“The spectators laughed. And my lawyer, rolling up one of his sleeves, said with finality, ‘Here we have a perfect reflection of this entire trial: everything is true and nothing is true!’”
– Albert Camus, from ‘The Outsider’
Just suppose 26/11 had not happened. Unthinkable. Even as nightmare, it is an addendum of India, the footnote we seek to become a part of history in the making. Such history seeks no veracity, but has a voracious appetite for stories where good conquers evil and no one knows either quite well. It can subsist on lies for “everything is true and nothing is true”. Perceptions overpower falsehoods.
From casual tourists to world leaders, the 26/11 route is part of the itinerary. Voluntary agencies have not been prominently involved. The work has been taken over by diverse citizens’ groups. Hubris meets hype.
Does it matter that recent reports have mentioned that certain western countries, most prominently Denmark, have plans to pump in funds to create discord? That the government is probing into the finances of ten NGOs that have received millions of rupees “to stage protests and resort to other agitational programmes against government policies, thus creating unrest”? Is this not cause for alarm, especially given the fact that David Headley, it transpires, could well have been a double agent working for the United States as well as Pakistan?
It is no surprise that those who came out in the streets on November 26, 2008 are the same ones who are part of the people’s movement against corruption. Today’s insider guilt by association is a reflection of the guilt by dissociation from then.
“Life does not proceed by the association and addition of elements, but by dissociation and division.”
– Henri Bergson
One of the reconstructed hotels has a red grand piano in its lobby. It looks like an installation made up of all the blood. A 13-year-old girl who has an iron rod fixed in her leg says she will kill all such terrorists. Remembrance pretends to be the great leveler closing the divide between disparate groups; fake egalitarianism walks a tightrope as pursed lips and hanky-covered noses touch the hearts of the little people.
Cracked glass of the windows has been secured between two rectangles of fortified glass. It is now less reminder and more attraction, seen through the golden haze of beer mugs at Café Leopold. Three years after the attacks, everyone remains a witness to the persecution. I saw, I heard, I touched, I felt, I know – the politics of eyewitness accounts is as fragile as those shards, memories engraved in renovated carvings. It is a personal ‘I’ witness monogrammed monologue.
They await the larger-than-life four-foot clay and bronze bust of the cop who was killed. Sub-inspector Tukaram Omble spotted Ajmal Kasab, the lone survivor of the gang that carried out the attacks, playing dead in a car and confronted him only to take the bullets. His colleagues captured Kasab. In 2008, Omble was a sidelined figure who was soon replaced by kitschy toy cops along the sea-face promenade. It was a hollow sense of security, much like inflatable dolls. Sub- inspectors are not particularly important in the Mumbai psyche. As glorified statues, though, they will be garlanded. The other ‘victims’ who suffered through televised images will grant this man the honour he would never have received had he helped riot victims or doused fires in slums. It is their magnanimity superimposed on his martyrdom.
The superimposition is part of a larger projectile where two power centres play out their games. It is the moneyed class versus the establishment. “What about our security?” they ask. It is a perfectly-timed question. The rich taxpayers think they need to be protected; only they can beckon the government functionaries who we are supposed to see as public servants. They forget that they have elected the convenient candidates, the ones who will be good for business. That is what Kasab, too, was apparently told by his minders when he left his village in Faridkot to join the Lashkar-e-Taiyba: India is rich, they have goodies; you are poor, the son of a fellow who sells street food. If you want a better life, then destroy the best that India has to offer.
Mumbai has been killed often, but no one wants to go there as my piece in CounterPunch then revealed. So, why is there no closure in this case? We have the man in prison with the verdict of a death sentence. “Hang him!” is the cry of the herd. This is merely collective catharsis; no one cares. Not even Pakistan. This will end the matter, but just as the United States has to look for new wolves after they ‘got’ Osama, India has to keep this issue alive. There are tactical reasons.
Kashmir is a stale tale, and it is a porous border; the army is on the job. The conflict with Pakistan is like a long–playing record, with both sides getting royalties from the tremendous sales. Gujarat is too much of an internal saga. Ever since the innocence of Muslims who have been arrested for bomb blasts became news and it was not merely the ideology of the rightwing parties that could be blamed, but the failure of the intelligence agencies, it has become increasingly difficult to make the outside hand seem like a palpable reality. Mumbai, a city of immigrants, serves as a perfect example. Mumbai can mimic New York, it can have as many Ground Zeros as it wants. What it lacks in land, it makes up for in imaginary space.
“By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.”
– Yukio Mishima
A self-serving society basks in the evanescence of self-destructiveness. Terror is archived, each file suffixed with the word.
Pakistan has given India a reason to live a Goth monstrosity as much as it gave us death. Why did Pakistan that lost all its three wars against India manage to keep a people hostage in their home territory? The vampire has been encrusted as icicles in cold consciences. Ajmal Kasab goes against the prototype terrorist we expect, and that is what fills the vacuum of paranoia. The city that did not sleep is now awake to every drumbeat. The sounds ricochet like bullets. We can now say, look, this guy could have been anyone, so everyone is suspect. This makes us all feel threatened.
No self-respecting society would wish to engage in friendly banter with an enemy that has caused it so much grief. Why does India persist in the dialogues, the trade initiatives, the exchange of cultural ambassadors, who incidentally follow a strict pecking order with only the big names involved, the dissenting patriots, the stooges of recusancy?
The peace motive is suspect. In fact, it is ‘insider trading’ where here too the corporate sector is involved. The man on death row is not just a number, but also a figure: Rs. 50 crore spent thus far to keep him alive. He is our ticket to barter minted myth. The anger that had manifested itself with such calculated fervour was mythical too. The only hammer to come out is during art auctions. Painted landscapes of a blood-soaked yesterday. Such memories are just strawberry daiquiris.
Farzana Versey is a Mumbai-based writer. She lives and breathes the city and can be reached at http://farzana-versey.blogspot.com/
Rebellion From Within
Last week I attended a presentation by Robert Ford, the first United States Ambassador to Syria in five years. Just two months ago, Ford was recalled from Syria because of safety concerns. More than 3500 people, including children, have been killed there.
Charming and warm, Ford delivered a riveting talk. He’s a storyteller, providing historical information interspersed with details about diabolical dictators who delight in pulling fingernails from enemies. When he described his responsibilities and offered his opinions, Ford also mesmerized the audience by weaving in adventure narratives, some of which were Harrison Ford-action-movie suspenseful. And just as entertaining. A relative, perhaps?
As Ford talked about the people who live in the Middle East, he distilled the problems to a single word: “dignity.” Essentially, people just want to be treated with dignity.
Yet, it cannot be found on any line item of US foreign policy.
I think of the assignation of titles for military actions: “Shock and Awe.” How the hell can this be translated as “dignity” to the people our troops are devastating when we level their homes, their hospitals, their schools, and their lives?
When Ambassador Ford spoke about the threat of Iran and mentioned sanctions, I thought of Iraq. And the words of former Secretary of State Madeline Albright during a television interview when asked if she thought the death of half a million Iraqi children [from sanctions in Iraq] was a price worth paying. Albright replied: “This is a very hard choice, but we think the price is worth it.”
What about the deaths of 500,000 children is dignified?
Ambassador Ford addressed the uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa, launched when Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian and college graduate, self-immolated after police confiscated the fruit and vegetables he sold without a permit. Bouazizi’s act of protest against a corrupt government started a chain reaction now known as Arab Spring. In Egypt, demonstrators are amassing despite a brutal military crackdown and violence leading to daily murders of those who will not back away.
Ford emphasized that this internal rebellion is the preferred means for change to spread democracy.
Stunning, isn’t it?
Because we are witness to rebellion from within, the Occupation Movement (OWS), right now, here at home, in our own supposedly “democratic” society. With each violation perpetuated by pepper-spraying, riot-geared police officers, the protestors’ determination strengthens.
Still, OWS’s future is being debated. Cynics predict its demise while others insist that today’s unacceptable conditions have awakened people to engage and remain involved.
A new report released by the US Census Bureau says that 100 million Americans (one in three), now, are living in poverty or near it.
For greater impact, protestors must target the nemesis that brought the country to economic collapse—the bailed-out bankers who committed criminal acts with impunity along with the non-financial corporations that suck productivity and dignity from the 99 percent. It is not bridges that should be blocked or the halls of Congress but Wall Street where the uber privileged continue to provide platinum salaries, diamond bonuses, and golden parachutes for their executives, the 1 percent who operate our politicians and render our voices mute.
Recently, Michael Moore spent four hours in a meeting with activists from OWS in NYC. This movement needs no input from the Moores of the world who add tangents to the demands. Stick with breaking up the banks and no more bailouts for financial institutions. In other words, focus on Wall Street, for now. By cutting the flow of money to DC and the oligarchs, a new system of government can be achieved. The rest, like improved Medicare for all and ending war, will follow.
As I listened to Ford, I thought about occupy sites all over the country, raided and shut down only to regroup and surge, inspiring more and more people to join in a demand for economic equality and justice. As we, the 99 percent, stipulate this within our own country, we also must also work to ensure a foreign policy that exacts the same for our brothers and sisters throughout the world.
Missy Beattie lives in Baltimore, Maryland. Email: missybeat@gmail.com
Uninvited Guests on Thanksgiving
SAN SALVADOR.
At the U.S. embassy here on Thursday (Nov. 24), Ambassador Carmen Aponte held a gala Thanksgiving dinner for a select group of local and North American guests. Outside the castle-like embassy compound, there were some uninvited visitors as well.
Nearly 100 Salvadorans and U.S citizens gathered to display our solidarity with the global Occupy/Indignados movement in the first Central American OWS-inspired protest. The demonstrators included university students, environmental activists, and “gringos” (like myself) who work with human rights and community development organizations based here in the capital.
Like most Occupation crowds in the United States, this one was politically diverse. Young members of the Communist Party waved Cuban and Venezuelan flags, while dread-locked musicians played the drums, and other participants held up homemade signs urging passing cars in one of the richest neighborhoods in El Salvador to honk for social justice.
But we were all united around a common concern, namely the impact of corporate globalization on working people here and in North America.
As the news media from El Salvador and throughout the region gathered round, various protesters explained how the corporate-influence policies of the Obama Administration were–in the name “economic development”–actually hurting the 99% in El Salvador.
“Free trade” between the two countries has not only destroyed local agriculture and production, victimized workers and the poor and increased immigration to the U.S., but also elevated corporate interests over national sovereignty. In 2009, for example, the Canadian mining company known as Pacific Rim utilized the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) to take legal action, before a World Bank tribunal, against the Salvadoran government for denying mining permits to Pacific Rim, as demanded by local environmental activists. Because the newly elected FMLN administration took a stand on the side of its own people and the environment, it now risks having to pay $77 million dollars in “damages” to Pacific Rim.
Alfredo Carias, of the Salvadoran environmental organization called La Unidad Ecologica Salvadorena (UNES), spoke about the broader environmental crimes of the U.S. government and the global 1%. As Wall Street Occupiers entered their second month of protest in New York and other cities in October El Salvador was hit by some of the worst flooding in its history. Tropical Depression 12 E dumped ten days of unrelenting rain on El Salvador, causing 34 deaths, forcing 50,000 people to flee their homes, and leaving an estimated $850 million worth of damage to infrastructure and agriculture in its wake.
Organizations like UNES attribute the unprecedented intensity of this storm to climate change. But Ambassador Aponte was among the first to caution the public about blaming human behavior for this “natural disaster.” The U.S. may be one of the biggest producers of greenhouse gases and a leading foe of meaningful international action to slow global warming the Ambassador urged “What is the point of placing blame? With what we have, we have to confront this reality.”
Confronting Reality Together, A Different Way
For me, the most important part of the first OWS-inspired protest in Central America was the collaboration it created between Salvadoran social movement activists and their foreign allies in helping to spread the idea of a cross-border movement of the 99%.
In October, I had the chance to visit several Occupy encampments, while touring the Midwest with other representatives of my organization, U.S. El Salvador Sister Cities. Along with two Salvadoran community organizers, we visited a General Assembly meeting at OccupyMadison, a rally organized by labor unions and community groups at OccupyChicago, and a lively march at OccupyCincinnati. One of my Salvadoran compañeros, Agustin, who has been a community leader and popular education teacher since the Salvadoran civil war, was initially unimpressed. He joked that what we were seeing was not the movement of the 99% but “the movement of 99 people and their tents.”
But as we traveled from town to town, I was filled with a pride in my country that I have never experienced before. I thought to myself that, finally, I have something, from back home, to brag about in El Salvador among the veterans of social justice struggles there. However, when I returned to El Salvador I was surprised that the majority of the people in my sister organization, The Association for the Development of El Salvador (CRIPDES) hadn’t heard anything about the Occupy/Indignados movement.
Very little coverage of OWS was seeping through the cracks of the corporate dominated Salvadoran media. Besides, most people had more immediate concerns. Government and community organizations were scrambling for donations to help rebuild roads and homes in the wake of the flooding; they also needed to prepare for the food shortage ahead due to the resulting reduced harvest of corn and beans in the countryside. This year’s storm only exacerbated the problems Salvadorans face every day: gang violence, unemployment, poverty and woefully under-funded social services.
However, many of us “gringos” employed by human rights and community development organizations, continued to talk with awe and admiration about the Occupy movement. We mused aloud about how to bring OWS to El Salvador and stage our own protest, but we were accustomed to playing the safer, more typical role of gringos solidarios—ie accompanying the Salvadoran social movement not pushing initiatives or projects. We decided we would stage our own gringo protest in front of the U.S. Embassy in San Salvador. However, as we informed our Salvadoran friends about our plans, the younger, more Internet savvy ones wanted to participate. Working initially with a few local environmental activists, we began to recalibrate the OWS message, focusing on the way corporate greed and capitalism is negatively affecting El Salvador as well.
The Pissed Off and Indignant
We also had to come up with new name, since the word “occupy” has negative connotations in a nation first occupied by Spain and then dominated by the U.S. ever since. We decided to call ourselves Los 99% Encachimbados and Indignados de El Salvador, the Pissed Off and Indignant 99% of El Salvador. Our Salvadoran collaborators were, of course, very pleased with our choice of protest target, because they have long seen the U.S. Embassy as a symbol of capitalism and “yanqui imperialism”.
As we began recruiting at forums, press conferences, meetings and a raucus concert of Calle 13, the reggaeton group which has gained wide popularity for protest anthems like Latinoamerica, we tried to convey the excitement and importance of the Occupy movement in the U.S.Some Salvadoran activists shared our enthusiasm, readily agreeing that resistance to corporate globalization would be greatly strengthened if more citizens of the U.S. joined the fight in the “belly of the beast.” But others responded to our fliers and invitations with the attitude that Occupiers were just pampered gringos all worked up about unemployment and budget cuts in the U.S., when far worse corruption and joblessness have been El Salvador’s fate for years.
So we focused on the international roots of the movement, its origins in the “Arab Spring” and the take-over of plazas in Spain and other countries faced with similar austerity measures. We also emphasized that our Indignados and Occupy Movement would bring more attention to the longstanding demands of the Salvadoran left for an end to a system of corruption, impunity and tax fraud that benefits the wealthy and powerful.
On the night before our Thanksgiving Action, a cafe newly opened by two long-time leftist activists hosted a sign making party and discussion of this global Occupy Movement. About 30 people showed up and went to work producing placards in Spanish and English with slogans like “We occupy to liberate our planet” and “1% Thanks for not Giving!” One artist in the group drew a portrait of the martyred Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, with the word Indignado, Indignant, emblazoned on his chest. We joined together to watch Telesur coverage of the November 16th national day of action in the U.S.; a journalist from Spain talked about occupation activity in his country; a Salvadoran asked what we saw for the movement’s future.
We stepped out into the warm night air after the event brimming with excitement, hope and a few lingering anxieties about the next day’s action. But even in that moment, it felt like we had already achieved something important. We had stepped away from the previous model of solidarity in which we supported the Salvadoran struggle for social justice with political advocacy in the U.S. and financial support for education and leadership programs in El Salvador but we never really linked the struggle here to our own back home.
In the past, we didn’t see our movement and our challenges in the U.S. as worthy of sharing with Salvadorans who had fought, sacrificed everything and lost loved ones to try to create a just and peaceful El Salvador. Now, we were sharing experiences and strategies not as experienced Salvadoran luchadores and gringo novices with heavy consciences, but as equals striving together for change. Even if there were only a handful of us at the embassy on Thanksgiving, we would, like the trickle of protestors that grew into a flood around the U.S., be adding our voices to the cry of the 99%.
Alexandra Early works for U.S. El Salvador Sister Cities. She is a former organizer for the National Union of Healthcare Workers and a graduate of Wesleyan University, where she studied Latin American studies. Ms. Early can be reached at earlyave@gmail.com.
Another Oops Moment
Moderation in temper is always a virtue; but moderation in principle is always a vice.
– Thomas Paine, The Rights of Man
The question is why the United States was even thinking of selling arms to Bahrain. The answer can be found in the fact that the United States is the number one arms supplier in the world and to maintain its status it cannot be judgmental about the conduct of its customers. If standards of conduct were the operable criteria, the United States’ customer base would be reduced if not eliminated. As it is, sales of arms simply jeopardize the lives of some who live in the customers’ countries as well as those with which they may come into armed conflict, conflicts that might not take place were the adversaries not armed by the United States and other weapons supplying countries.
On March 19, 2011protestors took over Pearl Square in Manama, Bahrain. Two days before the take over and acting under orders from King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, the army had used live ammunition to crack down on the Shiite dissidents who were demanding changes in how the country was governed. Unlike Egypt or Tunisia, where the revolts against the establishment were quick and successful, in Bahrain the monarchy brutally put down the revolt, assisted by its neighbor, Saudi Arabia. (As reported in the Los Angeles Times, on March 15 “hundreds of troops from Saudi Arabia and police officers from the nearby United Arab Emirates . . . entered Bahrain at the request of the ruling family. . . .”) Thanks to his own quick, if brutal response, and the assistance of Saudi Arabia, King Hamad continues to rule.
In Egypt and Libya and more recently Syria, the Obama administration said the conduct of their respective leaders had resulted in the loss of their right to rule. In Bahrain, home of the U.S. Fifth Fleet, the Obama administration urged the Kahlifa family and the demonstrators to negotiate their differences. The fact that Bahrain is the headquarters for the U.S. 5th Fleet was probably not the reason for the different approach.
Although King Hamad successfully put down the revolt he was sufficiently concerned about reports of brutality by government forces that four moths after the events took place he appointed a commission to investigate. The commission was headed by Professor Cherif Bassiounim a professor of international criminal law and a former member of U.N. human rights panels. The report was released on November 23, 2011. According to the Associated Press, in the press conference at which the results of the commission’s findings were announced, Mr. Bassiouni said when the revolt began, the government undertook midnight raids to create fear and engaged in purges from workplaces and universities. A number of Shiite mosques were destroyed. Those jailed were blindfolded, whipped, kicked, given electric shocks and threatened with rape to extract confessions. The Bahrain Center for Human Rights said more than 40 deaths of protestors occurred.
Although it is likely that someone in the United States government was aware of the appointment of the commission, it did not wait to find out what the commission would discover. Instead, on September 14 the Pentagon told Congress it intended to sell more than 44 armored Humvees and 300 TOW missiles to Bahrain. Some outside the administration who had followed events in Bahrain were alarmed.
Shortly after the notice was sent out Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) wrote the Secretary of State and observed what she might have observed without his prompting. He wrote that: “Proceeding with the announced arms sale to Bahrain without modification under the current circumstances weakens U.S. credibility at a critical time of political transition in the Middle East.” In what might be described as an “oops” moment, the administration said it was delaying the arms sale until the Bassiouni commission report was released and it had had a chance to review the report. Some might wonder why it took a letter from a Senator to get the State Department to delay its actions. The answer can be found in more than the zeal of the United States to stay in first place in the arms sale business. It can be found in a government audit that was released on November 19, 2011, The audit found “inadequate monitoring of American weapons sales to Persian Gulf countries with questionable human rights records or recent clashes with protesters.” According to the Washington Post, the GAO’s report expressed concern about “how the U.S. government ensures the proper use of military equipment” sold to, among other countries, Bahrain. It observed that “[s]uch vetting is especially critical given Bahrain’s use of its security forces to quell public demonstrations.”
Commenting on the GAO report, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairwoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, said: “We need to ensure that the equipment is not being diverted to third parties, and that those groups and units who are the intended recipients are not implicated in human rights violations.” Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen got it right. The disturbing thing is that the State Department didn’t.
Christopher Brauchli is an attorney living in Boulder, Colorado. He can be e-mailed at brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu.
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Muslim Trojan Horse
American Muslim communities celebrating Thanksgiving with a traditional Turkey feast represents an encouraging sign of integration with American values and rituals.
But, of course, we Muslims fooled you.
Yet again.
You should have known that our baked, brined, and deep-fried masala turkeys were simply veiling our nefarious, anti-American plots to replace McDonald’s arches with minarets and convert the White House to the United Colors of Benetton House.
Pam Geller, Our Anti-Muslim Paul Revere
However, not all patriotic Americans were gullible and naïve! Nay, some America-holic crusaders, like bloggers Pam Geller and her fearless co-horts, called out our “stealth jihadist turkey plot!” Like modern-day Paul Reveres, they blogged, tweeted and mass mailed our ingenious plot “to submit unassuming Americans to Islam by feeding them halal Turkey” this holiday season. (Halal meat is slaughtered according to Islamic custom, similar to Jewish Kosher laws.)
Our nation’s Cassandra, Pam Geller – the preeminent anti-Muslim blogger and conspiracy theorist aficionado – believes President Obama is a Muslim, illegitimate son of Malcolm X who once went to Pakistan for drugs and jihad.
She also uncovered Arabic is not just a language, but actually a spearhead for anti-Americanism. Thanks to her, we discovered radical Islam has infiltrated our government, which is secretly being run by Islamic supremacists. She also accused Muslims of engaging in stealth cultural jihad by wearing their headscarves at Disneyland.
Truth be told, we’ve already converted Goofy. Donald Duck was always our Manchurian candidate. Mickey was the first to turn Benedict Arnold. As for Porky Pig, he better watch out; we’re coming for him next…with our scimitars.
Damn you, Pamela Geller, your anti-Muslim, detective nose is too evolved and sophisticated in sniffing out our dastardly plots!
I guess the feathered, red wattled bird is out of the proverbial bag. There’s no reason to hide the secret any longer.
It’s true. The turkey is our new Trojan Horse.
After spending decades learning to cook and enjoy the famously-dry turkey, we Muslims decided to use the bird to launch our turkey jihad after successfully conquering it in our respective kitchens. We’ve evolved from creeping sharia into states to creeping cholesterol and obesity into American diets. After taking over all the street meat vendors in New York, the Islamization of the turkey bird was inevitable.
Turkey: The Greatest Weapon of Mass Distraction
The Turkey is our greatest weapon of distraction. Even more so than hummus, biryani, shwarmas,kebobs, naans, and Lupe Fiasco.
The fatty bird’s high levels of tryptophan act like a paralyzing agent, causing intense drowsiness and lethargy when Americans overeat on Thanksgiving Day. The ensuing food coma paves the way for The Muslim Agenda to stealthily accomplish its ambitious goal of radically transforming America into a radical Caliphate guided by Sharia law.
Pam Geller, the 21st century’s Velma, uncovers The Great Halal Turkey Conspiracy:
“Across this great country, on Thanksgiving tables nationwide, infidel Americans are unwittingly going to be serving halal turkeys to their families this Thursday. Turkeys that are halal certified… [this] is just the opposite of what Thanksgiving represents: freedom and inclusiveness, neither of which are allowed for under that same Islamic law.”
Blast her foresight and remarkable sleuthing skills!
In this land of religious freedom, tolerance and pluralism, it is utterly unacceptable – downright un-American, I say – to allow a diversity of slaughtering options for mass consumers! And allowing Turkeys to be slaughtered according to a religious custom similar to Jewish Kosher laws? Shudder the thought!
Indeed, it is more patriotic to consume a steroid-pumped, undernourished, traumatized turkey hurled onto a mechanical conveyor belt – along with thousands of its gobbling brethren – awaiting its rapture under the guillotine of economic efficiency and other profit-maximizing instruments of death.
That, my friends, is truly the American way!
Muslims, We’re Like the Green Bay Packers
But, even American superheroes like Pamela Geller can’t stop our momentum. Muslims are like the current Green Bay Packers of fifth-column, culinary stealth jihadists– we’re on a hot streak!
First, we infiltrated America by creating a hot, Lebanese American beauty pageant named Rima Fakih who won Miss USA and stole the tiara from the infidels. Then, we installed a biracial man with Kenyan roots in the Oval Office, who happens to be a practicing Christian that celebrates Easter, accepts Christ as his savior, and has yet to step foot in a mosque during his three years as President. Moreover, he drinks alcohol and publicly eats bacon. Indeed, the hallmark traits of a Muslim President.
Most recently, we have invaded mainstream American television sets with our very own reality TV show, TLC’s All American Muslim. Move over Kim, Paris and Snookie, Arab-American Muslim Shadia is creeping to take over your botox and photoshopped US Weekly covers. According to Pamela Geller’s Justice League of Islamophobes, TLC’s real intention in creating the show is to force“submission to Islam through the hijab.” (Our clandestine plots foiled yet again!)
Halal Turkey Victory: The Icing on the Cake
But this latest victory is the icing on the cake, or I should say, the honey on the kanafeh. Ha!
Who was our mighty warrior leading us to victory, you ask? Our Alexander? Our Achilles? Our Obama? Our Aaron Rogers? The Trojan horse of our stealth victory was none other than the Thanksgiving turkey.
In fact, we’ve been so successful at integrating, we’ve inspired the mega corporation Butterball to become our preeminent stealth jihadist and unleash stealth halal turkeys on unsuspecting Americans and citizens abroad.
After all, what’s more anti-American than introducing a uniquely American bird, Turkey, to new global consumer markets thereby promoting American products, advertising brand names, and stimulating the national economy?
That’s downright Communistic!
But, even this is too much for Geller, who is asking for Butterball to be held accountable for allegedly serving Americans unlabeled halal meat. She has created the “Boycott Butterball Turkey” Facebook page.
Even fellow American Muslims are upset! All this time they could’ve purchased turkey at affordable prices from their local supermarkets instead of shelling out extra money for halal-certified birds from their community butchers! How come no one told the rest of them about Butterball’s ingenious stealth halal turkey jihadist plan?
(We have to keep them in the dark. We can’t afford to activate all of our of culinary stealth jihadists at once. Most of them have to live as if they are actually moderate, peaceful, loyal, normal Americans going about their day to day lives dealing with real problems and concerns that are shared by their neighbors, friends and co-workers. Lateral thinking.)
The Muslim Agenda Fortune Cookie
If you’re lucky, you’ll find The Protocols of the Elders of Mecca (or, “The Muslim Agenda”) stuffed in your Butterball turkey this holiday season. It outlines the plans for our next American cultural takeovers. If you look closely, deep inside your Butterball turkeys, there will be leaked cell phone photos of a circumcised Easter Bunny praying towards Mecca right before he hands out Kosher eggs and crescent-shaped chocolates to kids from his Easter basket, which we imported from China.
Apparently he’s also developed an insatiable sexual urge for white female rabbits and has started his own “Hare’s Harem.” Rumor has it he’s been fasting during Ramadan and partying like it was Mardi Gras during Lent.
And, wait until you see what we have in store for Christmas! Red-nosed camels and a Santa Claus named Abu Qhlaws: a hairy, overweight Moroccan man with a bushy beard giving chicken tagine to school kids in the malls.
There’s a rumor that American Muslim families will be giving snickers and tandoori chicken pieces for Halloween. Trick or Treat?
We’ve successfully brainwashed the Tooth Fairy as well. She now wears a burqa and was forced to marry Imam Rumpelstiltskin (Come on, that wasn’t a shocker, right?). Instead of replacing children’s teeth with coins, she now places small Qurans published in Saudi Arabia under their bedroom pillows. She also sprinkles fairy dust on the children, consisting of turmeric and zaatar.
The battle of the absurd, paranoid, and demented is thankfully yearlong and not contained to seasonal limitations.
This Thanksgiving, however, please do enjoy your Turkey, whether it be kosher, halal, vegan, vegetarian, American or even foreign.
To appease Pamela Geller and company, just please make sure your dead, cooked bird is tasty, America-holic and not a radical, stealth agent of jihad. Just to be safe, stab the bird a few times Pulp Fiction-style with the baster.
Because, after all, you can never really know and you can never really be too sure.
Wajahat Ali is a playwright, attorney, journalist and humorist. He blogs at Goatmilk and is the author of the award-winning Domestic Crusaders. He is a contributor to He will be basting his halal turkey in America-holic juices this Thanksgiving.
Originally published in Loonwatch.
‘Zero-Problems’ Foreign Policy No More
When Recep Tayyip Erdogan became Turkey’s prime minister in 2003, he seemed to be certain of the new direction his country would take. It would maintain cordial ties with Turkey’s old friends, Israel included, but also reach out to its Arab and Muslim neighbors, Syria in particular. The friendly relations between Ankara and Damascus soon morphed from rhetorical emphasis on cultural ties into trade deals and economic exchanges worth billions of dollars. Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s vision of a ‘zero-problems’ foreign policy seemed like a truly achievable feat, even in a region marred by conflict, foreign occupations and ‘great game’ rivalry.
The Israeli raid on the Turkish aid ship, Mavi Marmara, in international waters on May 31, 2010, was not enough to erode this vision. The official Turkish response to Israel’s violent attack – which killed nine Turkish citizens – was one of great anger, but it hardly resembled what Turkey saw as state-sponsored Israeli piracy in the Mediterranean.
However, the Syrian uprising in March, the harsh government crackdown on dissent, and the growing militarization of the opposition – all leading the country down the road to full-fledged civil war – has forced Turkey to abandon its ‘zero-problems’ foreign policy. While Turkey had clearly grown impatient with the bloody crackdowns on widespread protests demanding freedom and political reforms, its growingly confrontational attitude towards Damascus was not entirely altruistic either. Considering the exceptionality of the situation throughout the Arab World, Turkey has had to make some difficult choices.
Turkey’s initially guarded support of NATO’s military intervention against Libya was a litmus test. It proved that Turkey’s membership in the organization, and its regional standing was more important than any foreign policy visions.
“The same stunning irony was clear in Turkey’s relations with (murdered President Muammar) Qadhafi’s Libya. Once these regimes faltered…zero problems was likely to look like a bad bet,” wrote Steven A Cook in the Atlantic, on November 18.
The other ‘stunning irony’ is, of course, Turkey’s hostile attitude towards Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, once considered by Erdogan to be a personal friend. In fact, the leading role currently played by Ankara to isolate and punish al-Assad would seem like the official “denouement of the Erdogan/Davutoglu investment in Bashar al-Assad,” and thus the “end of what has been billed as Turkey’s transformative diplomacy,” according to Cook.
Despite pressure on Ankara to hasten its isolation of Syria, and subtle insinuations that the Turkish leadership is moving too slow on that front, the language alone tells of near complete foreign policy conversion. In a statement on November 15, Prime Minister Erdogan suggested that al-Assad cannot be trusted. “No one any longer expects (the Syrian President) to meet the expectations of the people and of the international community…Our wish is that the Assad regime, which is now on a knife edge, does not enter this road of no return, which leads to the edge of the abyss” (Global Spin blog, TIME online, November 16).
The apocalyptic language can be justified on the basis of an almost inevitable civil war in Syria, and the instability that such a war could create for an already unstable southern Turkish border. More, with regional and international players already vying for the opportunity to exploit Syria’s internal woes, Turkey’s own internal problems could soon be exploited for the benefit of outside forces. Thus, the new Turkish foreign policy appears to be centered on ensuring a position of leadership for Ankara in any future scenario faced by Syria. It’s a remarkable shift – from a moralistic approach to politics to a crude realpolitik outlook, which may require sacrificing others for the benefit of oneself.
Political realism is often riddled with ironies. While Turkey once threatened to go to war unless Syria expelled PKK’s Ocalan, it “is now supporting a man, Riad al Assad, whose ‘Free Syrian Army’ is doing exactly the same across the Syrian border,” according Ankara-based writer Jeremy Salt. Furthermore, “in confronting Syria…Turkey has put itself at odds with Syria’s ally, Iran, whose cooperation it needs in dealing with the PKK” (The Palestine Chronicle, November 18).
By claiming a position of leadership in the ongoing effort to topple the Syrian government, Turkey hopes to stave off unwanted repercussions from the Syria fallout – and thus control the outcome of that adventure. This explains why Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, has played the host of the Syrian National Council, and why the Free Syrian Army, which has launched several deadly attacks on Syrian security installations, is finding a safe haven in Turkish territories.
Politically, Turkey is also taking a lead role. Its foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, after a meeting with French foreign minister Alain Juppe, called for more international pressure against Damascus. “If they don’t listen we have to increase pressure to stop bloodshed in Syria,” he said. “But this pressure should not be unilateral pressure, all the relevant countries should act together” (The Financial Times, November 18).
What Davutoglu means by ‘act together’, and which countries are ‘relevant’ is open to speculation.
As for acting, Mohammad Riad Shaqfa, the leader of Syria’s outlawed Muslim Brotherhood, offered his own roadmap at a news conference in Istanbul. “If the international community procrastinates then more is required from Turkey as a neighbor to be more serious than other countries to handle this regime,” Shaqfa said. “If other interventions are required, such as air protection, because of the regime’s intransigence, then the people will accept Turkish intervention” (Turkey’s Hurriyet, November 17).
A detailed plan of that envisaged intervention was published in Turkey’s Sabah newspaper on the day of Shaqfa’s comments. According to Sabah, an intervention plan was put forth by ‘oppositional forces’. Its details include a limited no-fly-zone that progressively widened to include major Syrian provinces and a blockade of the city of Aleppo in the north (Sabah, November 17).
Considering the escalating violence in Syria, and the palpable lack of good intentions by all ‘relevant countries,’ Syria is teetering close to the abyss of prolonged civil war, divisions and unprecedented bloodletting.
“As negotiator and facilitator between the Syrian government and the internal opposition, Turkey has a role to play,” wrote Jeremy Salt, “but provoking Syria along the border, lecturing Bashar al-Assad as if he were a refractory provincial governor during Ottoman rule and giving support to people who are killing Syrian citizens is not the way ahead.”
Ramzy Baroud is editor of PalestineChronicle.com. He is the author of The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People’s Struggle and “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London).
A Reply to Michael Bérubé
Even as NATO celebrates its victory over the Gaddafi dictatorship, there is growing unease about the operation. The Libyan intervention was supposed to be a model of legality, but ended up exceeding the terms set forth in Security Council Resolution 1973, which authorized a no fly zone but not regime change. US involvement violated the War Powers Resolution. The intervention was presented as a truly international operation, but ended up being directed by Britain and France, the two main powers from the heyday of colonialism, thus adding to the unsavory appearance of the whole enterprise. The intervention was supposed to prevent a massacre in Benghazi, but ended up enabling one in Sirte, where there have been numerous executions of pro-Gaddafi loyalists. It was supposed to dissuade other tyrants from oppressing their own people, but in reality had no such effect.[1] Political repression in Syria actually increased after the intervention. The intervention has generated significant dangers to global security: The character of Western policy toward the Libyan despot – by first persuading Gaddafi to give up his nuclear weapons development program and then overthrowing him – has discouraged other countries from abandoning their own nuclear weapons programs. The intervention thus constitutes a setback for international efforts to curb nuclear proliferation. In addition, vast stocks of anti-aircraft missiles have been looted from Gaddafi’s warehouses in the course of the intervention; these have likely filtered into the world-wide arms market. And even the most hardened observers must be chilled at the fate of Gaddafi himself, who was apparently sodomized before he was killed. This was certainly not the “clean” overthrow it was supposed to be.
In this context, supporters of the intervention seek to shift discussion away from the embarrassing facts and lash out against those who disagree with their views. Michael Bérubé has created a stir recently with his article “Libya and the Left,” [please add link] soon to appear in print in The Point Magazine. This article defends the intervention, while it attacks writers who oppose it, with a special emphasis on attacking left-wing opponents of the intervention. Both Juan Cole and Brad DeLong recommend this article on their blog sites, while the onlineedition of The Economist also praises it.
Bérubé condemns what he terms the “addled left” and their “popular shibboleths about the war,” which includes the supposedly widespread view that “Gaddafi was a progressive in domestic or foreign policy” who was “justified in sending out the military to crush the protesters.” There is a strong insinuation throughout the article that most opponents of the NATO intervention were friends of the Gaddafi dictatorship. On his own blog, Cole agrees with Bérubé and extols the merits of his analysis which, according to Cole, exposes the left’s “Woolly thinking, outrageous lies, moon-eyed Gaddafi-worship,” among other sins.
And Bérubé criticizes those who question NATO’s motives for intervening. He is particularly incensed by allegations that Libya’s oil reserves – which are the ninth largest in the world – might have influenced the decision to intervene. Allegations that the NATO states might have acted on self interest are examples of mere “tropes that have been forged over the past four decades of antiwar activism,” and can thus be dismissed.
The article concludes by arguing for a “rigorously internationalist left” one that will support “the freedom of speech, the freedom to worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear,” and will do these things even where it “puts one in the position of supporting US policies.” There is a distinct tone of innuendo here — that the existing left is for the most part not internationalist, that it opposes freedom of speech and the like – but no evidence whatsoever.
True, Bérubé inserts intermittent statements that acknowledge a more complex picture and admit that the intervention can be opposed for legitimate reasons. But such qualifications appear brief and pro forma. For the most part, the article is a sweeping indictment against virtually all opponents of the intervention, mostly through insinuated slurs.
“Libya and the Left” will no doubt be cited by many who will nevertheless miss the point that the article is rambling, petty, and self-contradictory; that the most weighty “evidence” cited by Bérubé consists of extended quotes from Cole (who appears to have formed a mutual admiration society with Bérubé); that it cites few facts, and those it does cite are often cited tendentiously; that it focuses more on attacking the moral character of the anti-interventionist movement than on their substantive claims; and that overall, it presents a textbook case of a profoundly illogical ad hominem argument.
Let us now turn to the reality of the situation with regard to the Gaddafi dictatorship: In fact, there has been a problem of Western collaboration with the dictatorship. However, the problem was not one of leftist collaboration, which was relatively minor. The real sources of collaboration were the very same Western leaders who recently crushed Gaddafi — who had been Gaddafi supporters only a few months before. This history of collaboration provides vital context for understanding NATO’s recent intervention.
Here are the facts: Around 2003, Gaddafi essentially offered to abandon his radical policies, including his support for terrorism and his nuclear weapons development program, on the condition that the Western powers would end their adversarial stance and lift economic sanctions, which had been in place since the 1980s. He also offered to cooperate in the War on Terror. The US and European powers accepted this deal, and Gaddafi became a de facto ally. Internally, Gaddafi’s oppression of his people continued uninterrupted, but this was not a problem since Western officials were unconcerned about human rights.
It is important to emphasize that the Western collaboration with Gaddafi during this period was very close indeed. Several states sought to sell weapons to Gaddafi. The French in particular were trying to sell him fighter planes as late as January 2011, only two months before they began to bomb him. Ironically enough, the fighter plane the French sought to sell was the Rafale, which was later used as the main weapon of war against Gaddafi, once French policy changed. We should not be shocked by France’s cynical shifting of loyalties in this case, since France has had a long history of cynical arms dealing (with extensive sales to Libya in the 1970s).
Leaders of several NATO states in addition to France established close relations with Gaddafi, and his previous history of terrorism was forgotten. Western companies poured money into Libyan oil fields, while British MI-6 agents formed close relationships with Libyan security personnel. Perhaps the most disturbing feature of the post-2003 dealings with Gaddafi concerned the practice of extraordinary rendition: We now know that the Central Intelligence Agency sent terrorist suspects to Libya, where they were tortured by Gaddafi’s thugs.
This sickening involvement with Libyan torture practices makes Dennis Kucinich’s pro-Gaddafi dalliances seem trivial in comparison.
And there was further collaboration: Nongovernmental institutions accepted Gaddafi money, with few qualms. The London School of Economics received a large contribution from the Gaddafi family, which aimed at improving their image in Britain. From the US, the Monitor Group consultancy arranged for prominent Americans such as Richard Perle to meet the Libyan dictator.
Thus, Western elites were perfectly comfortable with Gaddafi’s oppressive rule, including his use of torture. These states only broke with Gaddafi when his hold on power tottered, in response to the Arab Spring, and he ceased to be useful. He was no longer viewed as a reliable protector of Western access to Libya’s oil resources.
This shift from being pro-Gaddafi to anti-Gaddafi was undertaken with such suddenness and crass opportunism that the shift must be viewed as another iteration in the sordid history of realpolitik. And contrary to Bérubé’s claims, this collaboration was not undertaken primarily by the antiwar left. It was done by many of the same Western leaders who today are claiming the moral high ground in having overthrown the tyrant — who was considered a close ally only a few months before.
“The Left and Gaddafi” serves mainly to whitewash the history of official collaboration with the Gaddafi dictatorship, and it thus contributes to historical amnesia and foreign policy ignorance. Supporters of intervention may indulge Bérubé’s fantasy that leftists were the main supporters of Gaddafi, but this is a fantasy all the same.
The article also stands as a testament to the debasing of public discussion, whereby serious issues are trivialized through ad hominem attacks. Bérubé presents himself as part of the “decent left,” but he uses the same techniques as David Horowitz and the McCarthyite right.
David N. Gibbs is professor of history at the University of Arizona, who has published extensively on international relations, political economy, and US foreign policy. His latest book is First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia (Vanderbilt University Press, 2009).
Notes.
[1] See B. J. Bjornson, “Libya and the Left,” November 7, 2011, http://www.newshoggers.com/blog/2011/11/libya-and-the-left.html
The Good, the Bizarre and the Ugly
It is becoming increasingly clear that the AF-PAK war will end in yet another grand strategic defeat for the United States. To date, President Obama, has been able to distract attention from this issue, but given the stakes in 2012, that dodge is unlikely to last. Get ready for an ugly debate over “who lost the Afghan War.”
To those readers who disagree with my opening line, I urge you to study Anthony Cordersman’s most recent situation report on the AF-PAK War, THE AFGHANISTAN- PAKISTAN WAR AT THE END OF 2011: Strategic Failure? Talk Without Hope? Tactical Success? Spend Not Build (And Then Stop Spending)? It was issued by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington on November 15. Reading the report is heavy slogging but I urge readers to download and examine it — at the very least, take a few minutes to read the executive summary.
Now compare Cordesman’s systematic, detailed, and workmanlike analysis to the bizarre obscurantism peddled one week later, on 22 November, co-authored by Michael O’Hanlon (Brookings Institution) and former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz (American Enterprise Institute) in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, entitled Defining Victory in Afghanistan.
O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz posit the bizarre thesis that the admittedly less than successful outcome against the FARC guerrillas in Columbia is a favorable model for justifying continuing business as usual in Afghanistan. Viewed through the refractions of their Columbian lens, O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz conclude, “Our current exit strategy of reducing American troops to 68,000 by the end of next summer and transferring full security responsibility to Afghan forces by 2014 is working. In a war where the U.S. has demonstrated remarkable strategic patience, we need to stay patient and resolute.”
Are O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz living on the same planet as Cordesman or do they live in some kind of parallel universe?
I submit it is latter. Here’s why -
Einstein showed how reasoning by analogy can be a very creative way of thinking, but it is also very dangerous, because bad analogies, if not rigorously tested against reality, can capture the imagination and cause one to see what one wants to see. This problem has been particularly evident in the case of understanding the highly evolved complex tribal cultures of Afghanistan, as Jonathan Steele shows in his just released book, Ghosts of Afghanistan: The Haunted Battleground (Counterpoint, Berkeley, October 2011). Steele explains how one of the enduring features of America’s 30 year adventure in Afghanistan is a policy-making decision cycle, [ i.e., what military reformers refer to as the collective Observation - Orientation - Decision Action (OODA) Loop], grounded in an outlook [i.e., Orientation] that is shaped by false assumptions and mythical beliefs. The distorted Orientation causes decision makers and policy wonks to filter information in a way that causes them see what they want to see. When this happens, as I explained here, decisions and actions become progressively disconnected from reality and decision-makers become overloaded by confusion and disorder — a process we in the Pentagon used to call incestuous amplification.
The only innoculation against incestuous amplification is to destroy the “model” shaping the orientation with a blunt dose of cold reality, like the Cordesman Report — yet as O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz have so convincingly demonstrated, the minds of some people are beyond saving. A problem, of course, is that more people will read silly fantasies peddled in the Wall Street Journal than heavy tomes produced by serious analysts.
Cordesman’s report is also important for another reason. Notwithstanding the last ditch fantasies of O’Hanlon and Wolfowitz, an atmosphere of gloom is descending on Versailles, and the inevitable hunt for scapegoats to blame for the looming failure is in the offing. While Cordesman is unlikely to be a part of any finger pointing game, analyses like his (and others like Steele’s) will add fuel to the fire heating up the emerging political debate over “who lost Iraq and AFPAK?” We can expect that debate to go from the bizarre (like the O’Hanlon/Wolfowitz thesis) to the really ugly, given the unscrupulous know-nothing scorched-earth atmosphere currently so much in evidence in our contemporary politics.
Polls suggest withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan are more in tune with the majority wishes of the American public, which after ten years of costly futile war is understandably tired and is turning inward because of economic troubles at home. Yet polls also suggest the military is now the most “respected” institution of government–far more so than it was in the early 1970s; this is true despite (1) the fact that DoD is now the only federal agency that cannot pass at least part of the annual audit required explicitly by the Chief Financial Officers Act of 1990 and implicitly by the Constitution and (2) that after ten years, its wars are sputtering aimlessly into an morass.
On the other hand, the military — really the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex or MICC — is also far more politicized and influential in domestic politics than it was in the 1970s; its PR machine, abetted by ubiquitous advertisements by defense contractors in the printed and electronic media, is also far more sophisticated today than it was 40 years ago, and militarism has insinuated itself far more deeply into our popular culture. Indeed, as I have written elsewhere, Eisenhower’s nightmare is upon us.
To wit: the recent debate over deficit reduction effectively took serious reductions in defense spending off the table. In fact, even though the Super Committee on deficit reduction just collapsed as many predicted it would, Pentagon officials have refused to even make contingency plans to cope with defense cutbacks caused by a sequester, and have decided instead to push back on Congress, in effect passing the pain onto social programs and Social Security and Medicare. Evidence is mounting that defense spending and “no tax increases” are now eclipsing Social Security and Medicare as third rails in American politics.
My adice, dear reader, is to get ready for another Vietnam-like “stab in the back” argument like that of the late 1970s when the generals blamed their strategic/grand-strategic defeat in Vietnam on politicians at home. That drumbeat in the 1970s, abetted by phony claims that budget cuts after Vietnam created a “hollow military,” when in fact the hollowness was a self-inflicted wound [1]1, together with fantastical promises that new technologies would revolutionize the nature of war, plus the spreading of contracts to more and more congressional districts, fueled a political atmosphere that unleashed the huge and wasteful spending spree of the 1980s.
This time, a re-run of the stab-in-the-back argument is also likely to be abetted by an unstated racist undertone of being ‘stabbed by a black socialist president,’ (a totally phony charge) fueled discretely behind the scenes by the MICC. This kind of inuendo will very likely to gain traction, particularly among the Limbaugh/Beck crowd on the hard right, but more generally among angry blue collar white men who have seen their standard of living stagnate or decline and their social status diminish.
Obama and the Democrats will be targeted for the bulk of blame, although in the case of Afghanistan and Pakistan, Obama certainly bears a major part of the responsibility for Afghanistan, given his reckless decision to escalate the ground and air war in 2009. But the problems cited in Cordesman’s report did not build up in just three years, and its information helps us understand why blaming Obama and Democrats for ‘snatching defeat from the jaws of victory’ is a phony charge — there is plenty of blame to go around. Nevertheless, it is a almost certain this charge will be a campaign plank of the Republicans in 2012.
Combine the likely intensification of the MICC’s ‘stab-in-the-back politics with the growing popular rage against austerity economics in the US and Europe, the increasing prospect of a double dip global recession or even a debt-driven deflation, and 2012 is shaping up to be a very dangerous year for the United States — particularly if Israel tries to take advantage of this mess by attacking Iran in the middle of an election year.
Franklin “Chuck” Spinney is a former military analyst for the Pentagon and a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He be reached atchuck_spinney@mac.com
Notes
1 As I explained in my 1980 report, Defense Facts of Life (see Part I of Defense Facts of Life: The Plans/Reality Mismatch, Westview Press 1985) the so-called “hollow military” was a self inflicted wound caused by explicit internal decisions to cutback on readiness inorder to pay for modernization with increasingly costly and complex weapons. My report proved this point by showing how the Air Force’s tactical fighter force suffered from the same readiness problems as the rest of the military, even though the budget for the tactical fighter mission area increased dramatically in inflation adjusted terms after 1975.
Pushing the Eurozone to the Brink
“We are caught, it seems, in one of those self-reinforcing loops that almost always presage a collapse.”
– Michael Pettis, China Financial Markets
Germany’s “failed” bund auction on Wednesday was a real gamechanger. It means that Europe’s biggest and most powerful economy will not escape the contagion that’s swept across the south. Germany’s borrowing costs will rise and it’s finances will be put under a microscope. But that’s just the half of it. What’s roiling the markets is that investors are now pricing in the probability of a eurozone breakup. That’s what all the commotion is about; the nightmare scenario is beginning to unfold.
Here are the facts: Of the €6 billion in 10-year bonds that were offered at Wednesday’s auction, only €3.6 billion were purchased leaving the Bundesbank with the remaining €2.4 billion, which is 39 percent of the total allotment, the highest ratio on record.
The auction was, in the words of one trader “a complete disaster” mainly because it showed that Germany is not the safe haven that many thought it was. German debt has become a “risk asset” overnight just like that of Greece or Italy. (although to lesser degree) Investors are fleeing Europe altogether and moving their money into Gilts and US Treasuries. Take a look at this from the Wall Street Journal:
“Euro-zone leaders say they are determined to save the single currency. But the smart money is voting with its feet. First, short-term U.S. dollar-funding markets effectively closed, then the senior unsecured-bond markets shut down, then the interbank market. Now, corporate customers appear to be withdrawing their deposits from some countries’ banks. With an estimated €1.7 trillion ($2.29 trillion) of funding to roll over in the next three years, the stresses in the euro-zone banking system look doomed to get worse….
If eurozone leaders are serious about saving the euro, they must find ways to persuade the smart money to stay.” (“Europe’s Smart Money Votes With Its Feet”, Wall Street Journal)
So, the eurozone is experiencing a bankrun, only, so far, much of the money has merely shifted from the weaker countries to the stronger. Now that’s beginning to change. But don’t be deceived, the problem isn’t Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio or its prospects for future growth. The problem is that it’s linked to other teetering sovereigns in a single currency suicide pact, and there’s no way to get out unscathed. Here’s an excerpt from the Guardian:
“Global investors headed for the eurozone exit on Thursday after leaders of the area’s three biggest economies squashed residual market hopes for a huge intervention by the European Central Bank (ECB) to solve the sovereign debt crisis….
Angela Merkel again ruled out any expanded role for the ECB and stamped down proposals for single, eurozone-wide “eurobonds” to share the risk of sovereign debt. The ECB, she said, was only responsible for monetary policy….
Merkel … agreed only that early agreement to boost the EU’s bailout fund, the European financial stability facility, could help resolve the immediate crisis…She reiterated the view she expressed to the Bundestag a day earlier that eurobonds or the collectivisation of sovereign risk were neither “necessary nor appropriate” and could function only at a later stage of fiscal union.” (“Fear sweeps markets as Germany rules out ECB intervention”, Guardian)
Merkel’s rejection of eurobonds and fiscal transfers is a death warrant for the eurozone. She also refuses to allow the ECB to act as lender of last resort which would stem the flight out of government bonds. Here’s what a senior trader at a US bank told the Financial Times:
“We are now seeing funds and clients wanting to get out of anything that is denominated in euros and that includes Bunds because they don’t know what will happen to monetary union.”
See? Germany may be an industrial powerhouse and have it’s house in order (economically), but that’s not going to matter if the capital flight continues. It will face the same excruciating reckoning as the others.
So, what’s the solution?
In truth, there are only two options; either move towards total political and fiscal integration (A United States of Europe) or scrap the euro-project altogether and dissolve the union. If policymakers continue to procrastinate (“the politics of dither”), then the market will impose its own solution which will involve a cascade of bank and corporate defaults, soaring unemployment, agonising deflation and a decade of severe depression.
So, is there any chance of a positive outcome to the EU debt crisis? Here’s how economist James Galbraith answered that question:
James Galbraith: “No, I don’t think so. To get there you would have to have a complete reversal of the ideas that presently govern Europe. You would have to have a much greater sense of solidarity, a greater willingness to put European funds into the periphery in a serious and sustained way, and you’d have to have a plan for their growth and development. None of those are presently in the offing.” (Daily Ticker)
EU leaders haven’t changed their minds about anything. In fact, they’ve rejected every idea that might have helped, which is why the eurozone will not pull out of its death spiral.
For the video of Galbraith see link:
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/europe-crisis-may-end-violent-blow-galbraith-161311592.html
MIKE WHITNEY lives in Washington state. He is a contributor to Hopeless: Barack Obama and the Politics of Illusion, forthcoming from AK Press. He can be reached at fergiewhitney@msn.com
ICC Prosecutor’s Career Move Switches Horses and Legal Theories in Libya
A CounterPunch Exclusive
Zintan, Libya
Despite the claims of the National Transitional Council of Libya (NTC) that Saif al Islam Gadhafi, the apprehended subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant that ordered his transport to The Hague, is in a secure hidden location near Zintan, Libya, a town approximately 85 miles southwest of Tripoli, this is not the case.
Neither are the assurances by Steven Anderson, spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) who on 11/23/11 announced that Saif al-Islam’s injuries had been “taken care of,” nor his profuse assurances that Saif is in good health. In point of fact, following the ICRC assurances, the Ukrainian-born Doctor Andrei Murakhovsky who lives in Zintan reported that “Saif’s wound is covered with gangrenous tissue and necrotic tissue.” He added that “This wound is not in good condition and requires amputation. His index finger has been ripped off at the level of the middle phalange (finger bone), the bones are all shattered. It’s the same thing with the thumb of that hand.” Dr. Murakhovsky told the Reuters news service.
The morning of 11/24/11, Libyan NTC Prime Minister Abdurrahim El-Keib still insisted that “Saif al-Islam is receiving the best possible treatment, but for now he is not in the hands of the provisional central government and we don’t know where he is.”
Regarding Saif al Islam’s “secure and hidden location”, most people in the village of Zintan know where he is being held, as does this observer who visited a motley group of B-western movie types who are currently guarding and “protecting” Saif.
Although armed with a Power of Attorney from one of Saif’s family members to visit him, the group refused my request to visit Saif with the excuse that they had to consult their commander who was not expected to return for a few days since he was now the new NTC Libyan Defense Minister.
On the question of Saif’s health, there is increasing concern also because his guards claim they cannot take him to Zintan’s only hospital because someone would likely kill him in order to collect on the substantial rumored Qatar/NATO offered cash reward for whoever assassinates him thus presumably helping “the new Libya” and its allies avoid a messy trial.
Meanwhile, after what he claims in a change of heart, the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, now professes that Libya, not The Hague, is the best place after all for Saif al Islam and his trial. Since its establishment by the United Nations in 2002, the ICC has had just one Prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo. To the reported expressed relief of many international defense lawyers, several ICC staff and ICC judges, plus legal commentators familiar with his prosecutorial work, the ICC will have his successor chosen next month in New York. This coming weekend in New York, the legal defense organization, Avocats Sans Frontiers (ASF, ie Lawyers Without Borders) will meet in order to try to agree on a successor to propose to the 18 ICC Judges who will decide.
Prosecutor Ocampo’s visit this week to Libya caused some raised eyebrows among the groups noted above when he suddenly announced that the ICC would not invoke its UN Security Council-granted power and proceed with Case # ICC 01/11. This case was opened at the ICC on March 3, 2011, having been assigned to the ICC by the UN Security Council following the preceding month’s uprising in Benghazi, Libya.
Speculation among some in The Hague, in Libya and from ASF lawyers is that knowing that he would not be re-elected for another term as ICC Prosecutor, due to among other reasons he has not won one case during his 9 year term, has repeatedly incurred the wrath of ICC judges for bringing cases which they ruled lacked sufficient evidence and his penchant for self-aggrandizing publicity and making inaccurate claims about cases and defendants that border on judicial misconduct, Ocampo decided to switch horses.
One egregious example of his making false representations is the current ICC case involving Saif al-Islam Gadhafi in which Ocampo made several inaccurate headline-grabbing statements over the past several weeks claiming to be negotiating “indirectly” with Saif al Islam to give himself up to the ICC. Saif has emphatically denied Ocampo’s grandstanding claims and presumably, were Ocampo to attempt to personally prosecute his case Saif’s legal team would immediately file a motion to replace Ocampo for cause, as provided by ICC rules.
Given these problems, Ocampo, according to someone who accompanied him during his visit this week to Libya, decided to accept a lucrative offer from the NTC to advise the oil-rich country on setting up a legal system to try Saif al Islam and others.
The assurances by Moreno-Ocampo, NATO officials and American UN Ambassador Susan Rice that Libya is currently fully capable of currently handling trials of former regime loyalists are nonsense. Rice exhibited ignorance and surprise here last weekend when she claimed not to know that Libya had the death penalty and would apply the death penalty in the ICC case if given the chance. The Libyan public’s apparent preference is for the death penalty by hanging in the two Libya ICC cases. This was the case with Rwanda, which is one reason the Ruanda Tribunal did not allow the government of Rwanda to conduct certain trials even though that government assured the UN it would not actually carry out a death penalty sentence. Libya has offered no such assurances to the ICC against the use of the death penalty nor has it submitted a legal challenge to ICC jurisdiction over the Saif al Islam or Abdullah Sanussi cases, as the Rome Statute requires.
Despite switching jobs, Ocampo has not lost interest in prosecuting the Saif al Islam case which he views as his best chance of finally winning at least an ICC related case, but not at The Hague where there is the possibility that Saif could be convicted, given Court rules of procedure and ICC legal staff resources that would actually assist an accused in presenting his defense before the court. Ocampo is said to be betting on gaining a victory in Saif’s high profile case by working with the NATO-created NTC government in Libya and running the prosecution as a behind the scenes “consultant” and helping Libya’s NTC keep the UN and ICC at bay while allowing the NTC to try both Saif’s case and that of Abdullah Sanussi if and when the latter is proven to have been captured. Ocampo is said to relish the job of becoming the “Father of Libya’s new legal system.” Ocampo is now explaining that it was never his role “to tell Libyan officials how to hold a fair trial and the standard of the ICC is that it has to be a judicial process that is not organized to shield the suspect and I respect that it’s important for the cases to be tried in Libya.” He then added, “There are so many different traditions, it is difficult to say what is fair.”
No sooner had the surprising news and Ocampo’s sudden vagueness about what constitutes a fair trial begun to ricochet around the Internet than this observer received an email from an international criminal lawyer whose office is two blocks from the Carl Moultrie Courthouse in Washington, DC. The American lawyer was appalled: “Paying Ocampo as a consultant for the new Libyan government on criminal trial procedures is a ridiculous thought/idea. He has no idea of fair trial rights and has not achieved a conviction in his nearly 9 years at the ICC.”
Nor were the ICC judges thrilled at the perceived betrayal. The ICC quickly fired off a reminder to Ocampo, to the new Libyan government and the media that it is the ICC judges, and not the ICC Prosecutor, who will decide whether a case will be held in The Hague or if the country where the alleged crimes occurred and only they will decide if Libya has the ability to conduct a fair trial. The ICC is signaling that the Ocampo-generated international headlines to the contrary notwithstanding, the issue of trial venue in Libya has not settled in ICC case # 01/11.
Prosecutor Ocampo knows well that once the ICC decides to open an investigation of a case, national courts may not investigate that case and are relieved from their obligation to do so. In addition, since the ICC has issued an arrest warrant against Libyan defendants, all states – including Libya – are obliged to cooperate fully with the Court.
Following the public dressing down from The Hague, Ocampo has now retreated a bit and told CNN on 11/23/11 that: “ The only condition is the new Libyan government has to present their position to the International Criminal Court judges and the judges will decide if the case can be prosecuted in Libya. Libya will present evidence to ICC judges that the country can hold the trial, and the judges will decide if they are satisfied,” Ocampo explained.
The ICC, if it takes up the question as expected, should rule in the developing Saif al Islam case, precisely as the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda found in ruling against that country’s request for trial jurisdiction, although like Libya today, Rwanda claimed to have “modern functioning court system.” The reason is that an initial review of Libya’s criminal judicial system and discussion with Libyan criminal defense lawyers as well as with international criminal defense lawyers with years of experience in international tribunals’ practice, shows that it is very clear that persons accused of serious crimes in Libya currently do not have even the most minimal judicial rights that are required by international norms. Today Libya defendants do not enjoy adequate legal representation, financial support for indigent accused, travel and investigation support for defense teams, security for defense teams. Libya’s central and local governments place impediments curtailing defense teams in the discharge of their functions.
An admittedly cursory inquiry in Libya among lawyers here also reveal nonexistent or inadequate accommodation and transport arrangements for witness, as well as a lack of arrangements for protection of witnesses before, during and after testifying in court. In addition, the NTC is engaging in a pattern of threatening potential witnesses preparing to testify against NATO in another case. Similarly the NTC is failing to provide safe and secure travel for Libyan witnesses living abroad, including in Algeria, Tunisia, Mali, Niger, and Egypt. Interviews with Libyan lawyers and officials as well as visits to detention facilities in Libya reveal that conditions are not in compliance with international standards and that there is widespread torture of prisoners in Libya and threats against the families of prisoners.
Franklin Lamb is reachable c/o fplamb@gmail.com
Ex-Ambassador Exposes Government Cover-Up
Last February Britain’s then defense minister Liam Fox attended a dinner in Tel Aviv with a group described as senior Israelis. Alongside him sat Adam Werritty, a lobbyist whose “improper relations” with the minister would lead eight months later to Fox’s hurried resignation.
According to several reports in the British media the Israelis in attendance at the dinner were representatives of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, while Fox and Werritty were accompanied by Matthew Gould, Britain’s ambassador to Israel. A former British diplomat has now claimed that the topic of discussion that evening was a secret plot to attack Iran.
The official inquiry castigating the UK’s former defence secretary for what has come to be known as a “cash-for-access” scandal appears to have only scratched the surface of what Fox and accomplice Adam Werritty may have been up to when they met for dinner in Tel Aviv.
Little was made of the dinner in the 10-page inquiry report published last month by Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet’s top civil servant.
Instead O’Donnell concentrated on other aspects of Werritty’s behaviour: the 33-year-old friend of Fox’s had presented himself as the minister’s official adviser and jetted around the world with him arranging meetings with businessmen.
The former minister’s allies, seeking to dismiss the gravity of the case against him, have described Werritty as a harmless dreamer. Following his resignation, Fox himself claimed O’Donnell’s report had exonerated him of putting national security at risk.
However, a spate of new concerns raised in the wake of the inquiry challenge both of these assumptions. These include questions about the transparency of the O’Donnell investigation, the extent of Fox and Werritty’s ties to Israel and the unexplained role of Gould.
Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan until 2004, when he turned whistle blower on British and US collusion on torture, said senior British government officials were profoundly disturbed by the O’Donnell inquiry, seeing it as a “white wash.”
Murray himself accused O’Donnell of being “at the most charitable interpretation, economical with the truth.”
Two well-placed contacts alerted Murray to Gould’s central – though largely ignored – role in the Fox-Werritty relationship, he said.
Murray has pieced together evidence that Fox, Werritty and Gould met on at least six occasions over the past two years or so, despite the O’Donnell inquiry claiming they had met only twice. Gould is the only ambassador Fox and Werritty are known to have met together.
In an inexplicable break with British diplomatic and governmental protocol, officials were not present at a single one of the six meetings between the three men. No record was taken of any of the discussions.
Murray, who first made public his concerns on his personal blog, said a source familiar with the O’Donnell inquiry told him the parameters of the investigation were designed to divert attention away from the more damaging aspects of Fox and Werritty’s behaviour.
Subsequently, the foreign office has refused to respond to questions, including from an MP, about the Tel Aviv dinner. Officials will not say who the Israelis were, what was discussed or even who paid for the evening, though under Whitehall rules all hospitality should be declared.
Also unexplained is why Fox rejected requests by his own staff to attend the dinner, and why Werritty was privy to such a high-level meeting when he had no security clearance.
Nonetheless, O’Donnell appeared inadvertently to confirm that Mossad representatives were present at the dinner during questioning from an MP at a meeting of the House of Commons’ Public Administration Committee this week.
Responding to a question about the dinner from opposition MP Paul Flynn, O’Donnell said: “The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State [Fox] had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador [Gould]. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job.”
The real concern among government officials, Murray said, is that Fox, Werritty and Gould were conspiring in a “rogue” foreign policy – opposed to the British government’s stated aims – that was authored by Mossad and Israel’s neoconservative allies in Washington.
This suspicion was partially confirmed by a report in the Guardian last month, as O’Donnell was carrying out his investigation. It cited unnamed government officials saying they were worried that Fox and Werritty had been pursuing what was termed an “alternative” government policy.
Murray said the Tel Aviv dinner was especially significant. His contact with access to O’Donnell’s investigations had told him that the discussion that night focused on ways to ensure Britain assisted in creating favourable diplomatic conditions for an attack on Iran.
Israel is widely believed to favor a military strike on Iran, in an attempt to set back its nuclear program. Israel claims Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian nuclear energy project.
Israel has its own large but undeclared nuclear arsenal and is known to be fearful of losing its nuclear monopoly in the region.
Britain, like many in the international community, including the US government, officially favors imposing sanctions on Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions.
The episode of the Tel Aviv dinner, Murray said, raises “vital concerns about a secret agenda for war at the core of government, comparable to [former British prime minister Tony] Blair’s determination to drive through a war on Iraq.”
The Guardian revealed this month that the defense ministry under Fox had drawn up detailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran, including allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean, as a base from which to launch an attack.
The O’Donnell inquiry has done little to allay many officials’ concerns about the series of strange meetings involving Fox, Werritty and Gould.
David Cameron, the British prime minister, has so far refused opposition demands to hold a full public inquiry into Fox and Werritty’s relationship. And the three men at the centre of the saga have refused to discuss the nature of their ties.
This month revelations surfaced that Werritty had had dealings with other government ministers.
“It is deeply inadequate of the prime minister to continue to refuse to probe this issue further,” said shadow defense spokesman Kevan Jones, in response to the new information.
The British media have cautiously raised the issue of apparent Israeli links to Fox and Werritty.
The Daily Telegraph reported that the pair secretly met the head of the Mossad – possibly at the Tel Aviv dinner, though the paper has not specified where or when the meeting took place.
Last month the Independent on Sunday claimed that Werritty had close ties to the Mossad as well as to “US-backed neocons” plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime. The Mossad were reported to have assumed Werritty was Fox’s “chief of staff.”
In addition, the O’Donnell report revealed that Werritty’s many trips overseas alongside Fox had been funded by at least six donors, three of whom were leading members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain.
The donations were made to two organisations, Atlantic Bridge and Pargav, that Werritty helped to establish. Werritty apparently used the organizations as a way to gain access to Conservative government ministers, including three in the defense ministry.
The advisory board of Atlantic Bridge, which Werritty founded with Fox, included William Hague, the current foreign minister, Michael Gove, the education minister, and George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.
Despite Werritty’s apparently well-established connections to the ruling Conservative party, the media coverage has implied at most that he was a lone “rogue operator,” hoping to use his contacts with Fox and other ministers to manipulate British government policy.
Murray, however, raises the more troubling question of whether Werritty was actually given access, through Fox and Gould, to the heart of the British government. Were all three secretly trying to pursue a policy on Iran favored by Israel and its ideological allies in the US?
The answer, according to Murray, may lie in a series of meetings between the three that have slowly come to light since O’Donnell published his findings.
According to the 2,700-word report, Werritty joined Fox on 18 of his official trips overseas, and the pair met another 22 times at the defense ministry, with almost none of their discussions recorded by officials. The Guardian has also reported that Fox’s staff repeatedly warned him off his relationship with Werritty but were overruled.
Despite the serious concerns raised about Werritty by defense ministry staff, Gould, one of the country’s most senior diplomats, appears nonetheless to have cultivated a close relationship with Werritty as well as Fox.
According to Murray’s sources, Gould and Werritty “had been meeting and communicating for years.” The foreign office has refused to answer questions about whether the two had any contacts.
When Murray sent an email request late at night this week for “all communications” between Gould and Werritty, he received a response from the foreign office in less than 90 minutes stating that providing an answer was “likely to exceed the cost limit”.
As well as noting that the answer should have been straightforward unless Gould and Werritty had had a protracted correspondence, Murray wrote on his blog: “The Freedom of Information team in the FCO is not a 24 hour unit. Plainly not only are they hiding the Gould/Werritty correspondence, they are primed and on alert for this cover-up operation.”
O’Donnell’s report mentions a second meeting between the three men, in September 2010. On that occasion, Gould met Fox in what a foreign office spokesman has described as a “pre-posting briefing call” – a sort of high-level induction for ambassadors to acquaint themselves with their new posting.
Werritty was also present, according to O’Donnell, “as an individual with some experience in…the security situation in the Middle East.” His participation at the meeting was “not appropriate,” O’Donnell concluded.
However, Murray said such briefings would never be conducted at ministerial level, and certainly not by the defense minister himself.
He added that a senior official in the defense ministry had alerted him to two other peculiar aspects of the meeting: no officials were present to take notes, as would be expected; and their conversation took place in the ministry’s dining room, not in Fox’s office.
“As someone who worked for many years as a diplomat, I know how these things should work,” Murray said. “So much of this affair simply smells wrong.”
Murray’s queries to the foreign office about this meeting have gone unanswered but have revealed other unexpected details not included in the O’Donnell report.
In a statement in late October, after the report’s publication, a foreign office spokesman said Gould had met Fox and Werritty earlier than previously known – before Gould was appointed ambassador to Israel and when Fox was in opposition as shadow defense minister.
The foreign office has refused to answer questions about this meeting too – including when it occurred and why – or to respond to a parliamentary question on the matter tabled by MP Jeremy Corbyn. All that is known is that it must have taken place before May 2010, when Fox was appointed defense minister.
In replying to Corbyn’s questions, William Hague, the foreign minister, acknowledged yet another meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould – at a private social engagement in the summer of 2010.
Again, the foreign office has refused to answer further questions, including one from Corbyn about who else attended the social engagement.
The trio were also together shortly before the Tel Aviv dinner, when Fox made a speech at the hawkish Herzliya security conference in a session on the strategic threat posed by Iran.
And a sixth meeting has come to light. Fox and Gould were photographed together at a “We believe in Israel” conference in London in May 2011. Werritty was again present.
“That furtive meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould in the MOD dining room [in September 2010], deliberately held away from Fox’s office where it should have taken place, and away from the MOD officials who should have been there, now looks less like briefing and more like plotting,” Murray wrote on his blog about the Ministry of Defense meeting.
Murray said he believed more meetings will surface. During questioning at the Commons’ Public Administration Committee this week, O’Donnell made two references to “meetings” between Gould and Fox before the general election and Fox’s appointment to the post of defence secretary.
Until now, only one such meeting had been admitted by the foreign office.
Murray noted: “A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?”
Both Werritty and Gould are considered to have an expertise on Iran.
Gould was the deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Iran from 2003 to 2005, a role in which he was responsible for coordinating on US policy towards Iran. Next he was moved to the British embassy in Washington at a time when the neoconservatives still held sway in the White House.
Werritty, meanwhile, has travelled frequently to Iran where he has teamed up with opposition groups seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime. On his return from one trip to Iran he was called in by Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service for a debriefing, according to the Independent on Sunday.
Werritty also arranged for Fox to travel with him to Iran in summer 2007, when Fox was shadow defense minister. And he organised a meeting in May 2009 at the British parliament between Fox and an Iranian lobbyist with links to the current regime in Tehran.
The murky dealings between Fox, Werritty and Gould, and the government’s refusal to clarify what took place between them, is evidence, said Murray, that a serious matter is being hidden. His fear, and that of his contacts inside the senior civil service, is that “a neo-con cell of senior [British] ministers and officials” were secretly setting policy in coordination with Israel and the US.
Gould’s unexamined role is of particular concern, as he is still in place in his post in Israel.
Murray has noted that, in appointing Gould, a British Jew, to the ambassadorship in Israel in September last year, the foreign office broke with long-standing policy. No Jewish diplomat has held the post before because of concerns that it might lead to a conflict of interest, or at the very least create the impression of dual loyalty. Similar restrictions have been in place to avoid Catholics holding the post of ambassador to the Vatican.
Given these traditional concerns, Gould was a strange choice. He is a self-declared Zionist who has cultivated an image that led the Forward, the most prominent Jewish newspaper in the US, to describe him recently as “not just an ambassador who’s Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador.”
Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this story was first published in Al-Akhbar English, Beirut: http://english.al-akhbar.com
WEEKEND EDITION NOVEMBER 25-27, 2011
39
CounterPunch Diary
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
The last time we met Michael Bérubé on this site was back in 2007, and he was up to his neck in a rubbish dump, where I’d placed him, in the company of other promoters of the 2003 war on Iraq: where, I asked, are those parlor warriors now? Had any of them reconsidered their illusions…
“… that all it would take was a brisk invasion and a new constitution, to put Iraq to rights? Have any of them, from Makiya through Hitchens to Berman and Bérubé had dark nights, asking themselves just how much responsibility they have for the heaps of dead in Iraq, for a plundered nation, for the American soldiers who died or were crippled in Iraq at their urging ? Sometimes I dream of them… like characters in a Beckett play, buried up to their necks in a rubbish dump on the edge of Baghdad, reciting their columns to each other as the local women turn over the corpses to see if one of them is her husband or her son.”
Who’s this Bérubé, you ask. Well, for starters he’s the Paterno Family Professor in Literature and Director of the Institute for the Arts and Humanities at Pennsylvania State University. Penn State’s website informs us that “named professorships provide support for a focused area and are funded by gifts from individual donors,” which means that Bérubé has long been on Joe Paterno’s payroll – as things have turned out an ironic status for someone who’s spent a fair slice of his time barking and snapping his jaws at “the left” for innumerable failures stemming from moral equivocation and blindness to reality. Now that famed football coach Joe Paterno has been fired from Penn State for protecting one of his assistants, Jerry Sandusky, suspected of raping a ten-year old boy, amidst many other suspected assaults on youths under Sandusky’s supervision, we must await Bérubé’s assessment of how it feels to have been the kept man of this fallen idol. Does the title “Paterno Family Professor” remain ensconced on Bérubé’s formal letterhead?
Down the years Bérubé has fostered a niche speciality in trashing what he’s pleased to call “the left,” somewhat in the manner of Todd Gitlin, who – perched on the credential of having once been an SDS president — wrote so many worthy articles bashing this same left in the Sixties and issuing stentorian warnings against any such lapses amid the youth of later epochs that eventually he parlayed his services to decorous establishment thinking into a professorship of journalism and sociology at Columbia University.
Now Bérubé has launched an attack on the “left” for its anti-NATO conduct during the recent upheavals in Libya, during which the current National Transitional Council of Libya has been installed under the supervision of this same NATO. On this site this weekend David Gibbs deals capably with some of the major follies in Bérubé’s critique, but since the latter inscribes me in his roster of shame, I think a few comments are in order, starting with the obvious fact that Bérubé, eager to preserve his cred as thoughtful progressive critic of Left Excess, has had recourse to wholesale invention. The most obvious fact about what passes for the Left in the US and Europe regarding the entire Libyan saga was that it was only a few notches short of unanimity in endorsing the entire NATO-backed enterprise.
What consistent voices were raised in questioning the premises and applications of the two Security Council resolutions enabling NATO, the factual basis for the reporting coming out of Libya that enabled the near 100 per cent agreement in the press that the UN resolutions justified NATO’s bombing campaign, to avoid “genocide” by Gadhafi “against his own people,” that the credentials and conduct of the rebels, later renamed “revolutionaries” were beyond reproach? Here at CounterPunch some of our contributors such as Vijay Prashad were, initially at least, enthusiastic supporters of the Benghazi rebels. Others, such as myself or Patrick Cockburn, in Libya for the UK Independent, or Diana Johnstone in Paris or Jean Bricmont in Brussels, or Tariq Ali (passim) were critical, raised questions concerning the stentorian pro-NATO chorus. This role is usually regarded as one of the mandates of left journalism.
I do not recall CounterPunch as being part of a substantial chorus in this worthy enterprise. In fact I recall us as being among a mere handful on the left, more in concert with a libertarian site like antiwar.com. This is born out by scrutiny of Bérubé’s attack, which is markedly short on names and publications on which to lavish his reprobations of “the left” which, at least prior to the welcome rise of the Occupiers, has been a scrawny thing in recent years. On Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now one was far more likely to hear CIA-consultant Juan Cole issuing fervent support for the entire intervention than rather any vigorous interviewing of informed sources about what was actually happening on the ground in Libya.
Failure as concerns Libya’s history this year belongs not to the virtually non-existent left, but to the entire political spectrum from progressives and the whole arc rightwards. A substantial measure of blame must be allocated here to the press, both here and in the U.K. Could it be that the press coverage of NATO’s Libyan onslaught was actually worse than the reporting on NATO’s attacks on the former Yugoslavia in the late 1990s, or on Iraq in the run-up to the 2003 invasion by the U.S.A. and its coalition partners? The answer is yes.
In the case of both of the earlier NATO interventions, the debates pro and con were accompanied by many journalistic and official or semi-official investigations, most of them blatantly partisan, but some offering substantive claims about such issues as war crimes, weapons of mass destruction, the actual as opposed to self-proclaimed motives of the assailants, and kindred issues.
Mark the contrast with the Libyan intervention. In less than a month, from mid-February to mid-March, we moved from vague allegations of Gaddafi’s supposed “genocide” or “crimes against humanity” to two separate votes in the U.N. Security Council, which permitted a NATO mission to establish a “no-fly” zone to protect civilians, this latter protection to be achieved by “all necessary measures.”
By the time U.N. Security Council resolution 1973 had been voted through on March 17, France had already formally recognized the jerry-rigged rebel committee in Benghazi as the legitimate government of Libya. By the end of May, it was being openly stated by senior figures in the relevant NATO governments that “regime change” was the objective and the eviction of Gaddafi a sine qua non of the mission.
Also, by late May, it was apparent that the rebels’ military capacities were modest in the extreme, that Ghadafi’s eviction was not going to be the overnight affair, confidently predicted in western capitals and in Benghazi, also that NATO’s bombardments were not having the requisite effect.
In the crucial February 15 – March 17 time slot, there was no determined effort to investigate the charges against Ghadafi, leveled in the U.N. Security Council Resolutions and by NATO principals such as Obama and Clinton, the U.K.’s prime minister Cameron, or President Sarkozy and his foreign minister.
The amazing vagueness of news stories of this – or indeed any – topic coming out of Libya has been conspicuous. Here, remember, we had a regime accused in U.N. Security Council Resolution 1973 of “widespread and systematic attacks … against the civilian population [that] may amount to crimes against humanity.”
Yet since mid-February the reporting out of Libya displayed a striking lack of persuasive documentation of butcheries or abuses commensurate with the language lavished on the regime’s presumptive conduct. Time and again one read vague phrases like “thousands reportedly killed by Gaddafi’s mercenaries” or Gaddafi “massacring his own people,” delivered without the slightest effort to furnish supporting evidence. It was the secondhand allegation of massacres that drove both news coverage and U.N. activities – particularly in the early stage, when U.N. Resolution 1970 was adopted, calling for sanctions and the referral of Gaddafi’s closest circle to the International Criminal Court.
News reports in mid-March, such as those by the McClatchy news chain’s reporters Jonathan Landay, Warren Strobel and Shashank Bengali, contained no claims of anything approaching a “crime against humanity,” the allegation in Resolution 1973. Yet by February 23 the propaganda blitz was in full spate, with Clinton denouncing Gaddafi and with Reagan’s “mad dog of the Middle East” exhumed as the preferred way of describing the Libyan leader.
The U.N. commissioner for human rights, Navi Pillay, started denouncing the Libyan government as early as February 18; U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joined Pillay on February 21. The U.N. News Center reported that Ban was “outraged at press reports that the Libyan authorities have been firing at demonstrators from war planes and helicopters” (our italics). In these early days, no one who represented the Libyan government was permitted to address the council. Only defectors speaking on behalf of Libya were given the floor.
Now, remember that on March 10 French President Sarkozy, a major player in NATO’s coalition of the willing against Libya, declared the Libyan National Transition Council the only legitimate representative of the Libyan people. So, Gaddafi was facing a formal armed insurrection – not a protest movement demanding “democracy” – led by a shadowy entity based in Benghazi. Seven days later, Resolution 1973 made clear that attempts to suppress this insurrection would elicit armed intervention by NATO.
The political complexion and origins of the rebel leadership and its backers received only fleeting attention. Topics such as the rivalry between the French and Italian oil companies, or the input of other international oil majors, and major U.S. banks and financial institutions were rarely touched upon.
The coverage of any fighting was often laughable. The press corps in Benghazi breathlessly described minor skirmishes involving a tank or two, or some armed vehicles, as mighty engagements.
In fact, the mighty armies contending along the highway west of Benghazi would melt into the bleachers at a college baseball game. News stories suggest mobile warfare on the scale of the epic dramas of the Kursk salient or the battle for Stalingrad in World War Two.
By the end of June the “no-fly zone” prompted some 12,000-plus NATO sorties. As with any bombing, civilians died. Since the beginning of NATO operations, a total of 12,887 sorties, including 4,850 strike sorties, were conducted up to June 27.
A team of Russian doctors wrote to the president of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev, as follows:
“Today, 24 March, 2011, NATO aircraft and the U.S. all night and all morning bombed a suburb of Tripoli – Tajhura (where, in particular, is Libya’s Nuclear Research Center). Air Defense and Air Force facilities in Tajhura were destroyed back in the first 2 days of strikes and more active military facilities in the city remained, but today the object of bombing are barracks of the Libyan army, around which are densely populated residential areas, and, next to it, the largest of Libya’s Heart Centers. Civilians and the doctors could not assume that common residential quarters will be about to become destroyed, so none of the residents or hospital patients was evacuated.
“Bombs and rockets struck residential houses and fell near the hospital. The glass of the Cardiac Center building was broken, and in the building of the maternity ward for pregnant women with heart disease a wall collapsed and part of the roof. This resulted in ten miscarriages whereby babies died, the women are in intensive care, doctors are fighting for their lives. Our colleagues and we are working seven days a week, to save people. This is a direct consequence of falling bombs and missiles in residential buildings, resulting in dozens of deaths and injuries, which are operated and reviewed now by our doctors. Such a large number of wounded and killed, as during today, did not occur during the total of all the riots in Libya. And this is called ‘protecting’ the civilian population?”
With the Libyan intervention, everything was out of proportion. Gaddafi was scarcely the acme of monstrosity conjured up by Obama or Mrs. Clinton or Sarkozy. In four decades, Libyans rose from being among the most wretched in Africa to considerable elevation in terms of social amenities. In a detailed fairly recent report (“The Situation of Children and Women in Libya,” UNICEF Middle East and North Africa Regional Office, November 2010), UNICEF noted that Libya had important socio-economic achievements to its credit. In 2009 it enjoyed:
a buoyant growth rate, with GDP having risen from $27.3 billion in 1998 to $93.2 billion by 2009, according to the World Bank;
high per capita income (estimated by the World Bank at $16,430);high literacy rates (95 per cent for males and 78 per cent for females, aged fifteen and above);
high life expectancy at birth (74 years overall; 77 for females and 72 for males)
and a consequent ranking of 55 out of 182 countries in terms of overall “Human Development”
In terms of the distribution of oil revenues it would be instructive to compare Libya’s record to those of other oil-producing nations.
Gaddafi’s alleged slaughter of his own people, and alleged ordering of mass rapes, formed the sharp edge of the interventionist crusade and of the Security Council resolutions, draped with the imprimatur of the collusive International Criminal Court. These charges were endlessly recycled by the press, without any serious attempt at verification.
By mid-to-late June, human rights organizations were casting doubt on claims of mass rape and other abuses perpetrated by forces loyal to Gaddafi. An investigation by Amnesty International failed to find evidence for these human rights violations and in many cases has discredited or cast doubt on them. It also found indications that, on several occasions, the rebels in Benghazi appeared to have knowingly made false claims or manufactured evidence.
The findings by the investigators were sharply at odds with the views of the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who told a press conference that “we have information that there was a policy to rape in Libya those who were against the government. Apparently he [Colonel Gaddafi] used it to punish people.”
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was “deeply concerned” that Gaddafi’s troops were participating in widespread rape in Libya. “Rape, physical intimidation, sexual harassment, and even so-called virginity tests have taken place in countries throughout the region,” she said.
Donatella Rovera, senior crisis response adviser for Amnesty, who was in Libya for three months after the start of the uprising, said to Patrick Cockburn in late June that “we have not found any evidence or a single victim of rape, or a doctor who knew about somebody being raped.” She stressed this does not prove that mass rape did not occur, but there is no evidence to show that it did. Liesel Gerntholtz, head of women’s rights at Human Rights Watch, which also investigated the charge of mass rape, said, “We have not been able to find evidence.”
In one instance, two captured pro-Gaddafi soldiers presented to the international media by the rebels claimed that [added] their officers, and later themselves, had raped a family with four daughters. Ms. Rovera says that when she and a colleague, both fluent in Arabic, interviewed the two detainees, one 17 years old and one 21, alone and in separate rooms, they changed their stories and gave differing accounts of what had happened. “They both said they had not participated in the rape and just heard about it,” she said. “They told different stories about whether or not the girls’ hands were tied, whether their parents were present, and about how they were dressed.”
Seemingly the strongest evidence for mass rape appeared to come from a Libyan psychologist, Dr. Seham Sergewa, who says she distributed 70,000 questionnaires in rebel-controlled areas and along the Tunisian border, of which over 60,000 were returned. Some 259 women volunteered that they had been raped, of whom Dr. Sergewa said she interviewed 140 victims.
Asked by Diana Eltahawy, Amnesty International’s specialist on Libya, if it would be possible to meet any of these women, Dr. Sergewa replied that “she had lost contact with them,” and was unable to provide documentary evidence.
The accusation that Viagra had been distributed to Gaddafi’s troops to encourage them to rape women in rebel areas first surfaced in March, after NATO had destroyed tanks advancing on Benghazi. Ms. Rovera says that rebels dealing with the foreign media in Benghazi started showing journalists packets of Viagra, claiming they came from burned-out tanks, though it is unclear why the packets were not charred.
Rebels repeatedly charged that mercenary troops from Central and West Africa had been used against them. The Amnesty investigation found there was no evidence for this. “Those shown to journalists as foreign mercenaries were later quietly released,” says Ms. Rovera. “Most were sub-Saharan migrants working in Libya without documents.” Others were not so lucky and were lynched or executed. Ms. Rovera found two bodies of migrants in the Benghazi morgue, and others were dumped on the outskirts of the city. She says, “The politicians kept talking about mercenaries, which inflamed public opinion, and the myth has continued because they were released without publicity.”
One story, to which credence was given by the foreign media early on in Benghazi, was that eight to ten government troops who refused to shoot protesters were executed by their own side. Their bodies were shown on TV. But Ms. Rovera, says there is strong evidence for a different explanation. She says amateur video shows them alive after they had been captured, suggesting it was the rebels who killed them.
NATO intervention started on March 19 with air attacks to “protect” people in Benghazi from massacre by advancing pro-Gaddafi troops. There is no doubt that civilians did expect to be killed after threats of vengeance from Gaddafi. During the first days of the uprising in eastern Libya, security forces shot and killed demonstrators and people attending their funerals, but there is no proof of mass killing of civilians on the scale of Syria or Yemen.
Most of the fighting during the first days of the uprising was in Benghazi, where 100 to 110 people were killed, and in the city of Baida to the east, where 59 to 64 were killed, says Amnesty. Most of these were probably protesters, though some may have obtained weapons. There is no evidence that aircraft or heavy anti-aircraft machine guns were used against crowds. Spent cartridges picked up after protesters were shot at came from Kalashnikovs or similar caliber weapons.
The Amnesty findings confirmed a report by the International Crisis Group, which found that while the Gaddafi regime had a history of brutally repressing opponents, there was no question of “genocide.”
The report adds that “much Western media coverage has from the outset presented a very one-sided view of the logic of events, portraying the protest movement as entirely peaceful and repeatedly suggesting that the regime’s security forces were unaccountably massacring unarmed demonstrators who presented no security challenge.”
With so many countries out of bounds, journalists flocked to Benghazi, in Libya, which can be reached from Egypt without a visa. Alternatively they went to Tripoli, where the government allows a carefully monitored press corps to operate under strict supervision. Having arrived in these two cities, the ways in which the journalists report diverged sharply. Everybody reporting out of Tripoli expressed understandable skepticism about what government minders seek to show them as regards civilian casualties caused by NATO air strikes or demonstrations of support for Gaddafi. By way of contrast, the foreign press corps in Benghazi, capital of the rebel-held territory, shows surprising credulity toward more subtle but equally self-serving stories from the rebel government or its sympathizers.
The Libyan insurgents were adept at dealing with the press from an early stage, and this included skilful propaganda to put the blame for unexplained killings on the other side. It is a weakness of journalists that they give wide publicity to atrocities, evidence for which may be shaky when first revealed. But when the stories turn out to be untrue or exaggerated, they rate scarcely a mention.
It is all credit to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that they have taken a skeptical attitude to atrocities until proven. Contrast this responsible attitude with that of Hillary Clinton or the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who blithely suggested that Gaddafi was using rape as a weapon of war to punish the rebels This systematic demonization of Gaddafi – a brutal despot he may be, but not a monster on the scale of Saddam Hussein – also made it difficult to negotiate a ceasefire with him.
There is nothing particularly surprising about the rebels in Benghazi making things up or producing dubious witnesses to Gaddafi’s crimes. They were fighting a war against a despot whom they feared and hated, and they understandably used propaganda as a weapon of war. But it did show naivety on the part of the foreign media, who almost universally sympathize with the rebels, to the extent that they swallowed whole so many atrocity stories fed to them by the rebel authorities and their sympathizers.
The only massacre by the Gaddafi regime, involving hundreds of victims, which is so far well attested is the killings at Abu Salim prison in Tripoli in 1996, when up to 1,200 prisoners died, according to a credible witness who survived.
Battlefronts are always awash with rumors of impending massacre or rape, which spread rapidly among terrified people who may be the intended victims. Understandably enough, they do not want to wait around to find out how true these stories are. Earlier this year, Patrick Cockburn was in Ajdabiyah, a front-line town an hour and a half’s drive south of Benghazi, when he saw car loads of panic-stricken refugees fleeing up the road. They had just heard an entirely untrue report via al-Jazeera Arabic that pro-Gaddafi forces had broken through.
Likewise, al-Jazeera was producing uncorroborated reports of hospitals being attacked, blood banks destroyed, women raped, and the injured executed.
This toxic mixture of cheerleading and willful blindness persisted through to the end – though now stories do appear about the summary executions, revenge killings and mass imprisonments that are occurring.
These are the real failures, to which Bérubé is indifferent, just as he is indifferent to and entirely ignorant of Libyan history, past and present. His mandate is to issue his pro-forma denunciation of “the left,” an excerise in data-free ranting. By way of an antidote I strongly recommend a fine piece in the London Review of Books by Hugh Roberts, who was the director of the International Crisis Group’s North Africa Project from 2002 to 2007 and from February to July 2011. Roberts is about to take up the post of Edward Keller Professor of North African and Middle Eastern History at Tufts University.
A couple of samples:
“The claim that the ‘international community’ had no choice but to intervene militarily and that the alternative was to do nothing is false. An active, practical, non-violent alternative was proposed, and deliberately rejected. The argument for a no-fly zone and then for a military intervention employing ‘all necessary measures’ was that only this could stop the regime’s repression and protect civilians. Yet many argued that the way to protect civilians was not to intensify the conflict by intervening on one side or the other, but to end it by securing a ceasefire followed by political negotiations. A number of proposals were put forward. The International Crisis Group, for instance, where I worked at the time, published a statement on 10 March arguing for a two-point initiative: (i) the formation of a contact group or committee drawn from Libya’s North African neighbours and other African states with a mandate to broker an immediate ceasefire; (ii) negotiations between the protagonists to be initiated by the contact group and aimed at replacing the current regime with a more accountable, representative and law-abiding government. This proposal was echoed by the African Union and was consistent with the views of many major non-African states – Russia, China, Brazil and India, not to mention Germany and Turkey. It was restated by the ICG in more detail (adding provision for the deployment under a UN mandate of an international peacekeeping force to secure the ceasefire) in an open letter to the UN Security Council on 16 March, the eve of the debate which concluded with the adoption of UNSC Resolution 1973. In short, before the Security Council voted to approve the military intervention, a worked-out proposal had been put forward which addressed the need to protect civilians by seeking a rapid end to the fighting, and set out the main elements of an orderly transition to a more legitimate form of government, one that would avoid the danger of an abrupt collapse into anarchy, with all it might mean for Tunisia’s revolution, the security of Libya’s other neighbours and the wider region. The imposition of a no-fly zone would be an act of war: as the US defense secretary, Robert Gates, told Congress on 2 March, it required the disabling of Libya’s air defences as an indispensable preliminary. In authorising this and ‘all necessary measures’, the Security Council was choosing war when no other policy had even been tried. Why?
Resolution 1973 was passed in New York late in the evening of 17 March. The next day, Gaddafi, whose forces were camped on the southern edge of Benghazi, announced a ceasefire in conformity with Article 1 and proposed a political dialogue in line with Article 2. What the Security Council demanded and suggested, he provided in a matter of hours. His ceasefire was immediately rejected on behalf of the NTC by a senior rebel commander, Khalifa Haftar, and dismissed by Western governments. ‘We will judge him by his actions not his words,’ David Cameron declared, implying that Gaddafi was expected to deliver a complete ceasefire by himself: that is, not only order his troops to cease fire but ensure this ceasefire was maintained indefinitely despite the fact that the NTC was refusing to reciprocate. Cameron’s comment also took no account of the fact that Article 1 of Resolution 1973 did not of course place the burden of a ceasefire exclusively on Gaddafi. No sooner had Cameron covered for the NTC’s unmistakable violation of Resolution 1973 than Obama weighed in, insisting that for Gaddafi’s ceasefire to count for anything he would (in addition to sustaining it indefinitely, single-handed, irrespective of the NTC) have to withdraw his forces not only from Benghazi but also from Misrata and from the most important towns his troops had retaken from the rebellion, Ajdabiya in the east and Zawiya in the west – in other words, he had to accept strategic defeat in advance. These conditions, which were impossible for Gaddafi to accept, were absent from Article 1. (1) Demands the immediate establishment of a ceasefire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians;…”
And here’s Roberts concerning the influential charge that Gadhafi had ordered the slaughtering of his fellow Libyans from the air, plus his conclusion:
In the days that followed I made efforts to check the al-Jazeera story [about Ghadafi bombing Libyans] for myself. One source I consulted was the well-regarded blog Informed Comment, maintained and updated every day by Juan Cole, a Middle East specialist at the University of Michigan. This carried a post on 21 February entitled ‘Qaddafi’s bombardments recall Mussolini’s’, which made the point that ‘in 1933-40, Italo Balbo championed aerial warfare as the best means to deal with uppity colonial populations.’ The post began: ‘The strafing and bombardment in Tripoli of civilian demonstrators by Muammar Gaddafi’s fighter jets on Monday …’, with the underlined words linking to an article by Sarah El Deeb and Maggie Michael for Associated Press published at 9 p.m. on 21 February. This article provided no corroboration of Cole’s claim that Gaddafi’s fighter jets (or any other aircraft) had strafed or bombed anyone in Tripoli or anywhere else. The same is true of every source indicated in the other items on Libya relaying the aerial onslaught story which Cole posted that same day.
I was in Egypt for most of the time, but since many journalists visiting Libya were transiting through Cairo, I made a point of asking those I could get hold of what they had picked up in the field. None of them had found any corroboration of the story. I especially remember on 18 March asking the British North Africa expert Jon Marks, just back from an extended tour of Cyrenaica (taking in Ajdabiya, Benghazi, Brega, Derna and Ras Lanuf), what he had heard about the story. He told me that no one he had spoken to had mentioned it. Four days later, on 22 March, USA Today carried a striking article by Alan Kuperman, the author of The Limits of Humanitarian Intervention and coeditor of Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention. The article, ‘Five Things the US Should Consider in Libya’, provided a powerful critique of the Nato intervention as violating the conditions that needed to be observed for a humanitarian intervention to be justified or successful. But what interested me most was his statement that ‘despite ubiquitous cellphone cameras, there are no images of genocidal violence, a claim that smacks of rebel propaganda.’ So, four weeks on, I was not alone in finding no evidence for the aerial slaughter story. I subsequently discovered that the issue had come up more than a fortnight earlier, on 2 March, in hearings in the US Congress when Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were testifying. They told Congress that they had no confirmation of reports of aircraft controlled by Gaddafi firing on citizens….
The idea that Gaddafi represented nothing in Libyan society, that he was taking on his entire people and his people were all against him was another distortion of the facts. As we now know from the length of the war, the huge pro-Gaddafi demonstration in Tripoli on 1 July, the fierce resistance Gaddafi’s forces put up, the month it took the rebels to get anywhere at all at Bani Walid and the further month at Sirte, Gaddafi’s regime enjoyed a substantial measure of support, as the NTC did. Libyan society was divided and political division was in itself a hopeful development since it signified the end of the old political unanimity enjoined and maintained by the Jamahiriyya. In this light, the Western governments’ portrayal of ‘the Libyan people’ as uniformly ranged against Gaddafi had a sinister implication, precisely because it insinuated a new Western-sponsored unanimity back into Libyan life. This profoundly undemocratic idea followed naturally from the equally undemocratic idea that, in the absence of electoral consultation or even an opinion poll to ascertain the Libyans’ actual views, the British, French and American governments had the right and authority to determine who was part of the Libyan people and who wasn’t. No one supporting the Gaddafi regime counted. Because they were not part of ‘the Libyan people’ they could not be among the civilians to be protected, even if they were civilians as a matter of mere fact. And they were not protected; they were killed by Nato air strikes as well as by uncontrolled rebel units. The number of such civilian victims on the wrong side of the war must be many times the total death toll as of 21 February. But they don’t count, any more than the thousands of young men in Gaddafi’s army who innocently imagined that they too were part of ‘the Libyan people’ and were only doing their duty to the state counted when they were incinerated by Nato’s planes or extra-judicially executed en masse after capture, as in Sirte.
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We offer two terrific pieces, by Nancy Scheper-Hughes and Fred Gardner. A distinguished anthropologist, Scheper-Hughes is one of our favorite writers. Indeed your CounterPunch editors listed her Death without Weeping in its top 100 non-fiction books published in English in the 20th Century. A few months ago we ran her amazing investigation of the international trade in body parts. This time she contributes a very powerful piece – in part autobiographical – on the slow death of the Roman Catholic Church, centered on the Vatican’s appalling response to the disclosures of the past few years of the sexual predations of Catholic priests on children, among them indigenous peoples.
On September 23, 2011, Scheper-Hughes writes, human rights lawyers and former clerical sex abuse victims filed a complaint with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, asking for an investigation to prosecute Pope Benedict XVI and three of his top officials, including William Levada, a cardinal, and the former bishop of the diocese of San Francisco, for crimes against humanity.
“The request to war crimes court may seem theatrical. The Vatican did not ratify the Rome statute that created the court, although both Germany (Benedict’s birthplace) and Italy (home of the Vatican) have done so. The ICC only has jurisdiction over war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed after 2002. Nonetheless, the International Criminal Court has agreed to examine the papers, and a spokesperson has said that the case has merit.
So, finally, what’s a former Catholic to do when her Church is corrupt and moribund? Today, the defections are not just of unhappy priests and nuns, but of the global Catholic community at large. Churches are closing in European and in American cities. The will and the desire to fight the Vatican are mostly gone. The damage, beyond the current sex scandal, to women’s bodies, the indifference to maternal and infant mortalities, to the populations at risk of the AIDS epidemic, especially in Catholic parts of Africa, are too much to bear.
“Some former Catholics take solace in other spiritual traditions. Given the animistic quality of Catholic ancestor worship, some former Catholics embrace a cult of everyday saints, virgins, and martyrs, adding Steven Biko, Martin Luther King Jr., Albert Einstein, Dorothy Day, and Harvey Milk to their older devotion to Saint Joan, San Antonio, and Saint Francis of Assisi. Others look to a green theology based on reverence for earth, and sky and sea, and all the critters that slither and crawl, walk and swim. Some, like Paul Farmer, continue along the Vatican-savaged remains of a once vibrant liberation theology, a theology of hope.
“I am grieved and not relieved by my loss of a faith that once gave beauty, richness and fullness to my life. The secular humanism of anthropology offers an alternative form of discipleship, built around the practice of studied observation, contemplation and reflection. I know that anthropology is a powerful tool capable of taming unruly emotions, replacing disgust with respect, ignorance with understanding, hatred with empathy, and a practice of compassionate and modest witnessing to human sorrows. But it is cold comfort for the former believer, when the mystery is gone and with it the light has gone out of one’s soul.”
Don’t miss this marvelous essay.
Also don’t miss Fred Gardner’s contribution to our ongoing series on Obama’s record. Gardner examines the pledges on medical marijuana he made on the campaign trail and his substantive record thereafter and the current onslaught of the Justice Department on medical marijuana dispensaries in California. Gardner’s question to the leaders of the marijuana reform movement: Did they really read his lips? Did they “over-read” and too optimistically interpret what the candidate was saying.
