December 22, 2013

Reflection by Fidel: Mandela is dead Why hide the truth about Apartheid? by Fidel Castro Ruz, Dec 18, 2013

photo: Combatientes cubanos en Cuito Cuanavale, Angola, marzo de 1988

http://nnoc.info/mandela-is-dead-why-hide-the-truth-about-apartheid-by-fidel-castro/





Maybe the empire thought that we would not honor our word when, during days of uncertainty in the past century, we affirmed that even if the USSR were to disappear Cuba would continue struggling.

World War II broke out on September 1, 1939 when Nazi-fascist troops invaded Poland and struck like a lightning over the heroic people of the USSR, who contributed 27 million lives to preserve mankind from that brutal massacre that ended the lives of 50 million persons.

War, on the other hand, is the only venture that the human race throughout history has failed to avoid, leading Einstein to say that he did not know how World War III would be like but most certainly the fourth would be fought with sticks and stones.

Added up, the means available to the two most powerful powers –United States and Russia— amount to 20,000 (twenty thousand) nuclear warheads. Mankind should know that three days before John F. Kennedy assumed the presidency of his country on January 20, 1961, a US B-52 bomber, in a routine flight, carrying two atomic bombs with a destructive capacity 260 times that of the bomb dropped in Hiroshima, had an accident and the aircraft crashed. For such cases sophisticated automatic equipment are in place to prevent the bombs from exploding. The first bomb landed without risks. In the case of the second, three of the four mechanisms failed, and the fourth, in very critical conditions could barely function. The bomb did not explode by mere chance.

There is no present or past event I remember or have heard of that has impacted world public opinion so much as the death of Nelson Mandela, and not because of his wealth, but for his human quality and the loftiness of his ideas and feelings.

Throughout history and barely one and a half century ago — before robots and machines took over our modest tasks with a minimum energy cost– none of the phenomena that today shake mankind and inexorably rule each and every person –men and women, children and elders, young and adult, farmers and factory workers, manual workers or intellectuals– existed. The prevailing trend is to move to the cities, where the creation of jobs, transportation, and basic living conditions demand huge investments to the detriment of food production and other more rational ways of life.

Three powers have landed in our planet’s Moon. The same day Nelson Mandela, covered with his country’s flag, was buried in the backyard of the humble house where he was born 95 years ago, a sophisticated module from the Peoples Republic of China descended upon a bright spot in our Moon. The coincidence of both events was purely by chance.

Millions of scientists are studying earth and outer-space matters and radiations. Through them we now know that Titan, one of Saturn’s rings, accumulated 40 times more oil than the existing amount in our planet when oil extraction began 125 years ago and which will last barely one more century at current consumption rates.

The fraternal feelings of profound brotherhood between the Cuban people and Nelson Mandela’s homeland were born out of an event that has never been mentioned and about which we have never said a word during all these long years; Mandela, because he was an apostle of peace and did not want to hurt anyone; Cuba, because we have never done anything for the sake of glory and prestige.

Since the very triumph of the Revolution in Cuba we extended our solidarity to the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Liberation movements in that continent had colonialism and imperialism on the rack after World War II and the liberation of the Peoples Republic of China –the most highly populated country in the world— following the glorious triumph of the Russian Socialist Revolution.

Social revolutions were shaking the pillars of the old world order. In 1960 the inhabitants of the planet amounted to three billion. Along with this, the power of big transnational companies –almost all Americans– was growing and the American currency, underpinned by US gold monopoly and its intact industry so far removed from the battle fields, took control of the world economy. Richard Nixon unilaterally abolished the backing of US currency in gold and his country’s companies took control over the main resources and raw materials in the planet which they bought with paper bills.

Nothing I have said till now is new.

But why do they try to hide the fact that the Apartheid regime –that brought so much suffering onto Africa and arouse so much indignation in most nations throughout the world– was the fruit of European colonial powers and was turned into a nuclear power by the United States and Israel, something Cuba, who supported Portuguese colonies in Africa fighting for their independence openly condemned?

Our people, handed over to the United States by Spain after 30 years of heroic struggle, never reconciled with the slavery regime imposed during almost 500 years.

In 1975, racist troops supported by light tanks equipped with 90-millimeter guns set off from Namibia –then occupied by South Africa— and penetrated more than one thousand kilometers into Angolan territory up to the vicinity of Luanda, where an airborne battalion of Cuban Special Troops and several Cuban crews for Soviet tanks with no crews, succeeded in delaying their advance. This happened in November 1975, 13 years before the Cuito Cuanavale Battle.

I’ve already said that we have done nothing for the sake of prestige or seeking benefit of any kind. It is a fact that Mandela was an upright man, a profound revolutionary and a radical socialist who endured with great stoicism 27 years of solitary confinement. I could not but admire his honesty, modesty and enormous merit.

Cuba was strictly fulfilling its internationalist duties by defending key positions and training thousands of Angolans in the use of weapons every year. The USSR was providing the weapons. At the time, however, we disagreed with the idea of the main advisor of the suppliers of military equipment. Thousands of young and healthy Angolans were constantly joining the units of their then incipient army. Their main adviser, however, was not a Zhúkov, Rokossovski, Malinowvsky or any of the many men that brought so much glory to Soviet military strategy. His obsessive idea was to send Angolan brigades carrying the best weapons to the territory where the tribal government of Savimbi – a mercenary serving the United States and South Africa– was supposedly located, which was tantamount to sending the troops fighting in Stalingrad to the border with the Falangist Spain that had sent over hundred thousand troops to fight against the USSR. That year a similar operation was going on.

The enemy was advancing behind several Angolan brigades severely hitting them near the place they had been sent to, approximately 1,500 kilometers away from Luanda. They were returning from there, pursued by South African troops en route to Cuito Cuanavale, a former NATO military base, located some 100 kilometers away from where a Cuban Tank Brigade was stationed.

At such a critical point, the President of Angola requested the support of Cuban troops. The commander of our troops in the South, General Leopoldo Cintra Frías, sent us the request as usual. Our firm reply was that we would provide such support provided that all Angolan troops and equipment would be under the Cuban command in South Angola. Everybody understood that our request was a requirement to turn the former base into the ideal battle field to hit the racist South African forces.

There was a positive response from Angola in less than 24 hours.

It was decided that a Cuban Tank Brigade would be immediately sent there. Several other were in the same line towards the West. The main obstacle was the mud and humidity due to the rainy season and the fact that every stretch of land had to be checked for anti-personnel mines. The military personnel to operate the tanks and guns without crew were also sent to Cuito.

To the East, the base was separated from the territory by the large and fast- flowing Cuito River over which there was a solid bridge under the frantic attack of the racist army. A radio-controlled airplane full of explosives was hit, brought down on the bridge and put out of action. The retreating Angolan tanks still moving were crossed more to the North. Those that were not in good conditions were buried with their weapons facing East; a thick strip of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines turned the line into a mortal trap on the other side of the river. When the racist troops renewed their advance and ran into that defensive wall, the artillery and tanks of the revolutionary brigades came down on them shooting from their positions in the Cuito area.

The Mig-23 fighters had a special role to play. Flying at a speed of almost 1,000 kilometers per hour and 100 (one hundred) meters altitude they were able to distinguish if the artillery personnel was black or white and began firing relentlessly against them.

When the battered and immobilized enemy began to withdraw, the revolutionary forces began to get ready for the final combats.

Numerous Angolan and Cuban brigades began moving quickly and keeping proper distance to the West towards the only wide routes from which South Africans always began their military actions against Angola. The airport, however, was approximately 300 (three hundred) kilometers from the border with Namibia, which was totally occupied by the Apartheid army.

While troops reorganized and rearmed the urgent decision to build a runway for the Mig-23 was made. Our pilots were using the aircraft equipment provided by the USSR to Angola, whose pilots had lacked the time for a proper training. Several aircrafts were inoperative sometimes due to the action of our own artillerymen or anti-aircraft weapon operators. South Africans still occupied part of the main road going from the border of the Angolan plateau to Namibia. They began shooting from the bridges over the wide Cunene River –located between Southern Angola and Northern Namibia– with their 140-millimeter guns giving their projectiles a range of about 40 kilometers. The main problem was that the racist South Africans had, according to our estimates, 10 to 12 nuclear weapons. They had even tested them in the frozen areas or seas to the South. President Ronald Reagan had authorized such tests and the device for blasting the nuclear charge was among the equipment delivered by Israel. Our response was to organize the troops in combat groups of no more than 1,000 men, who would have to advance equipped with anti-aircraft tanks throughout an extensive territory at night.

According to reliable sources, South African nuclear weapons could not be transported by Mirage planes; heavy Canberra type bombers were required instead. In any case, our forces’ air defense had many different types of missiles that could hit and destroy air targets located dozens of kilometers away from our troops. In addition, a dam with 80 million cubic meters of water located in Angolan territory had been occupied and mined by Cuban and Angolan fighters. The explosion of that dam would have been tantamount to the explosion of several nuclear weapons.

Nonetheless, a hydroelectric plant using the strong current of the Cunene River, before reaching the Namibian border, was being used by a South African army detachment.

When the racists began shooting with their 140-millimeter guns in this new theater of operations, the detachment of white soldiers was strongly hit by the Mig-23 and the survivors fled the place leaving some posters criticizing their high command. That was the situation when Cuban and Angolan troops marched over the enemy lines.

I learned that Katiuska Blanco, the author of some historical accounts, together with other reporters and press photographers were there. It was a tense situation but everybody kept cool.

It was then that we got the news that the enemy was willing to negotiate. We had succeeded in stopping the imperialist and racist adventure in a continent where, in 30 years time, the population will exceed that of China and India together.

The role of the Cuban delegation on the occasion of the demise of our brother and friend Nelson Mandela will be unforgettable.

I congratulate comrade Raul for his brilliant performance and particularly for his strength of character and dignity when in a kind but firm gesture greeted the United States Head of Government and told him in English: “Mr. President, I’m Castro”.

When my health imposed limits to my physical capacity, I did not hesitate in expressing my criteria on who, in my view, could assume the responsibility. A life is a minute in the history of the peoples and I believe that whoever holds today that responsibility must have the experience and authority required to choose among an increasing -almost infinite— number of alternatives.

Imperialism will always have several cards up its sleeve to subdue our island even if it has to depopulate it, depriving it from young men and women to whom they offer the scraps of the goods and natural resources it ransacks from the world.

Let the spokesmen of the empire now talk about how and why Apartheid came to life.
Fidel Castro Ruz

December 18, 2013

8:35 p.m.

What really happened in the Ukrainian crisis, By Israel Shamir, israelshamir.net, Dec.22, 2013

http://www.israelshamir.net/English/TheTug.htm
It is freezing cold in Kiev, legendary city of golden domes on the banks of Dnieper River – cradle of ancient Russian civilisation and the most charming of East European capitals. It is a comfortable and rather prosperous place, with hundreds of small and cosy restaurants, neat streets, sundry parks and that magnificent river. The girls are pretty and the men are sturdy. Kiev is more relaxed than Moscow, and easier on the wallet. Though statistics say the Ukraine is broke and its people should be as poor as Africans, in reality they aren't doing too badly, thanks to their fiscal imprudence. The government borrowed and spent freely, heavily subsidised housing and heating, and they brazenly avoided devaluation of the national currency and the austerity program prescribed by the IMF. This living on credit can go only so far: the Ukraine was doomed to default on its debts next month or sooner, and this is one of the reasons for the present commotion.
A tug-of-war between the East and the West for the future of Ukraine lasted over a month, and has ended for all practical purposes in a resounding victory for Vladimir Putin, adding to his previous successes in Syria and Iran. The trouble began when the administration of President Yanukovich went looking for credits to reschedule its loans and avoid default. There were no offers. They turned to the EC for help; the EC, chiefly Poland and Germany, seeing that the Ukrainian administration was desperate, prepared an association agreement of unusual severity.
The EC is quite hard on its new East European members, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria et al.: these countries had their industry and agriculture decimated, their young people working menial jobs in Western Europe, their population drop exceeded that of the WWII.
But the association agreement offered to the Ukraine was even worse. It would turn the Ukraine into an impoverished colony of the EC without giving it even the dubious advantages of membership (such as freedom of work and travel in the EC). In desperation, Yanukovich agreed to sign on the dotted line, in vain hopes of getting a large enough loan to avoid collapse. But the EC has no money to spare – it has to provide for Greece, Italy, Spain. Now Russia entered the picture. At the time, relations of the Ukraine and Russia were far from good. Russians had become snotty with their oil money, the Ukrainians blamed their troubles on Russians, but Russia was still the biggest market for Ukrainian products.
For Russia, the EC agreement meant trouble: currently the Ukraine sells its output in Russia with very little customs protection; the borders are porous; people move freely across the border, without even a passport. If the EC association agreement were signed, the EC products would flood Russia through the Ukrainian window of opportunity. So Putin spelled out the rules to Yanukovich: if you sign with the EC, Russian tariffs will rise. This would put some 400,000 Ukrainians out of work right away. Yanukovich balked and refused to sign the EC agreement at the last minute. (I predicted this in my report from Kiev full three weeks before it happened, when nobody believed it – a source of pride).
The EC, and the US standing behind it, were quite upset. Besides the loss of potential economic profit, they had another important reason: they wanted to keep Russia farther away from Europe, and they wanted to keep Russia weak. Russia is not the Soviet Union, but some of the Soviet disobedience to Western imperial designs still lingers in Moscow: be it in Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Venezuela or Zimbabwe, the Empire can’t have its way while the Russian bear is relatively strong. Russia without the Ukraine can’t be really powerful: it would be like the US with its Mid-western and Pacific states chopped away. The West does not want the Ukraine to prosper, or to become a stable and strong state either, so it cannot join Russia and make it stronger. A weak, poor and destabilised Ukraine in semi-colonial dependence to the West with some NATO bases is the best future for the country, as perceived by Washington or Brussels.
Angered by this last-moment-escape of Yanukovich, the West activated its supporters. For over a month, Kiev has been besieged by huge crowds bussed from all over the Ukraine, bearing a local strain of the Arab Spring in the far north. Less violent than Tahrir, their Maidan Square became a symbol of struggle for the European strategic future of the country. The Ukraine was turned into the latest battle ground between the US-led alliance and a rising Russia. Would it be a revanche for Obama’s Syria debacle, or another heavy strike at fading American hegemony?
The simple division into “pro-East” and “pro-West” has been complicated by the heterogeneity of the Ukraine. The loosely knit country of differing regions is quite similar in its makeup to the Yugoslavia of old. It is another post-Versailles hotchpotch of a country made up after the First World War of bits and pieces, and made independent after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Some parts of this “Ukraine” were incorporated by Russia 500 years ago, the Ukraine proper (a much smaller parcel of land, bearing this name) joined Russia 350 years ago, whilst the Western Ukraine (called the “Eastern Regions”) was acquired by Stalin in 1939, and the Crimea was incorporated in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Khrushchev in 1954.
The Ukraine is as Russian as the South-of-France is French and as Texas and California are American. Yes, some hundreds years ago, Provence was independent from Paris, - it had its own language and art; while Nice and Savoy became French rather recently. Yes, California and Texas joined the Union rather late too. Still, we understand that they are – by now – parts of those larger countries, ifs and buts notwithstanding. But if they were forced to secede, they would probably evolve a new historic narrative stressing the French ill treatment of the South in the Cathar Crusade, or dispossession of Spanish and Russian residents of California.
Accordingly, since the Ukraine’s independence, the authorities have been busy nation-building, enforcing a single official language and creating a new national myth for its 45 million inhabitants. The crowds milling about the Maidan were predominantly (though not exclusively) arrivals from Galicia, a mountainous county bordering with Poland and Hungary, 500 km (300 miles) away from Kiev, and natives of the capital refer to the Maidan gathering as a “Galician occupation”.
Like the fiery Bretons, the Galicians are fierce nationalists, bearers of a true Ukrainian spirit (whatever that means). Under Polish and Austrian rule for centuries, whilst the Jews were economically powerful, they are a strongly anti-Jewish and anti-Polish lot, and their modern identity centred around their support for Hitler during the WWII, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of their Polish and Jewish neighbours. After the WWII, the remainder of pro-Hitler Galician SS fighters were adopted by US Intelligence, re-armed and turned into a guerrilla force against the Soviets. They added an anti-Russian line to their two ancient hatreds and kept fighting the “forest war” until 1956, and these ties between the Cold Warriors have survived the thaw.
After 1991, when the independent Ukraine was created, in the void of state-building traditions, the Galicians were lauded as 'true Ukrainians’, as they were the only Ukrainians who ever wanted independence. Their language was used as the basis of a new national state language, their traditions became enshrined on the state level. Memorials of Galician Nazi collaborators and mass murderers Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych peppered the land, often provoking the indignation of other Ukrainians. The Galicians played an important part in the 2004 Orange Revolution as well, when the results of presidential elections were declared void and the pro-Western candidate Mr Yuschenko got the upper hand in the re-run.
However, in 2004, many Kievans also supported Yuschenko, hoping for the Western alliance and a bright new future. Now, in 2013, the city's support for the Maidan was quite low, and the people of Kiev complained loudly about the mess created by the invading throngs: felled trees, burned benches, despoiled buildings and a lot of biological waste. Still, Kiev is home to many NGOs; city intellectuals receive generous help from the US and EC. The old comprador spirit is always strongest in the capitals.
For the East and Southeast of the Ukraine, the populous and heavily industrialised regions, the proposal of association with the EC is a no-go, with no ifs, ands or buts. They produce coal, steel, machinery, cars, missiles, tanks and aircraft. Western imports would erase Ukrainian industry right off the map, as the EC officials freely admit. Even the Poles, hardly a paragon of industrial development, had the audacity to say to the Ukraine: we’ll do the technical stuff, you'd better invest in agriculture. This is easier to say than to do: the EC has a lot of regulations that make Ukrainian products unfit for sale and consumption in Europe. Ukrainian experts estimated their expected losses for entering into association with the EC at anything from 20 to 150 billion euros.
For Galicians, the association would work fine. Their speaker at the Maidan called on the youth to ‘go where you can get money’ and do not give a damn for industry. They make their income in two ways: providing bed-and breakfast rooms for Western tourists and working in Poland and Germany as maids and menials. They hoped they would get visa-free access to Europe and make a decent income for themselves. Meanwhile, nobody offered them a visa-waiver arrangement. The Brits mull over leaving the EC, because of the Poles who flooded their country; the Ukrainians would be too much for London. Only the Americans, always generous at somebody’s else expense, demanded the EC drop its visa requirement for them.
While the Maidan was boiling, the West sent its emissaries, ministers and members of parliament to cheer the Maidan crowd, to call for President Yanukovich to resign and for a revolution to install pro-Western rule. Senator McCain went there and made a few firebrand speeches. The EC declared Yanukovich “illegitimate” because so many of his citizens demonstrated against him. But when millions of French citizens demonstrated against their president, when Occupy Wall Street was violently dispersed, nobody thought the government of France or the US president had lost legitimacy…
Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, shared her biscuits with the demonstrators, and demanded from the oligarchs support for the “European cause” or their businesses would suffer. The Ukrainian oligarchs are very wealthy, and they prefer the Ukraine as it is, sitting on the fence between the East and the West. They are afraid that the Russian companies will strip their assets should the Ukraine join the Customs Union, and they know that they are not competitive enough to compete with the EC. Pushed now by Nuland, they were close to falling on the EC side.
Yanukovich was in big trouble. The default was rapidly approaching. He annoyed the pro-Western populace, and he irritated his own supporters, the people of the East and Southeast. The Ukraine had a real chance of collapsing into anarchy. A far-right nationalist party, Svoboda (Liberty), probably the nearest thing to the Nazi party to arise in Europe since 1945, made a bid for power. The EC politicians accused Russia of pressurising the Ukraine; Russian missiles suddenly emerged in the western-most tip of Russia, a few minutes flight from Berlin. The Russian armed forces discussed the US strategy of a “disarming first strike”. The tension was very high.
Edward Lucas, the Economist's international editor and author of The New Cold War, is a hawk of the Churchill and Reagan variety. For him, Russia is an enemy, whether ruled by Tsar, by Stalin or by Putin. He wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that the [Ukraine] determines the long-term future of the entire former Soviet Union. If Ukraine adopts a Euro-Atlantic orientation, then the Putin regime and its satrapies are finished… But if Ukraine falls into Russia's grip, then the outlook is bleak and dangerous... Europe's own security will also be endangered. NATO is already struggling to protect the Baltic states and Poland from the integrated and increasingly impressive military forces of Russia and Belarus. Add Ukraine to that alliance, and a headache turns into a nightmare.”
In this cliff-hanging situation, Putin made his pre-emptive strike. At a meeting in the Kremlin, he agreed to buy fifteen billion euros worth of Ukrainian Eurobonds and cut the natural gas price by a third. This meant there would be no default; no massive unemployment; no happy hunting ground for the neo-Nazi thugs of Svoboda; no cheap and plentiful Ukrainian prostitutes and menials for the Germans and Poles; and Ukrainian homes will be warm this Christmas. Better yet, the presidents agreed to reforge their industrial cooperation. When Russia and Ukraine formed a single country, they built spaceships; apart, they can hardly launch a naval ship. Though unification isn’t on the map yet, it would make sense for both partners. This artificially divided country can be united, and it would do a lot of good for both of their populaces, and for all people seeking freedom from US hegemony.
There are a lot of difficulties ahead: Putin and Yanukovich are not friends, Ukrainian leaders are prone to renege, the US and the EC have a lot of resources. But meanwhile, it is a victory to celebrate this Christmastide. Such victories keep Iran safe from US bombardment, inspire the Japanese to demand removal of Okinawa base, encourage those seeking closure of Guantanamo jail, cheer up Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons, frighten the NSA and CIA and allow French Catholics to march against Hollande’s child-trade laws.
***
What is the secret of Putin’s success? Edward Lucas said, in an interview to the pro-Western Ekho Moskvy radio: “Putin had a great year - Snowden, Syria, Ukraine. He checkmated Europe. He is a great player: he notices our weaknesses and turns them into his victories. He is good in diplomatic bluff, and in the game of Divide and Rule. He makes the Europeans think that the US is weak, and he convinced the US that Europeans are useless”.
I would offer an alternative explanation. The winds and hidden currents of history respond to those who feel their way. Putin is no less likely a roguish leader of global resistance than Princess Leia or Captain Solo were in Star Wars. Just the time for such a man is ripe.
Unlike Solo, he is not an adventurer. He is a prudent man. He does not try his luck, he waits, even procrastinates. He did not try to change regime in Tbilisi in 2008, when his troops were already on the outskirts of the city. He did not try his luck in Kiev, either. He has spent many hours in many meetings with Yanukovich whom he supposedly personally dislikes.
 
Like Captain Solo, Putin is a man who is ready to pay his way, full price, and such politicians are rare. “Do you know what is the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?”, asked a James Joyce character, and answered: “His proudest boast is I paid my way.” Those were Englishmen of another era, long before the likes of Blair, et al.
While McCain and Nuland, Merkel and Bildt speak of the European choice for the Ukraine, none of them is ready to pay for it. Only Russia is ready to pay her way, in the Joycean sense, whether in cash, as now, or in blood, as in WWII.
Putin is also a magnanimous man. He celebrated his Ukrainian victory and forthcoming Christmas by forgiving his personal and political enemies and setting them free: the Pussy Riot punks, Khodorkovsky the murderous oligarch, rioters… And his last press conference he carried out in Captain Solo self-deprecating mode, and this, for a man in his position, is a very good sign.
 
Israel Shamir reports from Moscow for Counterpunch, comments on RT and pens a regular column in Russia's largest daily, KP.
He can be reached at adam@israelshamir.net

Israel lobby launches fierce counterattack against American Studies Association, by Ali Abunimah, electronic intifada, Sun 22 Dec., 2013

Photo: UN officials in Gaza announced last month that school construction projects were suspended due to the effects of the ongoing Israeli blockade.
(Mohamad Asad / APA images)


http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-launches-fierce-counterattack-against-american-studies-association

Israel lobby groups are marshaling their formidable forces for a fierce counterattack against the American Studies Association (ASA), including calls for repressive legislation, boycotts and other measures to punish and silence solidarity with Palestinians.

Earlier this month, members of the ASA voted overwhelmingly in a referendum to endorse the Palestinian call for the boycott of Israeli academic institutions which are complicit in Israel’s occupation and other violations of Palestinian rights.

Individuals supporting the boycott have also been targets of intense vilification and hate campaigns.
Pressure on universities

Last week anti-Palestinian group StandWithUs, which works closely with the Israeli government, sent out an email blast calling on its followers to “Urge university presidents, donors and government to denounce the ASA and sever ties with the organization.”

The ASA has five thousand individual members along with 2,200 library and other institutional subscribers.

Under such pressure two universities, Brandeis University and Penn State Harrisburg, have canceled their institutional memberships of the ASA.
Targeting NYU

Now, New York University (NYU) is under intense pressure to follow in their footsteps. A 21 December New York Post editorial called on NYU’s American studies program to “sever its ties” with the ASA, pointing out that “almost a quarter of the American Studies Association’s 17 non-student councilors are from NYU, including the group’s president-elect, Lisa Duggan.”

It was the ASA’s governing body, its National Council, that first endorsed the boycott and called for a full membership referendum to back its decision.

In a bizarre anti-Semitic twist, the Post editorial emphasizes that NYU “is supported by many Jewish donors and attended by many Jewish students. It features buildings and programs with names like Steinhardt and Tisch. It makes its home in the US city that has the highest number of Jews.”

It is unclear why any of that should be relevant unless one takes the bigoted position – as the Post appears to do – that all Jews are either implicated in or supportive of Israel’s occupation and other human rights abuses that motivated the ASA boycott.

Princeton resists

Princeton University president Christopher L. Eisgruber expressed his “dismay” at the ASA’s boycott decision and affirmed that “My personal support for scholarly engagement with Israel is enthusiastic and unequivocal,” in a statement sent to William Jacobson, a Cornell University law professor and pro-Israel blogger at the publication Legal Insurrection.

But, Eisgruber adds, “I do not intend to denounce the ASA, make it unwelcome on campus, or inhibit the ability of faculty members to affiliate with it. … engagement may be better than a boycott.”

Bullying and intimidation

In a 20 December press release emailed to The Electronic Intifada, the ASA Caucus on Academic and Community Activism states that “members of the American Studies Association are getting hate mail or threatening mail following the ASA membership vote in favor of a resolution calling for boycott of Israeli universities.”

The ASA Facebook page has been “subject to an avalanche of abusive postings” and “senior faculty have explicitly and implicitly intimidated junior faculty who support the boycott,” the release states.

“More generally within the academy, some are threatening to cut funds for faculty who want to attend the ASA in the future. We are also learning that individuals and groups outside the academy are threatening legal action against the ASA,” the press released adds.

Former Harvard University president Larry Summers has, for instance, called the ASA boycott “anti-Semitic in effect” and urged universities to deprive faculty of funds to participate in ASA meetings and activities.

Claire Potter, a professor at the New School University and long-time prominent critic of the ASA boycott, decided to vote for the boycott resolution in the end [after careful deliberation].(http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/benjamin-doherty/surprise-move-oppon…)

Since then, “I have been receiving nasty and threatening electronic messages from those supposedly defending Israel: swastikas and pictures of concentration camps arrive daily, as well as accusations that I am promoting another Holocaust,” Potter writes at her widely read Tenured Radical blog.

“Expressions of hate and intimidation, even if they come from isolated individuals, constitute part of a larger pattern of attack on anyone who criticizes Israel or Zionism. These disturbing messages can take the form of threats. As such, they should not be dismissed or discarded,” the Caucus on Academic and Community Activism says in its press release.

It urges ASA members to report threats and intimidation both to the caucus and to the appropriate officials at their institutions.

Call for government repression

Unsatisfied by the campaigns already underway, Michael Oren, former Israeli ambassador in Washington, called for more than mere denunciations of the ASA’s action.

“What’s needed is a way to fight back, and Congress can do it,” the American-born Oren, who renounced his US citizenship in 2009, writes in Politico.

Oren cited as a desirable precedent a 1977 US law “making it illegal for US companies to cooperate with any boycott of Israel and imposing stiff penalties on those that did.”

It is unclear whether Oren is unaware that such laws, in an academic context, would grossly violate First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and association – the very values that opponents of the boycott claim they want to protect.

Still, Oren may find a receptive audience in Congress where the leaders of the bipartisan Israel Allies Caucus have strongly denounced the ASA.

Backlash likely to backfire

Anti-Palestinian groups likely believe that with a strong counterattack they can raise the price to any other group that might want to follow in the ASA’s footsteps and thus deter anyone else from taking action in solidarity with Palestinians.

Israel lobbying groups’ outrage and bullying tactics may claim a few more victories, just as Brandeis and Penn State Harrisburg moved to boycott the ASA.

Yet the repressive backlash also exposes the lie that many boycott opponents are concerned about “academic freedom.”

In the long run, the only thing such tactics are likely to achieve is to spread the debate about Israel’s abuses and the merits of boycott as an ethical solidarity strategy to campuses across the United States.

There is evidence that is already happening. In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece denouncing the boycott as “a repugnant attack on academic freedom,” Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University, nonetheless had to concede that many of the Israeli policies that motivate boycott supporters are indeed “abhorrent.”

There’s something, at least, that we can all agree on.

December 18, 2013

US fails in propositioning The Syrian Islamic Front, by Andrew Taylor, Dec. 18, 2013

The ascendant Islamist Front of Jihadist fighters in Syria has rejected offers from the Obama Administration and its Allies to sit down and strike a deal, a senior US diplomat said on Wednesday.

The Syrian government noted it was "reprehensible" that the Obama Administration was soliciting a dialogue with the Islamic Front, which is composed of six major radical Islamist armed terrorist groups.

The Islamic Front agrees in rhetoric principle, strategy and goals with the Nusra Front and has often fought beside them.

The developments highlighted Washington's difficulties in manouvering some US influence within the combatant camp in the war on the Syrian state.

With a month to go before UN peace talks convene in Geneva 2, it is unclear who will represent "the opposition". Dec. 27 remains the final deadline set by UN mediator Brahimi for both sides to name their delegations.

"The Islamic Front has refused to sit with us, without giving any reason," US Syria envoy Robert Ford told Al Arabiya television, speaking in Arabic, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry said such talks might take place.

"We are ready to sit with them because we talk to all parties and political groups in Syria," Ford said.

Such comments by a US diplomat illustrate the utterly brazen shamelessness of US imperialism's floundering hand in The Middle East. And the doleful saga shows no signs of ending or improving.



notes:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/12/18/us-syria-crisis-front-idUSBRE9BH0W820131218
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304579404579236350695601652
http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Syrias-Islamic-Front-rebuffs-talks-with-US-335408
http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/16/us_weighing_closer_ties_with_hardline_islamists_in_syria

An Awkward Silence - Burying The Hersh Revelations Of Obama’s Syrian Deceit, By David Cromwell in Media Lens ,17 December 2013

 'All governments lie', the US journalist I.F. Stone once noted, with Iraq the most blatant example in modern times. But Syria is another recent criminal example of Stone's dictum.

http://www.medialens.org/index.php/alerts/alert-archive/alerts-2013/751-an-awkward-silence-burying-the-hersh-revelations-of-obama-s-syrian-deceit.html

An article in the current edition of London Review of Books by Seymour Hersh makes a strong case that US President Obama misled the world over the infamous chemical weapons attack near Damascus on August 21 this year. Hersh is the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed the My Lai atrocity committed by American troops in Vietnam and the subsequent cover-up. He also helped bring to public attention the systematic brutality of US soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.


After the nerve gas attack at Ghouta, Obama had unequivocally pinned the blame on Syrian President Assad, a propaganda claim that was fervently disseminated around the world by a compliant corporate news media. Following Obama's earlier warnings that any use of chemical weapons would cross a 'red line', he then declared on US television on September 10, 2013:

'Assad's government gassed to death over a thousand people ...We know the Assad regime was responsible ... And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.'

There was global public opposition to any attack on Syria. But war was only averted when the Americans agreed to a Russian proposal at the UN to dismantle Syria's capability for making chemical weapons.

Based on interviews with US intelligence and military insiders, Hersh now charges that Obama deceived the world in making a cynical case for war. The US president 'did not tell the whole story', says the journalist:

'In some instances, he omitted important intelligence, and in others he presented assumptions as facts. Most significant, he failed to acknowledge something known to the US intelligence community: that the Syrian army is not the only party in the country's civil war with access to sarin, the nerve agent that a UN study concluded – without assessing responsibility – had been used in the rocket attack.'

Obama did not reveal that American intelligence agencies knew that the al-Nusra Front, a jihadi group affiliated with al-Qaida, had the capability to manufacture considerable quantities of sarin. When the attack on Ghouta took place, 'al-Nusra should have been a suspect, but the administration cherry-picked intelligence to justify a strike against Assad.' Indeed, the 'cherry-picking was similar to the process used to justify the Iraq war.'

Hersh notes that when he interviewed intelligence and military personnel:

'I found intense concern, and on occasion anger, over what was repeatedly seen as the deliberate manipulation of intelligence. One high-level intelligence officer, in an email to a colleague, called the administration's assurances of Assad's responsibility a "ruse".'

Hersh continues:

'A former senior intelligence official told me that the Obama administration had altered the available information – in terms of its timing and sequence – to enable the president and his advisers to make intelligence retrieved days after the attack look as if it had been picked up and analysed in real time, as the attack was happening.'

The former official said that this 'distortion' of the facts by the Obama administration 'reminded him of the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, when the Johnson administration reversed the sequence of National Security Agency intercepts to justify one of the early bombings of North Vietnam.'

Hersh adds:

'The same official said there was immense frustration inside the military and intelligence bureaucracy: "The guys are throwing their hands in the air and saying, 'How can we help this guy' – Obama – 'when he and his cronies in the White House make up the intelligence as they go along?' "'

Hersh does not actually use the word 'lie' or 'deceive' in his article. But, given the above account, he might as well have done.

In an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, Hersh notes that:

'there are an awful lot of people in the government who just were really very, very upset with the way the information about the gas attack took place.'

He makes clear that he is not making any claims for who conducted the sarin attack at Ghouta; he does not know who did it. 'But there's no question my government does not' know either. The essence of the revelations, Hersh emphasises, is that Obama 'was willing to go to war, wanted to throw missiles at Syria, without really having a case and knowing he didn't have much of a case.'

'Our Media Lie Entirely In Sync With Our Governments'

The independent journalist Jonathan Cook spells out an important conclusion from Hersh's vital reporting:

'not only do our governments lie as a matter of course, but our media lie entirely in sync with our governments. Hersh exposes a catalogue of journalistic failures in his piece, just as occurred in Iraq. He even points out that at one vital White House press conference, where the main, false narrative was set out, officials refused to invite a critical national security correspondent, presumably fearing that he might expose the charade.'

It is noteworthy that Hersh's article did not appear in The New Yorker, his usual outlet in recent years. Hersh said 'there was little interest' for the story at the magazine, and New Yorker editor David Remnick did not respond to the news website BuzzFeed asking for an explanation for a piece it published discussing Hersh's revelations.

The Washington Post also turned down Hersh's article, even though it was originally going to run there. Hersh was told by Executive Editor Marty Baron 'that the sourcing in the article did not meet the Post's standards.' The journalist finally turned to the London Review of Books which, ironically, published his piece after it had been 'thoroughly fact checked by a former New Yorker fact checker who had worked with Hersh in the past.'

Given the resistance from both The New Yorker and the Washington Post, Cook is right to say that there should be no 'false complacency' that Hersh's exceptional role in exposing state deceptions demonstrates that our media is anywhere close to being 'free and pluralistic.' Cook makes the astute observation that:

'There will always be the odd investigative reporter like Hersh at the margins of the mainstream media. And one can understand why by reading Hersh closely. His sources of information are those in the security complex who lost the argument, or came close to losing the argument, and want it on record that they opposed the government line. Hersh is useful to them because he allows them to settle scores within the establishment or to act as a warning bell against future efforts to manipulate intelligence in the same manner. He is useful to us as readers because he reveals disputes that show us much more clearly what has taken place.'


'Several Hours Of Googling' Trumps Hersh

Some commentators have attempted to dismiss Hersh's article by misrepresenting it as pinning the blame on Syrian rebels for the Ghouta chemical weapons attack. Brian Whitaker, a former Middle East editor of the Guardian, has a blog piece based on this skewed reading. Whitaker asks his readers to treat Seymour Hersh, a veteran journalist with an impressive track record, with more scepticism than Eliot Higgins 'who sits at home in an English provincial town [Leicester] trawling the internet and tweets and blogs about his findings under the screen name Brown Moses.' Whitaker argues with a straight face that Hersh's in-depth journalism has been trumped by a blogger who has performed 'several hours of Googling'.

Whitaker wrote a follow-up blog piece prompted by criticism he'd received from Media Lens via Twitter. Again, he seemingly failed to grasp the point of Hersh's article - that Obama had no solid case and knew it - and Whitaker instead blew some diversionary smoke about 'a conflict between two different approaches [i.e. those of internet-researcher Higgins and 'traditional' Hersh] to investigative journalism and the sources that they use'. There followed an excellent rebuttal from the ever-insightful Interventions Watch. First, citing Whitaker:

'he [Hersh] has often been criticised for his use of shadowy sources. In the words of one Pentagon spokesman, he has "a solid and well-earned reputation for making dramatic assertions based on thinly sourced, unverifiable anonymous sources".'

Interventions Watch then noted that:

'Hersh has spent decades shining lights into places "Pentagon spokesmen" types don't want him to look. So it's not surprising that they'd try and discredit his work. Would Whitaker, for example, quote an Iranian military spokesman to try and rubbish the work of an Iranian dissident journalist? I doubt it. And the fact he does it here perhaps says much about his unexamined assumptions and biases.'

It is hardly surprising that Higgins, a blogger who presents a view conforming to the 'mainstream' narrative, should be given special attention by Whitaker, an establishment journalist. As Interventions Watch observes:

'At this point in his career, it's not like Higgins is some obscure, insurgent outsider. He has had his work published in The New York Times and Foreign Policy, has had a lengthy profile written about him in The New Yorker, has worked with Human Rights Watch, and has been interviewed more than once on T.V. News. Does this make him wrong? Of course not. But the line between him and "old media" isn't quite as defined as Whitaker would like to make out.'

Phil Greaves, a writer on US-UK foreign policy, likewise questions the role of Higgins who has recently:

'jump[ed] to the fore with his YouTube analysis in order to bolster mainstream discourse whilst offering the air of impartiality and the crucial "open source" faux-legitimacy. It has become blatantly evident that the "rebels" in both Syria and Libya have made a concerted effort in fabricating YouTube videos in order to incriminate and demonize their opponents while glorifying themselves in a sanitized image. Western media invariably lapped-up such fabrications without question and subsequently built narratives around them – regardless of contradictory evidence or opinion.'

The same spotlight of corporate media approval shines on the grandly-named Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – a man who owns a clothes shop, operating from his Coventry home – and the volunteer-run Iraq Body Count, whose numbers are routinely cited by journalists in preference to the much higher death-toll estimates from the Lancet epidemiological studies.

To emphasise once again, culpability for the Ghouta chemical attack is not the key thrust of Hersh's article at all. It is that significant elements of the US intelligence community were angered and dismayed by the Obama administration's manipulation of the facts, and that the White House falsely claimed certainty in its bid to make a self-interested case for war. It takes considerable skill in mental and verbal contortions to avoid these simple truths.


No Need For A Memory Hole

To date, searches of the Lexis newspaper database reveal that not a single print article has appeared about Hersh's revelations in the entire UK national press. Notably, the Guardian and the Independent, the two flagship daily newspapers of British liberal journalism, have steered well clear of embarrassing Obama. For the entire British press not to even discuss, far less mention, Hersh's claims is Orwellian – or worse. Why worse? Because there is not even the need for a memory hole if the story never surfaced in the first place. This represents an astonishing level of media conformity to the government narrative of events. In fact, the silence indicates complicity in the cynical distortion of the truth for war aims.

To its credit, the Daily Mail did publish a web-only article which was a fair summary of Hersh's article, and Peter Oborne had a short blog piece on the Telegraph website: all of five brief paragraphs. Oborne's piece then prompted his colleague Richard Spencer, a Telegraph foreign correspondent, to write his own web-only article denouncing Hersh's careful journalism as 'conspiracy theory'. Spencer did so based in large part on his reliance on the googling work of Eliot 'Brown Moses' Higgins, mentioned above, and a second blog 'of admittedly variable quality'. That appears to have been the sum total of press attention devoted to genuinely shocking revelations about the Nobel Peace Prize-winning US president.

As far as we can tell, there has been no coverage by BBC News, ITV News or Channel 4 News. (Certainly google searches of their websites yield not a single hit.) In the US, the media has likewise 'blacked out' coverage of Hersh's strong claims.

Imagine if a respected and experienced journalist published an in-depth piece reporting that an official enemy had deceived the world over chemical weapon claims in order to agitate for war. It would be plastered over every front page and given headline coverage on every major news programme.

As the days rolled on following the publication of Hersh's article, several Media Lens readers emailed journalists asking why they hadn't covered the revelations and urging them now to do so. Justin Webb of the BBC Radio 4 Today programme was a rare voice in responding:

'Thanks for this note - the answer is that we will and should [be covering the Hersh revelations] but we need to work out how much weight to give them. But yes it's obviously important.' (Posted on the Media Lens message board by Robert, December 12, 2013; temporary link.)

But, so far, nothing has been broadcast.

Another reader challenged Michael White, a Guardian assistant editor, who also had the decency to respond. White said:

'thanks for the note, was not aware of the piece, but he's a man to take seriously is Sey [sic] Hersh, so I will ask around among colleagues concerned with these matters' (Email, December 12, 2013)

Within an hour, White had replied again:

'a well informed friend says:

' "short answer: it was widely attacked and discredited by people who are genuinely expert on the subject and use open sources rather than anonymous spooks.

'"http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/12/09/sy_hershs_chemical_misfire#sthash.UKt3cjE9.dpbs

' "the article was rejected by wash post and new yorker apparently".'

Who is the 'well informed friend' - a Guardian colleague perhaps? - and who are these unnamed 'people who are genuinely expert on the subject'? White didn't say. The Foreign Policy link was, inevitably, to an article by one Eliot Higgins. So in less than 60 minutes, White had gone from saying Hersh 'is a man to take seriously' to dismissing him on the basis of being 'discredited' by a blogger whose output conforms to Western governments' propaganda.

Finally, in his Democracy Now!  interview, Hersh notes how easy it is for powerful leaders like Obama to go unchallenged:

'you can create a narrative, which he did, and you know the mainstream press is going to carry out that narrative.'

He continued:

'I mean, it's almost impossible for some of the mainstream newspapers, who have consistently supported the administration. This is after we had the WMD scandal, when everybody wanted to be on the team. It turns out our job, as newspaper people, is not to be on the team. [...] It's just not so hard to hold the people in office to the highest standard. And the press should be doing it more and more.'

The fact that Hersh's revelations have been met by an almost total silence in the corporate media is stunning but sadly unsurprising. After all, this is simply the standard performance by 'mainstream' news media that have demonstrated decades of adherence to state-corporate power. That this is still happening after the horrendous war crime of Iraq, which was facilitated by intense media boosting of Western propaganda claims, is utterly shameful.


SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.

Write to:

Alan Rusbridger, Guardian editor
Email: alan.rusbridger@guardian.co.uk
Twitter: @arusbridger

Amol Rajan, Independent editor
Email: a.rajan@independent.co.uk
Twitter: @amolrajan

Jon Snow, Channel 4 News
Email: jon.snow@itn.co.uk
Twitter: @jonsnowC4

Please blind-copy medialens in on any exchanges or forward them to them later at:
editor@medialens.org

Young Communist League of Israel, Our current struggles, Wed., 18 December 2013

http://maki.org.il/en/?p=1710

From Young Communist League of Israel: "Our current struggles", a declaration presented to the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students," held in Ecuador.
 
1. The Struggle Against the Prawer Plan

The Israeli government is planning to legislate a law (known as "Prawer Plan") which will drive away from their homes more than 35,000 Arab-Bedouins, who reside in the southern Negev desert. Up to 35 villages will be demolished and their lands confiscated, even though they are citizens of Israel and supposedly entitled to equality before the law.

The YCLI has been active in a broad youth movement to stop the Prawer Plan, with some of our cadres arrested during the last national day of protest.

We urge all the members of WFDY, and all progressive and democratic youth organizations, to raise their voice in protest against this barbarous plan.



2. Solidarity with the Refuseniks

For the majority of young people in Israel, military service is mandatory at the age of 18. The majority of Arab youth is exempted, but for those Arab youth who belong to the Druze community – military service is mandatory as well.

Our Comrade Omar Saad is currently imprisoned because of his refusal to enlist to the Israeli army, and to fight his own people. His statement of refusal acknowledged the fact that the Druze community is part of the broader Arab-Palestinian community in Israel, contrary to the Israeli government policy of divide-and-rule.

Previously we were involved in the successful campaign to free Natan Blanc, a young Jewish conscientious objector, who was jailed for 177 days for his refusal to serve the occupation.

The YCLI encourages our fraternal youth movements to organize solidarity with the young conscientious objectors (the so-called "refuseniks"), and to pressure the Israeli government and army to recognize the legitimacy of their refusal.



3. Defending the Rights of Young Workers

The YCLI is issuing material, in Hebrew and Arabic, aimed at young workers, with the intention of educating them about their rights at the workplace: minimum wage, sick days, their right to a secure environment, without sexual harassment and without being discriminated against, etc.

We have motivated a bill in the Israeli parliament aimed at equating the minimum wage law, so that teen workers will paid the same as workers above 18 years of age.



4. Turning Student Councils into Instruments of Struggle

Many high schools have elected student councils, but these bodies rarely act as an independent platform for student organizing, and they are usually co-opted by the establishment and the Ministry of Education.

Comrades from the YCLI have initiated holding elections for student councils in schools where these bodies did not previously exist, and were elected to responsible positions within the councils, with the aim of using them as an instrument to politicize and radicalize students.



5. Against Forcing "National Service" on Arab Youth

The government wishes to force Arab youth – which is generally exempted from military service – to undergo "National Service" at the age of 18. The rhetoric used by government to justify this act, is saying that the fact that Arab youth is exempted from the army – is the reason for their discrimination in society. Therefore the "national service" is being promoted as a way to achieve equality.

The YCLI rejects this false equation, which ties together basic civil rights with the idea of "civil duties", and reiterates its call for achieving complete national and civil equality for Arab-Palestinian youth within Israel – first and foremost, without any government preconditions.



6. Strengthen Internationalism

The YCLI is thoroughly committed to internationalist ideals and values. We are a Jewish-Arab youth movement, inside a state where problems of racism and nationalism run deep. No other youth movement in Israel is active among both Jewish and Arab young people, and tries to build a joint vision for an equal, democratic and peaceful society.

The YCLI sees itself as part of the world Communist and Progressive youth movement, and wishes to strengthen its links with other similar organizations.

We stand in solidarity with the heroic uprising of the youth in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and elsewhere in the Middle East; an uprising which was grounded in the ideas of democracy, secularism, social justice, national independence, and respecting the rights of women and minorities.

We stand alongside the youth of Iran and Syria, which are being the target of the aggressive and provocative threats and actions of the Israeli government, US Imperialism, and its reactionary allies in the region.

We are inspired by the progressive developments in Latin America, and especially by the example of the Cuban Revolution and its leadership.

We feel a sense of solidarity with the social protest movements of young people in Spain, Greece, the United States, and elsewhere.

We believe that the goal of peace, democracy and Socialism – is the common ground that brings all of our movements together.

Photo 1: Arafat Badarneh and Roi Khenin, members of the leadership of the Young Communist League of Israel to the 18th World Festival of Youth and Students, held in Ecuador (Photo Al Ittihad)
Photo 2: Young Communist League of Israel activists during the May Day rally in Nazareth, May 2012 (Photo Al Ittihad)

Young Communist League of Israel

P.O Box 26205, Tel-Aviv 61261

Tel: +972-52-833-0046, Fax: +972-3-6297263, Email:
ycl.israel@gmail.com



December 16, 2013

The West backs a new Jihadist player with the collapse of the 'moderate Syrian rebels' , Andrew Taylor, Dec 16, 2013


The project of  'The Free Syrian Army (FSA)' of General Salim Idris and its fractious brother 'the Syrian National Coalition (SNC)' which America, the UK and France have anointed as the legitimate moral revolutionary forces versus the Syrian state is presently in utter ruins. Both as a fighting force and as a putative anti-Assad front with international plausibility the two western-backed groups are in disarray.

This recession of the FSA has been building to this shambles for almost one year as Syrian Army forces on one side and Jihadist fighters on the other pushed them hard, but the crisis became crystal-clear 10 days ago with the suspension of non-lethal aid by the US and UK following the loss of  the headquarters of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Bab al-Hawa to an ascendant Islamist alliance, the Islamic Front (‏الجبهة الإسلامية‎, al-Jabhat al-Islāmiyyah) .

As Joshua Landis notes of Zahran Alloush, the head commander of the Islamic Front ~the emerging anti-Assad forces in Syria: "... the main groups that came together to form the Islamic Front have worked hand in glove with al-Qaida linked forces, particularly al-Nusra, on most battle fronts and recent offensives against the regime...The difference between his ideology and that of al-Qaida groups is not profound. Rather, it is one of shades of grey."1.

If Alloush, the head commander of the Islamic Front, is to continue his all-but-complete marginalisation of the western sponsored Free Syrian Army he cannot afford to turn on his comrades-in-arms and ideology represented by  'the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)' or 'Al-Nusra Front, the predominant Al Qaeda affiliates'. And indeed, his sectarian rhetoric demonising the Shiites, Alawites and other minorities is indistinguishable from the venomous denunciations used by the Al Qaeda affiliates. Zahran Alloush  "refers to Shiites, and reduces the Nusayris into this grouping, as “Majous”, or crypto-Iranians. “Majous” is the old term for pre-Islamic Persians or Zoroastrians...an Islamic term of abuse meant to suggest that Alawites and Iranians not only have the wrong religion but also the wrong ethnicity—they are not Arabs, but crypto-Iranians."2.
 
So the Western powers face a credibility crisis and reason might suggest Cameron, Hollande and Obama not only make permanent the suspension of aid to Gen. Idris the pantomime horse of the Syrian fighters, but begin to make real next month's Geneva 2 Talks in Montreux by engaging seriously with Syrian state representatives, the peaceful civic opposition groups in Syria and Iran and Turkey. 3. This is the sane, humanitarian answer to the Syrian bloodletting. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar ought to be isolated by the international community and left to get their mutual interests sorted in a forum where a civilian population is exempted from the calamity caused by their geopolitical ambitions and trade in arms.

But it appears the reasonable, humane route is not tempting the White House. The Washington Post wrote on  Thursday last :

The Obama administration is willing to consider supporting an expanded Syrian rebel coalition that would include Islamist groups, provided the groups are not allied with al-Qaeda and agree to support upcoming peace talks in Geneva, a senior U.S. official said Thursday...We don’t have a problem with the Islamic Front,” the official said, but any movement toward including them in the U.S.-backed coalition remains a “work in progress.” 4.

So it seems that if the 'moderate' proxy General Idris is unable to domesticate the hundreds of Islamist fighting brigades into a sanitized pro-western proxy, Washington will join the jihadists of the Islamic Front in their all-out-war against the state of Syria.
Footnotes:

1.  http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/zahran-alloush/
2. http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/zahran-alloush/
3. http://www.dawn.com/news/1072143/syrian-rebels-in-disarray-as-western-aid-is-halted   (Dawn is Pakistan's oldest and most widely read English-language newspaper.)
 4. http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/white-house-willing-to-support-a-syrian-rebel-coalition-that-would-include-islamist-groups/2013/12/12/e400fc86-636d-11e3-aa81-e1dab1360323_story.html

Notes:

See Joshua Landis' Blog: 'Syria Comment' for his recent article on Zahran Alloush: http://www.joshualandis.com/blog/
and Robert Parry's "Obama's Syria Strategy at a Crossroads":   http://truth-out.org/news/

December 15, 2013

Marxists.org - a superb resource, first published on 27 May 2006, socialistaction.net

http://www.socialistaction.net/Theory/Marxist-Theory/Marxists.org-a-superb-resource.html




One of the effects of the quarter century of victories of international capitalism after 1979 was that it became significantly harder to obtain Marxist works. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 the Collected Works of Marx and Engels rose hugely in price and it took over a decade for the series to be completed. The Collected Works of Lenin disappeared and are expensive to acquire even second hand. Trotsky’s works went up significantly in price. The stream of publication and translation of lesser known Marxist writers that had appeared from the late 1960s onwards largely dried up.

For those who do not know it already therefore www.marxists.org represents a superb achievement. An ongoing project, it includes, at the time of writing, internet versions of the first ten volumes of the Collected Works of Marx and Engels plus many of their individual works, the great bulk of the Collected Works of Lenin, large amounts of Gramsci, Rosa Luxemburg, and a host of more minor Marxist writers. A gratifying statistic is that for May 2006 there were over 1.4 million visits to the site.

China announces Chang'e-3 mission "complete success", Xinhua, BEIJING, Dec. 15,2013




The Chang'e 3 lunar lander and moon rover is part of the second phase of China's three-step robotic lunar exploration program

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2013-12/15/c_132970100.htm


BEIJING, Dec. 15 (Xinhua) -- China hailed its Chang'e-3 lunar probe mission "a complete success" Sunday night, after its first moon rover Yutu, or Jade Rabbit, and lander took photos of each other on lunar surface. The one-minute photographing, a day after the country finished its first lunar soft landing, showed that both the lander and moon rover functioned well and marked the completion of soft landing, in-situ and patrol explorations, said Pei Zhaoyu, spokesman for China's lunar probe program.
Ma Xingrui, chief commander of the lunar program, declared the success of Chang'e-3 mission at the Beijing Aerospace Control Center (BACC), where Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang were present.

In a congratulatory message sent by the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the State Council, and the Central Military Commission, the success of Chang'e-3 mission was hailed as a "milestone" in the development of China's space programs, a "new glory" of the Chinese people in their exploration of the frontiers of science and technology and "outstanding contribution" of the Chinese nation in the mankind's peaceful use of the space.

The photographing started at about 11:42 p.m. Beijing Time, when the six-wheeled Yutu moved to a spot about 9 meters north to the lander.
The color images, live transmitted via a deep space network designed by China, showed the Chinese national flag on Yutu. It marked the first time that the five-star red flag had pictures taken in an extraterrestrial body.
After the photographing, the rover and lander embarked on their own scientific explorations. But in the coming days, the two will still have chances of taking photos of each other from different angles while the rover circled the lander.

Yutu will survey the moon's geological structure and surface substances and look for natural resources for three months at a speed of 200 meters per hour, while the lander will conduct in-situ exploration at the landing site for one year.

The 140-kg rover separated from the lander and touched the lunar surface at 4:35 a.m. Sunday, several hours after Chang'e-3 lunar probe soft-landed on the moon's surface at 9:11 p.m. on Saturday.
Chang'e-3 landed on the moon's Sinus Iridum, or the Bay of Rainbows, making China the third country in the world to carry out such a rover mission after the United States and Soviet Union.
This is the world's first soft-landing of a probe on the moon in nearly four decades. The last such soft-landing was carried out by the Soviet Union in 1976.

In ancient Chinese mythology, Yutu was the white pet rabbit of the lunar goddess Chang'e. The name for the rover was selected following an online poll that collected several million votes from people around the world.
The rover, 1.5 meters long with its two wings folded, 1 m in width and 1.1 m in height, is a highly efficient robot controlled by the command center from the earth. It will face challenges including temperature differences of more than 300 degrees Celsius on the moon.

Following the success of the Chang'e-1 and Chang'e-2, respectively launched in 2007 and 2010, the Chang'e-3 lunar probe mission marks the full completion of the second phase of China's lunar program, which includes orbiting, landing and returning to the Earth.

After Chang'e-3, China's lunar program will enter a new stage of unmanned automatic sampling and return.
Wu Weiren, the lunar program's chief designer, said China is likely to bring samples from the moon back to the Earth on an unmanned craft before 2020, paving the way for a manned mission.

'Britain’s policy on Syria has just been sunk, and nobody noticed', Patrick Cockburn, The Independent, 14 December 2013

The final bankruptcy of American and British policy in Syria came 10 days ago as Islamic Front, a Saudi-backed Sunni jihadi group, overran the headquarters of the Supreme Military Council of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) at Bab al-Hawa on the Syrian side of the border with Turkey. The FSA, along with the Syrian National Coalition, groups that the United States and Britain have been pretending for years are at the heart of Syrian military and political opposition, has been discredited. The remaining FSA fighters are in flight, have changed sides, or are devoting all their efforts to surviving the onslaught from jihadi or al-Qa’ida-linked brigades.

The US and Britain stopped the delivery of non-lethal aid to the supply depot at Bab al-Hawa as the implications of the disaster sank in. The West’s favourite rebel commander, General Salim Idris, was on the run between Turkey and his former chief supporter and paymaster, Qatar. Turkey closed the border, the other side of which is now controlled by the Islamic Front. The so-called moderate wing of the Syrian insurgency has very limited influence, but its representatives are still being urged by Washington and London to attend the peace conference in Geneva on 22 January to negotiate Bashar al-Assad’s departure from power.

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/britains-policy-on-syria-has-just-been-sunk-and-nobody-noticed-9005332.html

Confusion over what is happening is so great that Western leaders may not pay as much of a political price at home as they should for the failure of their Syrian policy. But it is worth recalling that the Syrian National Coalition and the FSA are the same people for whom the US and UK almost went to war in August, and saw as candidates to replace Assad in power in Damascus. The recent debacle shows how right public opinion in both countries was to reject military intervention.

Who are the winners in the new situation? One is Assad because the opposition to him – which started as a popular uprising against a cruel, corrupt and oppressive dictatorship in 2011 – has become a fragmented movement dominated by al-Qa’ida umbrella organisation the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil); the other al-Qa’ida franchisee, the al-Nusra Front; and the Islamic Front, consisting of six or seven large rebel military formations numbering an estimated 50,000 fighters, whose uniting factor is Saudi money and an extreme Sunni ideology similar to Saudi Arabia’s version of Islam.

The Saudis see this alliance as capable of fighting pro-Assad forces as well as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, but Riyadh’s objections to the latter appears to be based on its independence of Saudi control rather than revulsion at its record of slaughtering Shia, Alawi, Christians, Armenians, Kurds, Turkomans or any dissenting Sunni.

The allegation of Saudi control is becoming easier to substantiate. Until a year ago, the Saudis stayed somewhat in the background when it came to funding the Syrian rebels, in which the leading role was played by Qatar in association with Turkey. But the failure of the rebels to win and US anger that the Qataris and Turks had allowed much of the aid to go to jihadis led to an important change this summer, when Saudi Arabia took over from Qatar as chief supporter of the rebels.

An interesting example of just how hands-on this Saudi direction has become is illustrated by a fascinating interview given by a top defector from the FSA to Isil, Saddam al-Jamal. Commander of the Liwa Allah Akbar battalion, he was until recently the top FSA commander in eastern Syria, much of which is under rebel control. He recalls that “we used to meet with the apostates of Qatar and Saudi Arabia and with the infidels of Western nations such as America and France in order to receive arms and ammo or cash”. He says Western intelligence operatives had of late been worried about the growing influence of al-Qa’ida affiliates and repeatedly asked him why he was growing a beard.

Jamal gives an account of a recent three-day meeting between the FSA commanders from northern and eastern Syria with Western, Saudi, Qatari, Emirati and Jordanian intelligence operatives. This appears to have been soon after the Saudis took over the Syria file from the Qataris. He says the FSA commanders, including General Idris, had a meeting with Prince Salman bin Sultan, the Saudi deputy defence minister who was the leading figure at the meeting. Jamal says that Prince Salman “asked those who had plans to attack Assad positions to present their needs for arms, ammo and money”.

The picture that Mr Jamal paints is of an FSA that was a complete pawn to foreign intelligence agencies, which is one reason why he defected. The Saudis subsequently decided that the FSA would not serve their purposes, and were frustrated by America backing away from war in Syria and confrontation with Iran. They set about using their limitless funds to attract into alliances rebel brigades such as the Islamic Front which would be Sunni fundamentalist, committed to the overthrow of Assad, against political negotiations, but distinct from al-Qa’ida. In reality, it looks highly unlikely that Saudi money will be enough to bring down or even significantly weaken Assad though it may be enough to keep a war going for years.

The old, supposedly moderate, opposition has been marginalised. Its plan since 2011 has been to force a full-scale Western military intervention as in Libya in 2011 and, when this did not happen, they lacked an alternative strategy.

The US, Britain and France do not have many options left except to try to control the jihadi Frankenstein’s monster that they helped create in Syria and which is already helping destabilise Iraq and Lebanon. Turkey may soon regret having given free passage to so many jihadi on their way to Syria. Ankara could close its 500-mile border with Syria or filter those who cross it. But Turkish policy in Syria and Iraq has been so dysfunctional in the past three years that it may be too late to correct the consequences of wrongly convincing itself that Assad would fall.

The Geneva II peace conference on Syria looks as if it will be born dead. In so far as the FSA and its civilian counterparts ever represented anyone in Syria they do so no longer. The armed opposition is dominated by Saudi-sponsored Islamist brigades on the one hand and by al-Qa’ida affiliates on the other. All US, British and French miscalculations have produced in Syria is a re-run of Afghanistan in the 1980s, creating a situation the ruinous consequences of which have yet to appear. As jihadis in Syria realise they are not going to win, they may well look for targets closer to home.

December 14, 2013

Communist Party of Israel: Message of Condolence Nelson Mandela, Thursday, 12 December 2013

http://www.solidnet.org/.../cp-of-israel-message-of...

The Communist Party of Israel (CPI) mourns the loss of Comrade Nelson Mandela and offers its condolences to the people of South Africa. We also convey our deepest sympathy and encouragement to his family. Tata Madiba – a genuine son of the soil, the greatest freedom fighter, a true revolutionary whose struggle against racism, discrimination and fascism has been a beacon for all freedom and equality lovers. Madiba forever will be inspiring us – those who fight for liberation, justice and peace, wherever we are.

It is important that the people of South Africa will know that our struggle as members of the CPI, Arab Palestinians and Jews alike, against the Israeli occupation and Apartheid in the Palestinian occupied territories and against Zionist racism, has been truly inspired by Madiba's spirit and will carry on his legacy until our final victory. The same should be said about our battle for a democratic and just Israel – a state that pursues the wellbeing of its citizens as a whole with no ethnic prejudice and discrimination whatsoever. That too, of course, resembles Mandela's internationalist legacy. As Mandela wrote to New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman in 2010, “Palestinians are struggling for freedom, liberation and equality, just like we were struggling for freedom in South Africa.” We at CPI, of course, embrace those words unequivocally.

It is also crucial to point out that in contrast to many political figures Mandela distinguished very carefully between being a Zionist, which he, like us, denounced, and being a Jew, which he, just like us, respected. We wish that that legacy of his will prevail too.

Amandla Ngawethu – Sleep Well Madiba!

Mohammed Nafa’h

Secretary General of the Communist Party of Israel

Featured Story

Dejemos que la izquierda de Estados Unidos tenga cuidado! por Andrew Taylor 23.06.2021

La Administración Biden ha habilitado una nueva "Iniciativa contra el terrorismo doméstico" para defender "The Homeland"...