrasting sharply with the ICG and CAP, Invisible Children lacks direct ties to the transnational military establishment; its realm is far more grounded in the grassroots activist spectrum (although their board of directors includes Dave Karlman, who has been attached to the International Rescue Committee). ²⁸  Acting in this grassroots space, Invisible Children – in contrast from the ICG and CAP – does not receive funding from the large liberal foundational complex. Instead, as a quick peruse through the organization’s financial statements (which, in a meaningful display of transparency, are posted for all to view on the Invisible Children’s website), the bulk of the funders are either individual donors, smaller businesses, schools, and religious organizations. With this funding, the Invisible Children organization has been able to conduct an impressive strategy that engages the population by hosting school events, protests, and arranging conservations with important policy-makers.

Aside from Dave Karlman, the overwhelming majority of Invisible Children staffers come from religious organizations or joined up following screenings of the film that launched the movement, Invisible Children. Religion plays an important role in the initial motivators behind Invisible Children’s Action; Jason Russell himself is an evangelical Christian and has acknowledged that his worldview is related to his charitable work.²⁹  Thus, because of this, it has not been uncommon to see Christian missionaries, such as Living Waters International, at work with Invisible Children in Uganda on some of their more functional community-based programs, such as the repairing or construction of infrastructure that had been damaged during the war.

As Michael Barker and others have pointed out, one of the organizations that has been subsidizing Invisible Children is ProVision, an extension of the religious, right-wing National Christian Foundation.³⁰  He notes that this combine has been a financial clearinghouse for a myriad of organizations that make up the tapestry of the evangelical community – including “The Family,” (also known as “The Fellowship”), a Washington D.C.-based religious organization that hosts the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Ironically, given the National Christian Foundation’s connection to Invisible Children, The Family itself has complicity in human rights abuses in Uganda: as reported by investigator Jeff Sharlet, a “core member” of the organization, the Uganda parliamentarian David Bahati, helped pushed forward the proposed “Anti-Homosexuality Bill.”³¹  This act, which is still being debated in the Ugandan parliament, would make homosexuality a capital offense and punishable by death.

Not all of National Christian Foundation’s funding recipients are religious-oriented, however. A large portion of their money is marked for free-market think-tanks that lobby for neoliberal economic reforms; these include the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute.³²  While at first this may seem like a curious anomaly, the fact that a religious organization is supporting a certain economic platform is not a new phenomenon. The two have been essentially conjoined at the hip for much of modern American history – religious integration has been utilized as a perfect vehicle for economic imperialism and vice-versa.

One worthwhile study of this complex has been Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett’s Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil.³³ In their sprawling work, the two authors have tracked an extensive history showing the often-indirect (but undeniable collusion) between the religious right (mainly Christian missionaries), progressive politicians and figureheads (such as the Rockefeller family) and US foreign policy agencies in bringing that unruly hotbed of Leftist, Central and South America, in line with American geopolitical and economic imperatives. Earlier still, the Rockefellers had already noted that religious work operated rather harmoniously with market prerogatives. Frederick Taylor Gates, the family’s administrator of philanthropic funding, took careful note that “Missionary enterprise, viewed solely from a commercial standpoint, is immensely profitable. From the point of view of means of subsistence for Americans, our import trade, traceable mainly to channels of intercourse opened by missionaries, is enormous.”³⁴

One last important example of the relationship between religion and elite strategy is the case of the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive yet powerful consortium of right-wing politicians, businessmen, and evangelical leaders. In the early 1980s the CNP was joined by Colonel Oliver North, who saw in the organization a potential cash-cow for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.³⁵ The move proved to be wildly successful, and the evangelical community became an informal extension of US foreign policy in the south by providing both money and media coverage to help unseat the left-wing Sandinista government. Perhaps importantly, the CNP and the National Christian Foundation were established a mere six months apart and maintained an interlocking relationship between their founders.³⁶ Furthermore, the Foundation maintained funding ties to Christian charities run by the sister of Nelson Bunker Hunt, one of the CNP’s original benefactors and one of North’s key Contra supporters.³⁷  To show just how closely aligned this world is, Hunt was also found to be one of the primary financiers of missionary work in South America, much to the benefit of the Rockefeller family and the US government.³⁸

Managing the Spectacle for Larger Ambitions

In bringing together the ICG, CAP, and Invisible Children together under a common rubric, a multi-tiered advocacy campaign is capable of being launched across normal class, ideological, and geographical divisions. At the top level, the ICG is capable of managing the flow of information coming from Uganda and can effectively craft policy recommendations on the actions that it sees fit. Likewise, CAP can work on the national level, and with its extensive relationship with the PR industry, drive a campaign while simultaneously conduct political lobbying. Invisible Children’s impact is primarily on a localized, community level, using clever campaigning to create a grassroots voice demanding action from the leaders in Washington. Working in tandem, a Spectacle is woven that promotes a singular mindset that, as discussed earlier, reflects the top-down pop consumer mentality of the society it was fomented in.

The Spectacle, in the hands of those who seek aggression, can be a powerful tool; it can overwhelm an opposition, as in the case of  the Iraq War, and one just has to turn on the television set to see the sabre-rattling being conducted towards Iran. Gerald Sussman, Professor of Urban Studies and Communications at Portland State University, has written that contrary to the ideas of many scholars, information – the cornerstone of the Spectacle³⁹ – does not, in the modern epoch, have a neutral character:

In the consumer economy, the prevailing uses of processed data are not simply informational in character or designed as a public good… Rather they are primarily promotional, which involves a control of language in ways that displaces the value of general wisdom and “common sense” that historically emerged in sites where public conversation, debate, and consensus on necessities and meanings took place (the public sphere). ⁴⁰

Kony 2012, by eschewing analysis and legitimate education in favor of easily digestible talking points and emotional appeals, creates a rather hollow framework that helps to undermine the complex conversations that must be had on the issue. The conditioning of society to consume hollow informational bits – a topic far beyond the scope of this article – allows a cohesive aura to be constructed, and the result in this case is the mass calls for what appears to indeed be an intervention in Uganda. A recent Reuters piece quotes John Campbell, an African specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations, saying that the “campaign… definitively energizes the political level and that in turn energizes the diplomatic machine.”⁴¹  The article also quotes an official from the ICG, who notes that while the “campaign aims to harden the U.S.’s engagement in the fight against the LRA,” fears of the negative fallout from troop deaths could spell disaster for Obama in the upcoming electoral season.

The irony is that while the Kony awareness campaign is utilizing people power to pressure politicians into action, a great many players in the campaign are themselves members of the transnational foreign policy elite who operate outside of the White House. The ICG itself has already successfully utilized its standing in shaping President Obama’s policy towards Uganda; in 2010 it issued a report that recommended that the US government dispatch a team of specialists to help run an “intelligence platform” to centralize efforts between the country’s military and other regional armies. ⁴²  The Obama administration, in a very under-reported move, did just that – and the Kony 2012 video proceeded to cite this as an example of people power interacting with their government.

This rise of interventionist mindset towards Africa follows closely on the heels of NATO’s excursion into Libya, situated at the northern edge of the continent. The Libyan venture, explained away to the US population as support for the country’s rebels seeking to unseat the dictator Muammar Gaddafi, is a picture-perfect example of the R2P doctrine in action. Although, unlike the current Stop Kony campaign, it was not preceded by a seemingly politically engaged citizenry – it was a decision reached behind closed doors and far away from Congress. The primary catalyst for the excursion was one of Obama’s picks for his National Security Council, the self-proclaimed “humanitarian hawk” ⁴³  Samantha Power. ⁴⁴

Described by Human Rights Watch director Kenneth Roth as “[having] the president’s ear,” Power skyrocketed to prominence in 2003 after publishing A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which argued that the US government is the solution to much of the world’s problems. In crafting this argument, however, she curiously sidesteps instances where the US has been the catalyst for human rights abuses or simply obfuscates the nation’s complicity. Critic Edward Herman has observed that one such instance is the earlier-discussed mass extermination in East Timor: Power’s treatment of the crisis is limited to noting that “when… the oil-producing, anti-Communist Indonesia, invaded East Timor, killing between 100,000 and 200,000 civilians, the United States looked away” – ignoring that America “gave its approval, protected the aggression from any effective UN response… and greatly increased its arms aid to Indonesia, thereby facilitating the genocide.” ⁴⁵  Regardless, Power’s work was heavily endorsed by the foreign policy establishment and during the year of its publication, was awarded the Council on Foreign Relation’s Arthur Ross Book Award.

Power’s position in the Obama administration has been dominated by an elite-centric and rather technocratic state of mind connected directly to managing the flow of information and leveraging propaganda in favor of government action. Her husband and longtime Obama confidant, Cass Sunstein, was also tapped for a governmental position after the election as the head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). OIRA is tasked with “overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs,”⁴⁶ something that may be unsettling when one takes into consideration their new director has argued in a college thesis that the government should “employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-’independent’ advocates to ‘cognitively infiltrate’ online groups and websites — as well as other activist groups — which advocate views that Sunstein deems ‘false conspiracy theories’ about the Government. ” The justification, he continues, is that actions deemed to be conspiratorial are good, as long as it serves the “greater good.” ⁴⁷

In a similar vein, Power stated in a 2008 interview with Charlie Rose that controlling information would be required in the era of Obama, particularly when it came to the hope that US forces would be leaving Iraq – “Expectation calibration and expectation management is essential at home and internationally.”⁴⁸  Following this statement, she proceeded to deny that the Obama presidency would be viewed as a wartime leadership – and in the process revealed her elite-centric view towards US supremacy:

Part of having a credible American leader again who is unimplicated with the war in Iraq who is very attractive to people around the world, is to somehow use that early wind at his back to try to extract commitments to patrol the commons, to actually deal with these broken people and broken places.

In other words, the presence of a commander-in-chief who is outside of what is normally perceived as the military establish will be more conductive to militarized behavior. She attaches this rhetoric to references to “broken people and broken places” – linking the military directly to humanitarian relief, while her belief in the necessity of “patrolling the commons” reveals a distinctive police mentality.

Power has deep ties to foreign policy complexes, including ones that are directly tied to the current “Stop Kony” campaign. In 1996 she was a policy analyst for the ICG, and she has been a director at the International Rescue Committee. She was the founding executive director of Harvard University’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy; the organization, which interlocks with the ICG through Morton Abramowitz, would go on to be involved in developing counter-insurgency doctrines during the War on Terror. ⁴⁹  She is linked to the Investors against Genocide group – much like the Enough Project’s John Prendergast. Furthermore, Resolve lists her as a “LRA Strategy Power Player,” the group of politicians involved in the movement to intervene in Uganda.⁵⁰

Samantha Power is certainly not the centerpiece of the humanitarian intervention complex – but she is indicative of the prevailing attitude that military force can be used for good. By repositioning it in a liberal context, it’s distanced from the neoconservative “Peace through Strength” diplomacy that the Left has so long castigated. Yet America (and the UN and NATO by extension) has, historically, been selective in its military offensives and interventions; where there are no economic gains to be had or geostrategic interests to be defended, the financial and physical costs of war have never been put to use. Thus, the flowery rhetoric about humanitarian intervention and “responsibility to protect” has to be taken lightly.

When one pulls back the cover behind the “Stop Kony” people power, the usual collusion of business and military can be found. The military advisers dispatched to Uganda on the ICG’s recommendations operate under the auspices of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), the umbrella group overseeing all of the US’s actions on the African continent.⁵¹  While the creation of AFRICOM, which occurred under the George W. Bush administration, was shrouded in humanitarian overtones, it came about following a lobbying campaign conducted by the African Oil Policy Initiative Group (AOPIG). ⁵²  The AOPIG, in turn, is a consortium of representatives from the CIA, African oil companies, and other private interests. It is also linked to the Institute for Advanced Strategic & Political Studies – an Israeli-based think-tank that seeks to “shift America’s dependency on oil from the Gulf nations — hostile towards Israel — to other parts of the world.”⁵³ The AOPIG also has ties to the Free Africa Foundation, an African-oriented free-market advocacy group with its own connections to a network of US-based conservative foundations and think-tanks.⁵⁴

The existence of AFRICOM and its connections hint at a wider geopolitical agenda. While we now veer into the area of conjecture, it is certainly interesting to observe that many have linked AFRICOM to the presence of Chinese petroleum interests on the African continent: “Officials say that Chinese efforts to exert its military influence in Africa have drawn the interest of U.S. military planners,” Fox News reported,⁵⁵ while the BBC drew attention to the fact that “the US gets more than 10% of its oil from Africa and is worried about increased economic and diplomatic competition from China.” ⁵⁶ Extrapolating from that, the Libyan intervention can be viewed in a new light: Gaddafi’s government had entered into an oil partnership with the China, providing the country with 3% of its oil needs in 2010.⁵⁷ The Libyan rebels made a point to attack these Chinese oil installations, disrupting worker camps and breaking down the lines of communication. ⁵⁸  Chinese African oil interests are not only limited to Libya; the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation also signed exploratory deals with the government of Somalia⁵⁹ (another spot of interest for the US military), and has also been engaging in talks with Uganda’s up and coming oil industry.⁶⁰

Regardless of the ultimate reason for AFRICOM and the surge in US interest on the African continent, many Africans have worried that the American command umbrella will lead to a militarization of the continent’s culture. “Africa is going to look at all its development efforts through the lens of the Pentagon. That’s a truly dangerous dimension. We don’t need militarisation of Africa, we don’t need securitisation of aid and development in Africa,” the BBC quoted Kenyan columnist Salim Lone as saying.⁶¹  This militarized mindset, driven by AFRICOM, is indivisibly linked to the Stop Kony movement through both logistics (the presence of military advisers) and rhetoric (the innocuous calls for the warlord’s arrest). It has the potential to serve further goals, beyond just the possible short-term gains of geopolitical interest, but also sets a precedent for future propaganda about the role of the military in alleviating humanitarian crises.

The election of President Obama was fueled, in large part, by the population’s disgust in war. Organizations capitalized on this sentiment, funneling discontent into a powerful voting bloc, and now the same organizations are pushing for military action with a citizenry – legitimately concerned with the plight of the world’s oppressed and exploited – acting as the primary vanguard of the movement. This is no small part thanks to a well-orchestrated management of the flows of information, rooted in a mental framework that is all pervasive throughout modern society. This is a byproduct of informational breakdown, the obfuscation of motivation, and the possibility for the elite to derive action from conditioned emotional responses. It is through oversimplification and ‘digestible’ sound bites and images that important and worthwhile education of human abuses and global affairs – things that must be known and discussed – can be transmuted into a space where the adage “War is Peace” rings true.

1. “Military Keynesianism” refers to the methodology of utilizing military spending to inject money into the national economy, leading to a cozy relationship between the armed forces, the corporations that produce goods used by the armed forces, and the wings of the government that hold control over military activities. President Eisenhower immortalized the concept as the “military-industrial complex.”
2. Polly Curtis and Tom McCarthy, “Kony 2012: What’s the Real Story”, The Guardian, March 8, 2012
3. Mikaela Luttrell-Rowland, “Consumerism Trumps Education”, Huffington Post March 11, 2012
4. Jacque Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes, Vintage Books, 1965, pgs. 30-31
5. Mike Pflanza, “Joseph Kony 2012: growing outrage in Uganda over film”, The Telegraph, March 8, 2012
6. Ibid.
7. Michael Barker, “KONY 2012” Swans Commentary March 26, 2012
8. Ibid
9. “About” Enough Project
10. Tom Hazeldine, “The North Atlantic Counsel: Complicity of the International Crisis Group”,  New Left Review, May-June 2010
11. See Tom Hazeldine, “The North Atlantic Counsel: Complicity of the International Crisis Group“
12. Michael Barker, “Imperial Crusader for Global Governance”, Swans Commentary, April 20, 2009
13. Noam Chomsky,  “The Responsibility to Protect”,  Talk given at the UN General Assembly, New York City, July 23, 2009
14. Edward S. Herman, David Petersen,  “The Responsibility to Protect, the International Criminal Court, and Foreign Policy in Focus: Subverting the UN Charter in the Name of Human Rights”,  MRZine, August 24, 2009
15. Barker “Imperial Crusaders for Global Governance”
16. For more information the Center for American Progress, see my “Strange Contours: Resistance and the Manipulation of People Power” Dissident Voice December 21, 2012
17. Matt Bai,  “Notion Building”, The New York Times,  October 12, 2003
18. John McCormmack,  Corporatism and the Center for American Progress, The Weekly Standard, October 20, 2010
19. Justin Elliot, “Who’s Doing Mubarack’s Bidding in Washington?” Salon, January 28, 2011
20. Various Open Society Institute reports
21. Halperin is also on the steering committee of the Democracy Coalition Project, an initiative of the Open Society Institute that works closely with the UN Democracy Caucus.
22. Jim VandeHei, Chris Cillizza, “A New Alliance of Democrats Spreads Funding”, The Washington Post, July 17, 2006
23. Matt Taibbi, quoted in “Americans Against Escalation in Iraq”, Sourcewatch
24. John Strauber, “Progressive Media – A PR War Room for Obama”, March 28, 2009
25. Sam Stein, “Obama, McCain Transition Efforts are Worlds Apart”, Huffington Post, October 8, 2008
26. “A New Way Forward in Afghanistan”, Center for American Progress, April 3, 2009
27. The Project for the New American Century, or PNAC, had been a coalition of neoconservatives that had come together during the Clinton administration to lobby for an increase in military action to maintain global American supremacy – an outgrowth of the “Peace Through Strength” mentality that had been the hallmark of Reagan-era foreign policy. Over twenty members of the PNAC went on to serve in the administration of George W. Bush, whose foreign policy followed their recommendations very closely.
28. Barker, “Kony 2012”
29. “Jason Russell and Alex Harris – Liberty University Convocation”
30. Michael Barker, “Kony 2012”
31. “The Secret Reach of ‘The Family’”, NPR interview between Terry Gross and Jeff Sharlet, November 24, 2009
32. M. Reynolds, “Inside the #1 Religious Right Money Machine”, Political Cortex, October 29, 2006
33. Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done: The Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil, Harper Collins, 1995
34. E. Richard Brown, Rockefeller Medicine Men: Medicine and Capitalism in America, University of California Press, 1979 pg. 123
35. This will be discussed in my forth-coming book on the history of American democracy promotion.
36. Reynolds, “Inside the #1 Religious Right Money Machine”
37. See Reynolds, “Inside the #1 Religious Right Money Machine”
38. See Colby and Dennett, Thy Will Be Done
39. The “Spectacle” referred to here is the superficiality of informational communication flows and mass media present in the age of advanced (or Late) capitalism. See Guy Debord, Society of the Spectacle, Black & Red 2010 (reprint edition). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri summarize Debord’s notion of the Spectacle as “an integrated and diffuse apparatus of images and ideas that produces and regulates public discourse and opinion.” Michael Hart and Antonio Negri, Empire Harvard University Press, 2000, pg. 321
40. Gerald Sussman, Branding Democracy: U.S. Regime Change in Post-Soviet Eastern Europe, Peter Lang, 2010, pg. 11
41. Peter Apps, “Seen by as seen by millions, will Uganda Kony video matter?” Reuters
42. “LRA: A regional strategy beyond Killing Kony”,  International Crisis Group,  April 28, 2010
43. Sholto Byrnes,  “Interview: Samantha Power“,  New Statesmen,  March 6, 2008
44. Sheryl Gay Strolberg,  “Still Crusading, but Now on the Inside“,  The New York Times,  March 29, 2011
45. Edward Herman,  “Response to Zinn on Samantha Power”,  ZNet,  August 27,  2007
46. “Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs”
47. Glenn Greenwald,  “Obama confidant’s spine-chilling proposal“, Salon,  January 15, 2010
48. Paul Street,  “‘Calibrating’ HOPE in the effort to “Patrol the Commons:” Samantha Power and the Hidden Imperial Reality of Barack Obama”,  ZNet,  February 25,  2008
49. Tom Hayden,  “Harvard’s Humanitarian Hawks”.  The Nation,  July 14, 2007
50. “Samantha Power”
51. Thomas P.M. Barnett,  “Africom to Work Lord’s Resistance Army Problem With Uganda”, Time,  October 17, 2011
52. “Ghana Oil – Seeking National or Some Personal Selfish Interests?” GhanaWeb,  February 1, 2010
53. Paul-Michael Wihbey,” Africa Energy Intelligence, November 5, 2002
54. One of the supporters of the Free Africa Foundation is Peter Ackerman, the managing director Rockport Capital Incorporated. Ackerman also holds deep ties to the US democracy promoting complex, acting as chairman of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict, which is funded in party by the US government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). Ackerman’s further credentials include acting as the former chairman of Freedom House, which also receives funding from the NED. Furthermore, Ackerman is a board member of the libertarian CATO Institute. In a similar vein, the Free Africa Foundation’s president, George Ayittey – who is also a member of the African Oil Policy Initiative Group – is a scholar at the CATO Institute, while another Free Africa Foundation board member, Theodore J. Forstmann, serves on the board of both CATO and Freedom House.
55. “Bush Approves New US Command in Africa”,  February 6, 2007
56. “US to get Africa command center”,  BBC News,  February 6, 2007
57. “Gaddafi’s fall threatens Chinese investments in Libya”,  Asia News,  August 24, 2011
58. Leslie Hook and Geoff Dyer,  “Chinese oil interests attacked in Libya”,  Financial Times,  February 24, 2011
59. Barney Jopson,  “Somalia Oil Deal for China”,  Financial Times,  July 13, 2007
60. “China’s State Oil Company in Talks for Uganda Refinery”,  Voice of America,  February 23, 2012
61. Daniel Gordon,  “The Controversy Over Africom”, October 3, 2007

Not only did the action cost many thousands of lives and untold destruction, it also paved the way for perpetual conflict – not only in Libya but throughout north Africa.

Mali was the first major victim of NATO’s Libyan intervention. It is now a staple in world news and headlines such as “The mess in Mali” serve as a mere reminder of a bigger “African mess.”

On March 17 last year resolution 1973 resolved to establish a no-fly zone over Libya.

On March 19, NATO”s bombers began scorching Libyan land, supposedly to prevent a massacre of civilians.

The next day, an ad-hoc high-level African Union panel on Libya met in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, and made one last desperate call to bring Nato’s war to an immediate halt.

It stated: “Our desire is that Libya’s unity and territorial integrity be respected as well as the rejection of any kind of foreign military intervention.”

The African Union (AU) is seldom considered a viable political player by the UN, NATO or any interventionist Western power.

But AU members were fully aware that NATO was unconcerned with human rights or the well-being of African nations.

They also knew that instability in one African country can lead to major instabilities throughout the region.

Various north African countries are glued together by a delicate balance – due to the messy colonial legacy inherited from colonial powers – and Mali is no exception.

It is perhaps too early to talk about winners and losers in the Mali fiasco, which was triggered on March 22 by a military coup led by army captain Amadou Sanogo.

The coup created political space for the Tuaregs’ National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad (MNLA) to declare independence in the north merely two weeks later.

The declaration was the culmination of quick military victories by MNLA and its militant allies, which led to the capture of Gao and other major towns.

These successive developments further emboldened Islamic and other militant groups to seize cities across the country and hold them hostage to their ideological and other agendas.

Ansar al-Din, for example, had reportedly worked in tandem with the MNLA, but declared a war “against independence” and “for Islam” as soon as it secured its control over Timbuktu.

More groups and more arms are now pouring through the ever-porous borders with Mauritania, Algeria and Niger.

Al-Tawhid wa al-Jihad, along with al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) are now making their moves across Mali.

New alliances are being formed and new emirates are being declared, making Mali a potential stage for numerous permanent conflicts.

Speaking to the Guardian, former UN regional envoy Robert Fowler railed against NATO:

Whatever the motivation of the principal NATO belligerents [in ousting Gadaffi], the law of unintended consequences is exacting a heavy toll in Mali today and will continue to do so throughout the Sahel as the vast store of Libyan weapons spreads across this, one of the most unstable regions of the world.

Considering that the inevitability of post-Libya destabilisation was obvious to so many from the start, why the insistence on referencing a “law of unintended consequences”?

Even “chaos” has its own logic. For several years, and especially since the establishment of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2008, much meddling has taken place in various parts of Africa.

Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Gregory Mann tried to undermine the fact that Sanogo “had American military training, and briefly affected a US Marine Corps lapel pin.”

He said that these details “are surely less important than the stunning fact that a decade of American investment in special forces training, co-operation between Sahalien armies and the United States and counter-terrorism programmes of all sorts run by both the State Department and the Pentagon has, at best, failed to prevent a new disaster in the desert and, at worst, sowed its seeds.”

The details are hardly “less important,” considering that Sanogo called for international military intervention against the newly declared Tuareg republic, referencing Afghanistan as a model.

True, regional African countries and international institutions have strongly objected to both the military coup in the capital Bamako and the declaration of independence by the Tuaregs in the north, but that may prove irrelevant after all.

The Azawad succession appears permanent and the US, although it suspended part of the aid to Mali following the junta’s takeover, has not severed all ties with Sanogo.

After all, he too claims to be fighting al-Qaida and its allies.

It is difficult to believe that despite years of US-French involvement in Mali and surrounding region, the bedlam wasn’t predictable.

The US position regarding the coup was precarious.

“The Obama administration has not yet made a formal decision as to whether a military coup has taken place in Mali,” wrote John Glaster in AntiWar.com.

According to US military definitions, this is still a “mutiny, not a ‘coup’” and US army personnel – referred to as “advisory troops” – were, in fact, dispatched to Bamako after March 22, according to AFRICOM spokeswoman Nicole Dalrymple.

What is clear is that the “mess in Mali” might be an opportunity for another intervention, which mainstream media sources are already rationalising.

A Washington Post editorial on April 5 counseled:

NATO partners should perceive a moral obligation, as well as a tangible national security interest, in restoring Mali’s previous order. The West should not allow its intervention in Libya to lead to the destruction of democracy – and entrenchment of Islamic militants – in a neighbouring state.

Unintended consequences? Hardly.

Libya

In his March 19, 2011 interview with Stephen Shalom (“Libyan Developments”) Achcar discusses what he says is the “composition of the opposition,” which he said was the case for “all the other revolts shaking the region.” They were “very heterogeneous,” and that in “all the disparate forces [there] is a rejection of the dictatorship and a longing for democracy and human rights.”¹

This was written and published nearly a month after numerous reports began coming in about vicious “rebel” attacks on black Africans. But for Achcar, who says nothing of the plight of black Africans, their tormentors long for “human rights.”

As for these “disparate forces” Achcar said “the Libyan opposition represents a mixture of forces, and the bottom line is that there is no reason for any different attitude toward them than to any other of the mass uprisings in the region.” But there were not, in places like Egypt, Bahrain and Tunisia, former regime officials (with the likes of former Libyan justice minister, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil) leading the rebels in alliance with the West, nor the racist attacks on minorities. Egypt and Tunisia didn’t need several months of NATO bombings to overthrow their governments, nor did they need to carry out terrorist attacks, indiscriminately shelled civilians, torture, execute and deny humanitarian assistance. And unlike Benghazi, Egyptian and Tunisian didn’t fly Al Qaeda flags over their courts following their revolutions. Achcar’s “bottom line” is simply false. There was and still are plenty of reasons to have a different attitude towards what happened in Libya and what happened in Egypt and Tunisia.²

In Egypt and Tunisia the uprisings were actually greeted with popular support. In Libya it was the Gaddafi regime which retained the popular support, as witnessed by the massive pro-government rally³ in Tripoli in July of 2011, the “citizen volunteers”⁴ of Sirte, and the residents of Bani Walid⁵ who have reclaimed their town since the fall of the government. It’s worth remembering that Libyan “rebels” would never have been able to overthrow the government and unleash the nightmare that they did without the help of NATO. Or as Luis Rumbaut, a Cuban-American lawyer put it:

At its peak, the 26 of July Movement had some 300 fighters, ill fed and poorly armed, bitten by mosquitoes and accompanied by the rain. Against them, Gen. Fulgencio Batista mobilized an army, a navy, an air force, a coast guard, and the Rural Guard, aside from a network of spies and irregular bands of enforcers at his command.

How could the 26 of July Movement have achieved victory? The majority of the people were against Batista and for the 26 of July. There was also an active underground, and organized resistance among student, union, and political organizations. Batista fell because he had no support. Revolutions succeed when the system they replace can no longer survive.

Libya’s rebels are a different story …⁶

In the same interview with Shalom, Achcar spoke of “the urgency of preventing the massacre that would have inevitably resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces, and the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal,” by saying that “no one can reasonably oppose” UN Resolution 1973.

The problem that many on the left had was not so much the wording of the resolution—though it was pointed out how one-sided it was in that the resolution demanded “that the Libyan government comply with their obligations under international law, including international humanitarian law, human rights and refugee law and take all measures to protect civilians and meet their basic needs, and to ensure the rapid and unimpeded passage of humanitarian assistance,” but said nothing of the legal obligations of the rebels—but that hardly anyone expected the US and NATO to actually protect civilians, de-escalate the conflict, or accept a cease fire (which the resolution made its first demand for). In fact, by the time the resolution was adopted, and Achcar’s interview was published, the Libyan government had already offered a cease fire which was rejected!

Here is a list of the numerous ceasefire offers. The source of the offers is revealing.⁷

February

25| Gaddafi’s Son Sees Negotiaton, Ceasefire in Libya

25| Gaddafi’s Son to Negotiate Ceasefire

March

18| Libya Calls Ceasefire in Response to UN Resolution

18| Pro-Gaddafi Forces to Observe Ceasefire

18| Libya Ceasefire Analysis

18| David Cameron Cautious over Libya Ceasefire Offer

18| Gaddafi’s Ceasefire May Split Coalition

18| Clinton Unimpressed by Libya’s Ceasefire Pledge

19| Libyan Minister Claims Gaddafi is Powerless and the Ceasefire is Solid

21| US-led Forces Reject Gaddafi Ceasefire

27| Turkey Offers to Broker Ceasefire Talks

April

1| Libyan Rebels Prepared to Accept Ceasefire if Gaddafi Lifts Sieges, Allows Protests

1| Libyan Rebels Seek Ceasefire as US Vows to Withdraw Jets

6| Gaddafi Accepts African Roadmap to End Libya Civil War Including Ceasefire

7| Gaddafi Writes to Obama, Urging End to Airstrikes

10| Libyan Rebels Spurn African Union Ceasefire Unless Gaddafi Gives Up Power

11| Ceasefire ‘Must Meet UN Conditions’ says Hague

11| Benghazi Rebels Reject African Union Truce Plan

13| Crucial Libya Talks as Rebels Again Reject Ceasefire

19| UN Appeals for Libya Ceasefire

30| Gaddafi Calls for Ceasefire as NATO Strikes Tripoli

30| Muammar Gaddafi Calls for Ceasefire in Libyan TV Address

30| Libyan Rebels Reject Gaddafi Offer

30| Libyan Opposition Rejects Gaddafi Truce Offer

30| Rebels and NATO dismiss Gaddafi Truce Offer

May

3| Turks Offer Libya Ceasefire Plan as Western, Arab Officials Meet in Rome

26| Libya Ready for Ceasefire, Demands End to NATO Strikes

26| Libyan Regime Makes Peace Offer that Sidelines Gaddafi

26| Libya’s Prime Minister Calls for Ceasefire

26| White House Says Libya Ceasefire Not Credible

26| Libya Ceasefire Offer Regarded Coldly by the West

26| Libya Approaches Spain for NATO Ceasefire

27| Comment: Why no mention of a Ceasefire for Libya, Obama?

27| US Rejects Libya Ceasefire, Vows War will Continue

28| Talks Under Way to End Libya Fighting

29| South Africa PM to Visit Gaddafi, Push for Ceasefire and Talks

31| Zuma Says Gaddafi Ready for Truce

31| Gaddafi Wants Truce in Libya, Says Zuma, but Terms Remain Unclear

June

2| Comment: NATO’s Strategy in Libya is Working – Talks with Gaddafi Won’t

10| Libya’s Gaddafi Writes to Congress for Ceasefire

11| Gaddafi Ceasefire Letter to USA

11| Gaddafi’s Letter to Congress Urges Ceasefire

21| Arab League Chief Calls for Ceasefire and Political Solution

22| Italy Asks NATO to Consider Ceasefire in Libya

22| Italy Ceasefire Call Exposes NATO Split on Libya

22| Italy Urges Suspension of Hostilities

22| Downing Street Rejects Allies’s Call for Libyan Ceasefire

22| France Rejects Italian Libya Ceasefire Call

23| Italian Minister Calls for Libyan Ceasefire

23| Italy Breaks Ranks to Call for Ceasefire in Libya so Aid can Get Through

26| Calls for Ceasefire in Libya Ring Louder

[Arab League has Second Thoughts About Air-Strike]

26| Gaddafi Vows Not to Put Pressure on AU Peace Talks

27| Comment: Libya is not Ready for a Political Solution

July

3| Libya Rebels Welcome African Union’s Gaddafi-Free Talks Offer

12| Nato Suggests Ramadan Libya Ceasefire

17| NATO Chief Cautious on Libya Ceasefire

20| France: Ceasefire Deal Could Include Gaddafi Remaining in Libya

21| France Says Gadaffi Can Stay in Libya if He Relinquishes Power

22| UN Peace Envoy Suggests a Ceasefire to be Declared

22| UN Plan Sees Unity Government in Post-Gaddafi Libya

26| Comment: Libya’s Stalemate Shows it is Time to Tempt Gaddafi Out, Not Blast Him Out

28| UN Official: Truce and Transitional Pact Key to Ending Libya Crisis

August

12| UN Calls for Ceasefire in Libya and Political Talks by Gaddafi and Rebels

15| UN Envoy Seeks Ceasefire to Break Impasse in Libya with Tunisia Meetings

18| Gaddafi Regime Urges Ceasefire as Libya Rebels Claim Control of Key Refinery

18| Casualties Mount in West Libya as Regime Urges Ceasefire

18| Libya Regime PM Calls for a Ceasefire

19| Libya Regime Calls for Ceasefire

24| Gaddafi’s Son Offers to Broker Ceasefire

September

1| NATO Keeps War Footing Until Gaddafi Regime is Smashed

4| The UN was Hijacked on Libya

28| Venezuela Calls for Libyan Ceasefire

Notice the date of the offers and those that preceded Achcar’s interview and his comment about “the absence of any alternative means of achieving the protection goal.” And let’s not forget that President Obama responded to the African Union’s attempt to negotiate a peaceful settlement by sending an envoy to the region to pressure them to stop their efforts.⁸

Which brings up another thing. Achcar wrote of “the urgency of preventing the massacre that would have inevitably resulted from an assault on Benghazi by Gaddafi’s forces.” Elsewhere in the interview Achcar also said, “The fact remains, nevertheless, that if Gaddafi were permitted to continue his military offensive and take Benghazi, there would be a major massacre,” and that “from an anti-imperialist perspective one cannot and should not oppose the no-fly zone, given that there is no plausible alternative for protecting the endangered population.”

Somehow it is anti-imperialist to go along with an imperialist intervention on the dubious grounds that it’s a “humanitarian intervention.” And like other pro-interventionsts at the time, Achcar says nothing about the validity of the claim itself. Had he bothered to look he would have found out that the claims were made by the rebels themselves, and there was no evidence to support the claim. Nearly three weeks before Achcar talks of “the urgency,” the Russian government said their satellite images revealed no truth to the claim.⁹

This kind of incident is not without an historical precedent. It was in August of 1990 when the US launched Operation Desert Shield for the claimed purpose of protecting Saudi Arabia from an Iraqi invasion, which was said to be imminent as Iraqi troops were moving towards the border. Like the Benghazi claim, Russia furnished evidence to the contrary.

Even the person at the UN who spread the Benghazi claim, later admitted he had no evidence and was basing it on what the rebels told him. It was Dr. Sliman Bouchuiguir, the Secretary-General of the Libyan League for Human Rights, who went to the UN to make the claim without it ever being verified. It was accepted hook, line and sinker, and the rest is, as the saying goes, history.¹⁰

And it wasn’t just that many saw the UN resolution as an escalation of the conflict, rather than a de-escalation. Many also didn’t think the US/NATO would protect civilians. Again as noted, by the time the resolution was adopted it was already known that NATO’s racist rebels were already committing massacres of black Africans. And as time went on these massacres turned into a full-blown campaign of ethnic cleansing and genocide, all of which received no concern or interest from the NATO powers who were “protecting civilians” in Libya, and certainly not activists like Gilbert Achcar who saw the perpetrators as “longing for democracy and human rights.”

Worse, at one point Achcar actually had the nerve to write that he “won’t dwell on the unacceptable arguments of those who try to shed doubt on the nature of the uprising’s leadership.” For Achcar, anyone who dared to criticize them “are most often the same as those who believe Gaddafi is a progressive.” It was very troubling to read a leftist scholar like Achcar say that it is unacceptable to doubt leaders, and to claim that those who do are apologists for a dictator. This was the same argument the pro-war right-wingers used against anti-war activists in the rush to war with Iraq in 2003. If you opposed the war then you were an apologist for Saddam Hussein. This is an observation worth consideration, especially when Achcar’s pro-US war in Syria is being repeated.¹¹

Considering Achcar’s silence on the things mentioned above and his comment in the interview with Shalom that “one must maintain a very critical attitude toward what the Western powers might do,” it is hard to imagine he himself maintained such an attitude. Where was the critical attitude towards the rebel leadership, which he said it was “unacceptable” to have? Where was the critical attitude towards their claims?

It would be bad enough that he made the colossal mistake once, but now Achcar is making it again. This time in regards to Syria. The difference between his mistake on Libya is that he at least had some (though not much) protection of criticism since his comments preceded much of the nightmare that happened afterwards.

For example, the ceasefire offers by the Libyan government continued, while the rebels rejected them and carried out massive war crimes.

Earlier this year the UN released its Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, where it too notes that there was no evidence of genocide by Gaddafi’s forces. While they did find excessive use of force against their political opponents, “the Commission has not found evidence that one particular group was targeted more than others.” However, they did find extensive evidence of the rebels targeting various communities, including Tawerghans. It also noted that “from the beginning of the uprising in February 2011, dark-skinned migrant workers were targeted – including being killed,” and that, “The Commission continues to receive reports of sub-Saharan Africans, some long-term residents of Libya, being arbitrarily arrested and beaten in detention.” It also noted that it is “deeply concerned that no independent investigations or prosecutions appear to have been instigated into killings committed by [the rebels].” Much of the documented crimes committed by the rebels amount to genocide, though of course considering the politicization of the UN it is not likely that their reasonable “recommendations” will ever be implemented, or that the UN will ever refer it to the ICC.¹²

The report also found no evidence of Gaddafi using mercenaries, or child soldiers. This is not surprising because there was never any proof of the “mercenaries.” Amnesty International was in Libya looking into this from late February to late May. After three months of looking this is what they had to say,

We examined this issue in depth and found no evidence. The rebels spread these rumors everywhere, which had terrible consequences for African guest workers: there was a systematic hunt for migrants, some were lynched and many arrested. Since then, even the rebels have admitted there were no mercenaries, almost all have been released and have returned to their countries of origin, as the investigations into them revealed nothing.¹³

That being said, Amnesty International could have identified foreign mercenaries operating in Libya … against the will of the population. And the whole world already knows the location of their headquarters. They are a composite of professional soldiers from different countries and belong to a single organization they call NATO, whose headquarters is located in Brussels, Belgium.

Back to the UN report. It said that while they “received reports of theft on a small scale perpetrated by Qadhafi forces during the conflict,” what they were able to establish was “widespread pillaging and destruction of public and private property across the country” by the rebels.

As far as sexual violence the report found that most of the claims against Gaddafi’s forces “cannot be relied upon” because they “believe that there is a strong possibility that the confessions were made under torture.”

Furthermore, the claim that Gaddafi attacked civilian institutions was confirmed, however in many instances the Commission either “could not determine without further investigation whether schools, hospitals and mosques and other civilian objects were hit deliberately,” or found that the civilian objects were being used by the rebels and therefore “could not consider them as purely civilian objects,” and “after these buildings could be said to have taken on a military character by encouraging or supporting combat operations [...] their targeting would not necessarily violate international law.”

In other words, the overall picture puts “the disparate forces” who long for “democracy and human rights” as the main perpetrators of the genocidal violence, not Gaddafi’s forces.

Syria

As noted, it is one thing that Achcar made such a mistake once, but twice?

In a recent interview on Syria, again features on ZNet, Achcar says that, “The Syrian National Council is a heterogeneous combination of people.”¹⁴

Déjà vu.

He also says that, “The SNC is held together by the pressure of various states intervening in the Syrian situation,” and that the SNC is staffed “with a number of figures linked to Western governments, the US or France in particular.” This may be the most truthful thing he says, though he downplays it by not specifying the “figures linked to Western governments,” and by stressing that, “The Syrian opposition within the country starts, of course, with the Local Coordination Committees (LCC),” who Achcar says is “the most authentic representation of the uprising in the sense that they are its principal organizers” of which he says “are networks of people, mostly young, coordinating the mobilization.”

As with Libya, it’s worth noting that Achcar steers away from the specifics. Those with links to the Western governments that are holding the SNC together, or the links off the LCC’s to the SNC and foreign governments, again, goes un-named. As is the quality of their claims. Though there is already plenty to draw from. Writers like Patrick Cockburn of The Independent UK and Robert Dreyfuss of The Nation have written on the propaganda of the Syrian activists.

Before continuing it should also be pointed out that Achcar, in his recent interview, continues to defend his pro-intervention position on Libya even after all that is now known. While he says that in Libya there was “no other group challenging [the TNC] as representing the Libyan opposition,” he fails to note how much more popular the regime was, or how it took a nearly eight-month long bombing campaign, coupled with rebels committing ethnic cleansing and indiscriminately bombing civilians and disrupting the delivery of humanitarian aid to overthrow the government, or how the rebels faced stiff resistance from “citizen volunteers” in places like Tripoli, Bani Walid, and Sirte.

And even after Achcar says that Libya is now “a chaotic country with the state being replaced by independent armed groups” he goes on to refer to what happened in Tripoli as “liberation,” with no mention of the well-documented tortures, massacres and executions that followed. And Achcar certainly doesn’t call what the residents of Bani Walid did when they took back their town a “liberation.” In fact, Achcar simply ignores them and their struggle, like that of black Africans or the people of Sirte where Achcar’s rebels said the people “chosen to die” by not siding with them.¹⁵

Achcar even points out that last August he was opposed to continued NATO bombing (note he doesn’t say he was opposed to it entirely, just “the continuation of the bombing by NATO”), though was “calling instead for arms deliveries to the insurgents.” But by August “the insurgents” were already well underway to committing massive war crimes, and crimes against humanity and Achcar continued to support arming them. In fact, Human Rights Watch (HRW)¹⁶ reported on rebel abuses and said that, “How the rebels behave in towns that have supported Gaddafi gives an indication of what they may do if they gain control in other areas, especially if they approach Tripoli.” And when they did approach Tripoli their indication proved all too true. In an article by Independent journalist Kim Sengupta in late August, titled “Rebels settle scores in Libya”, [17]

The killings were pitiless.

They had taken place at a makeshift hospital, in a tent marked clearly with the symbols of the Islamic Crescent. Some of the dead were on stretchers, attached to intravenous drips. Some were on the back of an ambulance that had been shot at. A few were on the ground, seemingly attempting to crawl to safety when the bullets came.

Around 30 men lay decomposing in the heat. Many of them had their hands tied behind their back, either with plastic handcuffs or ropes. One had a scarf stuffed into his mouth. Almost all of the victims were black men.¹⁷ [emphasis added]

Back to Syria.

In “The United States Should Stay Out of Syria,” by The Nation’s Robert Dreyfuss, the writer wastes no time and gets to the point:

Lined up in support of regime change in Damascus are the Middle East’s major Sunni powers, led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Also backing regime change, though less publicly, is the international network known as the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni powerhouse that is providing much, if not most, of the increasingly militarized Syrian opposition forces, especially in Sunni strongholds such as Homs. And backing the Sunni-led regional forces for regime change is NATO, the United States and its allies, who are outraged, just outraged, that Russia and China would dare to veto a carefully crafted UN Security Council resolution targeting President Bashar al-Assad.¹⁸

Dreyfuss then goes on to quote Aisling Byrne of Asia Times as writing, “What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime ‘more compatible’ with US interests in the region.”

Yet the most explosive comment was when Dreyfuss wrote that,

The killings in Syria are ugly, but no doubt wildly exaggerated. Nearly all, repeat all, of the information about the violence in Syria is coming from a handful of exiled Syrian opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and various Western powers. Did 200 people really die in Homs this past weekend, conveniently just on the eve of the UNSC debate? Who knows? The only source for the fishy information, though ubiquitously quoted in the New York Times, the wire services, the network news and elsewhere, are the suspect Syrian opposition groups, who have axes galore to grind.

It’s not just the Times, but even the BBC, and nearly all of the mainstream press.

As for the BBC, in their online article “Syria crisis: Shelling ‘kills dozens’ in restive Homs” we read about how, “The worst shelling has been in the Baba Amr district, where activists say 50 people were killed on Wednesday alone.”¹⁹ [emphasis added]

Who are these “activists”? Why “The Local Co-ordination Committees, a network of anti-government,” of course, or as Dreyfuss put it: “a handful of exiled Syrian opposition groups backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and various Western powers,” and getting considerable coverage from the dominant press.

Patrick Cockburn of The Independent has also written on the propaganda element that is facilitated by the Western media:

The Syrian opposition needs to give the impression that its insurrection is closer to success than it really is. The Syrian government has failed to crush the protesters, but they, in turn, are a long way from overthrowing it. The exiled leadership wants Western military intervention in its favour as happened in Libya, although conditions are very different.

The purpose of manipulating the media coverage is to persuade the West and its Arab allies that conditions in Syria are approaching the point when they can repeat their success in Libya. Hence the fog of disinformation pumped out through the internet.²⁰

Writing for al Akhbar in late February, Sharmaine Narwani wrote in her piece “Questioning the Syrian ‘Casualty List’” about Nir Rosen’s coverage within Syria. Narwani quoted Rosen as saying,

Every day the opposition gives a death toll, usually without any explanation of the cause of the deaths. Many of those reported killed are in fact dead opposition fighters, but the cause of their death is hidden and they are described in reports as innocent civilians killed by security forces, as if they were all merely protesting or sitting in their homes.²¹

All of this, on the claims of the Syrian opposition, precede Achcar’s interview by months. It is amazing that in the nearly 3,500 words Achcar questions the validity of their claims.

And again there is absolutely nothing about the violence of the Syrian opposition. The torture, terrorist attacks, murder, using civilian institutions as military installations, and killing of foreign journalists doesn’t get any mention from Achcar.

While there was a lot of coverage in the mainstream press about the two Western journalists who were killed in Syria earlier this year, it is noteworthy that there was considerable less attention and outrage at a French journalist killed in Syria, especially after it was revealed the victim was killed by armed opposition forces. There is another aspect about the most recent killings of the two journalists that is (predictably) not being emphasized on: they were not only embedded with the Free Syrian Army, but the “media center” they were operating from was in an apartment building—a residential building.

According to Spiegel Online, “They had been in the back of the apartment serving as the “media center” when the first missile shook the room.” Later the article notes that, “Increasingly little word was coming from the surviving activists in the “media center,” which was moved from the third to the first floor of a residential building.”²²

Initially, articles were questioning whether or not the Syrian government was specifically targeting these journalists. Case in point, this recent article by the New York Times says that “citizen journalists in Homs have been killed recently in what activists interpret as part of a deliberate campaign to choke off news of the opposition.” The article also notes that “the two journalists died after shells hit the house in which they were staying…”²³

What is interesting about the coverage is that there is no questioning the FSA for using residential buildings for military operations even though that is a serious war crime. It is using the people as a human shield, and increases the civilian casualty rate. There was no condemnation from the US or other Western powers, and certainly not Qatar, Saudi Arabia, or even Gilbert Achcar.

So when the Times reports that, “The French foreign minister, Alain Juppé also said in a statement that he had called on the Syrian government to order an immediate halt to the attacks on Homs and to respect its ‘humanitarian obligations,’ ” it is strange how there is no mention of the “humanitarian obligations” of the Free Syrian Army, nor was any similar statement issued when Gilles Jacquier was killed at a pro-government rally last month by the resistance, along with Belgian journalist Steven Visner and seven civilians. Rather, Juppé called on the Syrian government “to ensure the security of international journalists on their territory, and to protect this fundamental liberty which is the freedom of information.” To be sure, for the recent incident, Juppé didn’t call on the FSA to provide similar protections.²⁴

This is all a part of the overall coverage, or lack of, that is coming out about Syria. Not only is their quite a bit of silence about the political, religious, and sectarian views of the “resistance,” and their support coming from the U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, but much of the relevant context is missing. All one is likely to find is a repetitive anti-al-Assad presentation. Al-Assad is evil incarnate, the “resistance” are glorious liberators battling a genocidal dictator. If you don’t support the rebellion then you are an apologist for the dictatorship. The truth is not nearly so black and white.

The Syrian government retains a lot of support, and has shown considerable constraint over the last year—much more than one would expect from the U.S. and other nations who are shedding crocodile tears. When the Arab League sent in an observer mission in December and January progress was made, but when the observer mission issued its report (which noted its success and warned that its discontinuation could lead to a worsening of situation), which was suppressed and the mission suspended the U.N. Security Council quickly tried to push through a resolution that only called for the Syrian government forces to cease fire and withdraw. With Syria facing a foreign-directed rebellion and no serious prospect of a fair settlement coming from either the Arab League or the UN, but rather a concerted effort for regime change, it’s not surprising that they moved in on the rebel stronghold. How indiscriminate the regime is being is hard to tell since the only information we have to go on is coming from the rebels, and even they admit they are operating from “residential buildings.”

So it is strange to read that while “The UN mediation has been accepted by all factions of the Syrian opposition,” according to Achcar, “most people are skeptical about the Syrian regime’s true willingness to implement Kofi Annan’s plan.” Achcar says that, “The regime knows too well that if it were to actually withdraw its armed forces from the cities and stop its bloody repression, the popular mobilization against it will immediately reach new heights — similar to the huge popular rallies that took place in Hama last summer when the regime’s forces refrained from attacking the demonstrations for a short while.”

Notice he talks about the regimes “bloody repression” but says nothing about that of the rebels, or how he mentions “huge popular rallies that took place in Hama last summer” but says nothing about the much larger pro-government rallies, or how one poll found that 55% of Syrians supported retaining al-Assad out of fear for their country (i.e. they fear what the rebels represent more than the tyranny of al-Assad).

As for the claim that “most people are skeptical about the Syrian regime’s true willingness to implement Kofi Annan’s plan,” we can look to the Arab League’s report from earlier this year to get an idea of how accurate that statement is.²⁵

For starters, here are some comments about the “opposition”:

In Homs and Dera‘a, the Mission observed armed groups committing acts of violence against Government forces, resulting in death and injury among their ranks. In certain situations, government forces responded to attacks against their personnel with force. The observers noted that some of the armed groups were using flares and armour-piercing projectiles.

[…]

In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed.

[…]

In Homs, a French journalist who worked for the France 2 channel was killed and a Belgian journalist was injured. The Government and opposition accused each other of being responsible for the incident, and both sides issued statements of condemnation. The Government formed an investigative committee in order to determine the cause of the incident. It should be noted that Mission reports from Homs indicate that the French journalist was killed by opposition mortar shells.

[…]

Recently, there have been incidents that could widen the gap and increase bitterness between the parties. These incidents can have grave consequences and lead to the loss of life and property. Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.

While the opposition is blowing up buses, killing journalists, attacking government security forces and civilians, bombing trains and other acts of sabotage and terrorism, we read how, “In Latakia, thousands surrounded the Mission’s cars, chanting slogans in favour of the President.”

And while the “armed gangs” continue to carry out attacks, the report notes how,

Based on the reports of the field-team leaders and the meeting held on 17 January 2012 with all team leaders, the Mission confirmed that all military vehicles, tanks and heavy weapons had been withdrawn from cities and residential neighbourhoods. Although there are still some security measures in place in the form of earthen berms and barriers in front of important buildings and in squares, they do not affect citizens.

Furthermore, even after we are informed that the government has opened up to an observer mission, offered amnesty, released thousands of detainees, and “withdrawn from cities and residential neighbourhoods” we read of an “armed entity” roaming the streets and “attacking Syrian security forces and citizens, causing the Government to respond with further violence.” More on this in a moment via Wikileaks.

As for the Syrian governments behavior during the mission it is reported that, “The Mission noted that the Government strived to help it succeed in its task and remove any barriers that might stand in its way. The Government also facilitated meetings with all parties. No restrictions were placed on the movement of the Mission and its ability to interview Syrian citizens, both those who opposed the Government and those loyal to it.”

And ever mindful of what happened in Iraq and Libya, the report found that “the citizens believe the crisis should be resolved peacefully through Arab mediation alone, without international intervention.” Translation: We don’t want a NATO “humanitarian intervention,” thanks. No wonder Qatar, who has come out in support of an armed intervention and pretends to support “democracy,” has suppressed the report and went along with the suspension of the mission. Which is at odds with the report itself.²⁶

In the conclusions, it asked for “administrative and logistic support in order allow it to carry out its tasks.” The report said it must have “the media and political support required to create an appropriate environment that will enable it to fulfil its mandate in the required manner,” which includes a “political process [that] must be accelerated and a national dialogue [that] must be launched.” According to the report, “That dialogue should run in parallel with the Mission’s work in order to create an environment of confidence that would contributes to the Mission’s success and prevent a needless extension of its presence in Syria.” The report gave the following warning: “ending the Mission’s work after such a short period will reverse any progress, even if partial, that has thus far been made.” That was very likely the reason for ending the mission, silencing the report, and its ultimate leak. Some want war and regime change, regardless of what the mission observers, or the people of Syria want.

Afterwards one of the observers came out and said that,

The Arab League is entirely discredited by burying the report of its own observers’ mission and its appeal to the Security Council. It missed the opportunity to participate in the settlement of the Syrian affair. All it can offer in the future will be worthless.²⁷

This is at odds with Achcar’s statement about the willingness of the Syrian government to accept and honor a peaceful mediation.

Achcar finds no room for mentioning the violence of the opposition, or the Arab League report. And he certainly doesn’t mention that Wikileaks has already shown that the U.S. has been supporting the opposition forces since before Obama took office,²⁸ or how the U.S. has only been pushing for the Syrian government to cease fire while ignoring the violence and war crimes of the opposition forces. There is also no mention of the new Wikileaks release of Stratfor emails.²⁹

In an email written in December of 2011 it is stated that “SOF teams (presumably from US, UK, France, Jordan, Turkey) are already on the ground focused on recce missions and training opposition forces,” and that while the U.S. “distanced themselves” from a bombing campaign because “Syrian air defenses are a lot more robust and are much denser, esp around Damascus and on the borders with Israel” it was noted that the plan “is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns, try to break the back of the Alawite forces, elicit collapse from within.” This means, “There wouldn’t be a need for air cover, and they wouldn’t expect these Syrian rebels to be marching in columns anyway.”

The Stratfor emails makes another startling comment. “[U.S. forces] think the US would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage.” If there can be “enough media attention on a massacre” then the U.S., who is “already on the ground . . . training opposition forces” would find it easier to carry out a bombing campaign like they did in Libya and “would have a high tolerance for killings as long as it doesn’t reach that very public stage,” which with the current state of media subservience to the Western establishment is very likely. U.S. use of force is almost always treated as “constructive,” whereas so-called “enemies” use of force (i.e. Syria under al-Assad) is “nefarious.”

The last interesting revelation on the Stratfor email is the date: December 7, 2011. This is just over two weeks before the Arab League sent their observer mission.

Why is it that Achcar doesn’t mention the bogus propaganda of the opposition, or their violence, or the Arab League report, or how the Stratfor emails show that the US plan “is to commit guerrilla attacks, assassination campaigns”?

It all comes to a disastrous end when Achcar ends his recent interview on Syria by saying that,

Anyone who is truly not a supporter of Bashar al-Assad and opposes hypothetic arms deliveries to the Syrian insurgents — in the name of an idealistic commitment to non-violence, for instance — should focus their opposition on the very real and massive Russian and Iranian arms deliveries to the Syrian regime in order to remain consistent.

Yet again we are told that unless you “focus [your] opposition on the very real and massive Russian and Iranian arms deliveries to the Syrian regime”—what Achcar calls remaining “consistent”—then you are a “supporter of Bashar al-Assad.”

There is no concern for consistency in regards to opposing the violence and politics of the armed rebels that are serving the American Empire’s interests. It is not even a concern for consistency to get the facts right. The “focus” should be on Iran and Russia arming the Syrian regime that is defending itself from a foreign-directed rebellion using civilian buildings as military installations for their terrorist and guerrilla attacks, assassinations, torture and more. Even Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the SNC late last month expressing their “concern about increasing evidence … of kidnappings, the use of torture, and executions by armed Syrian opposition members.” Again, arousing no comment from Achcar.³⁰

What are readers to make of Achcar’s position on Libya and Syria? The one “consistent” theme I have found in Achcar’s position is he is selective in how he approaches and frames them. He ignores the violent and criminal aspect of the foreign-directed rebellions, and says anyone who doesn’t support them is a supporter of the dictatorship. He claims we must “focus” on the crimes and armaments of America’s enemies, and even attempts to describe this as an “anti-imperialist perspective.” This is a very odd position for a supposed anti-imperialist leftist to take. It is also radically juxtaposed to Noam Chomsky’s comments to the UN about the “Responsibility to Protect” doctrine, which the conflicts in Libya and Syria are intimately a part of:

The discussions about R2P, or its cousin “humanitarian intervention,” are regularly disturbed by the rattling of a skeleton in the closet: history, to the present moment. Throughout history, there have been a few principles of international affairs that apply quite generally. One is the maxim of Thucydides that the strong do as they wish while the weak suffer as they must. A corollary is what Ian Brownlie calls “the hegemonial approach to law-making”: the voice of the powerful sets precedents. Another principle derives from Adam Smith’s account of policy-making in England: the “principal architects” of policy — in his day the “merchants and manufacturers” — make sure that their own interests are “most peculiarly attended to” however “grievous” the effect on others, including the people of England – but far more so, those who were subjected to “the savage injustice of the Europeans,” particularly in conquered India, Smith’s own prime concern. A third principle is that virtually every use of force in international affairs has been justified in terms of R2P, including the worst monsters. Just to illustrate, in his scholarly study of “humanitarian intervention,” Sean Murphy cites only three examples between the Kellogg-Briand pact and the UN Charter: Japan’s attack on Manchuria, Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia, and Hitler’s occupation of parts of Czechoslovakia, all accompanied by lofty rhetoric about the solemn responsibility to protect the suffering populations, and factual justifications. The basic pattern continues to the present.³¹

Achcar’s comments on Libya and Syria also stand in stark contrast with Chomsky’s classic work on “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” where Chomsky wrote nearly fifty years ago that, “Intellectuals are in a position to expose the lies of governments [and their media parrots], to analyze actions according to their causes and motives and often hidden intentions,” and that, “Western democracy provides the leisure, the facilities, and the training to seek the truth lying hidden behind the veil of distortion and misrepresentation, ideology and class interest, through which the events of current history are presented to us.” In short, Chomsky argues persuasively that, “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.”³²

Rather than expose, analyze, seek, and speak the truth lying hidden behind the propaganda that has been filling the media, Achcar has apparently accepted and repeated much of it.

Opposing the rebellions doesn’t necessarily make one a supporter of Gaddafi or al-Assad, just as opposing the Iraq War didn’t make one an apologist for Saddam Hussein. It is sufficient to oppose the armed rebellions on the grounds that they are not popularly supported, and run the very real risk of making things worse, as Vietnam, Rwanda, Congo, Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, and now Syria can attest to. If one wants to “remain consistent” they would look at not only the crimes and injustices (or how much support they retain) of the various dictatorships, whether they are supported or opposed by the US, but that of the armed opposition as well. When it comes to Gilbert Achcar on Libya and Syria it is hard to imagine he did so, and come to the remarks and conclusions he draws.

1. Libyan Developments, Gilbert Achcar, Znet, March 19. 2011.
2. Flying proudly over the birthplace of Libya’s revolution, the flag of Al Qaeda, Daily Mail UK, November 2, 2011.
3. One Third of Libya Turns Out to Support Qaddafi in World’s Largest March Ever, Mathaba, July 7, 2011.
4. Fighters Enter Qaddafi Stronghold City as Toll Rises, NYT, September 26, 2011.
5. Libya: Libyan city of Bani Walid still run by Gadaffi loyalists, AllVoices, March 1, 2012.
6. NATO’s Rebel Forces, Luis Rumbaut, MR Zine, August 24, 2011.
7. [7]
8. US bids to break Gaddafi Regime, Financial Times, August 9, 2011.
9. “Airstrikes in Libya did not take place” – Russian military, RT, March 1, 2011.
10. Humanitarian War in Libya : There is no evidence !, Youtube, November 28, 2011.
11. Libya: a legitimate and necessary debate from an anti-imperialist perspective, Gilbert Achcar, ZNet, March 25, 2011.
12. Report of the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya, UN Human Rights Council, March 2, 2012.
13. “Es fand eine regelrechte Jagd auf Migranten statt“, derStandard, July 6, 2011.
14. ‘There’s a fear that the fall of Assad would lead to worse for Western interests and Israel…‘, Gilbert Achcar, ZNet, April 6, 2012.
15. Libya: exodus from Sirte as thousands flee rebel offensive, The Telegraph UK, September 28, 2011.
16. Libya: Contact Group Should Press Rebels to Protect Civilians, HRW, July 15, 2011.
17. Rebels settle scores in Libyan capital, Kim Sengupta, The Independent UK, August 27, 2011.
18. The United States Should Stay Out of Syria, Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation, February 6, 2012.
19. Syria crisis: Shelling ‘kills dozens’ in restive Homs, BBC, February 9, 2012.
20. Whose hands are behind those dramatic YouTube pictures?, Patrick Cockburn, The Independent UK, January 15, 2012.
21. Questioning the Syrian “Casualty List”, Sharmine Narwani, Al-Akhbar, February 4, 2012.
22. Syria’s ‘Srebrenica: Situation Grows Increasingly Grim in Rebel Stronghold of Homs, Spiegel Online, February 23, 2012.
23. Two Western Journalists Killed in Syria Shelling, NYT, February 22, 2012.
24. French journalist, several others killed in Syria, MSNBC, January 11, 2012.
25. League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria, Global Research.
26. Syria Accuses Qatar of Arming Rebels, Defense News, January 18, 2012.
27. What you won’t read in the Western and Arab media, The Angry Arab News Service, February 8, 2012.
28. U.S. secretly backed Syrian opposition groups, cables released by WikiLeaks show, Washington Post, April 17, 2011.
29. INSIGHT – military intervention in Syria, post withdrawal status of forces, Wikileaks.
30. Open Letter to the Leaders of the Syrian Opposition, HRW, March 20, 2012.
31. Statement by Professor Noam Chomsky to the United Nations General Assembly Thematic Dialogue on the Responsibility to Protect, July 23, 2009.
32. The Responsibility of Intellectuals, Noam Chomsky, Chomsky.info, February 23, 1967.

Importantly, the first two points of the six-point initiative proposed by Mr. Annan call for 1) a “Syrian-led political process to address the legitimate aspirations and concerns of the Syrian people” and 2) “a cessation of violence in all its forms by all parties to protect civilians and stabilise the country [emphases added].”

In other words, the balanced nature of the Annan peace proposal would appear to throw yet more cold water on the West’s lusting over Syrian “regime change.”  Such desires, one will recall, have been frustrated ever since Russia and China blocked a U.N. Security Council resolution in early February, which had called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to go.

Unsurprisingly, the West has acted quite coolly to Mr. Annan’s diplomatic breakthrough.  As U.S. Secretary of State Hillary (“We came. We saw. He died.”) Clinton warned on Tuesday,

Given al-Assad’s history of overpromising and underdelivering, that commitment must now be matched by immediate actions. We will judge Assad’s sincerity and seriousness by what he does, not what he says.

The American punditry has also largely dismissed the Annan plan.  Writing in the New York Times on Thursday, former state department official Aaron David Miller took particular umbrage with Annan’s proposal for a Syrian-led political process.

“It reduces the chances of an internationally mediated transition in Syria. And that’s the way the Assads want it: a Syrian solution to a Syrian problem,” Mr. Miller wrote of the Annan plan.

(A Syrian solution to the country’s present crisis, though, is precisely what the majority of Syrians—the regime and its domestic opponents alike—would prefer.  After all, what kind of nationalist, democratic movement would ever seriously advocate for imperial intervention?)

Amidst the rampant public disparaging of Mr. Annan’s peace plan, the West also continued through the week to increase its pledge of aid to the Syrian rebels.  As the Christian Science Monitor reported Thursday:

Britain said it was doubling non-military aid to opponents of Assad and expanding its scope to equipment, possibly including secure telephones to help activists communicate more easily without fear of detection and attack.

The aid, worth $800,000, “includes agreement in principle for practical non-lethal support to them inside Syria,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said.

This follows on the heels of an announcement earlier in the week from Turkey and the U.S. that they both also plan to provide “non-lethal” aid to the Syrian rebels.  According the New York Times, delivery of American aid has already begun.

The notion, however, that all such aid is somehow “non-lethal” is quite absurd.  Despite official Western claims, the true purpose of providing such equipment is to help the armed Syrian opposition better coordinate their attacks against Syrian government forces.  And, needless to say, in the event of a foreign intervention, such equipment will be readily used by Syrian rebels to pinpoint targets for their NATO cohorts flying above—the latter dutifully fulfilling their Orwellian “responsibility to protect,” a la Libya.

Of course, fashioning Libya 2.0 has been the true Western interest in Syria from the beginning.  And as the NATO supplied rebels continue to attack Syrian government forces, drawing a return of force in response, these imperial plans may just come to fruition.  For by responding to continuing rebel attacks, Assad will no doubt be fingered by the West for his “failure of action.”  The bloodthirsty tyrant is simply incapable of brokering peace, we will be told.  Thus, NATO powers will once again resume their previously thwarted push for “regime change” under the cover of a U.N. Security Council resolution.  Or as Mr. Miller would have it, the push for “an internationally mediated transition.”

Scuttle those notions of a Syrian-led political peace process.  Imperial ambitions never die easy.

St. Augustine lived in the late fourth and early fifth centuries, in the Roman Empire. In that empire, occupied and occupier got to know one another all too well, from Britain to  Mesopotamia (Iraq) where resistance forces forced a withdrawal Roman troops in 117.

Britons rose up against the Roman occupiers and their Queen Boudicca died fighting around 60 CE. (She’s quoted by Tacitus as determined to avenge “lost freedom, my scourged body, the outraged chastity of my daughters.”) Familiarity bred rebellion resulting in vicious Roman responses, including the suppression of multiple uprisings in Judaea from 66 to 135.

Familiarity bred contempt in India as well as British authorities recruited Indian soldiers into their army from the eighteenth century. The sepoys rebelled in 1857 in protest of promotion policies, pay and assignment issues, reports of Christian proselytization, and the rumor that the cartridges needed to load the soldiers’ rifles were greased with pork fat — a terrible offense to Hindu and Muslim religious sensibilities. The mainly upper-caste Hindu sepoys turned on their British trainers in a bloody uprising that led to the fall of what was left of the Mughal Empire and the transfer of authority from the East India Company to the British crown.

The U.S.A. is today’s Roman Empire and British Empire rolled into one. With its allies the U.S. invaded Afghanistan over 3,825 days ago. The vast majority of people in this country at the time regarded the invasion, less than a month after the 9/11 attacks, as a war “of necessity” provoked by those attacks. Even many usually progressive people passively accepted the need for a vindictive response. Those who dissented were treated as naïve at best, traitorous at worst.

The facts, as packaged by officials, seemed clear: the U.S. had been attacked by al-Qaeda; al-Qaeda was based in Afghanistan; the rulers in Afghanistan (the Taliban) had “sponsored” Osama bin Laden. So the Talibs needed to be overthrown, while the U.S. bombed and obliterated bin Laden’s camps.

But the U.S. wouldn’t just act in its own self-defense. It would also magnanimously liberate the oppressed Afghanis. The Bush administration posed as the champion of Afghan women in particular, depicting their plight (symbolized by the mandatory wearing of the burqa) as rooted in Taliban rule. (In fact, the burqa had been standard female attire in Afghanistan for hundreds of years, and has remained so since the Taliban were overthrown. One might hope that it will “vanish from the page of time” but that’s likely to require more than an invasion.)

In November 2001, in the opening stage of the war, Laura Bush took over for her husband in delivering the president’s weekly radio address. She told us that “ a regime guilty of “brutal oppression” of women was “now in retreat across much of the country, and the people of Afghanistan, especially women, are rejoicing.” The bombing missions ordered by her husband were bringing joy to the Afghan people!

Actually, while the bombing killed thousands of civilians, a lot of Afghans did welcome  the overthrow of the Taliban and the establishment of a new regime. During the first few years, plausible public opinion polls showed fairly high support for Hamid Karzai, the CIA operative hand-picked by Washington to serve as president. The prospect of being aligned with the U.S., which had aided the Mujahadeen in their decade-long war against the Soviets, and receiving massive doses of U.S. aid for roads and schools, was attractive to some. (But then, the alliance with the USSR, and Soviet aid had been attractive to many Afghans from 1978. Afghanistan like most places contains diverse political forces with differing world views.)

As time passed, Karzai’s weakness and corruption became apparent. Gradually feelings soured, as warlords reestablished control over their former fiefs; as the national police acquired a reputation for abuses including the kidnapping and sexual abuse of children; as  the Taliban and aligned movements resurged and capitalized on the dissatisfaction; as the bombings and drone strikes and night time raids on homes produced such anger that Karzai and the parliament began insisting they must stop — feelings soured. And U.S. public opinion soured on the Afghan War, validating the objections some of us had expressed at the outset.

The behavior of some foreign troops over the last year (collecting body parts as trophies, urinating on dead militants’ bodies, burning Qur’ans, the March 11 massacre of 16 Afghan civilians in Kandahar) may have brought us to the tipping-point.

The “Red Team” Study

The U.S. Army has long been concerned about the fact that its soldiers fighting to support the Karzai regime and contain the resurgent Taliban have a terrible relationship with the Afghan soldiers and police they’re obliged to work with and train. A “red team” headed by Jeffrey Bordin, a political and behavioral scientist, was dispatched to Afghanistan last year to investigate. (In the Army, a “red team” is supposed to “provide commanders an independent capability to continuously challenge plans, operations, concepts, organizations and capabilities in the context of the operational environment and from our partners’ and adversaries’ perspectives.” It’s supposed, in other words, to help commanders think outside the box.)

Bordin’s study, completed last May, is entitled “A Crisis of Trust and Cultural Incompatibility: A Red Team Study of Mutual Perceptions of Afghan National Security Force Personnel and U.S. Soldiers in Understanding and Mitigating the Phenomena of ANSF-Committed Fratricide-Murders.” It’s available online.

In the report, Bordin noted that there had been since September. 2009 at least 21 instances of  “fratricide-murder incidents” in which Afghan National Security Force (ANSF) members killed 51 foreign troops, mostly U.S. forces, who had been sent to train them. (The toll has risen to over 80 since. About a quarter of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan this year — including three more on Monday, March 26 — have been killed by Afghan security forces.) He declared that the magnitude of the killings (referred to in U.S. military parlance as “green-on-blue” incidents) “may be unprecedented between ‘allies’ in modern history.” But why is there so much hostility between U.S. forces (and other foreign forces) in Afghanistan and the soldiers they’re supposed to train.

Bordin explained:

 “Factors that fueled the most animosity included U.S. convoys not allowing traffic to pass, reportedly indiscriminant return U.S. fire that causes civilian casualties, naively using flawed intelligence sources, U.S. Forces conducting night raids/home searches, violating female privacy during searches, U.S. road blocks, publicly searching/disarming ANSF [Afghan National Security Forces] members as an SOP [standard operating procedure] when they enter bases, and past massacres of civilians by U.S. Forces (i.e., the Wedding Party Massacre, the Shinwar Massacre, etc.). Other issues that led to altercations or near-altercations (including many self-reported near-fratricide incidents) included [U.S. soldiers] urinating in public, their cursing at, insulting and being rude and vulgar to ANSF members, and unnecessarily shooting animals. They found many U.S. Soldiers to be extremely arrogant, bullying, unwilling to listen to their advice, and were often seen as lacking concern for civilian and ANSF safety during combat.”

(The “Wedding Party Massacre” refers to the incident in Nuristan Province in July 2008, when 47 people including 39 women and children were killed by a missile. The deputy speaker of the Afghan parliament stated that none of them had had any connection with either al-Qaeda or the Taliban. The U.S. initially denied that there had been any civilian deaths. The “Shinwar Massacre” refers to the March 2007 incident in which a U.S. convoy in Nangarhar Province killed 19 and injured up to 50 as they fired indiscriminately after a humvee was struck by a minivan laden with explosives that injured one Marine.)

According to the study, U.S. forces for their part held “extremely negative” views of the ANSF, finding among them “pervasive illicit drug use, massive thievery, personal instability, dishonesty, no integrity, incompetence, unsafe weapons handling, corrupt officers, no real NCO corps, covert alliances/informal treaties with insurgents, high AWOL rates, bad morale, laziness, repulsive hygiene and the torture of dogs. Perceptions of civilians were also negative stemming from their insurgent sympathies and cruelty towards women and children.”

Notice that both sides complain of the other’s treatment of women and children. But while the Afghans interviewed complained of specifics — foreigners observing women in a yard from a roof; breaking down a door to enter a female’s room; taking photos of women; searching them without reason; giving children candy even though their proximity can lead to them dying in attacks — the U.S. soldiers’ complaints were more vaguely expressed. “How they treat their women and children is disgusting,” said one GI. “They are just chattel to them.”

Both complain of the other’s treatment of dogs. But the Afghans complain that the U.S. soldiers kill dogs who belong to people — dogs on leashes outside people’s homes. They do it for sport, or to shut them up if they bark, even in the presence of their owners — one of whom according to this report joined the Taliban after his dog was shot to death. The GIs kill cattle and donkeys as well, say the Afghans. The U.S. troops for their part complain that the Afghans kill stray dogs. (Of course, there’s never any excuse to torture an animal, but isn’t it possible that Afghan society has traditionally controlled the population of feral dogs? Neighboring India has a huge population of pariah dogs, who are often rabid — over 70,000 in Mumbai alone. In that city they bite 25,000 people per year. They’re a real management problem most people in this country can hardly imagine. Perhaps this issue of feral dog killing can be seen as a “cultural” issue between the Afghans and the occupiers.)

According to Bordin’s report, U.S. troops in Afghanistan not only dislike and mistrust ANSF — for reasons that seem related to the Afghans’ habits and customs, poverty, and illiteracy (90% among the Afghan troops) — but also have “negative” views of Afghan civilians in general. This, he posits, is due to civilians’ sympathy with the insurgents and because of the “cruelty towards women and children” that occurs in Afghan society.

While the relationship between the occupiers and the people was beyond the scope of Bordin’s assignment, this observation is obviously significant. If the GIs see the Afghans in general –  not just the insurgents, but ANSF (who allegedly form “covert alliances/informal treaties with insurgents”), and even the bulk of the population — so negatively, how can they ever mould ANSF into a viable military and police force, meeting their own expectations? How can they ever crush the Taliban and its allies, and win over the masses?

The Main Problem is Not a Culture Clash

“A Crisis in Trust” is a statistical study that tries to examine the recognized “green-on-blue” problem. But it misses the forest for the trees. The “factors fueling most animosity” are factors generic to invasions and occupations: the arrogance and condescension of the invaders; the insistence on regulating movement of people in the invaded country; the response to (real or imagined) attacks with overwhelming firepower that inevitably kills civilians; the need to recruit local, often unreliable snitches; night raids, etc. These have nothing to do with “cultural incompatibility” but with the arrogance of power bound to produce indignation. How ought Afghans to respond to such national humiliation? Should anyone be surprised that their indignation has mounted over ten-and-a-half years?

In what Bordin calls the “first tier” of Afghan complaints about U.S. troops is the charge that they are “extremely arrogant.” This is related to other “first tier” issues, specifically: night raids, disrespect for Afghan women, roadblocks, refusal to allow Afghan troops to pass U.S. convoys, indiscriminate shooting of Afghans following attacks, killing of many civilians, constant cursing (including calling Afghan troops “motherfuckers”—which is deeply resented), and publicly searching any Afghan soldier entering a U.S. base.

But how can the U.S. troops not be arrogant? Their basic training is designed to inculcate a sense of righteousness about their role. They’re conditioned to believe that they’re on a heroes’ mission to defend family and friends at home, and keep the U.S. safe from another 9/11 type attack. They need to do this by containing the Taliban resistance, which they’re encouraged to associate with al-Qaeda. (They’re also encouraged to associate the Taliban with Iraq and any “bad guy” Muslim force they might read about, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-i-Islami forces, Iran, Hizbollah, Hamas, Somali pirates, Gaddafi, etc. While they’re routinely told “We respect Islam” they’re also encouraged to see the world in simple “us vs. them” terms, and it just happens that all the enemies are Muslims.)

This simplistic “war on terror” mentality, pitting the “good” warrior against a vague, omnipresent Evil is a key aspect of the problem, for both them and the Afghans. The invaded population may be tradition-bound, largely illiterate, religious fundamentalists. But the invaders are fundamentally deluded about their mission. This is by design, part of the boot camp experience.

Things the Invaders Aren’t Supposed to Know

The troops aren’t briefed about the fact that the Taliban regime — bad as it was – had, and has, a considerable social base. It was preferred by many Afghans to the warlords of the Northern Alliance who are now back in power in much of the country. They’re not told that the Taliban is rooted in the anti-Soviet Mujahadeen of the 1980s which the U.S. eagerly supported, deliberately pitting Islamic fundamentalism against the pro-Soviet regime and its secularist policies. They don’t necessarily realize that U.S. policy helped generate the enemy they now face.

They’re not told that the Taliban took power in most of the country in 1996 with help from Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence, which had worked intimately with the CIA throughout the 1980s. (As the late president Benazir Bhutto once noted in an interview, longtime U.S. ally Pakistan supported the Taliban because it seemed most likely to insure the stability of Central Asian trade routes.)

The troops aren’t told that the Taliban never invited bin Laden into their country. They’re not told that the U.S. agreed in 1996 to allow bin Laden to fly out of Sudan in a C-130 transport plane with 150 men, women and children on board, to refuel in pro-western Qatar (where he was greeted warmly by government officials) and to relocate to Afghanistan where he was welcomed and hosted by anti-Taliban chiefs. (He settled in Qandahar in May 1996. The Taliban only acquired control over Kabul that September.)

They’re not told that the Taliban once in power tolerated bin Laden’s presence and let him maintain his training camps (initially established with CIA help) out of appreciation for his assistance in the war against the Soviets when he was working with the U.S. (They also appreciated his financial assistance to them, at a time when only Saudi Arabia and Pakistan recognized their regime and provided aid, and felt obliged to observe the Pashtunwali code requiring hospitality for strangers.) But they never embraced his program for a global jihad. Indeed they claim that after the USS Cole incident off Yemen in 2000 they placed him under detention and cut off his communications.

U.S. troops aren’t told that Zalmay Khalilzad, the Afghan-American special envoy to Afghanistan in 2002, and later the ambassador to Afghanistan, then Iraq, then the UN — the man who arranged for Karzai to become president –had six years earlier actually written an op-ed supporting U.S. engagement with the Taliban!

“The Taliban does not practice the anti-U.S. style of fundamentalism practiced by Iran,” the former State Department official declared in the Washington Post in October 1996. “It is closer to the Saudi model.” He later, as a Unocal executive, hosted Taliban leaders at his Texas ranch to discuss a gas pipeline deal in the late 90s.

They’re not told that after the Taliban successfully banned opium cultivation in 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell praised their effort and delivered $43 billion in aid to them. They’re not told that the Taliban not only sought good relations with the U.S. before 9/11, but even (as reported on Counterpunch) agreed to turn bin Laden over to the U.S. as early as November 2000. It was willing to do so unconditionally after the 9/11 attacks, but the U.S. government never accepted the offer.

(The Taliban issued a statement on September 12, 2001:  “We do not allow Osama bin Laden to use Afghanistan’s territory to launch attacks on any country in the world… We denounce this terrorist attack, whoever is behind it.”)

The troops aren’t told that the current U.S.-backed president Karzai was briefly the foreign minister of the Taliban government (in 1996) and that he still insists there are “good men” among the Taliban. He’s even offered to welcome Taliban chief Mullah Omar to Kabul for negotiations. In 2008 he appealed to Taliban chief Mullah Omar “to return home under guarantees of safety to help bring peace to Afghanistan.” The U.S. sternly objected, prompting an indignant public statement from Karzai that the U.S. had no veto rights on inter-Afghan matters.

The troops aren’t told that none of the 9/11 hijackers were Afghans and that only two of them were known to have ever been in that country at any point for any reason. They’re certainly not told that Attorney General John Ashcroft spoke falsely when he told a press conference after 9/11 that all of the hijackers had been trained in Afghanistan.

U.S. troops aren’t told that many — maybe most — Afghans aren’t even aware of the 9/11 attacks on the U.S. (A 2010 study showed that 92% of people in the Pashtun south have never heard about them!) And even if they learn about them, they don’t understand why they would justify the invasion and occupation of their country. It’s not hard to understand why many would assume that the invaders are waging a war on their religion.

U.S. soldiers are encouraged to believe the Taliban and al-Qaeda are closely connected, if not one and the same thing. But this is simply untrue. The Taliban is an inward-looking, Pashtun-Afghan nationalist movement. It wants to impose a version of Muslim law upon a country torn by war since 1978. But it’s shown no interest in joining an international jihad. It merely wants to do what Afghan resistance movements have done from the time of Alexander the Great (which, by the way, was a millennium before the introduction of Islam). It wants to drive the invader out.

Al-Qaeda, now based in Pakistan and Yemen, is actively promoting a global confrontation between Islam and the West. But the Taliban has repeatedly declared it will not allow attacks on other countries from Afghan soil when/if it regains power. (And again it has consistently stated it had no knowledge of al-Qaeda plans while bin Laden was in the country.) Intelligence officials in Pakistan have stated that the Taliban has broken with al-Qaeda and would, if returned to power, crack down on any remnants of the organization in the country.

The U.S. troops are not mainly in Afghanistan to prevent al-Qaeda from making Afghanistan its base for a global jihad. It’s unlikely that, even if the occupying forces withdrew tomorrow, this decentralized web of groups of unknown size, with franchises and affiliates in Algeria, Yemen, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and elsewhere, would be able to transform Afghanistan into a headquarters for launching attacks on the U.S. (Anyway, weren’t the 9/11 attacks planned more in Germany and Florida than in Afghanistan?)

The foreign troops are not in Afghanistan to fight al-Qaeda, or anyone connected to attacks on the U.S. They’re, rather, to create and leave behind, whenever they leave, a “stable” country with a friendly regime, an effective security apparatus that will contain any “Islamist” forces the U.S. regards as potentially threatening, allow the presence of half a dozen U.S. military bases in the country (close to Iraq, Pakistan and Iran) and cooperate in the construction of a pipeline that will bring Caspian natural gas to the Indian Ocean. (The latter is of major geopolitical importance to Washington since most gas from the region is now piped through Russia, and the U.S. wants a pipeline that also avoids Iranian territory.)

Some of the troops have come to question their mission. Some have even been radicalized by their Afghan experiences and have become antiwar, anti-imperialist activists. But few fully grasp that they’re imperialist invaders, and so receiving the same treatment the Soviets experienced in the 1980s when they tried to occupy Afghanistan. So they cannot understand why the Afghan soldiers they’re supposed to train are so unenthusiastic, and why in general the people are so unwelcoming and unappreciative.

According to the Red Team study, most soldiers’ “perceptions of civilians” are “negative stemming from their insurgent sympathies.” But wasn’t this the case in Vietnam and Iraq as well? Or for that matter the Philippines from 1899 to 1902? Weren’t U.S. soldiers conditioned to expect warm receptions shocked to find the local people so cold and so prone to support the “enemy” instead of themselves?

The Sgt. Robert Bales Case

No one wants to be in a foreign country, asked to accomplish the impossible, surrounded by sullen people who find you rude and vulgar and want you to leave. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales surely didn’t.

Bales, relocated over Afghan objections to Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, is accused of going on a rampage the evening of March 11 in Panjwai district in Qandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban. He’s been charged with the premeditated murder of 17 Afghan civilians.

According to some reports, a roadside blast in the village of Mokhoyan, blew off the leg of one of Bales’ buddies on March 7 or 8. Villagers say U.S. troops rounded up all the adult males in the village, lined them up against a wall and told them they would “pay a price.” It’s, of course, not clear that this alleged incident influenced Bales’ subsequent actions in two villages. But the “Qandahar Massacre” may be the worst, clearest instance of a soldier to date expressing “negative perceptions of civilians” due to their “insurgent sympathies.”

Bales has his sympathizers, who see him as the victim of repeated deployments in places where U.S. soldiers confront resentful populations. They see him as someone who just “snapped” at a certain point, such that he decided to march off and shoot Afghan women and children, and burn their bodies. “I kind of sympathize for him,” a former neighbor told AP, “being gone, being sent over there four times. I can understand he’s probably quite wracked mentally, so I just hope that things are justified in court. I hope it goes okay.”

This is entirely in the tradition of unconditional “support for the troops” deeply entrenched in our culture. There was widespread outrage in this country when Sgt. William Calley was convicted of mass murder of Vietnamese in 1971. Georgia governor Jimmy Carter established “American Fighting Man’s Day” and urged Georgians to show Calley support. The governor of Indiana asked that all state flags to be flown at half-staff for Calley, and many states’ governors protested the verdict and demanded clemency. How, they wondered, could the U.S. court system persecute a hero-soldier who, fighting for his country and for freedom, just happened to slip up a little on the rules and kill between 22 and 500 Vietnamese civilians?

But Laura King, in the LA Times, takes the opportunity to assert a high American standard of morality, juxtaposing it against an Afghan one. “In American minds, “ she writes, “the moral distinction between the accidental and the deliberate, between the carefully judged risk and the deranged act, is incalculable. But for Afghans, the result — the shrouded bodies, the wailing relatives, the bite of shovels into dusty ground — speaks to the numbing sameness of unexpected and violent death.”

In other words, the “American mind” is highly moral, and while forgiving episodes of Accidental “collateral damage” it recoils in disgust at any deliberate act of terror. King seems to echo Bales’ own words to a home-town reporter in 2007. The soldier after an Iraq deployment expressed contempt for anyone who would put “his family in harm’s way,” adding “I think that’s the real difference between being an American as opposed to being a bad guy.” For this accused mass-murderer, Americans are, by definition, “good guys.”

Whatever her intentions, King’s piece seems almost an apologia for U.S. imperialism. U.S. citizens as “their” forces invade maintain this “incalculable moral distinction” between what the soldiers do deliberately and what they do by accident. But the poor natives are unable to distinguish between “the numbing sameness” of the accidental killing of civilians (the “collateral damage” of airstrikes or roadblock incidents) and the occasional deliberate targeting of civilians.

Isn’t the point that the invasion itself was a very deliberate event? A crime against peace? And that such invasions usually produce these sorts of results?

“End of the Rope”

Ekil Hakimi, the Afghan ambassador to the U.S., told CNN recently that Bales’ rampage was “not the first incident; it was the 100th, the 200th and 500th incident.”

Hakemi is very much in the pro-U.S. camp. And yet even he complains to the U.S. mass media that the U.S. is routinely slaughtering civilians in his country.

The Afghan parliament has voted — unanimously! — to withdraw from the existing military agreement with the U.S. in protest of the removal of Bates from Afghanistan and the Afghan legal process. The legislators (even though they obtained their own positions as a result of foreign occupation) see it as an insult to the nation. Karzai probably won’t sign the law; he is, however much he postures as a nationalist, dependent on U.S. aid to secure his own position. But isn’t it significant that even a parliament established under U.S. hegemony, excluding any Taliban forces, favoring the warlords grateful for U.S. support, is making such a statement?

Meanwhile Karzai’s demanding that foreign troops withdraw from villages and return to their bases, declaring U.S.-Afghan relations “at the end of their rope.” These are surely positive developments

Some of those most closely aligned to the U.S. in Afghanistan are saying: Please go away. We don’t like you. Even if we once did, we don’t anymore because you’ve killed too many of us, and insulted and offended us in too many ways. You have overstayed your welcome in our country.

And the U.S. troops are saying: We don’t like these people, and we’re shocked by their ingratitude and hostility.

Of course, mutual animosity shouldn’t generally be a cause for celebration. But mutual animosity between occupied and occupier is normal, and certainly (as Mao Zedong put it) “it’s right to rebel” against oppression. And don’t the host of Afghan grievances cited by Bordin constitute oppression?

At this point the level of animosity has become impossible to conceal with cheery reports of “progress” such as that delivered to Congress by Gen. John Allen, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, earlier this month. Fallout from the Qandahar Massacre is causing some to predict or urge a speedy pullout. Retired General James A. Marks, senior Army intelligence officer at the time of the Iraq invasion, has said it “not inconceivable” that that massacre might prompt a U.S. withdrawal “in weeks.”

The My Lai Massacre helped turn U.S. public opinion decisively against the Vietnam War, and so maybe we can say that Calley’s victims did not die entirely in vain. The silver lining to the Qandahar Massacre might just possibly be an early withdrawal from Afghanistan. Optimally, these episodes reflecting mutual contempt in Afghanistan might actually bind people in both Afghanistan and the U.S. together — in revulsion towards imperialism.

When the Egyptian people began to gather in Tahrir Square in January 2011, the embers of the immolation that consumed Tunisian street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi had already sparked the prairie fire that overthrew the dictatorial ruler Ben Ali. The protest in Tahrir Square was the first manifestation of that fire in Egypt but certainly not the last. As everyone must know by now, the fires of protest in Egypt tossed out their dictator less than two months after Mr. Ben Ali was deposed. The feat of that overthrow was not only momentous within the borders of Egypt itself; its repercussions were felt in the halls of Arabia, Asia, Africa and the Americas. In Washington, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Paris, and Rome and on Wall Street, there was plenty of catching up to do. Neither the eavesdroppers at the National Security Agency or the black ops mangers of the Central Intelligence Agency predicted the end of the Mubarak regime. Indeed, it wasn’t until the bitter end that the political powers in the aforementioned capitals began to side with (and subvert) the popular uprising in the streets of Egypt.

After Mubarak’s fall, the revolutionary fire spread like flames whipped by warm Santa Ana winds. Bahrain to Libya. Yemen to Syria. London and New York. Athens and Oakland. The insurrectionary wave was in motion and nowhere was it more powerful than in the Arab world. Also, nowhere was it met with more determined (and murderous) resistance from the powers that be, internally and externally. Underlying the insurrectionary tide were the economic facts of neoliberalism’s struggle to maintain its global dominance. When it became apparent that this goal could not always be accomplished by continuing to support the old regimes, the capitols of capitalism inserted their agents into the opposition and did their best to manipulate the rebellion into serving the agencies of those capitols. The IMF, World Bank and the rest of the usual suspects saw their moments in each instance and made their moves. As I write, the entire insurrectionary wave is at a stalemate between the forces of popular social justice and just another new face for western imperialism.

Naturally, very little has been written about this aspect of the revolutionary upsurge of 2011-2012 in the organs of neoliberalism. Instead, the fact of IMF arrangements with the post-Mubarak Egypt and the new Tunisia are interspersed with superficial analyses of the rebellions that would have the reader believe that it was social media that provoked them. Even more revealing of the mainstream media’s allegiance to the imperial regime in the insurrection is its lack of coverage of the continuing popular resistance in the Pentagon’s shipyard Bahrain. Instead, we are presented with an ongoing litany of unconfirmed atrocities committed by the Syrian military and a portrayal of the resistance there as essentially untainted by its affiliation with outside governments and militaries.

Fortunately, we have Vijay Prashad. His latest book, titled Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, attacks the western interpretation of the transitions in Egypt and Libya and explores the actual events from a perspective that explains the players in terms of their allegiances, holdings and politics. In Prashad’s work, the differences between the fighters on the ground and the suits on television are not only acknowledged, they are examined in terms of their meaning to the future. In discussing Egypt, Prashad describes the conflagration of Washington’s imperial needs, Tel Aviv’s paranoiac perception of its security, and the Mubarak clique’s desire to maintain power. He gives lie to the West’s claim that it was interested in democracy (a relatively simple task to be sure), explaining that in the western mindset democracy doesn’t mean democracy, it means a guarantee that the interests and holdings of capital will not be upset. The common term one hears, states Prashad, is stability.

Most of this book is about the battle for Libya. Prashad’s text provides the most detailed description of the events both on the ground and in the office suites. He exposes the humanitarian intervention by NATO for what it was. That is, a means for the western powers to regain unfettered access to Libyan oil and rid themselves of an at best erratic client—Muammar Gaddafi. Unlike many on the Left, Prashad does not take sides for or against the rebellion. Instead, he explains the uprising as a popular and positive thing that was manipulated by the forces of the G7 and NATO. Simultaneously, he discusses Gaddafi’s reign as one that began with many positive changes yet ultimately was a victim of its own excess and greed. If there are any good guys in his narrative, it would be the masses that risked their lives to overthrow the autocracy that had Gaddafi at its helm. Their opposite would be the men on both sides of the battle whose only real interest was in keeping their bank accounts plush while serving their masters in the stock exchanges of the neoliberal world.

Interesting, and as yet not very closely examined, is the role of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates. Jordan and Morocco. Prashad makes note of the fact that the western capitals have said very little about the harsh repression visited on the Bahraini uprising or the Saudi intervention there. He also explores the military role played by Qatar in Libya, its current role in Syria, and the inclusion of some GCC states in a NATO adjunct. Perhaps, writes Prashad, this adjunct of NATO will be able to stand in for NATO in future operations in the Arab world, thereby creating another shadow in the workings of modern imperialism.

Despite the (probably) millions of words written about the Libyan uprising and the NATO intervention, nothing written in English has come near the truth. After reading Arab Spring, Libyan Winter, it seems that when all is said and done, Prashad’s work will come the closest.

Balandi is located in the Panjwai District of Kandahar Province, which has seen some of the toughest resistance to the US-NATO occupation of the country. Kandaharis have received a bad reputation for spoiling the war party devised by the US, NATO, and their corrupt local allies.

In a way, Balandi is a microcosm of Afghanistan.

When the US-led bombing campaign of Afghanistan commenced in October 2001, many commentators cheered. In a strikingly unequal war – with the world’s most advanced nations attacking the world’s poorest – the US wanted to teach al-Qaeda terrorists a lesson. The latter quickly disbanded and poured through neighboring borders across the region (the violent network is now being sighted in several Arab countries). Meanwhile, the Afghani people shouldered the brunt of the war. Tens of thousands have since perished in a vengeful war they had no part in creating.

Many commentators have supported the war, rationalized it, or simply pretended it was not happening. The Afghans seemed to be dispensable on account of their being less ‘civilized’ somehow. The war was presented as a ‘good war’, with a rationale that swayed the likes of Christopher Hitchens, who stated: “‘Bombing Afghanistan back into the Stone Age’ was quite a favorite headline for some wobbly liberals. The slogan does all the work. But an instant’s thought shows that Afghanistan is being, if anything, bombed OUT of the Stone Age” (Daily Mirror, November 2001).

Even those who were actually committed to human rights and international law found some sort of logic in the war in Afghanistan.  “To my lasting regret I supported the war initially as an instance of self-defense validated by the credible fear of future attacks emanating from Afghanistan,” wrote Richard Falk, a renowned human rights scholar and UN envoy. However, he came to realize that “senseless and morbid wars produce senseless and morbid behavior” (Foreign Policy Journal, March 15).

The words “senseless” and “morbid” don’t begin to describe the dirty war in Afghanistan. A recent indication of callousness was on display in Washington, as President Barack Obama welcomed British Prime Minister David Cameron to the White House. Our alliance is “rock-solid,” Obama said. “Our world has been transformed over and over, and it will be again. Yet, through the grand sweep of history, through all its twists and turns, there is one constant: the rock-solid alliance between the US and the UK.” The intended reference was mostly about Afghanistan, as the latest massacre of Afghan civilians prompted a call by the country’s president, Hamid Karazi, to ask the US to redeploy its troops out of villages throughout the country.

“Rock-solid” means the US and its allies will stick to their plan of not ending their combat operations until 2014, and then, through a US-Afghan memorandum, maintaining a permanent military presence. Considering the alarming killing rates of Afghans, the term ‘rock-solid’ could also indicate numerous more deaths of innocent people simply because Obama doesn’t want to be seen as “soft” and inconsistent during an election year.

But Afghans cannot maintain this charade for long. Expectedly, the Taliban will no longer engage the US in direct or indirect talks. As for the country’s weak president, he cannot find the right balance of accommodating the US plans and managing the active anger brewing among his countrymen.

The original orchestrators of the Afghanistan war are waking up to the new reality. The Afghans will accept no less than a full US-NATO withdrawal from their country, no matter the cost of that freedom. Empowered by an inflated sense of military superiority, the Bush and Obama administrations failed to grasp what has become a historical imperative: Afghanistan belongs to its people, who will fight to reinstate that fact over and over again.

Freedom is an absolute value. Its meaning is not diminished by war or military occupation. The moral clarity of the Afghan struggle for freedom in 2012 remains as strong as it was in 2001. What may prove ominous in future months is the fact that even the feeble excuse for war – that it was actually a “war on terror” – is hardly as ubiquitous as it once was. The war now merely exists to save face, to assert a degree of American dominance, and to arrange for some beneficial future that allows the US to reap unclear gains. This lack of moral and strategic centrality is turning the war into something sadistic, strange, racist and utterly inhumane.

The US is turning its citizens into ‘pathological killers’ wrote Falk. “American soldiers urinating on dead Taliban fighters, Koran burning, and countryside patrols whose members were convicted by an American military tribunal of killing Afghan civilians for sport… (Whatever US officials say to explain all of this) has become essentially irrelevant.”

In a meeting with Karazi, an elder from Balandi asked the president: “They killed so many of our loved ones, and do you have an answer why?”

No one is likely to offer an answer, for pathology cannot always be explained by carefully worded diplomatic language. What is clear, however, is that the recent spree of violence and humiliation will further fuel the determination of Afghans to end yet another bloody episode of their history on their own terms. “I don’t want any compensation. I don’t want money, I don’t want a trip to Hajj (pilgrimage), I don’t want a house. I want nothing but the punishment of the Americans. This is my demand, my demand, my demand and my demand,” said another elder (Al Jazeera, March 17).

Speaking of demands, what are the US’ demands and objectives? Do American soldiers even know what they are fighting for, or whom they are fighting against? (Bales’ victims were mostly women and children.)

Former US secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld said in March 2003: “Freedom’s untidy, and free people are free to make mistakes and commit crimes and do bad things.”

Richard Falk is right; senseless and morbid wars do produce senseless and morbid behavior. They produce bizarre logic as well.

The outrage expressed by politicians in the West and Gulf State and in the mass media, about the ‘killing of peaceful Syrian citizens protesting injustice’ is cynically designed to cover up the documented reports of violent seizure of neighborhoods, villages and towns by armed bands, brandishing machine guns and planting road-side bombs.

The assault on Syria is backed by foreign funds, arms and training. Because of a lack of domestic support, however, to be successful, direct foreign military intervention will be necessary. For this reason a huge propaganda and diplomatic campaign has been mounted to demonize the legitimate Syrian government. The goal is to impose a puppet regime and strengthen Western imperial control in the Middle East. In the short run, this will further isolate Iran in preparation for a military attack by Israel and the US and, in the long run, it eliminates another independent secular regime friendly to China and Russia.

In order to mobilize world support behind this Western, Israeli and Gulf State-funded power grab, several propaganda ploys have been used to justify another blatant violation of a country’s sovereignty after their successful destruction of the secular governments of Iraq and Libya.

The Larger Context: Serial Aggression

The current Western campaign against the independent Assad regime in Syria is part of a series of attacks against pro-democracy movements and independent regimes from North Africa to the Persian Gulf. The imperial-militarist response to the Egyptian democracy movement that overthrew the Mubarak dictatorship was to back the military junta’s seizure of power and murderous campaign to jail, torture, and assassinate over 10,000 pro-democracy protestors.

Faced with similar mass democratic movements in the Arab world, the Western-backed Gulf autocratic dictators crushed their respective uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, and Saudi Arabia. The assaults extended to the secular government in Libya where NATO powers launched a massive air and sea bombardment in support of armed bands of mercenaries thereby destroying Libya’s economy and civil society. The unleashing of armed gangster-mercenaries led to the savaging of urban life in Libya and devastation in the countryside. The NATO powers eliminated the secular government of Colonel Gaddafi, along with having him murdered and mutilated by its mercenaries. Nato oversaw the wounding, imprisonment, torture, and elimination of tens of thousands of civilian Gaddafi supporters and government workers. NATO backed the puppet regime as it embarked on a bloody pogrom against Libyan citizens of sub-Saharan African ancestry as well a sub-Sahara African immigrant workers – groups who had benefited from Gaddafi’s generous social programs. The imperial policy of ruin and rule in Libya serves as “the model” for Syria: Creating the conditions for a mass uprising led by Muslim fundamentalists, funded and trained by Western and Gulf State mercenaries.

The Bloody Road From Damascus to Tehran

According to the State Department ‘The road to Teheran passes through Damascus’: The strategic goal of NATO is to destroy Iran’s principal ally in the Middle East; for the Gulf absolutist monarchies the purpose is to replace a secular republic with a vassal theocratic dictatorship; for the Turkish government the purpose is to foster a regime amenable to the dictates of Ankara’s version of Islamic capitalism; for Al Qaeda and allied Salafi and Wahabi fundamentalists a theocratic Sunni regime, cleansed of secular Syrians, Alevis, and Christians, will serve as a trampoline for projecting power in the Islamic world; and for Israel a blood-drenched divided Syria will further ensure its regional hegemony. It was not without prophetic foresight that the über-Zionist US Senator Joseph Lieberman demanded days after the ‘Al Qaeda’ attack of September 11, 2001: “First we must go after Iran, Iraq, and Syria” before considering the actual authors of the deed.

The armed anti-Syrian forces reflect a variety of conflicting political perspectives united only by their common hatred of the independent secular, nationalist regime which has governed the complex, multi-ethnic Syrian society for decades. The war against Syria is the principle launching pad for a further resurgence of Western militarism extending from North Africa to the Persian Gulf, buttressed by a systematic propaganda campaign proclaiming NATO’s democratic, humanitarian and ‘civilizing’ mission on behalf of the Syrian people.

The Road to Damascus is Paved with Lies

An objective analysis of the political and social composition of the principle armed combatants in Syria refutes any claim that the uprising is in pursuit of democracy for the people of that country. Authoritarian fundamentalist fighters form the backbone of the uprising. The Gulf States financing these brutal thugs are themselves absolutist monarchies. The West, after having foisted a brutal gangster regime on the people of Libya, can make no claim of ‘humanitarian intervention’.

The armed groups infiltrate towns and use population centers as shields from which they launch their attacks on government forces. In the process they force thousands of citizens from their homes, stores and offices which they use as military outposts. The destruction of the neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs is a classic case of armed gangs using civilians as shields and as propaganda fodder in demonizing the government.

These armed mercenaries have no national credibility with the mass of Syrian people. One of their main propaganda mills is located in the heart of London, the so-called “Syrian Human Rights Observatory” where it coordinates closely with British intelligence turning out lurid atrocity stories to whip up sentiment in favor of a NATO intervention. The kings and emirs of the Gulf States bankroll these fighters. Turkey provides military bases and controls the cross-border flow of arms and the movement of the leaders of the so-called “Free Syrian Army”. The US, France and England provide the arms, training and diplomatic cover. Foreign jihadist-fundamentalists, including Al Qaeda fighters from Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan, have entered the conflict. This is no “civil war”. This is an international conflict pitting an unholy triple alliance of NATO imperialists, Gulf State despots, and Muslim fundamentalists against an independent secular nationalist regime. The foreign origin of the weapons, propaganda machinery and mercenary fighters reveals the sinister imperial, ‘multi-national’ character of the conflict. Ultimately the violent uprising against the Syrian state represents a systematic imperialist campaign to overthrow an ally of Iran, Russia, and China, even at the cost of destroying Syria’s economy and civil society, fragmenting the country and unleashing enduring sectarian wars of extermination against the Alevi and Christian minorities, as well as secular government supporters.

The killings and mass flight of refugees is not the result of gratuitous violence committed by a blood thirsty Syrian state. The Western backed militias have seized neighborhoods by force of arms, destroyed oil pipelines, sabotaged transportation and bombed government buildings. In the course of their attacks they have disrupted basic services critical to the Syrian people including education, access to medical care, security, water, electricity and transportation. As such, they bear most of the responsibility for this “humanitarian disaster”, (which their imperial allies and UN officials blame on Syrian security and armed forces). The Syrian security forces are fighting to preserve the national independence of a secular state, while the armed opposition commits violence on behalf of their foreign pay-masters – in Washington, Riyadh, Tel Aviv, Ankara, and London.

Conclusions

The Assad regime’s referendum last month drew millions of Syrian voters in defiance of Western imperialist threats and terrorist calls for a boycott. This clearly indicated that a majority of Syrians prefer a peaceful, negotiated settlement and reject mercenary violence. The Western-backed Syrian National Council and the Turkish and Gulf States-armed “Free Syrian Army” flatly rejected Russian and Chinese calls for an open dialogue and negotiations which the Assad regime has accepted. NATO and Gulf State dictatorships are pushing their proxies to pursue violent “regime change”, a policy which already has caused the death of thousands of Syrians. US and European economic sanctions are designed to wreck the Syrian economy, in the expectation that acute deprivation will drive an impoverished population into the arms of their violent proxies. In a repeat of the Libya scenario, NATO proposes to “liberate” the Syrian people by destroying their economy, civil society and secular state.

A Western military victory in Syria will merely feed the rising frenzy of militarism. It will encourage the West, Riyadh and Israel to provoke a new civil war in Lebanon. After demolishing Syria, the Washington-EU-Riyadh-Tel Aviv axes will move on to a far bloodier confrontation with Iran.

The horrific destruction of Iraq, followed by Libya’s post-war collapse provides a terrifying template of what is in store for the people of Syria: A precipitous collapse of their living standards, the fragmentation of their country, ethnic cleansing, rule by sectarian and fundamentalist gangs, and total insecurity of life and property.

Just as the “left” and “progressives” declared the brutal savaging of Libya to be the “revolutionary struggle of insurgent democrats” and then walked away, washing their hands of the bloody aftermath of ethnic violence against black Libyans, they repeat the same calls for military intervention against Syria. The same liberals, progressives, socialists and Marxists who are calling on the West to intervene in Syria’s “humanitarian crises” from their cafes and offices in Manhattan and Paris, will lose all interest in the bloody orgy of their victorious mercenaries after Damascus, Aleppo, and other Syrian cities have been bombed by NATO into submission.

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

Catastrophe is just a kind of change, a quick transition to a new equilibrium — and didn’t America recently vote for change? The discontinuity that marks collapse is simply the point at which prevailing fallacies are reduced to absurdity by life. Yeats saw war and British dominion reduced to absurdity, and wrote The Second Coming to make sense of it. It strikes me as a very cheerful poem: the unborn sphinx, a precious little bundle of joy.

Collapse is the obverse of renewal. Gibbon’s magnum opus, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, is equally the story of the rise of Europe in all its centripetal glory. At the close of Volume VI, modern Europe has taken shape. The collapse of the Soviet Warsaw Pact has freed several subject peoples. As nations unite, states naturally come and go. Peace requires self-determination, as the UN Charter tells us, and self-determination is advanced as states fail in gross or subtle ways. Sometimes a state loses its reason to exist, and deserves to collapse.

We in America have weathered the collapse of commercial and financial integrity, property rights, and government legitimacy in an orgy of elite looting. We’ve seen legal and Constitutional protections collapse in oligarchic repression. What of any value is left in our state? Life in America is already nasty and brutish, and short, by rich-world standards, at 78.3 years, a state of nature with institutional predators and human prey. The yammering fury of public discourse gets more insistent as it’s clearer that the centre cannot hold. Here in America, who will decide when it’s time to retire our failing state? And as state failures cascade and compound, how much suffering will result?

States fall apart in various ways but rights and rule of law limit the discomfort — at least in the civilized world. Developed countries can handle their fissiparous tendencies:

Scotland

Scotland plans a referendum on independence in the Autumn of 2014. Consultation with the Scottish public has begun. A final referendum bill and implementation plan is to be in place by the end of the year. The Scottish parliament considers the referendum bill for planned passage in October, subject to royal assent. The English government is mounting a bureaucratic defense in depth, maneuvering behind the scenes to rig the options, to strip Scotland of its natural resources, and to cultivate support for the half-measure of home rule. Partly in reaction to that heavy hand, the Scottish majority now backs independence.

Slovakia

When the Velvet Revolution displaced a crumbling Soviet client state, trouble started early on. The first Slovak cause célèbre was a bid to drop the word socialist from the country’s name. Then the revolutionary Civic Forum tore itself apart, sidelining pinkos to form the Civic Democrats. Slovaks jibbed at the misery of the economic shock treatment imposed by Finance Minister Vaclav Klaus. Co-prime ministers and power sharing failed to heal the growing rifts. The majority Czech party turned down proposals for a looser union modeled on the Maastricht Treaty, and in July 1992, the Slovak National Council resolved:

We, the democratically elected Slovak National Council, solemnly declare that the thousand years’ struggle of the Slovak nation for independence (“self-standing”) has been fulfilled.

In this historical moment, we declare the natural right of the Slovak nation for self-determination, as embodied by all international agreements and treaties about the right of nations for self-determination.

Recognizing the right of nations for self-determination, we declare, that we also want to freely create the way and form of national and state life, while respecting the rights of everybody, all citizens, nations, national minorities, ethnic groups, and the democratic humanist legacy of Europe and the world.

By this declaration, the Slovak National Council declares sovereignty of the Slovak Republic as a basis for a sovereign state of the Slovak nation.

Concisely ticking all the boxes, self-determination, rights, and rule of law, the Slovaks broke away. The Czechs let them go. Klaus and his Slovak counterpart negotiated terms and in less than six months, Parliament dissolved the federal state.

The Slovaks have not lost their independent spirit. Just this February an anti-corruption protest drew 15,000 citizens who lobbed bananas, eggs, bottles, firecrackers and a flowerpot over the fence of their Presidential Palace. They are an inspiration to us all.

Quebec

Quebeckers have been restive since at least 1837, when they rebelled as Lower Canada. In the 1960s Quebec spawned various independence movements encompassing a spectrum of tactics, from party politics and illegal nonviolence to violent rebellion. As proper leftists, they bombed the stock exchange, but rural rightists were on board too. They felt like Frantz Fanon was talking to them, and even if he wasn’t, Charles de Gaulle was, when he yelled, Vive le Québec libre! Technocratic dithering bought time.

In 1995, at the Royal Commission on the Future of Quebec, the Marxist-Leninists emptied the stands by proposing that Quebec declare its independence. The ensuing referendum barely kept Canada together. The movement seems to be in remission now, subsumed by recent immigrants and ambivalent indigenes.

Slovenia

When the end of Soviet-style multinational rule uncorked the immemorial hatreds of the Balkans, Slovenia saw what was coming and determined to get out. The Yugoslav government planned to assert control of Tito’s decentralized armed forces, but before it could happen the Slovenes secretly mobilized a home guard command structure. They got to work on a war plan and a Tienanmen-themed media strategy. In December of that year, 88 per cent of Slovenes voted to secede from Yugoslavia. The Slovene people were on their own — the US and its European satellites could see no point to self-determination, and for NATO, ethnic tensions promised exciting new threats to bomb.

When the Yugoslav People’s Army took over in Slovenia, they found that no soldiers reported to them: the chain of command now took its orders from the new Slovene capital, Ljubljana. The Slovenes sat their Yugoslav border guards down and tactfully put them out to pasture. A bewildered Yugoslav army invaded itself. The tentative Yugoslavian Blitzkrieg featured desertions, mass surrenders, and serendipitous mechanical breakdowns, and was aborted by the Serbs, who didn’t really care. Forty-four Yugoslavs and 18 Slovenes gave their lives.

Collapse is a continuum linking devolution, autonomy, secession, disintegration, internecine warfare, and forcible dismemberment. When the government is evil, it’s all good — that’s US foreign policy, in essence. America’s ruling class has helped most of the world dissolve its governments again and again. The US government showcased its foreign-interference skills in Greece, Italy, Iran, Guatemala, North Vietnam, Hungary, Laos, Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, Bolivia, and Uruguay. Also in Cambodia, Chile, Australia, Angola, Afghanistan, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Panama.

Our government’s enthusiasm for therapeutic collapse runs afoul of international norms, particularly UN General Assembly A/RES/36/103: Declaration on the Inadmissibility of Intervention and Interference in the Internal Affairs of States.

The resolution points out that economic and political pressure tactics are subject to UN authority just as war is subject to UN authority, under Chapter VII. As required by the supreme law of our land, A/RES/36/103 limits national security policy to the two poles of self-defense or pacific settlement of disputes. The risky middle ground of graduated pressure requires the concurrence of the world, under UN rules.

UN Charter Article 39 reads:

The Security Council shall determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression and shall make recommendations, or decide what measures shall be taken in accordance with Articles 41 and 42, to maintain or restore international peace and security.

Article 41 reads:

The Security Council may decide what measures not involving the use of armed force are to be employed to give effect to its decisions, and it may call upon the Members of the United Nations to apply such measures. These may include complete or partial interruption of economic relations and of rail, sea, air, postal, telegraphic, radio, and other means of communication, and the severance of diplomatic relations.

In the United States, economic or political sanctions without UN supervision are illegal under the supreme law of the land.

Yet the principle of non-interference, if applied, would paralyze US foreign policy. The US government would be lost without disruption, overthrow, armed intervention, subversion, occupation, destabilization, mercenaries, great-power confrontation, defamation, vilification, economic coercion, blockade, distortion of human rights, sabotage, or terror. The resolution rules out America’s favorite unilateral trick, use of transnational and multinational corporations as instruments of coercion. Our unilateral denial of the SWIFT banking network to Iran: illegal under US supreme law. US agents “striking at Egypt’s stability” with distorted selective claims of right: illegal, in the US as in Egypt.

When our Mideast puppet rulers began to collapse naturally, without us, the state’s urge to meddle swept away any notion of law. In Libya our government relied on traditional star-spangled carnage to topple the Libyan state, dispatching the CIA’s tame revolutionary, Khalifa Hifter. When routine interference failed, our government tried gun-running , direct reinforcements, and finally aerial bombardment in illegal support of civil war.

As soon as our government stubbed out its war in Libya, it lit another one in Syria.  Again, our subversion conformed with American tradition. We dusted off Kermit Roosevelt’s old plan, with its paramilitary insurgents, assassinations, coup de main, and sabotage.  Recognizing the growing importance of humanitarian law, our insurgents weaponized it, making up casualty numbers with whimsical abandon, posing executed soldiers in rubble as civilian victims of government bombardments. Our government fabricated crimes against humanity by cribbing old satellite photos, like term papers, right off the Internet.

But this time, when Uncle Sam offered to put the Syrian state out of its induced misery, the UN Charter tripped us up. Our government’s shaky grasp of the non-interference precept led Russia and China to cast unusual Security Council vetoes. Our great-power counterparts had been acting in accordance with UN reform principles, refraining from vetoes on votes involving human rights, but our fake atrocities and real slaughter were too much. Perhaps our Libyan mass-rape tall tale was the last straw. Like some greedy producer of action films who squeezes in one product placement too many, our spooks couldn’t resist the implausible propaganda flourish of Viagra as a rape aid.

Our government’s gotten away with it, so far. Libya’s a bestial bloodbath thanks to us. US proxies and paramilitaries are still gnawing like termites on Syrian society. Amateur revolutionaries in Congress are trying to cut Baluchistan loose from Pakistan. American bigwigs overtly support Kurdish terrorists in overthrowing the government of Iran, notwithstanding that’s a felony offense in the US.

There’s one slight adverse side-effect. Our spooks proved that you can topple a government anywhere — even here at home. Sauce for the Syrian or Libyan goose is sauce for the American gander. At some point a regional power or bloc will get tired of US spooks hiring traitors in their sovereign states, and decide to give our government a taste of its own medicine. After all, for every Ahmad Chalabi or Khalifa Hifter there must be a thousand dodgy Americans on the make, ready to fabricate intel, tug heartstrings, and organize resistance for the most treasonous designs. And why not? Everyone hates this government, patriots most of all. Public rage at pervasive state corruption and crime is barely contained by partisan divide-and-rule manipulation.

Caught red-handed throwing stones in front of its glass house, our police state is panicked to see its revolutionary social-justice weapons proliferating all the way back home. The National Defense Authorization Act is based on a world-view of a global state of siege with ubiquitous malefactors skulking behind every tree, striving to undermine and destroy America.  The see-no-evil gumshoes of the FBI, having slept through the greatest financial crime in history, are mobilizing the public to combat terrorists including beauty terrorists, home-improvement terrorists, and body-art terrorists.  The threat of accountability scares our government even more. The Defense Intelligence Agency fears “lone wolves” in its ranks, “radicalized” into complying with US supreme law such as the Geneva Conventions or Article 19.  The security state is even afraid of its old soldiers.

But as the Beltway death merchants know, one man’s existential threat is another man’s booming market. So in the spirit of traditional American FREE MONEY! seminars and infomercials, let us ask: If you as a domestic subversive want a piece of that foreign belligerent funding and training, how should you go about knocking over your tottering American kleptocracy?

First, let’s dispel the major misconceptions. There’s a lot of unhelpful nostalgia for the imagined golden age of the American Revolution. Our patriotic brainwashing seems to take hold when we try to face totalitarian encroachments by our state. The resulting historical conceit can take the sophisticated formulation of Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who predicts that with one bad break, “…you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.” Or it can take the form of rattlesnake flags and silly buckskin costumes.

In fact, there is no going back. The American State Papers are as much use to you as the Dead Sea scrolls. They do not apply any more. They cannot help you with the forcible overthrow of the Government of the United States. Our state has set its founding documents aside. Besides, you do not need a war of independence. Independence is the last thing you want.

The key is to avail yourself of John L. Hargrove’s “web of living law.” Just leap and it will catch you like an acrobat’s net. Customary and conventional international law aligns the world with your self-determination goals.

This approach is particularly effective when the ruling regime is shown to hold those norms in contempt. The disgraceful failure of our state is amply documented in reviews by independent institutions of international repute: the Committee Against Torture, the Human Rights Committee, and the Human Rights Council. International law exposes domestic legal cover for impermissible state conduct. The scrutiny of the international community can void totalitarian enabling acts such as the PATRIOT Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, exacting escalating costs in national prestige and diplomatic influence. The US government’s client states become less malleable. Non-aligned states and autonomous blocs gain the moral high ground.

When it’s time to abolish the government, your declaration writes itself. No need for a founding genius to think it up de novo – you can cut and paste from universally-accepted boilerplate grounded in customary and conventional international law. Not so stirring, perhaps, but just as revolutionary in effect: in current doctrine, sovereignty is responsibility. An irresponsible state has forfeited its sovereignty and has no reason to exist. The world can and must step in.

By design, a state has to screw up pretty badly to flunk its sovereignty test. It has to be guilty of particular crimes:

- Of war crimes (Check. Fallujah, and dereliction of Afghan human security in breach of Article 55 of the Fourth Geneva Convention);

- Or genocide (Check. Cambodia, and attributable failure to prevent in Palestine);

- Or crimes against humanity (keeping the jackboot on the neck of the Gulf States while BP poisons them);

- Or ethnic cleansing (our government’s brutal cattle-drive response to Hurricane Katrina).

For a taste of modern emancipatory bumf, let’s slap together a pastiche of the World Summit Outcome Document; the UN Secretariat’s report, Implementing the Responsibility to Protect; some foundational international law that subordinates national security to human security and rights; and just to make the old soldiers sniffle and salute, snippets of the Declaration of Independence.

Declaration of Interdependence

When in the course of human events it becomes necessary for peoples to demand their birthright of peace, dignity, and a better life in larger freedom, customary and conventional law require that they demonstrate their sovereignty in reclaiming it from an overreaching state.

We hold these principles to be universal and binding on any sovereign American state: the United Nations Charter, the International Bill of Human Rights, and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to derogate core human rights and permit the most serious crimes, it is the urgent duty of nations and peoples to provide new guards for human security.

The Government of the United States (the State) has repudiated its duties under humanitarian law and human rights law. The State perpetuates an unlawful policy of official impunity with attacks on the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court including threat of force. The State exploits human-rights treaty commitments as pretexts for aggression, and subverts concomitant domestic obligations with legislative obstruction and federalist neglect.

Respect for human rights is an essential element of responsible sovereignty. The State uses domestic law as a weapon against its population, abridging the peoples’ civil and political rights while conferring impunity on compliant elites. The judiciary refuses redress for violations of fundamental human rights, in breach of the supreme law of the land.

Failures of governance have imposed profound and deepening inequalities. Development has reversed, opening lasting fissures in the social and political fabric. Incapacitating social divisions and an exploitative doctrine of corporatist growth intensify contention for resources. State repression lets domestic tensions worsen with no peaceful resolution. Political leaders have made a deliberate and calculated choice to take advantage of social divisions and institutional failures, using sovereignty as a shield to inflict widespread and systematic violence with impunity. Political leaders and ruling factions suppress and subvert rights and rule of law with war propaganda and hate speech, indoctrinating the public at large along with critical actors in society including police, soldiers, the judiciary, and legislators. Our rulers undermine and attack self-correcting mechanisms that could discourage and derail the most serious crimes.

To prove this, let the facts be submitted for a candid world:

- Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 19 of the Convention: Conclusions and recommendations of the Committee against Torture – United States of America, CAT/C/USA/CO/2, 18 May 2006;

- Universal Periodic Review of the United States of America, Friday, 5 November 2010;

- Human Rights Committee, Eighty-seventh session, 10-28 July 2006, Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 40 of the Covenant-United States of America, Concluding observations;

- Human Rights Committee: Consideration of Reports submitted by States Parties Under Article 40 of the Covenant – Fourth Report of the United States of America;¹

- Consideration of Reports Submitted by States Parties Under Article 19 of the Convention: Conclusions and recommendations of the Committee against Torture – United States of  America Fifth Periodic Report.²

In a mobilized military power with the privileges and unequal justice of permanent Security Council membership, this intensifying complex of repression and aggression constitutes a threat of paramount concern to the international community. The manifest failure of the state’s protective responsibilities have resulted in war crimes, genocide, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. Accordingly, we the American peoples request international assistance and capacity building to avert still greater crimes and to restore human security.

We call for concerted international suasion, education, and assistance, reinforced by parallel and consistent diplomacy, including measures in conformity with UN Charter Article 41 or Rome Statute Article 13 (b). Those contemplating the incitement or perpetration of crimes and violations relating to the responsibility to protect must be made to understand both the costs of pursuing that path and the potential benefits of seeking peaceful reconciliation and development instead.

We call for dialogue, education and training on human rights and humanitarian law to inform national agendas for institutional reform. The international community must engage with the State and the public to support a culture of peace, and to realize the educational obligations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

We call for international development assistance based on human rights as an alternative to exploitative regimes based on corporatist central planning, elite looting, trading in influence and abuse of function, coercive control of peoples’ natural wealth and resources, and private debt imposed for social control.

To curb our increasingly dangerous state, we the peoples of the United States urgently need external intervention to restore lost attributes of good governance: rule of law, a competent and independent judiciary, human rights, security sector reform, a robust civil society, an independent press, and a political culture that favors tolerance, dialogue and mobility. In a climate of violent state resistance to basic obligations, the international community must support civil society, assisting and protecting associations committed to human rights and rule of law.

The Government of the United States has compromised its sovereignty with domestic repression and crimes of concern to the international community. The peoples of America have lost control over their state, and cannot preserve peace and human security without the help of all the nations and the peoples of the world.

We, therefore, the assembled Representatives of the peoples of America do, solemnly publish and declare, that as Free and sovereign peoples, they have full Power to keep Peace, contract Alliances, protect human rights, and to carry out all other duties of sovereign states, subject to the free expression of the will of individual American electors in universal and equal suffrage. And for the support of this Declaration we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

It runs on a bit, in the gabby American way — it wouldn’t suit the taciturn Slovaks — but then the world might want to know exactly what to expect of American splittists or putschists, after the psychotic carnage of the country’s postwar history. If the wrong faction, or the wrong states, broke away leaving cooler heads behind, a spate of wars would surely ensue. Imagine Texas or Arizona breaking loose — or any state, led by the bloodthirsty nationalist ghouls of Harvard or Johns Hopkins. Nonetheless, things can’t go on this way, with the United States government as outsized as it is, and as murderous. The world knows this rogue state needs to be curbed or torn apart.

The thought has occurred to people here at home, and not just to crackpots and Dixie rednecks. Cold War statesman George F. Kennan daydreamed of breaking the US up. He worried that the USA’s huge scale would lead to overweening ambitions. He supported the affable insurgents of Sovereign Vermont. Near the end of his life Kennan wrote:

All power to Vermont in its effort to distinguish itself from the USA as a whole, and to pursue in its own way the cultivation of its own tradition.

And:

Such are at present the dominating trends in the U.S. that I can see no other means of ultimate preservation of cultural and societal values that will be not only endangered but eventually destroyed in an endlessly prolonged association of the northern parts of New England with the remainder of what is now the U.S.A.

Needless to say, a declaration’s only the beginning. Vermont’s declaration got them nowhere. The next steps would depend on the government’s response. An ace hustler like Ahmad Chalabi would hold that detail back until he clinched the deal with foreign agents. To an entrepreneur of induced collapse, the declaration is just promotional material, a teaser for his limited-enrollment seminars in dismal chain hotels.

The seminars could be packed with practical tips for aspiring American Chalabis. The art of destabilizing police states is advancing at a rapid pace. The revolutionist’s body of knowledge incorporates US foreign-subversion practices.  The world learned a lot ousting America’s Mideast puppets.

In response to state repression, modern subversives have a broadening spectrum of options. As part of its Iran strategy, the Brookings Institution devised a handy manual for toppling governments with popular revolutions, insurgencies, or coups. Traditional forcible-overthrow tricks continue to be refined. The Afghans and Iraqis are continually devising ingenious new ways to discourage illegal military occupation. The classics continue to inspire new generations and new ideas.

The US military funds destabilization research, producing weapons that deserve to proliferate at home and abroad. At the technical institute founded by Gilded-age oligarchs Carnegie and Mellon, scholars have devised CONSTRUCT-O to pinpoint the weaknesses of socio-technical systems. CONSTRUCT-O suggests that horizontal organizations like the Occupy movement are harder to destabilize than our increasingly autocratic state. CONSTRUCT-O can measure the frustration of America’s secret police when they attack non-hierarchical groups like Occupy. Our government’s fixation on its chain of command produces befuddled apparatchiks who scurry around dissident encampments demanding, “take me to your leader.” Heel-clicking government bureaucrats cannot see why you can’t decapitate an acephalous collective.

In the US, the state’s heavy reliance on debt peonage opens new possibilities for collective action.  The debt-encumbered underclass has grown to become an overwhelming majority. Secured debt exceeds the value of pledged assets. Predatory lending now regulates access to human rights like health and education, and as these basic services deteriorate, the state permits increasingly coercive collection measures. Well-coordinated debt strikes could paralyze the economy as effectively as work stoppages once did. The government is determined to purge this approach from the institutions under its control, but collective action for debtors is bound to be integrated into nonviolent resistance.

All in all, it’s got boundless potential for Multi-Level Marketing: not just training subversives, but training trainers of subversives, and training trainers of trainers in infinite regress, like AMWAY with collapse instead of soap. Free Foreign Money for Regime Change!  The entrepreneurial genius that gives America its weapons and prisons and wars could paralyze America for peace. Find a need and meet it, as the hucksters say, that’s the key to success. So for any threatened nation that wants to get America’s maniacal rogue state under control, a diverse selection of subversive elements can be reached through a network of dead drops and cutouts near you. Ask for Spitball, that’s my secret agent code name.

But there’s no guarantee. It doesn’t always work. Tibet and Western Morocco continue to languish in subjection. Sometimes you cannot effect rebirth, and freedom fighters fail, however greedy or grandiose or brave. Sometimes the repressive regime is too far gone for salutary collapse. In an irrational state lost to unchecked exploitation, renewal may be impossible.

In Palestine, freedom will play out with the grim futility of classical tragic κατάδεσμος, as a curse redounding through the generations. Despite press coverage of Palestine’s UN membership bid as a climactic contretemps, Palestine is a state – an occupied state under systematic genocidal attack, but a state nonetheless. The Palestinian state has gained recognition from more than two thirds of the UN member states. When the US quashed the formality of UN membership, UNESCO accepted Palestine as a state. Palestinians completed a National Plan, backed by the mediating Quartet countries, to build institutions ready for statehood — except for what the government of Israel could obstruct.

But in the grip of what the ancients called a curse, old victims are made mad, destroying new victims. When the State of Israel carpet-bombed its frontiers with poisoned uranium weapons  ³,  unfavorable winds sterilized Israel’s population. Now the nation’s in a spiral toward extinction. The state’s Moslem victims are holding their own for now, multiplying against a tide of monstrous birth defects and stillbirths, but if autonomy improves development and education, fertility will quickly drop below critical levels, as it has among Israeli Jews. Within a generation, peace will come to a depopulated waste.

The corrupt and brutal government of the United States lies between world-standard governance ideals and barbarism, on a continuum from the rights and rule of law of the civilized world down to outcast concentration camps like Israel or North Korea. America’s direction of movement is easy to discern: we’ve gone far beyond the civilized pale. The American peoples can no longer rein in their fanatical police state alone. For security and protection they must have recourse to the outside world. We don’t yet know if our predator state has passed the point of no return. It may be the world can only watch in horror.

1. At this writing the Department of State has released its own report but no Committee review documentation.
2. US report due November 19, 2011; at this writing the Department of State has released no documentation.
3. Poisoned weapons are prohibited by Rome Statute Article 8 (2b) (xvii) and may constitute a crime against humanity

But the structural causes of poverty are rarely addressed in the Western press. Why, for example, if capitalism is the best of all possible socio-economic systems, do most of the people on the planet live in poverty?

We are told that developing countries have dragged their populations out of poverty by opening up their markets to direct foreign investment. Rather than reining in the excesses of capitalism, then, intensifying its expansion is, many would argue, the solution to poverty.

But if that is the case, why is Haiti one of the poorest countries in the world? Haiti has had direct foreign investment for decades, yet standards of living have declined drastically. The same can be said for most Latin American countries who have sold their natural resources to foreign corporations.

Countries such as Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia have achieved socio-economic progress through nationalization not privatization. But there is a state at the other side of the world which has succeeded in providing almost full employment; is continuously raising wages; investing in education, scientific and technological research and development, and has achieved self-sufficiency in agriculture, creating an environment of social hope for its citizens. That country is the Republic of Belarus.

Venezuela and Belarus. Multi-polarity and endogenous development.

In 2007 President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela described the Republic of Belarus as a “model state”. Driving through the streets of Minsk, it is not difficult to see why the Venezuelan president would use such terms to describe Belarus.

Since the 1998 election of Chavez in Venezuela, the Bolivarian revolution has reduced poverty by half, eradicated illiteracy, and implemented radical reforms aimed at improving the standard of living of Venezuela’s poor majority.

However, much remains to be done; the hillsides of Caracas are still dotted with make-shift slum housing while the city’s economic elite on the Eastern side of the city live in sybaritic luxury. Driving through Minsk, on the other hand, one is struck by a vision of what Caracas could become. There are no slums in Minsk. The city’s inhabitants live in modern, European standard apartment blocks. There are plenty of clean open spaces with the excellent recreation facilities for children. Caracas has a major litter problem, wheras the streets and neighborhoods of Minsk are among the cleanest in the world.

The Venezuelan government has been implementing measures to reduce violence and social delinquency. But Caracas still remains a dangerous city. Minsk, on the other hand, is arguably one of the safest cities in Europe.

While decades of plutocratic dictatorship, corruption and neglect, Venezuelan agriculture remains underdeveloped and the population still depends on imports from the United States, Belarus is self sufficient in high quality food production.

Belarus has been able to help Venezuela develop its agricultural sector through the dispatch of consultants and the export of high quality trucks and agricultural machinery. The construction of agro-towns by Belarusian companies in Venezuela agreed in 2011 is a cogent illustration of progressive bilateral co-operation.

The bilateral agreement between Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA and Belarusnef to create a joint-venture called Servicio Belovenezolana is another example of the advantages of a multi-vectored foreign policy for Belarus.

The Republic of Belarus has been able to decrease its dependence on Russia for oil through co-operation with oil-rich Venezuela, while Venezuela has been able to benefit from Belarusian industrial and scientific expertise. Both countries seek to diversify their markets. Venezuela wants to reduce its dependence on oil sales to the United States, while Belarus is trying to reduce its dependence on Russian oil. And both countries are dealing with fifth columns funded by Euro-Atlantic imperialism.

The advanced manufacturing sector in Belarus has also been an inspiration for Venezuela who have sent technicians to Belarus to be trained with a view to creating Latin America’s first national truck factory in Venezuela.

There are also many projects to increase further co-operation between Belarus and Venezuela such as increased imports and exports of agricultural products, medical technology and supplies, and joint state initiatives in the textile industry.

The increasing bilateral trade and co-operation between Belarus and Venezuela is a direct result of the commonalities in social policies of both countries. The five chief priorities of the Belarusian government are:

1 Maintaining equality and raising the standard of living of the working people.
2 Maintaining a full-employment economy.
3 Investment in education and scientific research.
4 The protection and development of a strong indigenous production base.
5 Inviolable national sovereignty

For Venezuela, Belarus is a model state because it has achieved what every progressive government in the world aspires to: near full employment and the elimination of extreme poverty. It has developed an impressive manufacturing base; maintained autonomy in the production of food; a consistently high rate of economic growth, and attained a standard of living and level of social equality unparalleled anywhere else in the developing world. This is precisely the dream of the Bolivarian Revolution and this is why the experience of Belarus since the fall of the Soviet Union is so important for the developing world.

Unlike Venezuela, which is emerging out of an extreme form of plutocracy where a tiny minority controlled the country’s wealth, Belarus has emerged from the Soviet Union where social classes had been eradicated during the construction of socialism in the 1920s and 30s.

In this sense Belarus has a distinct advantage over Venezuela as it does not have a super-rich bourgeoisie using its connections with the United States to prevent re-distribution of wealth. Belarus does, however, have the aforementioned fifth column, but they do not possess the obscene wealth and power of their Venezuelan counterparts.

President Lukashenko’s vision of a multi-polar world threatens the proponents of a New World Order, where the interests of the many are subordinated to those of the Euro-Atlantic financial elites.

Unlike neighboring states such as Poland and Lithuania, for whom “freedom” since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 has resulted in mass unemployment, emigration, and the supply of troops for NATO’s foreign wars and occupations, Belarus has shown that the state has a vital role in regulating the market for the general good.

If global poverty is to be eradicated, then sustainable industries, endogenous development and planned economies will have to become the norm. Belarus, perhaps more than any other country, could play a leading role in the transition to a new global era of socially-oriented economies.

The Venezuelan ambassador to Belarus Americo Diaz Nunez recently told reporters in Minsk that:

The two countries are implementing joint projects to construct brick manufacturing plants, assemble tractors and trucks (this facility will open in Venezuela soon), construct agro-towns, produce oil and gas, build more than 20,000 apartments and trade in goods. It is impossible to ignore the fact that Belarus really helps change the life of the Venezuelans.

The constructive and creative relationship between two countries in different continents aimed at improving the living standards of the many rather than the privileges of the few, is in stark contrast to the belligerent and decadent kleptocracies of the West who mask their lucre-lust in high-sounding phrases about “human rights” and “democracy” while proceeding to kill the social hope of billions of people.

The Venezuelan-Belarus relationship is a unique example of what international diplomacy in a socialist world could mean for humanity.

The international media campaign of demonization, calumny, lies and disinformation about the Belarusian government has fooled not only die-hard proponents of neo-liberal economics but many so-called “leftists” and “progressives”, who have fallen for the double speak about “human rights,” “freedom,” and “democracy.”

The absence of solidarity by the European “left” with the Republic of Belarus is a symptom of just how corrosive and all-pervasive capitalist ideology has become in Western post-modern societies. This is a trend which will lead to social and political catastrophe if not is not reversed.

Ales Bialiatski: legally a convicted criminal, ideologically a “human rights activist”

On the 8th of August as plans for the siege of Sirte in Libya were underway, American senator John McCain was already signaling that Belarus would be America’s next target for regime change. McCain referred to the imprisonment of Ales Bialiatski, the so-called “human rights” activist arrested by the Belarusian authorities for fiscal fraud in 2011.

Bialiatski is the vice-president of the International Federation of Human Rights, (Fédération internationale des ligues des droits de l’Homme) a sub-organisation of which provided the United Nation’s Human Rights Council with false information in February 2011 accusing the Libyan government of “massacres” in Benghazi.

This false information served as a pretext for a war of aggression that led to the killing of tens of thousands of people, reducing a prosperous socially-oriented economy to rubble and imposing a corrupt foreign-selected dictatorship against the wishes of the Libyan people.

The barbaric destruction of the Libyan Jamahirya should serve as a sufficient lesson to any intelligent person of what NATO countries mean by “human rights,” “democracy,” and the “rule of law.”

Amnesty International’s condemnation of Bialiatski’s prosecution, without showing any proof of a miscarriage of justice on the part of the Belarusian courts, shows that the so-called “human rights” organization is more concerned with providing moral legitimacy for the foreign policy objectives of Western governments than protecting human rights.

Bialiatski was arrested by the Polish and Lithuanian police for fiscal fraud on intelligence supplied to them by Interpol. He was not arrested for his political opposition to the Belarusian government. This is not the first time Amnesty International has falsely accused Belarus of human rights violations and it is unlikely to be the last.

Since Bialiatski’s imprisonment, the Polish government has moved to prevent further Interpol arrest warrants issued from “undemocratic” countries. This is rather farcical coming from a state where wearing a Che Guevara T-Shirt could land you in jail!

The human rights charade is now becoming so ridiculous it is likely to backfire in the long term. Regime change specialists such as Canvas, a US funded colour revolution training centre based in Belgrade, are now orchestrating stunts involving the use of naked women protesting outside the KGB headquarters in Minsk. Behaviour of this kind would get one arrested in any country.

However, the point of the exercise is, in fact, to get arrested, film it and thereby embarrass the KGB. But the KGB, being an intelligence agency, have pre-empted their plans and the silly nudists have only succeeded in catching a cold and providing light entertainment for pedestrians, all in the cause of the “revolution.”

That Amnesty International should hold openly take sides in favour of US-funded pseudo-dissidents should not surprise us. After all, the head of Amnesty International USA Suzanne Nossel is a former assistant to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the man they call Dr. Stranglove, former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski is also a former board member of the same human rights organisation.

The Threat of NATO and its minions

The war of aggression waged against Libya in 2011 and the current covert war being waged by NATO agencies against Syria have shown that the Euro-Atlantic powers have, as in the past, decided to use war as a means of securing a re-division of the world propitious to their geo-political interests.

The sophisticated disinformation campaign waged against Libya by social media and international satellite TV channels that saw Africa’s richest country bombed to ruins, should serve as a warning to the Belarusian government of the danger posed by NATO to world peace.

Thanks to the exemplary actions of the Belarusian security forces during the post-election riots of December 19th 2010, an unpopular Western-imposed dictatorship was averted. The Belarusian people have seen the horror and immiseration of Western-backed regime change in Serbia, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgystan and other countries. The US-funded colour coups have been smashed in the Republic of Belarus and they are not likely to succeed in the near future.

Given the failure of CIA-backed colour revolutions in Belarus in the recent past and the country’s proximity to Russia, it is difficult to imagine what strategy NATO will devise in order to place its puppets in Minsk.

However, a strategy of tension involving the use of covert mercenaries disguised as peaceful protestors such as we have seen in Syria, presents a real danger for the Republic of Belarus in the coming months.

Addressing the Belarusian Armed Forces on February 23rd president Lukashenko noted political and information technologies of Western NGOs effected regime change across North Africa. Belarus, he stressed, has the unity and technical ability to withstand such destabilization.

Conlusion

President Lukashenko once remarked that dishonest journalists can be worse than assassins. The centrality of mass media disinformation during the Libyan war and the ongoing demonization campaign against the Republic of Belarus have shown the danger which news stenographers to corporate power pose for humanity.

The clash between the politics of human endogenous development and the politics of cancerous greed is the internecine conflict facing our world today. If there is to be a future for the next generation, a multi-polar world based on Westphalian sovereignty and endogenous socio-economic development will have to built.

That is why those of us who stand for world peace, economic development and international law, must continue to expose the slanderous corporate media campaign against the socially-oriented domestic and foreign policy of the Republic of Belarus.

I wondered about Anderson’s commitment to anti-interventionism and his view on “humanitarian” interventions, something that should be crystal clear from someone running for president and appealing to progressives. The following email exchange resulted:

From JW to RA:  Hello Rocky,

I wish that you would spell all this out a bit more clearly.

Are you for “humanitarian” interventions as in the Balkans?  Have you read Jean Bricmont’s great (and short) book “Humanitarian Imperialism”?

Are you for getting rid of all our overseas bases and devoting a limited military to purely defensive purposes?

Many pwogs, for example, Amy Goodman and CIA “consultant” Juan Cole, were cheerleaders for the Libyan intervention, despite Libya having had the highest Human Development Index in all of Africa before NATO destroyed its infrastructure and reduced it to rubble in the name of human rights.

We have two versions of imperialism – the “tough guy” Dick Cheney brand and the “humanitarian” Susan Rice version.  Both are the same in reality whatever the words attached to them.  We must break with them both and cease viewing the world solely through the very arbitrary lens of “human rights,” a good sell among the pwogwessives.

But what good are human rights to a starving illiterate woman in India, a category that Mao consigned to the dust heap of history in China?

From RA to JW:  Yes, so long as we are in compliance with the War Power Clause of the Constitution and the U.N. Charter, I favor the U.S. working with the international community in putting to an end massive atrocities.  I strongly believe in living up to the promise of “Never Again.”  Given all my work in this area, I don’t know how you would have any doubt about my position.  I don’t think political boundaries should control our moral obligations to our brothers and sisters elsewhere.

I recommend to you A Problem From Hell, by Samantha Power.

Your reference to Susan Rice was a curious one.  She sat on her hands (as you apparently would have had her do) when she was with the NSC and failed to take any action to stop the genocide that led to the slaughter of 800,000 Rwandans in 100 days.  According to an article in The Atlantic by Samantha Power, Susan Rice was apparently more concerned with the political implications in the mid-term elections in 1994 than she was about the horrendous fate of the Tutsis and moderate Hutus in Rwanda. Those who stood by when their action could have ended the atrocities are, in my view, complicit.

From JW to RA: I think the Samantha Powers of the world are a big part of the problem.

I recommend that you read Humanitarian Imperialism by Jean Bricmont.

From RA to JW: I think isolationist nationalists who don’t care about the suffering of other people who happen to be in other parts of the world are “the problem”.  Sorry, John, we’re on completely different moral planets here.

I’ll try to read the book you referenced.  Have you read A Problem From Hell?  It’s heart-breaking — and a real indictment of the failure of the US to do what is required to stop the atrocities.

From JW to RA: I cannot agree, Rocky.  The “international community” is a euphemism for NATO and the US.  The UN foolishly went along with the destruction of Libya – and we can now see that Russia and China are finally drawing a line in the sand at Syria.

You fail to see that the US is the most ruthless Empire in the history of humankind, and it will cover up its atrocities with appeals to “human rights.”  It is the biggest lie of all.   Would you favor military intervention to end apartheid in Israel?  Will you take that position on the campaign trail?

For those of us living in the heart of Empire there is no alternative to being principled anti-interventionists.  The Empire is incapable of waging a “good war,” whatever that may be.  An anti-interventionist is not an “isolationist nationalist.”  That is simply a smear.

Samantha Power has not written a heart rending account of what has been done to Iraq, I notice.

Finally, the Empire has always cloaked its wars in virtue, from the White Man’s burden to “human rights,” and it always will.  The path to hell is paved with naiveté.

From RA to JW: Samantha Power has not written that account of Iraq because we did not intervene on humanitarian grounds.  It was an illegal war of aggression, at odds with the War Power Clause and with the UN Charter.  You paint with a very misleading, broad brush.  You can advocate abandoning people during genocides and other mass atrocities.  I will always be on the other side.  I share your anti-imperialistic views; I do not share your willingness to turn a blind eye to humanitarian disasters.

You will never convince me of what I perceive to be an extremely selfish, heartless isolationist position.  I would always advocate doing what I would want the U.S. and international community to do if I were in the position of a victim of genocide.  To advocate doing what is right is hardly naïve.  And it is hardly countenancing wars of aggression.  No one has a stronger record of opposition to the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq than I.

From JW to RA: You are well meaning as far as I can tell, but you hold very dangerous views IMHO.

If people want to help those in far off lands, let them form their Abraham Lincoln brigades, something the US Empire also opposed.  Of course, that means putting one’s body on the line, not someone else’s body.

First do no harm.

From RA to JW: So you would advocate repeal of the Genocide Convention?  We couldn’t be further apart in our views on this.

But, then, I recognize the concerns with US empire that drive your views on this.  We need to strive to be better on all counts.  That’s why I have worked so hard in all of these areas over the years — and a large part of why I’m doing what I am now.

From JW to RA:  I never said that I wanted to repeal the Genocide Convention.  Why do you conclude that?

But what is being done to the Palestinians is a slow genocide.  Do you advocate military action against Israel to get rid of the Apartheid regime there?  You should be explicit about that.

Noam Chomsky points out that the slaughter in the Balkans, greatly exaggerated, took place AFTER NATO’s bombs started falling.  And that was not really a genocide either.

Nor is Darfur a genocide either – a brutal war on both sides apparently but not a genocide. In fact, only the US and that outrageous liar Susan Rice label it as such.

And then there is the slaughter in Libya a country that once had the highest Human Development Index in all of Africa.  The concrete reality is that the US is always up to no good and will kill and kill to get its way. We should not be in the business of providing cover for that.

I do not think that you really appreciate that the formerly colonized peoples of the world do not want Western interventions.  They have had quite enough of the benefits of such neocolonial acts.

From RA to JW: You are so incredibly wrong.  The people (at least the Tutsis) of Rwanda, and of Kosovo, view the U.S. as heroically coming to their aid and stopping the massacres.  You would have been content with sitting back after the massacre at Srebrenica.  To me, that is the greatest moral cowardice.

And how can you maintain that you would not seek the repeal of the Genocide Convention?  It creates a legal obligation to take action to stop genocides wherever they occur.

I cannot countenance the U.S. continuing to build its empire; neither can I countenance people — or our nation — turning a blind eye to mass atrocities when they can be stopped.

This will be my last email on this topic.  I’m dismayed that any person can be so insensitive toward victims of genocide or other mass atrocities.  (I’m curious.  What have you done, if anything, to help stop wars of aggression or mass atrocities?)

Good luck - 

At this point someone on the list of those cc’d to this exchange jumped in, J.A., an Israeli expat who as a young man was swept into the Yom Kippur war and saw many of his friends needlessly killed. He left Israel in part to save his son from future slaughters of this sort and has vowed never to return. He wrote:

From J.A. to RA and JW:  Rocky, h humanitarian intervention is a slippery slope argument, and is being used for imperialistic ambitions (The latest example is Libya, and still Afghanistan – freeing the Afghan women. If remember well, Samantha Power supported this view) and, in general, being used to justify our military power. (Humanitarian aid via aircraft carriers, being the good policeman of the world, etc).

BTW, you wrote “illegal invasion”; is there a legal invasion?

Here is a question: Since you support “humanitarian” intervention, do you support attacking Israel and freeing the Palestinians from the  Israeli harsh occupation? You must know about the suffering of the Palestinians under the Israeli Apartheid and the stealth genocide by Israel, so should we invade Israel?

(It is a rhetorical question to demonstrate how absurd is the “humanitarian” intervention view).

Joshua

From JW to RA:  You did not answer whether you would advocate in your campaign a military expeditionary force led by the US to end Israeli apartheid and the slow genocide of the Palestinians?  Why can you not answer that?

And will you launch another expedition to restore the Tibetan theocracy?  It will probably take a few million persons under arms and a return to the draft.  Or how about an occupation of India where the most dire poverty continues and the farmers driven from their agriculture by agribusiness commit suicide in huge numbers?  Or is that OK because “democracy” reigns?

And a second point.  The greatest stimulus to nuclear proliferation is the huge conventional military force which the US has.  That is the force that you need to preserve in order to save the world.  The only protection for a small nation is nukes.

Long ago when the US was trying to take down the Chinese revolution and waging a war on Vietnam, Mao Zedong opined that US imperialism is the number one enemy of the peoples of the world.  I am afraid that remains true.

I recommend again that you read Chomsky on the Balkans.

And you are proof positive that the progressive movement, so called, is no longer anti-interventionist or anti-Empire.

As they say, “You’ve come a long way, baby.”

At least you admit it outright – and that amount of honesty deserves credit.  I suggest that you openly proclaim the new humanitarian interventionism as part of your platform.  Now if only other progressives would also do that, we could separate wheat from chaff more readily.

JW

P.S. As a medical student I learned that there are some things that are beyond one’s control and that when one tries to control them the only thing that results is harm — sometimes fatal harm. Using the US imperial military to save the world is like operating with an infected scalpel.

I had become gravely ill on July 26, 2006, a month and a half prior to the summit, and could barely sit up in bed. Many of the most distinguished leaders who participated in the event were kind enough to visit me. Chavez and Evo visited me several times. One afternoon four visitors came by whom I will always remember: UN Secretary General Kofi Annan; an old friend, Abdelaziz Buteflika, the president of Algeria; Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran; and the vice minister of Foreign Affairs and current Foreign Minister of China, Yang Jiechi, on behalf of the leader of the Communist Party and the president of China, Hu Jintao. It was really an important time for me; I was in the midst of intense physiotherapy on my right hand that I had seriously injured when I fell in Santa Clara.

With all four I spoke about some of the difficulties facing the world at the time; problems that have become progressively more complex.

During our meeting yesterday, I noted that the Iranian president was absolutely calm and tranquil, completely unconcerned about the Yankee threats and, fully confident in the capacity of his people to confront any aggression and in the effectiveness of their arms —which, in large part, they produce themselves— to inflict an unpayable price on its aggressors.

In reality, we hardly spoke about the topic of war. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was focused on the ideas he had presented at the Main Hall of the University of Havana during his conference on the struggle of humankind:

Moving towards reaching and achieving peace, security, respect and human dignity as a fundamental desire of all human beings throughout history.

I am convinced that Iran will not commit any rash actions that might contribute to setting off a war. If a war were to be unleashed, it would inevitably be completely as a result of the recklessness and congenital irresponsibility of the Yankee Empire.

I believe that the political situation surrounding Iran and the associated risks of a nuclear war that involves us all —regardless of whether one possess nuclear weapons— are extremely delicate because they threaten the very existence of our species. The Middle East has become the most troubled region on the planet, the same region that produces the energy resources vital for the world’s economy.

The destructive power and the mass sufferings caused by some of the weapons used in World War Two led to a strong movement to ban weapons such as asphyxiating gas and others. Nevertheless, conflicting interests and the huge profits made by arms manufacturers led to the production of crueler and more destructive weapons; modern technology has now added the means and material to build weapons that if used in a world war would lead to extinction.

I support the opinion, undoubtedly shared by all those with a basic sense of responsibility, that no country big or small has the right to possess nuclear weapons.

They never should have been used to attack two defenseless cities such as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing and irradiating with horrible and long-lasting effects hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, in a country that had already been militarily defeated.

If fascism indeed forced the allied nations against Nazism to compete with this enemy of humanity in the production of such weapons, once the war ended and the United Nations was created, the first duty of this organization should have been to prohibit nuclear weapons without exception.

However, the United States, the strongest and richest power, forced the rest of the world to follow its lead. Today, they have hundreds of satellites that spy and monitor the entire world from outer space. Their naval, air and land forces are equipped with thousands of nuclear weapons; and they control the world’s finances and investments at their whim via the International Monetary Fund.

Analyzing the history of each Latin American nation, from Mexico to Patagonia, by way of Santo Domingo and Haiti, one can observe that each and every country, without exception, have suffered for 200 years, from the beginning of the 19th century up until today. And, in one way or another, they are increasingly suffering the worst crimes that power and force can commit against the rights of a people. Brilliant Latin American writers are emerging in an increasing number. One of them, Eduardo Galeano, author of the book Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent that describes the aforementioned, has just been invited to open the prestigious Casa de Las Americas Awards as a recognition to his outstanding body of work.

Events happen incredibly fast; but technologies report them to the public even faster. On any given day, like today, important news comes out a dizzying pace. A cable report dated from January 11 states:

The Danish presidency of the European Union confirmed on Wednesday that a new series of more severe European sanctions against Iran, because of its nuclear program, will be discussed on January 23. The new sanctions will not only target the oil industry but also the Central Bank.

During a meeting with international journalists, Danish Foreign Minister Villy Soevndal said that “We will increase sanctions against the oil industry in addition to sanctions against financial structures.” This clearly demonstrates that, in order to impede nuclear proliferation, Israel can go on accumulating hundreds of nuclear warheads while Iran is not allowed to produce 20% enriched uranium.

Another article, from a respected British news agency, states that “China gave no hint on Wednesday of giving ground to U.S. demands to curb Iran’s oil revenues, rejecting Washington’s sanctions on Tehran as overstepping …”

The sheer tranquility with which the United States and civilized Europe carry out this campaign with incredible and systematic acts of terrorism is enough to shock anybody. Just look at these lines reported by another important European news agency:

The murder on Wednesday of Iranian nuclear specialist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan [a scientist at the Natanz nuclear plant] was the fourth attack to kill a leading scientist in the country in almost exactly two years.

On January 12, 2010:

Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a particle physics professor at Tehran University is killed when a booby-trapped motorcycle explodes outside his home in the capital.

On November 29, 2010:

Two attacks target leading Iranian nuclear scientists on the same day. Majid Shahriari, a key member of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, is killed in Tehran by a limpet bomb attached to his car. His colleague Fereydoon Abbasi Davani is also targeted by a bomb attached to his car, but escapes.

The car was parked in front of the Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran where both men worked as professors.

On July 23, 2011:

Gunmen shoot dead Dariush Rezaei-Nejad, a senior scientist who is reportedly associated with the defense ministry, and wound his wife as they waited for their child outside a Tehran kindergarten.

On January 11, 2012 —the same day that Ahmadinejad travelled from Nicaragua to Cuba to give a conference at the University of Havana—, scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, “a deputy director at the Natanz nuclear enrichment facility, is killed in a car bomb blast outside the [Allameh Tabatabai] University in east Tehran.” As in previous years “Iran once again accused the United States and Israel.”

The killings represent a systematic and selective slaughter of brilliant Iranian scientists. I have read articles by known Israeli sympathizers who write about crimes carried out by Israeli intelligence services in cooperation with the United States and NATO as if they were the most normal occurrence.

At the same time, Moscow news agencies report that “Russia warned that in Syria a similar scenario is developing as to that in Libya, and added that this time the attack will be launched from neighboring Turkey.

The secretary of the Russian Security Council, Nikolai Patrushev, said the West wants to ‘punish Damascus not as much for repressing the opposition, but because it is unwilling to sever ties with Tehran.

…NATO members and some Persian Gulf states, operating according to the Libya scenario, intend to move from indirect intervention in Syrian affairs to direct military intervention…This time the main strikes forces will not be provided by France, the U.K. or Italy, but possibly by neighboring Turkey.

Washington and Ankara are now assumed to be negotiating a “no-fly” zone over Syria, where Syrian armed insurgents can be trained and concentrated, added Patrushev.

News is not only coming out of Iran and the Middle East, but also from other parts of Central Asia near the Middle East. These reports show the great complexity of the problems that can arise from this dangerous region.

The United States has been led by its contradictory and absurd imperial policy to get involved in serious problems in countries such as Pakistan, whose borders with Afghanistan were drawn up by the colonialists without taking into account culture or ethnicities.

In Afghanistan, which defended its independence against English colonialism for centuries, drug production has multiplied in the wake of the Yankee invasion. Meanwhile, European soldiers, supported by drone airplanes and armed with sophisticated US weapons, carry out deplorable massacres that increase the people’s hatred and ward off any possibilities of peace. All this and other dirty actions are also reported by Western news agencies.

WASHINGTON, January 12, 2012 – US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called the actions of four U.S. marines who urinated on corpses in Afghanistan “utterly deplorable” The video of the act was circulated in the Internet.

I have seen the footage, and I find the behavior depicted in it utterly deplorable…

This conduct is entirely inappropriate for members of the United States military and does not reflect the standards of values our armed forces are sworn to uphold…

In reality, Panetta neither confirms nor denies the action, and anyone, including the Secretary of Defense himself, may harbor doubt.

But it is also extremely inhumane that men, women and children, or an Afghani combatant fighting against the foreign occupation, be murdered by bombs dropped by drone planes. Another very serious incident: dozens of Pakistani soldiers and officials who safeguarded the country’s borders have been killed by these bombs.

Afghani President Karzai stated that the outrage committed against the bodies was “simply inhumane.” He asked for the US government “to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

Meanwhile Taliban spokespersons declared that “over the last ten years, hundreds of similar acts have been carried out that were not reported…”

One even feels sorry for those soldiers, thousands of kilometers away from their family, friends and country, sent to fight in countries that they might not have even heard of during their school days, where they are assigned the task of killing or dying to enrich transnational companies, arms manufacturers and unscrupulous politicians who each year squander funds needed to feed and educate the uncountable millions of hungry and illiterate people around the world.

Many of these soldiers, victims of the trauma suffered, end up taking their own lives.

Is it an exaggeration to say that world peace is hanging by a thread?