JSoc: Obama’s secret assassins

Naomi Wolf: On making change
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 3 February 2013 14.00 GMT

The president has a clandestine network targeting a ‘kill list’ justified by secret laws. How is that different than a death squad?

The film Dirty Wars, which premiered at Sundance, can be viewed, as Amy Goodman sees it, as an important narrative of excesses in the global “war on terror”. It is also a record of something scary for those of us at home – and uncovers the biggest story, I would say, in our nation’s contemporary history.

Though they wisely refrain from drawing inferences, Scahill and Rowley have uncovered the facts of a new unaccountable power in America and the world that has the potential to shape domestic and international events in an unprecedented way. The film tracks the Joint Special Operations Command (JSoc), a network of highly-trained, completely unaccountable US assassins, armed with ever-expanding “kill lists”. It was JSoc that ran the operation behind the Navy Seal team six that killed bin Laden.

Scahill and Rowley track this new model of US warfare that strikes at civilians and insurgents alike – in 70 countries. They interview former JSoc assassins, who are shell-shocked at how the “kill lists” they are given keep expanding, even as they eliminate more and more people.

Our conventional forces are subject to international laws of war: they are accountable for crimes in courts martial; and they run according to a clear chain of command. As much as the US military may fall short of these standards at times, it is a model of lawfulness compared with JSoc, which has far greater scope to undertake the commission of extra-legal operations – and unimaginable crimes.

JSoc morphs the secretive, unaccountable mercenary model of private military contracting, which Scahill identified in Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, into a hybrid with the firepower and intelligence backup of our full state resources. The Hill reports that JSoc is now seeking more “flexibility” to expand its operations globally.

JSoc operates outside the traditional chain of command; it reports directly to the president of the United States. In the words of Wired magazine:

“JSoc operates with practically no accountability.”

Scahill calls JSoc the president’s “paramilitary”. Its budget, which may be in the billions, is secret.

What does it means for the president to have an unaccountable paramilitary force, which can assassinate anyone anywhere in the world? JSoc has already been sent to kill at least one US citizen – one who had been indicted for no crime, but was condemned for propagandizing for al-Qaida. Anwar al-Awlaki, on JSoc’s “kill list” since 2010, was killed by CIA-controlled drone attack in September 2011; his teenage son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki – also a US citizen – was killed by a US drone two weeks later.

This arrangement – where death squads roam under the sole control of the executive – is one definition of dictatorship. It now has the potential to threaten critics of the US anywhere in the world.

The film reveals some of these dangers: Scahill, writing in the Nation, reported that President Obama called Yemen’s President Saleh in 2011 to express “concern” about jailed reporter Abdulelah Haider Shaye. US spokespeople have confirmed the US interest in keeping him in prison.

Shaye, a Yemeni journalist based in Sana’a, had a reputation for independent journalism through his neutral interviewing of al-Qaida operatives, and of critics of US policy such as Anwar al-Awlaki. Journalist colleagues in Yemen dismiss the notion of any terrorist affiliation: Shaye had worked for the Washington Post, ABC news, al-Jazeera, and other major media outlets.

Shaye went to al-Majala in Yemen, where a missile strike had killed a group that the US had called “al-Qaida”. “What he discovered,” reports Scahill, “were the remnants of Tomahawk cruise missiles and cluster bombs … some of them bearing the label ‘Made in the USA’, and distributed the photos to international media outlets.”

Fourteen women and 21 children were killed. “Whether anyone actually active in al-Qaida was killed remains hotly contested.” Shortly afterwards, Shaye was kidnapped and beaten by Yemeni security forces. In a trial that was criticized internationally by reporters’ groups and human rights organizations, he was accused of terrorism. Shaye is currently serving a five-year sentence.

Scahill and Rowley got to the bars of Shaye’s cell to interview him, before the camera goes dark (in almost every scene, they put their lives at risk). This might also bring to mind the fates of Sami al-Haj of al-Jazeera, also kidnapped, and sent to Guantánamo, and of Julian Assange, trapped in asylum in Ecuador’s London embassy.

President Obama thus helped put a respected reporter in prison for reporting critically on JSoc’s activities. The most disturbing issue of all, however, is the documentation of the “secret laws” now facilitating these abuses of American power: Scahill succeeds in getting Senator Ron Wyden, who sits on the Senate intelligence committee, to confirm the fact that there are secret legal opinions governing the use of drones in targeted assassinations that, he says, Americans would be “very surprised” to know about. This is not the first time Wyden has issued this warning.

In 2011, Wyden sought an amendment to the USA Patriot Act titled requiring the US government “to end practice of secretly interpreting law”. Wyden warns that there is now a system of law beneath or behind the law that we can see and debate:

    “It is impossible for Congress to hold an informed public debate on the Patriot Act when there is a significant gap between what most Americans believe the law says and what the government is using the law to do. In fact, I believe many members of Congress who have voted on this issue would be stunned to know how the Patriot Act is being interpreted and applied.

    “Even secret operations need to be conducted within the bounds of established, publicly understood law. Any time there is a gap between what the public thinks the law says and what the government secretly thinks the law says, I believe you have a serious problem.”

I have often wondered, since I first wrote about America’s slide toward fascism, what was driving it. I saw the symptoms but not the cause. Scahill’s and Rowley’s brave, transformational film reveals the prime movers at work. The US executive now has a network of secret laws, secret budgets, secret kill lists, and a well-funded, globally deployed army of secret teams of assassins. That is precisely the driving force working behind what we can see. Is fascism really too strong a word to describe it?

• This article originally referred to Scahill and Rowley’s documentary as Secret Wars; this was amended to Dirty Wars at 5.20pm ET on 3 February. The phrase “US kill list” in the subhead was also amended to “kill list” in order to remove possible ambiguity

Time to Face the Truth about Iran

The Islamic Republic has survived for so long because its basic model is, according to numerous surveys, what a majority of Iranians actually want, write Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett.

Middle East Online

Fifty years ago, during the Cuban missile crisis, the United States faced what is frequently described as the defining challenge of the Cold War. Today, some argue that America is facing a similarly defining challenge from Iran’s nuclear activities. In this context, it is striking to recall President John Kennedy’s warning, proffered just months before the missile crisis, that “the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.” Half a century later, Kennedy’s warning applies all too well to America’s discussion — it hardly qualifies as a real debate — about how best to deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

For more than thirty years, American analysts and policy-makers have put forward a series of myths about the Islamic Republic: that it is irrational, illegitimate and vulnerable. In doing so, pundits and politicians have consistently misled the American public and America’s allies about what policies will actually work to advance US interests in the Middle East.

The most persistent — and dangerous — of these myths is that the Islamic Republic is so despised by its own people that it is in imminent danger of overthrow. From the start, Americans treated the Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 as a major surprise. But the only reason it was a surprise was that official Washington refused to see the growing demand by the Iranian people for an indigenously generated political order free from US domination. And ever since then, the Islamic Republic has defied endless predictions of its collapse or defeat.

The Islamic Republic has survived because its basic model — the integration of participatory politics and elections with the principles and institutions of Islamic governance and a commitment to foreign policy independence — is, according to polls, electoral participation rates and a range of other indicators, what a majority of Iranians living inside the country want. They don’t want a political order grounded in Western-style secular liberalism. They want one reflecting their cultural and religious values: as the reformist President Mohammad Khatami put it, “freedom, independence and progress within the context of both religiosity and national identity.”

That’s what the Islamic Republic, with all its flaws, offers Iranians the chance to pursue. Even most Iranians who want the government to evolve significantly — for example, by allowing greater cultural and social pluralism — still want it to be the Islamic Republic. After Iran’s 2009 presidential election, when former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi lost to the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Western elites and Iran “experts” portrayed the Green Movement that morphed out of Mousavi’s campaign as a mass popular uprising poised to sweep away the Islamic Republic. But the Greens, even at their height, never represented anything close to a majority of Iranians, and within a week of the election, their social base was already contracting. The fundamental reason was that, after Mousavi failed to substantiate his charge of electoral fraud, the Greens’ continued protests were no longer about a contested election, but a challenge to the Islamic Republic itself — for which there was only a negligible constituency.

While many Westerners prefer to believe that the Greens did not fade because of their own weaknesses, but because of cruel suppression by an illegitimate regime, this does not hold up to scrutiny. In the fifteen months preceding the shah’s 1979 departure, his troops gunned down thousands of protesters — and the crowds demanding his removal kept growing. In 2009, police brutality unquestionably occurred in the course of the government’s response to post-election disturbances. The government itself acknowledged this — for example, by closing a prison where some detainees were physically abused and murdered, and by indicting twelve of that prison’s personnel (two were later sentenced to death). But fewer than 100 people died in the clashes between demonstrators and security forces after the 2009 election, and still the Greens retreated and their base shrank.

Western human rights groups estimate that 4,000 to 6,000 Iranians were arrested in connection with protests following the 2009 election. More than 90 percent were released without charge. As of 2010, Western human rights organizations did not dispute official Iranian figures that about 250 were convicted of crimes stemming from the unrest, with perhaps 200 other cases still pending. Most were pardoned by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei; most who were not are free on bail pending appeals. According to a survey by Craig Charney, a former pollster for Bill Clinton and Nelson Mandela, most Iranians saw their government’s response to the unrest as legitimate.

Notwithstanding the Islamic Republic’s staying power, American policy elites and Iran “experts” with no direct connection to the on-the-ground reality inside the country continue to advance the myth of the Islamic Republic’s illegitimacy and fragility, with the idea that if we just believe in it enough, we will somehow sweep away the challenge Iran poses. Today, this myth comes in two interlocking versions: that sanctions are “working” to promote US objectives vis-à-vis Iran, and that the Arab Awakening has left it isolated in its own neighborhood.

* * *

Many commentators now posit that the economic hardships caused by the sanctions will soon prompt Iranians to rise up and force fundamental change in their country — or at least compel their government to make the concessions demanded by Washington. But those making this argument have never explained why the economy is so much worse today than it was in the 1980s, when Iran lost half its GDP during the war with Iraq — and yet even then, its population did not rise up to force fundamental change or concessions to hostile powers.

Indeed, there is no precedent anywhere for a sanctioned population mobilizing to overthrow the government and replace it with one that would adopt the policies preferred by the sanctioning foreign power. Even in Iraq, where crippling sanctions were imposed for more than a decade, killing more than 1 million Iraqis (half of them children), the population did not rise up to overthrow Saddam Hussein. In the end, Saddam was displaced only by a US invasion — and even after that, Iraqis did not set up a pro-American, secular, liberal government ready to subordinate Iraq’s sovereignty and national rights to Washington’s preferences.

Last year, Western pundits hyperventilated about “hyperinflation” in Iran, arguing that a sharp devaluation in the country’s currency would turn the people against the government. This assessment, like so many similar projections before it, proved fanciful. The Iranian rial has been overvalued for more than a decade, underwriting the rising consumption of imported goods by upper-class Iranians that has cost the economy billions of dollars, hurt prospects for farmers and domestic manufacturers, and constrained Iran’s non-oil exports. The recent devaluation of the rial has aligned its nominal value with its real value; as the rial has dropped, Iran’s non-oil exports have expanded significantly. At the same time, the government is disbursing its foreign exchange holdings to defend a lower exchange rate for essential imports like food and medicine.

While no one in Iran is immune from the impact of currency devaluation, the rural poor and those involved in export-oriented sectors are in a relatively advantageous position. There are no discernible food shortages; stores of all sorts are fully stocked, with significant customer traffic. Shortfalls are emerging in some imported medicines. This, however, is not because of currency devaluation. Rather, it is a function of the US-instigated banking sanctions that, contrary to official US rhetoric about their “targeted” nature, make it difficult for Iranians to pay for Western medical and pharmaceutical imports, even though selling such items to Iran is technically allowed under US sanctions regulations. Certainly, anyone who has walked the streets of Tehran recently (as we did in December) can see that Iran’s economy is not collapsing, and anyone who has talked with a range of Iranians inside the country knows that the sanctions will not compel either the Islamic Republic’s implosion or its surrender to US demands on the nuclear issue. There is no constituency — among conservatives, reformists or even what’s left of the Green Movement — prepared to accept such an outcome.

Sanctions advocates continue to claim that it’s different this time, partly because a “demonstration effect” from the Arab Awakening will reinforce the impact of sanctions to break the Islamic Republic’s back. In Tehran, however, policy-makers and analysts see the Arab Awakening as hugely positive for the Islamic Republic’s regional position. They judge – correctly — that any Arab government that becomes more representative of its people’s beliefs, concerns and preferences will be less enthusiastic about strategic cooperation with the United States, let alone Israel, and more open to the Islamic Republic’s message of foreign policy independence.

More particularly, one hears in Washington that, because of the Arab Awakening, Tehran is going to “lose Syria,” its “only Arab ally,” with dire consequences for Iran’s regional position and internal stability. This observation underscores just how deeply US elites are in denial about basic political and strategic trends in the Middle East. Iranian policy-makers do not believe that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will be overthrown (at least not by Syrians). But even if Assad felt compelled at some point to cede Damascus, he and his forces would almost certainly still control a significant portion of Syria. Under these circumstances, Syria is hardly likely to become an ally of the West. Indeed, any plausibly representative post-Assad government would not be more pro-American or pro-Israel than the Assads have been, and it might even be less keen about keeping Syria’s border with Israel quiet. Unless Assad were replaced by a Taliban-like political structure — which would be at least as anti-American as it was anti-Shiite and anti-Iranian — the foreign policy of post-Assad Syria would be, on most major issues, just fine for Iran. But the US fixation on undermining the Islamic Republic by encouraging Saudi-backed jihadis to fight Assad will ultimately damage US security, just as US support for Saudi-backed jihadis did in Afghanistan and Libya.

More significant, American elites have been slow to grasp that, today, the Islamic Republic’s most important Arab ally isn’t Syria; it’s Iraq — the first Arab-led Shiite state in history, an outcome made possible by the US invasion and occupation. Likewise, America’s political class has been reluctant to acknowledge that the strategic orientation of Egypt — a pillar of US Middle East policy for more than thirty years — is now in play. While certainly not uniformly pro-Iranian, post-Mubarak Egypt is clearly less reflexively pro-American. Before meeting with President Obama, the country’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Morsi, traveled last year to Beijing, where he met with both outgoing President Hu Jintao and incoming President Xi Jinping, and to Tehran, where he met with President Ahmadinejad. Iranian military ships now go through the Suez Canal — something that Washington could have vetoed just two years ago. Because of these developments, Iran doesn’t “need” Syria today in the same way it once did.

American elites have a hard time facing these facts. What Washington misses above all is that Tehran does not need Arab governments to be more pro-Iranian; it just needs them to be less pro-America, less pro-Israel and more independent. Because US elites miss this critical point, they miss a broader reality as well: that the Arab Awakening is accelerating the erosion of Washington’s strategic position in the Middle East, not Tehran’s. Rather than deal with this, Americans continue to embrace the logic-defying proposition that the same drivers that are empowering Islamists in Arab countries will somehow transform the Islamic Republic into a secular liberal state.

But reality is what it is. Consider the strategic balance sheet: on the eve of 9/11, just over a decade ago, every Middle Eastern government — every single one — was either pro-American (e.g., Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the smaller Gulf Arab monarchies, and Tunisia), in negotiations to realign toward the United States (Qaddafi’s Libya) and/or anti-Iranian (Saddam’s Iraq and the Taliban’s Afghanistan). Today, the regional balance has turned decisively against Washington and in favor of Tehran.

This has occurred not because Iran fired a single shot, but because of elections that empowered previously marginalized populations in Afghanistan, Egypt, Gaza, Iraq, Lebanon, Tunisia and Turkey. In all of these places, governments have emerged that are no longer reflexively pro-American and anti-Iranian. This is a huge boost to the Islamic Republic’s strategic position.

Some commentators claim to see signals from Iran that suggest it will finally be forced by sanctions and the Arab Awakening to make those concessions on the nuclear issue that the United States and Israel have long demanded. But what these commentators put forward as evidence of imminent Iranian concessions is nothing new. Unlike others in the Middle East, Iran was an early signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And the Islamic Republic has for years been willing to negotiate with America and others about their concerns over its nuclear activities — so long as it would not have to concede internationally recognized sovereign and treaty rights.

In the early 2000s, the Islamic Republic negotiated with the “EU-3” (Britain, France and Germany), suspending uranium enrichment for nearly two years to encourage progress in the talks, at a time when it had installed far fewer centrifuges and was enriching only at the 3 to 4 percent level required to fuel power reactors. The United States refused to join those talks until Tehran agreed to forsake its right to internationally safeguarded enrichment and to dismantle its nuclear infrastructure.

In 2010, Iran made commitments to Brazil and Turkey that it would give up most of its then-current stockpile of 3 to 4 percent enriched uranium and, in effect, forgo enrichment at the near 20 percent level needed to fuel a research reactor making medical isotopes for cancer patients. In return, Tehran asked for an internationally guaranteed fuel supply for the reactor and recognition of its right to enrich. Once again, Washington rejected this public opening to negotiate a meaningful nuclear deal.

Still, Iran continues to be interested in an agreement — perhaps one restricting its near 20 percent enrichment in return for new fuel for its research reactor and substantial sanctions relief or, preferably, a more comprehensive accord. In this regard, the nuclear issue is quite simple: if the United States accepts Iran’s right to enrich on its own territory under international safeguards, there could be a deal — including Tehran’s acceptance of more intrusive verification and monitoring of its nuclear activities and limits on enrichment at the near 20 percent level.

But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration before it, refuses to acknowledge Iran’s nuclear rights. In the wake of Obama’s re-election, there is no evidence his administration is rethinking that approach; senior US officials say their goal remains a suspension of Iran’s enrichment-related activities. The administration may offer Tehran bigger material incentives for substantial nuclear concessions (as if the Iranians were donkeys to be manipulated with economic carrots and sticks). But Washington remains unwilling to address the Islamic Republic’s sovereign rights and core security concerns, for that would mean acknowledging it as a legitimate political entity representing legitimate national interests. As long as this is the case, there won’t be a deal.

* * *

Even if Tehran won’t surrender to American diktats and the Islamic Republic doesn’t collapse, a critical mass of US policy elites argue that continuing the current mix of sanctions and faux diplomacy is worthwhile, because this will persuade Iranians, other Middle Easterners and Americans that the failure to reach a deal is the Iranian government’s fault. And that, it is held, will justify the ultimate “necessity” of US military strikes.

Americans should have no illusions about the consequences of an overt, US-initiated war against the Islamic Republic. Using American military power to disarm another Middle Eastern state of weapons of mass destruction it does not have, even as Washington stays quiet about Israel’s arsenal of about 200 nuclear weapons, would elevate already high levels of anti-American sentiment in the region, threatening our remaining allies there and rendering their cooperation with the United States virtually impossible. American military action against the Islamic Republic would have no international legitimacy. The larger part of the international community (120 of the UN’s 193 member states are part of the Non-Aligned Movement, which recently elected the Islamic Republic as its chair) is already on record that it would consider an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities illegal. There will be no UN Security Council authorization for such action; Washington will have no allies save Israel and (perhaps) Britain.

Starting a war with Iran over the nuclear issue would ratify the US image, in the Middle East and globally, as an outlaw superpower. This prospect is even more dangerous to America’s strategic position today than it was after the invasion of Iraq. Just a few years ago, the United States was still an unchallenged superpower. Other countries’ views did not matter much; especially in the Middle East, Washington could usually impose its requirements on compliant governments whose foreign policies were largely unreflective of their own peoples’ opinions.

Today, as more countries with increasingly mobilized publics seek greater independence, their views on regional and international issues — as well as the views of their people — matter much more. Therein lies the real challenge posed by the Islamic Republic, a challenge that Washington has yet to meet squarely: How does the United States work with an Iran — or an Egypt, for that matter — acting to promote its interests as it sees them, rather than as Washington defines them? America needs better relations with Tehran to begin improving ties with the growing number of Islamist political orders across the Middle East, which is essential to saving what’s left of the US position in the region. It also needs Tehran’s help to contain the rising tide of jihadi terrorism in the region — a phenomenon fueled by Saudi Arabia and Washington’s other ostensible Arab allies in the Persian Gulf. Iran is a critical player for shaping the future not only of Iraq and Afghanistan, but Syria as well. More than ever before, American interests require rapprochement with the Islamic Republic. Continued US hostility only courts strategic disaster.

Flynt Leverett is professor of international affairs at Penn State. Hillary Mann Leverett is senior professorial lecturer at American University. Together, they write the Race for Iran blog. Their new book is Going to Tehran: Why the United States Needs to Come to Terms With the Islamic Republic of Iran (Metropolitan Books).

Copyright © 2013 The Nation — distributed by Agence Global
First Published: 2013-02-11

Good riddance, sex abuse victims tell Pope

Written by  Tribune
Wednesday, 13 February 2013 00:00

WASHINGTON — Pope Benedict XVI did nothing to punish pedophile priests or Church seniors who looked the other way, according to US and Irish victims hoping his successor will focus on fighting sex abuse.

Barbara Blaine, founder and president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, called the outgoing Pope’s record “dismal.”

“He has made lofty statements. He has not matched those statements with deed or action. Under his reign, the children remained at risk,” Blaine said.

In recent years, the United States and Ireland have been among several countries rocked by successive sex scandals involving members of the Catholic clergy and Church higher-ups accused of covering up abuses.

This month, Los Angeles Archbishop Jose Gomez was forced under court order to release files on presumed cases of pedophilia involving some 100 clergymen.

Last year, Monsignor William Lynn of Philadelphia was sentenced to three to six years in prison for having hidden cases of sexual abuse and allowing at least two predatory priests to remain in posts in which they had contact with minors.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops says that since 1950, more than 6,100 priests have been accused of pedophilia. Some 16,000 victims have been identified, and $2.5 billion have been spent on damages or rehabilitation therapy.

“This is not a US problem, this is a global problem,” Blaine said, stressing that the solution is “at the footsteps of Pope Benedict.”

“Even now in these next two weeks, he could take simple measures that would have wide-ranging positive impact to protect children and our Church across the globe.”

The Pope, who plans to resign on Feb. 28, could publish the names of predatory priests on the Internet, as 30 American bishops have, or order bishops to report all cases of sexual abuse to the police, Blaine said.

“I’m very happy that the pope is resigning because he really did not do very much about clergy sexual abuse,” said Robert Hoatson, president of victims aid group Road To Recovery.

“The next Pope has to tackle this issue. This is the most important issue because it concerns children, and it is a worldwide problem and the Pope has to commission a group of expert to determine what has to be done to solve this problem.

“And if it means firing all the bishops that have covered up, so be it.”

He worried that the Church will “keep everything covered up” unless it is ordered to reveal information about abuses.

In Ireland, the victims group Survivors of Child Abuse also welcomed word that the pope is stepping down.
“This Pope had a great opportunity to finally address the decades of abuse in the Church but at the end of the day, he did nothing but promise everything and in the end, he ultimately delivered nothing,” said spokesman John Kelly.

“The Church needs to acknowledge that all of this happened. They need to acknowledge that they allowed the devil inside and had him reside there for 50 years.

“The Church cannot move on,” he added. “This Pope’s tenure has been plagued by scandals and that will continue unless the Pope addresses the root causes and that can only start from the top.” AFP

100,000 take part in street protests in Ireland against austerity

100,000 take part in street protests in Ireland against austerity days after government deal;Union leaders claim Irish taxpayers are paying 42 percent of Euro bank debt
By
PATRICK COUNIHAN,
IrishCentral
Published Sunday, February 10, 2013,

Trade union officials have claimed that over a hundred thousand people marched against austerity in Ireland on Sunday.

Public disquiet was evident on streets across the country less than 24 hours after the government formalised a promissory note deal with the European Central Bank.

The Irish Congress of Trade Unions has claimed the marches were a success despite the Government’s hard-won bank debt deal according to the Irish Times.

The paper reports on the various rallies to protest at spending cuts imposed by the banking crisis.

Trade union marches took place in Dublin, Cork, Galway, Limerick, Sligo and Waterford.

Officials have claimed that 60,000 attended the Dublin protest although police offer a smaller figure of 25,000.

Congress general secretary David Begg told protestors that the campaign against the debt burden will continue until the European authorities fully honour the agreement reached last July to separate bank debt from sovereign debt.

He said: “There will be no more stoic little pixie heads and no more Mr nice guy.”

Begg added: “Congress will begin campaigning with 60 million trade union members in the European Trade Union Confederation.

“A situation where Irish people are paying 42 per cent of the European bank debt burden is unfair.”

Begg claimed to the Irish Times that around 100,000 people had taken in the series of demonstrations organised around the country today by the Irish trade union movement.

Demonstrators heard some dissenting voices claim the protests were ‘tokenism.’

Others said people need to ‘hear some real leadership from the trade union movement on how it’s going escalate resistance to austerity.’#

Power, Privilege and Climate Change: A Tale of Two Presidents

By Joseph Nevins

February 10, 2013 “Yahoo” — As I watched a video of Barack Obama delivering his second inaugural address last month, and listened to his call to “respond to the threat of climate change” lest we “betray our children and future generations,” I could not help but think of another president.

Indeed, the very holding of the event at which Obama spoke is one indication why it is not to the occupant of the White House that those concerned global warming should look for inspiration, but to someone else. After all, there is something disconcerting about hearing about the need to fight climate change—to reduce the gargantuan greenhouse gas-related footprint of the United States in other words—at a huge event that was both unnecessary and expensive. Obama was already president of the United States, so why another inauguration?

No doubt, the answer illustrates how the nation-state relies to a significant degree on performances to reproduce itself. This is especially the case in countries such as the United States where the benefits that the state actually delivers to its citizenry are increasingly meaningless in terms of everyday wellbeing. In a country in which more than 20 percent of its children live below the official poverty line, for example, approximately half of discretionary U.S. government spending is dedicated to its enormous, global military apparatus and what is called “homeland security.” (Under a Nobel Peace Prize-winning president, U.S. military spending rivals that of all the rest of the world’s countries combined.)

But the event is also a manifestation of U.S. wealth and power. As one historian stated in endorsing Obama’s decision to hold the inauguration, to “let it roll,” a U.S. president “is part of the most elite club in the world,” and a second-term president “the most elite within the most-elite club.”

Such elitism is costly: while the final price tag of the inauguration won’t be known for months, it will certainly be many tens of millions of dollars. According to The Economist, security alone for what it called “the three days of revelry” totaled around $100 million.

It is also ecologically expensive. With an estimated 800,000 people in attendance, for instance, large numbers of the celebrants traveled long distances by ground transport and airplane—adding tens of thousands of tons of greenhouse gases to the Earth’s atmosphere in the process.

Compare such consumption and priorities to another head of state, one profiled late last year in The New York Times: President José Mujica of Uruguay. Mujica, reports the Times,“lives in a run-down house on Montevideo’s outskirts with no servants at all. His security detail: two plainclothes officers parked on a dirt road.” He hangs his laundry on a clothesline outside his home.

As part of Mr. Mujica’s effort, he says, to make his country’s presidency “less venerated,” he sold off a presidential residence in a resort city on Uruguay’s Atlantic coast. He also refuses to live in Uruguay’s presidential mansion, one with a staff of 42. Instead, he has offered the opulent abode as a shelter for homeless families during the coldest months.

The leftist president sees such practices as necessary for the proper functioning of a democracy, a goal which requires, reports the Times in paraphrasing him, that “elected leaders . . . be taken down a notch.” He also explains his austere life style by drawing on the words of Seneca, the Roman court-philosopher Seneca: “It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, who is poor.”

José Mujica’s net worth when he took office in 2010 was $1,800. While his official presidential salary is about $108,000 per year, he donates 90 percent of it, mostly to a program for expanding housing for the poor. This leaves him with a monthly income comparable to a typical Uruguayan. As Mujica is quick to say, “I do fine with that amount; I have to do fine because there are many Uruguayans who live with much less.”

Barack Obama, by contrast, lives in luxury—in the White House—and also takes in $400,000 annually as president. That, combined with his royalties from book sales, gave him and his wife an income of $1.7 million in 2010. The Obamas, as they typically do, also donated a portion of their income—about 14 percent—but kept enough to maintain their position among the “one percent” nationally, and by easy extension, globally.

Given these differences, it is hardly surprising that Obama embraces the interlocking interests of U.S. capital, empire, and militarism (how else can one credibly explain, for example, the many hundreds of U.S. military bases that litter the planet?), and the rampant consumption they entail. With less than five percent of the world’s population, the United States consumes about a quarter of the world’s fossil fuels. The Pentagon, which devours more than 300,000 barrels of oil per day, an amount greater than that consumed by any of the the vast majority of the world’s countries, is the planet’s single biggest consumer.

Such factors might explain why Obama’s soaring rhetoric about global warming in his inauguration speech only very indirectly and weakly, at best, indicates, why human-induced climate destabilization might be happening. If one employs a very generous interpretation of his words, his invocation of the need for “sustainable energy sources” would seem to suggest the fossil fuel use is to blame. But he offers nothing beyond this. There is no indication of who is responsible for its use, thus implying, by default, that all the planet’s denizens are equally culpable, not the small slice of the Earth’s population that consumes the lion’s share.

Mujica has much more of substance than his U.S. counterpart to say on this front. Uruguay’s president laments that so many societies consider economic growth a priority, calling it “a problem for our civilization” because of the demands on the planet’s resources. Hyper-consumption, he says, “is harming our planet.” he is also highly doubtful that the world has enough resources to allow all its inhabitants to consume and produce waste at the level of Western societies. Were such levels to be reached, it would probably lead to “the end of the world,” he guesses.

In a speech to UN Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro last June, the man who many in the media dub “the poorest president in the world,” insisted that “the challenge ahead of us . . . is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one.” Pointing to a “model of development and consumption, which is shaped after that of affluent societies,” societies ruled by the dictates of the capitalist market, Mujica said it was “time to start fighting for a different culture.” Arguing that the assault on the environment was a symptom of a larger disease, he asserted that “the cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life.”

Given the position he occupies, and the interests he serves, it is almost impossible even to imagine Barack Obama—or any U.S. president of today—uttering these words, advocating living simply, or doing with a lot less in the name of equity. And the interests he serves are a big part of the problem.

In an era of climate change and other ecological crises, it is these interests that humanity must confront. In this regard, José Mujica’s willingness to live by example and, through his words, offer a larger structural critique—while insisting that the everyday and the systemic are inherently linked—is not only inspiring, but instructive.

Joseph Nevins teaches geography at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. His books include Dying to Live: A Story of US Immigration in an Age of Global Apartheid (City Lights Books, 2008) and Operation Gatekeeper and Beyond: The War on “Illegals” and the Remaking of the US-Mexico Boundary (Routledge, 2010). ICH

How I Reached my Breaking Point Ten Years Ago Today

By Simon Black

February 07, 2013 “Information Clearing House” – Exactly ten years ago to the day, I was in the Kuwaiti desert waiting for George W. Bush to ‘make his decision’.

You may remember the circumstances. Ever since labeling Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the ‘Axis of Evil’ in January 2002, the President had been gradually advocating war with Iraq based on the threat of nuclear weapons.

We knew it was going to happen. At the time, I was a rising intelligence officer, my head still filled with ideals of national duty from my time at West Point.

One of the generals that I served under gathered together his officers in early 2002 and said, “We’re going to war. It’s not a question of IF, but WHEN.”

By late summer of that year, my unit was ordered to Kuwait to pre-position assets and begin gathering boots on the ground intelligence. So every time Mr. Bush would say “I haven’t made a decision yet,” I winced from the heavy stench of his BS.

But still, I held out hope.

It all came crashing down ten years ago today. On February 5, 2003 Colin Powell, four-star general turned US Secretary of State, made a case to the United Nations that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Now, I won’t bother delving into the inaccuracies of the intelligence he presented. In Powell’s own words, making that presentation to the UN was “the lowest point in [his] life” and a “lasting blot on his record.”

For me, it was pivotal. At that instant, I knew without doubt that my government had reprehensibly lied through its teeth. And if they were lying about this… what else were they lying about?

Everything, it turned out.

The event set me down a path on which I never looked back. The fraud of the Iraq War soon led to the frauds of previous wars, our monetary system, taxes, the global banking system, the national balance sheet, the police state, etc.

It all unraveled so quickly, and I soon realized that I was not living in a free country… that all the loud, bombastic nonsense and pledges of allegiance were illusions masking modern day serfdom.

The subsequent ten years have only reinforced this trend. The political and banking elite have given us more war, inflation, and epic financial crises. They’ve turned Western civilization into a giant police state. And they’ve managed to brainwash the great masses so effectively that the people are crying out for more.

And yet, there are solutions.

After an emotional, gut-wrenching awakening, I traveled to more than 100 countries looking for freedom and opportunity. I learned that awareness, prudent planning, and global thinking can rebuild much of our stolen liberty.

Quite simply, you don’t put all of your eggs in one basket. History shows that when governments enter a period of terminal decline, they try to control EVERYTHING– wages, prices, borders, money supply, foreign exchange, private property, etc.

Of course, these tactics never work and only hasten the decline, as everyone from Emperor Diocletian of ancient Rome to Argentina’s modern day President Cristina Fernandez [will] have learned.

As destructive as these politicians are, though, they’re easy to defeat. Individuals who take action early have plenty of options to buy precious metals, move a portion of their savings abroad to a stable banking jurisdiction, and scout out locations overseas in case they ever need to get out of dodge.

These steps make sense no matter what. It’s hard to imagine that you’ll be worse off for shipping a few physical ounces of gold abroad, having some savings stashed away in a healthy foreign bank, or taking control of your retirement account.

However if it’s a bumpy road ahead– gold criminalization, capital controls, pension fund confiscation, etc.– you’ll be well ahead of the crowd.

I had to reach my breaking point before taking these steps. Fortunately I was early. Most people either ignore the writing on the wall… or they won’t do anything until it’s too late and there are no more options. I’m willing to bet that you’re different.

This article was originally posted at Sovereign Man

© Copyright 2012 Sovereign Man, All rights reserved

Obama Grants Himself License To Kill

This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants

By Andrew P. Napolitano

February 07, 2013 “Information Clearing House” – After stonewalling for more than a year federal judges and ordinary citizens who sought the revelation of its secret legal research justifying the presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas – even Americans – claiming the research was so sensitive and so secret that it could not be revealed without serious consequences, the government sent a summary of its legal memos to an NBC newsroom earlier this week.

This revelation will come as a great surprise, and not a little annoyance, to U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon, who heard many hours of oral argument during which the government predicted gloom and doom if its legal research were subjected to public scrutiny. She very reluctantly agreed with the feds, but told them she felt caught in “a veritable Catch-22,” because the feds have created “a thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws, while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret.”

She was writing about President Obama killing Americans and refusing to divulge the legal basis for claiming the right to do so. Now we know that basis.

The undated and unsigned 16-page document leaked to NBC refers to itself as a Department of Justice white paper. Its logic is flawed, its premises are bereft of any appreciation for the values of the Declaration of Independence and the supremacy of the Constitution, and its rationale could be used to justify any breaking of any law by any “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

The quoted phrase is extracted from the memo, which claims that the law reposes into the hands of any unnamed “high-level official,” not necessarily the president, the lawful power to decide when to suspend constitutional protections guaranteed to all persons and kill them without any due process whatsoever. This is the power claimed by kings and tyrants. It is the power most repugnant to American values. It is the power we have arguably fought countless wars to prevent from arriving here. Now, under Obama, it is here.

This came to a boiling point when Obama dispatched CIA drones to kill New Mexico-born and al-Qaida-affiliated Anwar al-Awlaki while he was riding in a car in a desert in Yemen in September 2011. A follow-up drone, also dispatched by Obama, killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old Colorado-born son and his American friend. Awlaki’s American father sued the president in federal court in Washington, D.C., trying to prevent the killing. Justice Department lawyers persuaded a judge that the president always follows the law, and besides, without any evidence of presidential law breaking, the elder Awlaki had no case against the president. Within three months of that ruling, the president dispatched his drones and the Awlakis were dead. This spawned follow-up lawsuits, in one of which McMahon gave her reluctant ruling.

Then the white paper appeared. It claims that if an American is likely to trigger the use of force 10,000 miles from here, and he can’t easily be arrested, he can be murdered with impunity. This notwithstanding state and federal laws that expressly prohibit non-judicial killing, an executive order signed by every president from Gerald Ford to Obama prohibiting American officials from participating in assassinations, the absence of a declaration of war against Yemen, treaties expressly prohibiting this type of killing, and the language of the Declaration, which guarantees the right to live, and the Constitution, which requires a jury trial before the government can deny that right.

The president cannot lawfully order the killing of anyone, except according to the Constitution and federal law. Under the Constitution, he can only order killing using the military when the U.S. has been attacked or when an attack is so imminent that delay would cost innocent lives. He can also order killing using the military in pursuit of a declaration of war enacted by Congress.

Unless Obama knows that an attack from Yemen on our shores is imminent, he’d be hard-pressed to argue that a guy in a car in the desert 10,000 miles from here – no matter his intentions – poses a threat so imminent to the U.S. that he needs to be killed on the spot in order to save the lives of Americans who would surely die during the time it would take to declare war on the country that harbors him, or during the time it would take to arrest him. Under no lawful circumstances may he use CIA agents for killing. Surely, CIA agents can use deadly force defensively to protect themselves and their assets, but they may not use it offensively. Federal laws against murder apply to the president and to all federal agents and personnel in their official capacities, wherever they go on the planet.

Obama has argued that he can kill Americans whose deaths he believes will keep us all safer, without any due process whatsoever. No law authorizes that. His attorney general has argued that the president’s careful consideration of each target and the narrow use of deadly force are an adequate and constitutional substitute for due process. No court has ever approved that. And his national security adviser has argued that the use of drones is humane since they are “surgical” and only kill their targets. We know that is incorrect, as the folks who monitor all this say that 11 percent to 17 percent of the 2,300 drone-caused deaths have been those of innocent bystanders.

Did you consent to a government that can kill whom it wishes? How about one that plays tricks on federal judges? How long will it be before the presidential killing comes home?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written eight books on the U.S. Constitution.

See also –

Obama regime kills 5 people in Pakistan: : At least five persons were killed when a US drone targeted a house located at Spinwam of North Waziristan on Wednesday, Geo News reported.

“Globalizing Torture” – More Than 50 Countries Helped the CIA Outsource Torture

By Spencer Ackerman

February 06, 2013 “Wired” – – In the years after 9/11, the CIA ran a worldwide program to hold and interrogate suspected members of al-Qaida, sometimes brutally. It wasn’t alone: The agency had literally dozens of partners that helped in ways large and small. Only it’s never been clear just how many nations enabled CIA capture and torture; cooperated with it; or carried it out on behalf of the U.S. — until now.

A new report from the Open Society Foundation details the CIA’s effort to outsource torture since 9/11 in excruciating detail. Known as “extraordinary rendition,” the practice concerns taking detainees to and from U.S. custody without a legal process — think of it like an off-the-books extradition — and often entailed handing detainees over to countries that practiced torture. The Open Society Foundation found that 136 people went through the post-9/11 extraordinary rendition, and 54 countries were complicit in it.

Some were official U.S. adversaries, like Iran and Syria, brought together with the CIA by the shared interest of combating terrorism. “By engaging in torture and other abuses associated with secret detention and extraordinary rendition,” writes chief Open Society Foundation investigator Amrit Singh in a report released early Tuesday, “the U.S. government violated domestic and international law, thereby diminishing its moral standing and eroding support for its counterterrorism efforts worldwide as these abuses came to light.”

Iran didn’t do any torturing on behalf of the CIA. Instead, it quietly transferred at least 15 of its own detainees to Afghan custody in March 2002. Six of those found their way into the CIA’s secret prisons. “Because the hand-over happened soon after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan,” Singh writes, “Iran was aware that the United States would have effective control over any detainees handed over to Afghan authorities.” At least one of those detainees, Tawfik al-Bihani, ended up at Guantanamo Bay, where his official file makes no mention of his time with the CIA.

Iran’s proxy Syria did torture on behalf of the United States. The most famous case involves Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen snatched in 2002 by the U.S. at John F. Kennedy International Airport before the CIA sent him to Syria under the mistaken impression he was a terrorist. In Syrian custody, Arar was “imprisoned for more than ten months in a tiny grave-like cell, beaten with cables, and threatened with electric shocks by the Syrian government,” Singh writes.

But it wasn’t just Arar. At least seven others were rendered to Syria. Among their destinations: a prison in west Damascus called the Palestine Branch, which features an area called “the Grave,” comprised of “individual cells that were roughly the size of coffins.” Syrian intelligence reportedly uses something called a “German Chair” to “stretch the spine.” These days the Obama administration prefers to call for Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, the murderer of over 60,000 Syrians, to step down.

Many, many other countries were complicit in the renditions. For a month, Zimbabwe hosted five CIA detainees seized from Malawi in June 2003 before they were released in Sudan. Turkey, a NATO ally, allowed a plane operated by Richmor Aviation, which has been linked to CIA renditions, to refuel in Adana in 2002 and gave an Iraqi terrorist suspect to the CIA in 2006. Lots of countries played host to CIA rendition flights, including Sri Lanka, Thailand, Afghanistan, Belgium and Azerbaijan. Italy let the plane carrying Arar refuel. Under Muammar Gadhafi, Libya was an eager participant in the CIA’s rendition scheme — and the Open Society Foundation sifted through documents found after Gadhafi fell to discover that Hong Kong helped shuttle a detainee named Abu Munthir to the Libyan regime.

The full 54 countries that aided in post-9/11 renditions: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Canada, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Finland, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Jordan, Kenya, Libya, Lithuania, Macedonia, Malawi, Malaysia, Mauritania, Morocco, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Syria, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, Uzbekistan, Yemen, and Zimbabwe. The Open Society Foundation doesn’t rule out additional ones being involved that it has yet to discover.

Singh and the Open Society Foundation don’t presume that the CIA is out of the extraordinary renditions game under Obama. Danger Room pal Jeremy Scahill recently toured a prison in Somalia that the CIA uses. While Obama issued an executive order in 2009 to get the CIA out of the detentions business, the order “did not apply to facilities used for short term, transitory detention.” The Obama administration says it won’t transfer detainees to countries without a pledge from a host government not to torture them — but Syria’s Assad made exactly that pledge to the U.S. before torturing Maher Arar.

Much of this is likely to be contained in the Senate intelligence committee’s recent report into CIA torture. It’s unclear when, if ever, that report will be declassified. But the Open Society Foundation’s study into renditions comes right as Obama aide John Brennan — already under pressure to clarify his role, if any, in post-9/11 torture — is about to testify to the panel ahead of becoming CIA director. It remains to be seen if the Senate committee will ask Brennan to clarify if the CIA still practices extraordinary rendition, along with its old friends.

Wired.com © 2013 Condé Nast.

Image embedded in this article by ICH, did not appear in the original item.

Cameron’s Attack on George Galloway Reflects the West’s Self-delusions

By Glenn Greenwald

February 01, 2013 “The Guardian” —  On Wednesday afternoon in the British Parliament, near the end of question time for British Prime Minister David Cameron, a short though incredibly revealing exchange occurred between Cameron and Respect Party MP George Galloway. Whatever one’s preexisting views might be of either of these two polarizing figures is entirely irrelevant to the points and facts raised here about this incident.

Galloway stood to ask Cameron about a seeming contradiction in the policy of the British government (one shared by the US government). He wanted to know why it is that the British government is so intent on fighting and bombing Islamic extremists in Mali, while simultaneously arming and funding equally brutal Islamic extremists in Syria (indeed, although it was once taboo to mention, it is now widely reported in the most establishment venues such as the New York Times that while many ordinary Syrians are fighting against the savagery and tyranny of Assad, Islamic extremists, including ones loyal to al-Qaida, are playing a major role in the war against the regime). The same question could have been posed regarding Libya, where Nato-supported rebel factions were filled with fighters with all sorts of links to al-Qaida.

There certainly are reasonable answers to Galloway’s point, but whatever one’s views might be on those points, there’s no denying it’s a reasonable question. It is simply the case that the British government, along with its Nato allies including the US, were – in both the wars in Syria and Libya – on the same side as, and even arming and funding, the very extremists, “jihaidists”, and even al-Qaida-supporting fighters they claim pose the greatest menace to world peace.

In lieu of addressing the substance of the question, Cameron unleashed a 10-second snide attack on Galloway himself. “Some things come and go,” proclaimed the Prime Minister, “but there is one thing that is certain: wherever there is a brutal Arab dictator in the world, he will have the support of [Galloway].” Here is the one-minute video of this exchange:

As usual, anyone who questions the militarism of western governments is instantly smeared as a sympathizer or even supporter of tyrants. Thus, those who opposed the aggressive attack on Iraq were pro-Saddam; those who now oppose bombing Iran love the mullahs; those who oppose Nato intervention in Syria or Libya harbor affection for Assad and Ghadaffi – just as those who opposed the Vietnam War fifty years ago or Reagan’s brutal covert wars in Latin America thirty years ago were Communist sympathizers, etc. etc. Cameron’s outburst was just the standard smear tactic used for decades by western leaders to try to discredit anyone who opposes their wars.

The more important point here is that of all the people on the planet, there is nobody with less authority to accuse others of supporting “brutal Arab dictators in the world” than David Cameron and his Nato allies, including those in the Obama administration. Supporting “brutal Arab dictators in the world” is a perfect summary of the west’s approach to the Arab world for the last five decades, and it continues to be.

In January of last year, Cameron visited the region’s most repressive dictators, the close British allies inSaudi Arabia. In Riyadh, he met King Abdullah and Crown Prince Nayef in order, he said, to “broaden and deepen” the UK-Saudi relationship. That “relationship” was already quite broad and deep, as “Saudi Arabia is the UK’s largest trading partner in the Middle East with annual trade worth £15bn a year.”

Moreover, “a Saudi official told the BBC the leaders would discuss sales of the latest technology and weaponry, and making Britain a major part of a massive Saudi military expansion.” Indeed, as the Guardian noted in 2012, “during the third quarter of last year Britain exported arms valued at more than £1m to Saudi Arabia, including components for military combat vehicles and turrets.” In June, Cameron again visited Saudi Arabia as well as the UAE, and the Huffington Post UK reported at the time: “Cameron has been open about his desire to sell arms to the Saudis, the UAE and Oman.”

In November – just two months before yesterday’s attack on Galloway – Cameron again traveled around to several tyrannical Gulf states – including his close ally Saudi Arabia as well as the United Arab Emirates – in order to sell British fighter jets and other military hardware to those regimes. As Amnesty International UK’s head of policy and government affairs Allan Hogarth said: “Saudi Arabia has been the recipient of record-breaking arms deals involving the UK.” Indeed, as the Guardian noted during this trip: “In 2009 the Saudi air force used UK-supplied Tornado fighter-bombers in attacks in Yemen which killed hundreds – possibly thousands – of civilians.”

cameron bahrainThen there was that charming incident in May, 2011, when – at the height of the violent crackdown by the Bahraini regime on democratic protesters – Cameron welcomed Bahrain’s Crown Prince to 10 Downing Street and posed for photographers shaking hands with the tyrant. Former Labour foreign minister Denis MacShane protested that Cameron should not be “rolling out the red carpet for Bahrain’s torturer-in-chief”.

 

In August, Cameron met with Bahrain’s King in London. While the Prime Minister’s office claimed he pressed the King to implement greater political reforms, the Guardian noted that the King was “given red carpet treatment in Downing Street”.
cameron bahrain

Just last year, it was reported that – despite a temporary suspension of licenses – “Britain has continued to sell arms to Bahrain despite continuing political unrest in the Gulf state”. Indeed, “several licences were granted for arms exports, including in February and March 2011, and during the height of the violence.” Specifically:

    “According to the figures the government approved the sale of military equipment valued at more than £1m in the months following the violent crackdown on demonstrators a year ago. They included licences for gun silencers, weapons sights, rifles, artillery and components for military training aircraft.

“Also cleared for export to Bahrain between July and September last year were naval guns and components for detecting and jamming improvised explosive devices.”

As Maryam Al-Khawaja of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights said: “The US, UK and France attack Russia for providing weapons to Syria, but that’s exactly what they are doing for the Bahrain government; Russia is criticised for a naval base in Syria, but the US has one here.” Of course, Bahrain wasn’t the only close UK ally to violently attack democratic protesters in the kingdom. “During last year’s uprising, Saudi Arabia sent forces to Bahrain in British military trucks.”

Then there’s Britain’s long-standing support for the Mubarak dictatorship, and Cameron’s personal support for Mubarak as the protest movement unfolded. In January, 2011, as tens of thousands of Egyptians assembled to demand an end to their dictatorship, he sat for an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, who asked him whether Mubarak should resign. Cameron said: “What we support is evolution, reform, not revolution.” As Egyptian police were killing protesters, this exchange then occurred:

    “ZAKARIA: Is Mubarak a friend of Britain?

“CAMERON: He is a friend of Britain. Britain has good relations with Egypt.”

The following month, as Mubarak’s crackdown intensified, “the British government refuse[d] to say whether it would follow the example of Germany and France and suspend exports of arms and riot control equipment to Egypt.” In 2009, Britain sold £16.4m worth of arms to the regime in Egypt.

In 2010, the UK granted licenses for the sale of arms to Algeria, Bahrain, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, the UAE and Yemen. In July of that year, shortly after Cameron assumed office, “the Scrutiny of Arms Exports report by the Parliamentary Committee on Arms Export Controls (CAEC) show[ed] that there are still 600 existing arms exports licences in place for the sale of goods including assault weapons, ammunition, and surveillence equipment, to Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen.” In 2011, Der Spiegel reported:

    “Britain exported over €100 million ($142 million) in weapons to Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi in the last two years alone. Included in those shipments are sniper rifles that may currently be in use against the Libyan opposition. Furthermore, Gadhafi’s terror police are British-trained.”

So who exactly is it that is guilty of supporting every “brutal Arab dictator in the world”? At the top of any honest list, one would find David Cameron, along with the leaders of most leading Nato countries, beginning with the US (see here and here). Indeed, as Der Spiegel noted in April 2011 about yet another of Cameron’s trips to visit Arab tyrants: “Cameron flew on to Kuwait, where he got down to the real purpose of his trip: selling weapons to Arab autocrats.”

Cameron’s so-called “slapdown” of Galloway was predictably celebrated in many precincts. The reality, though, is that it was quite cowardly: he refused to answer Galloway’s question, then smeared him knowing that he could not reply, then simply moved on to the next questioner. Galloway was able to respond afterward only by posting an open letter on his website, noting the multiple Arab dictators steadfastly supported not by Galloway but by his accuser, David Cameron.

The more important point here is that this so perfectly reflects the central propagandistic self-delusion amazingly sustained throughout the west. The very same western countries that snuggle up to and prop up the planet’s worst dictators are the same ones who strut around depicting themselves as crusaders for democracy and freedom, all while smearing anyone who objects to their conduct as lovers of tyranny. That’s how David Cameron can literally embrace and strengthen the autocrats of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the UAE, Yemen and so many others, while accusing others with a straight face of lending support “wherever there is a brutal Arab dictator in the world”.

In the most minimally rational universe, Cameron’s act of extreme projection would provoke a sustained fit of mocking laughter. In the propaganda-suffused western world, it all seems perfectly cogent and even inspiring.
The Hillary Clinton version

The outgoing US Secretary of State on Wednesday unleashed this bizarre description of the Egyptian people: “It’s hard going from decades under one-party or one-man rule, as somebody said, waking up from a political coma and understanding democracy.” As As’ad AbuKhalil astutely replied: “The US and not the Egyptian people were in denial about the true nature of the Sadat-Mubarak regime. No, in fact they were not in denial: they knew full well what they were doing against the Egyptian people.”

Indeed, it was Hillary Clinton – not the Egyptian people – who proclaimed in 2009: “I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family. So I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.” (As a related bonus, see this all-time great Hillary Clinton quote about the US role in the world.) In sum, any list of those lending support “wherever there is a brutal Arab dictator in the world” must begin with the leaders of the US and the UK in order to have any minimal credibility.

© 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited

ICH

Americans Are Living in an Orwellian State

No Place To Hide
Americans Are Living in an Orwellian State.

By Brian De Palma

February 03, 2013 “RT” –  Film director Brian de Palma has become an expert in voicing people’s frustration with the shortcomings of the US government. RT caught up with the celebrated Hollywood filmmaker and screenwriter to ask him political and apolitical questions.

­Known best for his suspense and crime thriller movies, such as Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible, de Palma has also made a number of films that challenge the political establishment such as Casualties of War.

In his 2007 picture, Redacted, de Palma tells a story of a US soldier in the Iraq War trying to shoot an amateur documentary. Through the eyes of this soldier de Palma exposes what he considers to be the hypocrisy inherent in the US war machine.

RT: Oliver Stone, who wrote the script to one of your best-known films ‘Scarface,’ said in an interview with RT that Americans are living in an Orwellian state. It might not be oppressive on the surface, but there is no place to hide, eventually some part of you is going to end up in a database somewhere. According to historian Peter Kuznick, the US government intercepts over 1.7 billion messages a day. Are you aware of this?

BDP: Well, I can understand Oliver’s paranoia because Oliver, like myself, has very strong views about what our American foreign policy now is. Needless to say, I probably have been followed around since the 1960s, because I made very political anti-war pictures at that time. I sort of accept it. My last political picture ‘Redacted’ was not received well in my country, because I was criticizing our foreign policy and what the hell we are doing in Iraq. All these terrible things happen when we put these young boys in these worlds where they don’t understand what they are fighting for or why they are there. So I understand why Oliver thinks we are being followed all the time, we probably are!

RT: Your drama ‘Redacted,’ which deals with the war in Iraq, provoked political debate in America with claims it portrays the US soldiers in a negative light. Are you sensitive to such critiques? Even your film’s title makes it clear that the truth about the war in Iraq has been edited and hidden from the American public.

BDP: Unfortunately, in America you can never say anything negative about the American troops even though they are over in a country they shouldn’t be, doing things where a lot of innocents are getting killed. They are all valued warriors.

I think our foreign policy is incorrect, I don’t think we should have been in Iraq at all, I think we were lied to by our government. When you put young boys in situations when they don’t know why they are there, it’s even worse than Vietnam. Not only are you in a terrible environment, where everybody wants to kill you, and you walk around and suddenly the earth explodes, your best friend’s just lost his leg, you detest the people you’re supposed to be fighting for and you do crazy things. That’s what ‘Redacted’ is about, and that’s what ‘Casualties of War’ was about. These wars make no sense and crazy things happen.

RT: You’ve studied the phenomenon, or rather the pathology of violence for over four decades. Why is America so keen to get involved in conflicts wherever they happen, Afghanistan to Libya, shooting first and thinking later?

BDP: Many things that are repeated over and over again sort of create a special atmosphere. One is: ‘America is the greatest nation in the world!’ I don’t know how many times I’ve heard that! Do they say that in Russia? Do you say Russia is the greatest nation in the world?

RT: Not so often, no.

BDP: Why are we all over the world? Why do we have a military presence in countries all over the world? Why? Because we are the policemen of the world? Who decided this? Consequently we get ourselves into a lot of trouble. And there is also the economic thing.

RT: According to president Obama, an economic recovery has began. But America cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many can barely make it.

BDP: What do we sell? Planes, guns, rockets, missiles – to all these countries all over the world. That’s where our biggest interest is. It’s our biggest export. Defense.

RT: America spends as much money on militarysecurity intelligence as the rest of the world combined.

BDP: You’re dealing with a big economic reality. The idea that we would cut any money to the defense budget is unbelievable. Let’s get a few more planes, let’s buy a few more ships. For what? We’re going broke doing this. Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex: Watch out! It just grows and grows and grows. And nobody can seem to stop it!

RT: Barack Obama has been recently sworn in for his second term, but you don’t seem to be very happy with his achievements.

BDP: Oh no, Obama’s trying to change some of this, but our country is very split. We have liberals on either coast, and we have this very conservative center of the country. That’s why it is so difficult to get anything done in the Congress.

Why do we have guns? What about guns all over the place? We’re slaughtering children and people think – oh, maybe we need more police within the school rooms. It’s crazy! But guns are big business. They like to sell guns. We are probably the only country in the world, that has guns all over the place.

RT: Following the mass shooting at the elementary school in Connecticut in December, the Los Angeles police department has decided to deploy 600 armed police patrol at elementary and middle schools. Do you think increasing police patrols could help halt violence? Some say that the real purpose of a police buildup at schools is to make kids used to the constant presence of police and the growing atmosphere of fear.

BDP: There was an incident in China where somebody went to school and attacked all the children. Fortunately, he only had a knife. So he only managed to stab a few people and kill no one. When you have automatic weapons that can fire a hundred rounds in 10 seconds, it gets crazy. These are the kind of things that make no sense in America. Obviously, after this last terrible tragedy, they are trying to make some changes in the gun rules. So, I can buy an automatic weapon with a magazine that holds 200 bullets to go hunting? It’s absurd! These are the kind of things that drive me crazy. They make no sense whatsoever.

RT:‘Zero Dark Thirty,’ the controversial US drama focusing on the decade-long manhunt for Osama Bin Laden, has been slammed for excessive violence and depiction of torture. Do you find such criticism fair enough?

BDP: Absolutely not! Big surprise, we tortured a few people to find out where the terrorists were. Wow! I can’t believe it! America torturing people? What’s going on in Guantanamo Bay, these poor guys have been there forever? Is the war ever over? Maybe we should waterboard them a little bit. They’ve only been there for 10 years.

RT: Where does this glorification of murder and torture come from?

BDP: I think the use of torture in the Bigelow movie is very realistic. I don’t know why everybody is so surprised or upset. But the fact that you would say that Americans actually torture people was like… impossible. But of course they torture people!#

Information Clearing House (ICH)