The Marikana Massacre and the South African State’s Low Intensity War Against the People

The massacre of the Marikana/Lonmin workers has inserted itself within South Africa’s national consciousness, not so much through the analysis, commentary and reporting in its wake. Instead, it has been the power of the visual images of police armed with awesome fire power gunning down these workers, together with images of bodies lying defeated and lifeless, that has aroused a national outcry and wave of condemnation. have also engendered international protest actions outside South African embassies. In themselves these images communicate a politics about ‘official state power.’ It is bereft of moral concern, de-humanized, brutal and at odds with international human rights standards; in these ways it is no different from apartheid era state sponsored violence and technologies of oppressive rule. Moreover, the images of police officers walking through the Marikana/Lonmin killing field, with a sense of professional accomplishment in its aftermath, starkly portrays a scary reality: the triumph of South Africa’s state in its brutal conquest of its enemies, its citizens.

At the same time, the pain and suffering of the gunned down workers has became the pain of a nation and the world; this has happened even without the ANC government declaring we must not apportion blame but mourn the dead. In a world steeped in possessive individualism and greed, the brutal Marikana/Lonmin massacre reminds us of a universal connection; our common humanity. However, while this modern human connection and sense of empathy is important, it is also superficial. This is brought home by a simple truth: the pain of the Marikana/Lonmin workers is only our pain in their martyrdom. They had to perish for all of us to realise how deep social injustice has become inscribed in the everyday lives of post-apartheid South Africa’s workers and the poor. The low wage, super exploitation model of South African mining, socially engineered during apartheid, is alive and well, and thriving. It is condoned by the post-apartheid state. This is the tragic irony of what we have become as the much vaunted ‘Rainbow nation.’

New Faultline is Revealed

Moreover, the spectral presence of the Marikana/Lonmin massacre speaks to us about another shadow cast by the ‘Rainbow’ fairytale. It forces us to confront the hard edge of violence fluxing through our stressed social fabric. At one time, violent crime – car jackings, robberies, rapes, murders – defined our everyday understandings of violence. Our narration of these violent events constructed a sense of criminal violence as a major fault-line running through South African society. Such violence spreads fear, racial division and a sense of siege. It has been our undeclared civil war. However, the social geography of violence changes with the Marikana/Lonmin moment. A new faultline is revealed. Such a faultline has been in the making deep inside South African society through xenophobic attacks, violent police attacks on striking transport and municipal workers (over the past few years), violence against gays and lesbians especially in township communities, and police complicity in thwarting legitimate protest actions in poor communities and informal settlements. Through a failure to act decisively (in some instances like during xenophobic violence or by failing to provide policing in informal settlements) or through orchestrated violence the South African state is at war with the working-class within its borders; it is a ‘low intensity war.’ More specifically, such a war spans shootings, intimidation, failure to allow communities to lay charges, failure to investigate crimes perpetrated against poor communities, failure to be responsive to the safety needs of poor communities, fabrication and smear campaigns against local leaders, complicity with goons linked to local politicians (particularly the ANC) and a failure to act knowing that innocent lives are in danger.

A few examples of police orchestrated low intensity warfare working in cahoots with ANC goon squads or local politicians against communities illustrates this more clearly. This is based on testimony received from activists. First, after Abahlali Basemjondolo (Shack Dwellers movement) successfully challenged the Slums Act in the Constitutional Court, ensuring community participation to determine whether there can be relocation from an established community they became the target of police-ANC violence. In early 2010 an ANC goon squad violently removes Abahlali from Kennedy Road informal settlement. This is also captured in a documentary entitled Dear Mandela. The police carry out arrests of Abahlali leadership on trumped up charges and public violence which are eventually kicked out of court. Abahlali is not able to return to Kennedy Road informal settlement.

Second, a more recent example in Umlazi township Durban also shows this police-political party nexus working in insidious ways to suppress community demands. The local Unemployed Peoples Movement (UPM) and Ward 88 residents demanded a recall of their ANC councillor and a democratization of the ward committee. In their perception the ANC ward councillor was corrupt, failing to deliver and engaging in clientelistic control of development resources. This unleashed a series of reprisals. On 23 July the leader of the UPM was arrested under false charges. The complainants turned out to be incited by the councillor working in cahoots with the station commander at Umlazi police station. These charges could not stick but they held the leader of UPM for a day. It would seem these trumped up charges were meant to prevent him from leading a community meeting being held on the same day. This story has many twists and turns with the police-ANC apparatus constantly trying to intimidate the UPM and residents of Ward 88 in the course of this struggle.

What is striking about these examples is their challenge to mainstream academic and media explanations of community based violence as being merely reducible to intra-ANC battles. In all these instances a conscious awakening and challenge by communities and movements to the ANC state unleashes a low intensity destabilization of these community forces through the police-ANC state nexus.

COSATU’s Challenge

Contrary to Zwelinzima Vavi, the General Secretary of COSATU, who believes South Africa is poised to experience the shock of a ‘ticking time bomb’ rooted in deep inequality and unemployment, this bomb is already exploding in various locales. However, the response of the ANC state has been about a recourse to low intensity violence. The Marikana/Lonmin massacre merely brings this trend into sharp relief. The challenge to COSATU is simple: does it want to remain a democratizing force, with a proud history, and take a stand with the wider working-class or does it want to be complicit in the low intensity war against the broader working-class and citizenry?

At a mass meeting on 22nd August at the University of Johannesburg the Marikana workers and community passionately appealed for solidarity. Such solidarity actions are congealing into but not limited to:

• calls for a national and international day of solidarity action with Marikana workers (including 3 minutes of silence on August 29th at 1pm as a symbolic reference to the 3 minutes it took the callous South African Police Services to mow down the 34 workers on 16 August 2012);
• support for solidarity strike action emerging within the platinum mining industry;
• a call for an independent ‘peoples commission of enquiry’ to ensure full transparency, testimony and justice for the Marikana workers and communities afflicted with state-ANC violence;
• calls demanding the withdrawal of all charges and the immediate release of miners held in police custody;
• calls for the dismissal of the Head of the National Prosecuting Authority and the Minister of Police to be dismissed for trying to cover up the police killings of the miners by utilizing a common purpose provision in apartheid legislation to charge the workers for murder and calls for an end to the police siege and harassment of the Marikana communities.

Marikana as a defining moment in post-apartheid politics is essentially about galvanizing the battle to reclaim South Africa’s democracy from below. It resonates with and expresses the desire of the majority to end the ugly reality of South Africa’s deep seated and racialized class based inequality that has been widening under ANC rule. •

Vishwas Satgar is a founding member of the Democratic Left Front and a member of the DLF national convening committee. This article first appeared on his blog defendingpopulardemocracy.blogspot.ca.

Afghanistan’s Base Bonanza. Total Tops Iraq at That War’s Height

Afghanistan may turn out to be one of the great misbegotten “stimulus packages” of the modern era, a construction boom in the middle of nowhere with materials largely shipped in at enormous expense to no lasting purpose whatsoever. With the U.S. military officially drawing down its troops there, the Pentagon is now evidently reversing the process and embarking on a major deconstruction program. It’s tearing up tarmacs, shutting down outposts, and packing up some of its smaller facilities. Next year, the number of International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) coalition bases in the southwest of the country alone is scheduled to plummet from 214 to 70, according to the New York Times.

But anyone who wanted to know just what the Pentagon built in Afghanistan and what it is now tearing down won’t have an easy time of it.
At the height of the American occupation of Iraq, the United States had 505 bases there, ranging from small outposts to mega-sized air bases. Press estimates at the time, however, always put the number at about 300. Only as U.S. troops prepared to leave the country was the actual — startlingly large — total reported. Today, as the U.S. prepares for a long drawdown from Afghanistan, the true number of U.S. and coalition bases in that country is similarly murky, with official sources offering conflicting and imprecise figures. Still, the available numbers for what the Pentagon built since 2001 are nothing short of staggering.

Despite years of talk about American withdrawal, there has in fact been a long-term building boom during which the number of bases steadily expanded. In early 2010, the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) claimed that it had nearly 400 Afghan bases. Early this year, that number had grown to 450. Today, a military spokesperson tells TomDispatch, the total tops out at around 550.

And that may only be the tip of the iceberg.

When you add in ISAF checkpoints — those small baselets used to secure roads and villages — to the already bloated number of mega-bases, forward operating bases, combat outposts, and patrol bases, the number jumps to 750. Count all foreign military installations of every type, including logistical, administrative, and support facilities, and the official count offered by ISAF Joint Command reaches a whopping 1,500 sites. Differing methods of counting probably explain at least some of this phenomenal rise over the course of this year. Still, the new figures suggest one conclusion that should startle: no matter how you tally them, Afghan bases garrisoned by U.S.-led forces far exceed the 505 American bases in Iraq at the height of that war.

Bases of Confusion

There is much confusion surrounding the number of ISAF bases in Afghanistan. Recently, the Associated Press reported that as of October 2011, according to spokesman Lieutenant Colonel David Olson, NATO was operating as many as 800 bases in Afghanistan, but has since closed 202 of them and transferred another 282 to Afghan control. As a result, the AP claims that NATO is now operating only about 400 bases, not the 550 to 1,500 bases reported to me by ISAF.

This muddled basing picture and a seeming failure by the U.S. and its international partners to keep an accurate count of their bases in the country has been a persistent feature of the Afghan conflict. Some of the discrepancies may result from terminology or from the confusion that can result from communications in any international coalition. ISAF, NATO, and the U.S. military all seem to keep different counts. Mainly, however, the incongruities appear to stem from fundamental issues of record-keeping — of, in particular, a lack of interest in chronicling just how extensively Afghanistan has been garrisoned.

In January 2010, for example, Colonel Wayne Shanks, an ISAF spokesman, told me that there were nearly 400 U.S. and coalition bases in Afghanistan, including camps, forward operating bases, and combat outposts. He assured me that he only expected that number to increase by 12 or a few more over the course of that year.

In September 2010, I contacted ISAF’s Joint Command Public Affairs Office to follow up. To my surprise, I was told that “there are approximately 350 forward operating bases with two major military installations, Bagram and Kandahar airfields.” Perplexed by the apparent loss of 50 bases instead of a gain of 12, I contacted Gary Younger, a public affairs officer with the International Security Assistance Force. “There are less than 10 NATO bases in Afghanistan,” he wrote in an October 2010 email. “There are over 250 U.S. bases in Afghanistan.”

By then, it seemed, ISAF had lost up to 150 bases and I was thoroughly confused. When I contacted the military to sort out the discrepancies and listed the numbers I had been given — from Shanks’s 400 base tally to the count of around 250 by Younger — I was handed off again and again until I ended up with Sergeant First Class Eric Brown at ISAF Joint Command’s Public Affairs Office. “The number of bases in Afghanistan is roughly 411,” Brown wrote in a November 2010 email, “which is a figure comprised of large base[s], all the way down to the Combat Out Post-level.”

If the numbers supplied by Olson to the Associated Press are to be believed, then between November 2010 and October 2011, the number of foreign military bases in Afghanistan nearly doubled, from 411 to about 800. Then, if official figures are again accurate, those numbers precipitously dropped by nearly 350 in just four months.

In February of this year, Lieutenant Lauren Rago of ISAF public affairs told me that there were only 451 ISAF bases in Afghanistan. In July, the ISAF Joint Command Press Desk informed me that the number of bases was now 550, 750, or 1,500, depending on what facilities you chose to count, while NATO’s Olson and the Associated Press put the number back down at the January 2010 figure of around 400. TomDispatch did not receive a response to a request for further clarification from a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan before this article went to press.

Reconciling the numbers may never be possible or particularly edifying. Whatever the true current count of bases, it seems beyond question that the number has far exceeded the level reached in Iraq at the height of the conflict in that country. And while the sheer quantity of ISAF bases in Afghanistan may be shrinking, don’t think deconstruction is all that’s going on. There is still plenty of building underway.

The Continuing Base Build-Up

In 2011, it was hardly more than an empty lot: a few large metal shipping containers sitting on a bed of gravel inside a razor-wire-topped fence at Kandahar Air Field, the massive American base in southern Afghanistan. When I asked about it this spring, the military was tight-lipped, refusing to discuss plans for the facility. But construction is ongoing and sometime next year, as I’ve previously reported, that once-vacant lot is slated to be the site of a two-story concrete intelligence facility for America’s drone war. It will boast almost 7,000 square feet of offices, briefing and conference rooms, and a large “processing, exploitation, and dissemination” operations center.

The hush-hush, high-tech, super-secure facility under construction is just one of many building projects the U.S. military currently has planned or underway there. While some U.S. bases are indeed closing down or being transferred to the Afghan government, and there’s talk of combat operations slowing, as well as a plan for the withdrawal of American combat forces, the U.S. military is still preparing for a much longer haul at mega-bases like Kandahar and Bagram, a gigantic air base about 40 miles north of Kabul. “Bagram is going through a significant transition during the next year to two years,” Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Gerdes of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Bagram Office told Freedom Builder, a Corps of Engineers publication, last year. “We’re transitioning… into a long-term, five-year, 10-year vision for the base.”

According to contract solicitation documents released earlier this year and examined by TomDispatch, plans are in the works for a Special Operations Forces’ Joint Operations Center at Kandahar Air Field. The 3,000-square-meter facility — slated to include offices for commanders, conference rooms, training areas, and a secure communications room — will serve as the hub for future special ops missions in southern and western Afghanistan, assumedly after the last U.S. “combat troops” leave the country at the end of 2014.

Thus far in 2012, no fewer than eight contracts have been awarded for the construction of facilities ranging from a command and control center and a dining hall to barracks and a detention center at either Kandahar or Bagram. Just one of these contracts covered seven separate Air Force projects at Bagram that are slated to be completed in 2013, including the construction of a new headquarters facility, a control room, and a maintenance facility for fighter aircraft.

Improvements and expansions are planned for other bases as well. Documents examined by TomDispatch shed light on a $10 to $25 million construction project at Camp Marmal near Mazar-e-Sharif in Balkh Province on the Uzbekistan and Tajikistan borders. Designated as a logistics hub for the north of the country, the base will see a significant expansion of its infrastructure including an increase in fuel storage capacity, new roads, an upgraded water distribution system, and close to 150 acres of space for stowing equipment and other cargo. According to David Lakin, a spokesman for U.S. Forces-Afghanistan, a contract for work on the base will be awarded by the end of the year with an expected completion date in the summer of 2013.

Base World

Even before the new figures on basing in Afghanistan were available, it was known that the U.S. military maintained a global inventory of more than 1,000 foreign bases. (By some counts, around 1,200 or more.) It’s possible that no one knows for sure. Numbers are increasing rapidly in Africa and Latin America and, as is clear from the muddled situation in Afghanistan, the U.S. military has been known to lose count of its facilities.

Of those 505 U.S. bases in Iraq, some today have been stripped clean by Iraqis, others have become ghost towns. One former prison base — Camp Bucca — became a hotel, and another former American post is now a base for some members of an Iranian “terrorist” group. It wasn’t supposed to end this way. But while a token number of U.S. troops and a highly militarized State Department contingent remain in Baghdad, the Iraqi government thwarted American dreams of keeping long-term garrisons in the center of the Middle East’s oil heartlands.

Clearly, U.S. planners are having similar dreams about the long-term garrisoning of Afghanistan. Whether the fate of those Afghan bases will be similar to Iraq’s remains unknown, but with as many as 550 of them still there — and up to 1,500 installations when you count assorted ammunition storage facilities, barracks, equipment depots, checkpoints,and training centers — it’s clear that the U.S. military and its partners are continuing to build with an eye to an enduring military presence.

Whatever the outcome, vestiges of the current base-building boom will endure and become part of America’s Afghan legacy. What that will ultimately mean in terms of blood, treasure, and possibly blowback remains to be seen.

Nick Turse is the associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a fellow at the Nation Institute. An award-winning journalist, his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, and regularly at TomDispatch. He is the author/editor of several books, including the recently published Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050 (with Tom Engelhardt). This piece is the latest article in his series on the changing face of American empire, which is being underwritten by Lannan Foundation. You can follow him on Tumblr.

WTF? – CIA enters WikiLeaks war

The CIA has set up a unique task force dedicated to assessing the impact of the recent deluge of leaked diplomatic cables and military files from the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

Reports in the US media describe how the WikiLeaks Task Force – which has quickly earned the acronym “WTF” – has been established to provide an “extensive inventory” of all the information that has come out through a number of high profile leaks of classified information.

Julian Assange – espenmoe/flickr

The task force is thought to be involved in calculating the immediate effects of the releases, such as the US ability to recruit informants.

This new role was widely unexpected given that the CIA is one of the government agencies least effected by the leaks, whose source remains unknown despite the continuing imprisonment of former intelligence officer Bradley Manning.

A reluctance on the part of senior CIA staff to share their intelligence on the same platform from which the leaks were taken has meant that only a few files out of hundreds of thousands refer to CIA activities.

The CIA’s system has always been separate from “SIPRNET” – the Pentagon’s classified worldwide three million-strong network from which the leaks were taken – despite most of the reports having a similar secret-level status.

To some within the agency, the leaks have justified the policy of separation – one that came under severe scrutiny after failed inter-agency communications led in part to the terrorist attacks in New York on September 11 2001.

“[The CIA] has not capitulated to this business of making everything available to outsiders. They don’t even make everything available to insiders. And by and large the system has worked,” an unnamed CIA veteran WAS quoted in the Washington Post.

“The consensus was that there were simply too many people potentially who had access [to SIPRNET],” another source is quoted as saying.

Julian Assange, editor-in-chief and co-founder of Wikileaks, remains on bail in the UK pending an extradition hearing in relation to an alleged case of sexual assault in Sweden.

Thomas Wolfe: Santimony and cant of war

Thomas Wolfe
From Look Homeward, Angel (1929)

As the war developed, and the literature of war-enchantment began to appear, Margaret Leonard gave him book after book to read. They were the books of the young men – the young men who fought to blot out the evil of the world with their blood. In her trembling voice she read to him Rupert Brooke’s sonnet – “If I should die, think only this of me” – and she put a copy of Donald Hankey’s A Student in Arms into his hand, saying:

“Read this, boy. It will stir you as you’ve never been stirred before. Those boys have seen the vision!”

He read it. He read many others. He saw the vision. He became a member of this legion of chivalry – young Galahad-Eugene – a spearhead of righteousness. He had gone a-Grailing. He composed dozens of personal memoirs, into which quietly, humorously, with fine-tempered English restraint, he poured the full measure of his pure crusading heart. Sometimes, he came through to the piping times of peace minus an arm, a leg, or an eye, diminished but ennobled; sometimes his last radiant words were penned on the eve of the attack that took his life. With glistening eyes, he read his own epilogue, enjoyed his post-mortem glory, as his last words were recorded and explained by his editor. Then, witness of his own martyrdom, he dropped two smoking tears upon his young slain body. Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

…

The town and the nation boiled with patriotic frenzy – violent, in a chaotic sprawl, to little purpose. The spawn of Attila must be crushed (“exterminated,” said the Reverend Mr. Smallwood) by the sons of freedom. There were loans, bond issues, speech-making, a talk of drafts, and a thin trickle of Yankees into France. Pershing arrived in Paris, and said, “Lafayette, we are here!”, but the French were still looking…

Summer died upon the hills. There was a hue, barely guessed, upon the foliage, of red rust. The streets at night were filled with sad lispings: all through the night, upon his porch, as in a coma, he heard the strange noise of autumn. And all the people who had given the town its light thronging gaiety were vanished strangely overnight. They had gone back into the vast South again. The solemn tension of the war gathered about the nation. A twilight of grim effort hovered around him, above him. He felt the death of joy; but the groping within him of wonder, of glory. Out of the huge sprawl of its first delirium, the nation was beginning to articulate the engines of war – engines to mill and print out hatred and falsehood, engines to pump up glory, engines to manacle and crush opposition, engines to drill and regiment men.

[T]he flares and rockets of the battle-fields cast their light across the plains as well. Young men from Kansas were going to die in Picardy. In some foreign earth lay the iron, as yet unmoulded, that was to slay them…

…

When he returned to the university for his second year, he found the place adjusted soberly to war. It seemed quieter, sadder – the number of students was smaller and they were younger. The older ones had gone to war. The others were in a state of wild, but subdued, restlessness. They were careless of colleges, careers, successes – the war had thrilled them with its triumphing Now. Of what use To-morrow! Of what use all labor for To-morrow! The big guns had blown all spun schemes to fragments: they hailed the end of all planned work with a fierce, a secret joy. The business of education went on half-heartedly, with an abstracted look: in the classroom, their eyes were vague upon the book, but their ears cocked attentively for alarums and excursions without.

…

The Spring advanced with a mounting hum of war. The older students fell out quietly and drifted away to enlistments. The younger strained tensely, waiting. The war brought them no sorrow: it was a pageant which might, they felt, pluck them instantly into glory. The country flowed with milk and honey. There were strange rumors of a land of Eldorado to the north, amid the war industry of the Virginia coast. Some of the students had been there, the year before: they brought back stories of princely wages. One could earn twelve dollars a day, with no experience. One could assume the duties of a carpenter, with only a hammer, a saw, and a square. No questions were asked.

…The war seemed to unearth pockets of ore that had never been known in the nation: there was a vast unfolding and exposure of wealth and power. And somehow – this imperial wealth, this display of power in men and money, was blended into a lyrical music.

…

Twice a week the troops went through. They stood densely in brown and weary thousands on the pier while a council of officers, tabled at the gangways, went through their clearance papers. Then, each below the sweating torture of his pack, they were filed from the hot furnace of the pier into the hotter prison of the ship. The great ships, with their motley jagged patches of deception, waited in the stream: they slid in and out in unending squadrons.

…

Eugene returned to Pulpit Hill in a fever of war excitement. The university had been turned into an armed camp. Young men who were eighteen years old were being admitted into the officers’ training corps. But he was not yet eighteen. His birthday was two weeks off…

By Christmas, with fair luck, he might be eligible for service in khaki: by Spring, if God was good, all the proud privileges of trench-lice, mustard gas, spattered brains, punctured lungs, ripped guts, asphyxiation, mud and gangrene, might be his. Over the rim of the earth he heard the glorious stamp of the feet, the fierce sweet song of the horns. With a tender smile of love for his dear self, he saw himself wearing the eagles of a colonel on his gallant young shoulders. He saw himself as Ace Gant, the falcon of the skies, with 63 Huns to his credit by his nineteenth year. He saw himself walking up the Champs-Elysées, with a handsome powdering of gray hair above his temples, left forearm of the finest cork, and the luscious young widow of a French marshal at his side. For the first time he saw the romantic charm of mutilation. The perfect and unblemished heroes of his childhood now seemed cheap to him – it only to illustrate advertisements for collars and toothpaste. He longed for that subtle distinction, that air of having lived and suffered that could only be attained by a wooden leg, a rebuilt nose, or the seared scar of a bullet across his temple.

Meanwhile, he fed voraciously, and drank gallons of water in an effort to increase his poundage. He weighed himself a half-dozen times a day. He even made some effort at systematic exercise: swinging his arms, bending from his hips, and so on.

And he talked about his problem with the professors. Gravely, earnestly, he wrestled with his soul, mouthing with gusto the inspiring jargon of the crusade. For the present, said the professors, was his Place not Here? Did his Conscience tell him that he Had to go? If it did, they said gravely, they would say nothing more. But had he considered the Larger Issues?

“Is not,” said the Acting Dean persuasively, “is not this your Sector? Is your own Front Line not here on the campus? Is it not here that you must Go Over The Top? Oh, I know,” he went on with a smile of quiet pain, “I know it would be easier to go. I have had to fight that battle myself. But we are all part of the Army now; we are all enlisted in the Service of Liberty. We are all Mobilized for Truth. And each must Do His Bit where it will count for most.”

“Yes,” said Eugene, with a pale tortured face, “I know. I know it’s wrong. But oh, sir, – when I think of those murderous beasts, when I think of how they have menaced All that we Hold Dear, when I think of Little Belgium, and then of My Own Mother, My Own Sister – ” He turned away, clenching his hands, madly in love with himself.

“Yes, yes,” said the Acting Dean gently, “for boys with a spirit like yours it’s not easy.”

“Oh, sir, it’s hard!” cried Eugene passionately. “I tell you it’s hard.”

“We must endure,” said the Dean quietly. “We must be tempered in the fire. The Future of Mankind hangs in the balance.”

Deeply stirred they stood together for a moment, drenched in the radiant beauty of their heroic souls.

A Frenzy of War Talk-Israel’s Outrageous Threats to Attack Iran

by Larry Everest

Over the past several weeks there has been an eruption of alarming reports, high-level meetings, and public debate over whether Israel is close to deciding—or has already decided—to launch a military assault on Iran before the November U.S. presidential election.

On August 10, Channel 2 News, Israel’s leading news program, stated that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak were on the verge of making a decision to go to war. "Insofar as it depends on [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu and [Defense Minister] Ehud Barak,” the Guardian UK, citing Israel’s largest daily Yedioth Ahronoth, reported, “an Israeli military strike on the nuclear facilities in Iran will take place in these coming autumn months, before the U.S. elections in November."

The week before, The New York Times reported, "In Israel, there remains feverish speculation that Mr. Netanyahu will act in September or early October." A former head of Israeli intelligence commented, "If I was an Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks."

In the midst of these threats, the BBC reported that a document purporting to be an Israeli plan was leaked describing a "shock and awe, Israel-style" assault including a massive cyber-attack, barrages of ballistic and cruise missiles, and follow-on attacks by Israeli war planes.

The Outrage of War—and Threatening War

There is widespread debate and speculation over what’s really going on here. Is Israel actually preparing to attack in the coming weeks, calculating that on the eve of the Presidential elections it would be difficult if not impossible for the Obama administration to refuse to support or join such an assault? Are the threats by Israel’s leaders part of a high-stakes ploy aimed at forcing the U.S. imperialists to take an even more aggressive stance toward Iran, with an even more clear cut and near-term commitment to take military action against Iran in order to head off a unilateral Israeli attack as The New York Times and others are suggesting? Is it some combination of both, or another scenario entirely? In any case, there is doubtless more going on behind closed doors than is being aired in public, and in all likelihood no one outside the highest levels of the Israeli and/or U.S. governments can answer these questions with certainty at this moment (and there may be uncertainty at these levels as well).

But three things can be said.

First, whether bluff, actual attack preparations, or some other machination, this flurry of threats represents a further escalation of a very dangerous overall trajectory toward confrontation and possible war against Iran by the world’s main capitalist-imperialist powers and their creation and Middle East garrison state—Israel.

This dynamic has ratcheted up sharply in the past year and in certain ways the U.S., Israel and the European powers are already waging forms of war on Iran (sanctions, covert cyber-attacks, assassinations and the like). The stated and public focus of this clash has been Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, but this is part of a bigger battle by the U.S. and Israel to maintain their domination and control over the entire Middle East-Central Asian region, including their military hegemony.

At present, this battle for dominance is concentrated in their clash with the Islamic Republic of Iran, which is posing an obstacle and challenge to the U.S. on many fronts. This is a clash between two reactionary, outmoded forces, with the U.S. and Israel posing the far greater danger to the planet. Stepped-up U.S. intervention in Syria, including possible military intervention, is linked to these efforts to weaken, isolate, and ultimately topple Iran’s Islamist theocracy. (See my analyses of the recent P5+1 negotiations with Iran, the accelerating U.S.-EU-Israeli campaign against Iran, and the role of Israel.)

Second, whatever Israel’s motives, the moves against Iran are still outrageous and must be condemned. Threatening preemptive war is itself a form of aggression. Let’s call it what it is: terrorism, aimed at terrorizing the people of Iran and the region. And it must be noted here that whatever differences do or don’t exist between Israel and the U.S.—the Obama administration has neither condemned these threats, nor stated categorically that it opposes an Israeli strike and would not support such an action. Instead, Obama officials have talked of Israel’s sovereign "right" to make its own decisions concerning its "defense."

And coming from Israel, the region’s only nuclear power, a country whose main backer, the U.S., is the only country in the world to have ever actually used nuclear weapons, there’s an implied nuclear threat here. This makes it all the more clear that Israeli and U.S. aggression is not aimed at lessening the nuclear danger, much less ridding the world of these horrific weapons of mass destruction. Israeli and U.S. threats—"all options are on the table"—are a form of using nuclear weapons—their nuclear weapons—against non-nuclear Iran. Their demand: that only they be allowed to possess and wield these doomsday devices, while Iran must not be allowed to enrich uranium or ever develop nuclear weapons know-how.

Third, what should our stand be towards all this? First, recognizing that any U.S. and/or Israeli attack would be a towering crime against the people, with the potential to escalate in unpredictable ways. Second, the need to act with urgency to mobilize mass opposition, in many forms and on many fronts, to the U.S.-European-Israeli aggression against Iran that’s taking place right now, and to any kind of military attack—right now. Third, the solution to this madness is not siding with either of the reactionary outmoded forces now at each other’s throats, but fighting to bring forward a whole other, liberating way—including here in the U.S. by actively opposing the threats and crimes of this government—election or no election, no matter who’s in office.

Larry Everest is a correspondent for Revolution newspaper (revcom.us), where this article first appeared and author of Oil, Power & Empire: Iraq and the U.S. Global Agenda (Common Courage 2004). He can be reached via www.larryeverest.org

‘The lost war in Afghanistan

by Afshain Afzal

US Army General Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had to flee the country to save his life when Afghan Taliban carried out attack on US’s controlled highly protected Bagram Air Base on August 21, 2012. General Dempsey escaped an attempt on his life but his aircraft which was directly hit got damaged.

Then General Dempsey immediately fled to some unidentified location in Indian Ocean or Middle East in another aircraft. The official statement from the Pentagon claimed that the strike was not aimed specifically at Dempsey’s plane. However, the statement admitted hitting General Dempsey’s plane in which two personnel of the Air Base were injured while General Dempsey’s C-17 plane and an Apache helicopter were damaged.

A report by a local commander claimed that Bagram Air Base remained under Afghan Taliban control for more than five hours. General Martin Dempsey and group of senior officers were immediately airlifted to save their lives. This is not new that Americans have fled away from the battlefield to save their lives as even the US President George Bush went underground for complete ten days after 11th September attacks on Pentagon and World Trade Centre due to fear of renewed attacks.

Taliban’s spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid issued a statement immediately after the incident claiming that General Dempsey’s aircraft was targeted by Taliban using exact information about its whereabouts. After the attack, the morale of US forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan is ever low and there is lack of willingness by the combatants to serve in Afghanistan.

It is pertinent to mention here that the personnel from 101 Airborne Division, Fort Cambell, 1 Armored Division, Fort Bliss and 10 Mountain Division, Fort Drum that will be deployed in Afghanistan within two months or so have shown reluctance to serve at the War Zones. Unconfirmed reports reflected that the personnel serving in Afghanistan were critical of lack of intelligence input against Taliban. Some personnel referred personnel serving in Afghanistan as blid sitting ducks. The criticism was brushed aside by the senior commanders but within their complaint proved to be correct when a barrage of missiles welcomed US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and made him to flee the country along with top senior officers.

If we recall, similar attacks were carried out during the visits of US President George Bush and Barack Obama. These attacks are the symbols of hatred towards Armed Forces and Governments of US and allied forces. In fact, there was a spark of renewed hatred for every foreign personnel in Afghanistan after the unfortunate incident of burning of hundred of copies the Holy Quran at the US controlled Bagram Airbase.

“Death to America” shouted the group of 8/9 years old Afghan boys. They shouted “We will kill every foreign soldier and war veterans who has killed our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and other innocent Afghan nationals. The Americans have disrespected our Holy Quran; we will take revenge as revenge is in our blood.” It is interesting to note that the Pentagon, CIA and other intelligence agencies have compiled a book, “No Easy Day” by Mark Owen, Penguin Group (USA’s) Dutton imprint, which will be released on 11 September 2012. The book has focused on a number of allegations on Pakistan and Afghanistan and highlighted killing of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad. Although, it is open secret that Osama bin Laden was not in the house where US agencies claim to have attacked. Ironically, the video of Osama bin Laden in that house, which is claimed to be proof of Osama’s presence in that house is also not resembling him in physcique, age, style of beard, flesh on shoulders and hands, etc.

It is pertinent to mention here that in a recent conference held in the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, US Marine Lieutenant General Richard P. Mills, disclosed, “I can tell you that as a commander in Afghanistan in the year 2010, I was able to use my cyber operations against my adversary with great impact,” Mills said. “I was able to get inside his nets, infect his command-and-control, and in fact defend myself against his almost constant incursions to get inside my wire, to affect my operations.”

The remarks have been taken as a joke because why a US General would try to take credit for an international offence which happened two years back and falls within the perview of his duty. Today, US has pulled out bulk of its combatants from Afghanistan and relying on Afghan National Army and Police. One wonders how can US and allies fight war against Taliban without involving its own combatants, who are sitting in Bahrain, Iraq, Australia and CARs states? It seems that the propaganda and drama of credits and discredits is almost over as US has lost the war.

Can the War Israel Wants With Iran Be Averted?

by Danny Schechter

For more than a year now, the drums of war emanating from Israel have become louder and louder with weekly news leaks, and threats including the disclosure of alleged attack plans. The whole exercise seems designed to create a sense of alarm and inevitability.

These warnings have been amplified by statements by American politicians that seem to be occurring with greater frequency.

The escalation of the war on and in Syria, with some spread into Lebanon, only makes the scenarios for regional conflict seem more scary and realistic.

For the most part, in the media at least, Iran has appeared isolated and even crippled by US sanctions while being targeted by noisey statements from Western countries orchestrated by Israel’s backers.

Nations faced with agression often seek alliances, support and solidarity, and Iran is no exception. The meeting of the non-aligned nations in Tehran, and the decision by UN Secretary General Ban Moon to attend, is raising hackles among western warriors and propagandists.

He is defying the wishes of those nations who insist that his presence will give comfort to the Islamic Republic Israel and the US are furious with his decision to “legitimate” Iran, even though you can expect him to speak critically of the government there to appear “balanced.”

Foreign Policy notes, “U.S. and Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, objected to Ban’s attendance on the grounds that it frustrates their efforts to isolate Tehran. "Your visit will grant legitimacy to a regime that is the greatest threat to world peace and security," Netanyahu was quoted as saying.”

The UN is an institution was designed to using its good offices to stop war. Its failure to do so effectively at the time of the US invasion of Iraq on the pretext of curbing non-existent WMDs tarnished its own credibility. It must try to avert a conflict likely to be disastrous, while at the same time, using its diplomatic influence to press Iran to stop any threatening behavior on its part.

Instead of imagining how war with Iran can be contained or avoided, we have websites and TV networks inventing excited scenarios to sell war, not avert it. Armchair generals at think tanks and policy wonks can’t see to wait for the bombs to fly.

Here’s one example: Rense.com speculating on what a war would look like:

“The war began as planned. The Israeli pilots took off well before dawn and streaked across Lebanon and northern Iraq, high above Kirkuk. Flying US-made F-15 and F-16s, the Israelis separated over the mountains of western Iran, the pilots gesturing a last minute show of confidence in their mission, maintaining radio silence.

Just before the sun rose over Tehran, moments before the Muslim call to prayer, the missiles struck their targets. While US Air Force AWACS planes circled overhead–listening, watching, recording–heavy US bombers followed minutes later. Bunker-busters and mini-nukes fell on dozens of targets while Iranian anti-aircraft missiles sped skyward.

The ironically named Bushehr nuclear power plant crumbled to dust. Russian technicians and foreign nationals scurried for safety. Most did not make it.”

This is the latest form of dramatized saber rattling that sounds like some alarmist reality TV show, videogame or a Fox News wet dream. These scenarios always make it seem as if a war will be swift and surgical, with no retaliation, and no consequences.

It brings you back to the Neocon fantasies about the “cakewalk” they expected in Iraq, the war that never went as planned, and took a decade to lose before the US was, in effect, tossed out. (Today there are reports that Iraq is actually defying the financial and oil sanctions imposed on its neighbor.)

This doesn’t stop those who seem to be looking forward to the fight they believe is coming. Here’s another site: Polcymic.com

“In recent weeks, all indications have pointed to an increasingly imminent Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. Whether it be the account of the reporter who was granted access to observe the Israeli Air Force prepare for a strike and subsequently recounted his belief that Israel is now “closer than ever” to mounting an attack, or the former prime minister warning, “If I were Iranian, I would be very fearful of the next 12 weeks,” Israel has made no attempt to hide the contents of its short-term agenda.”

At least this site is not salivating, also noting: “The fatal flaw of an Israeli assault is that some of the facilities lie underground and out of reach. Worse, many, including Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, fear the “unintended consequences” an Israeli strike could sow. The American Security Project, among others, points out that an attack — which would only amount to a flesh wound — would unite Iranians around hardliners and would not only guarantee further nuclear production, but also legitimize it even in the opinion of Iranians previously opposed to the nuclear program.”

Former CIA Station Chief Robert Greniew has another take. He believes that Iran and the US are calling Israel’s bluff. He says so on AlJazeera:

“Israeli President Shimon Peres, reflecting the concerns of many, said a few days ago that "It is clear to us now that we cannot do this alone. It is clear to us we need to work together with America." That view, we are told, is widely shared within the Israeli defense and intelligence establishments. The military people charged with conducting a preemptive strike on Iran are the most likely to resist starting something that they know they cannot finish on their own. They are the ones who realize, despite the uninformed and wishful thinking of some civilians, that long-range air attacks on Iran are unlikely to have more than a marginal impact on its nuclear program unless they are sustained. Israel cannot sustain these attacks. Only the US can. 



“But the Americans have made clear that they want to wait. It is at least part of Netanyahu’s calculation that credible threats of an Israeli strike during the US presidential campaign season and the Bema administration’s desperate desire to avoid it will motivate the US to trade Israeli assurances of near-term forbearance for a more credible and irrevocable US commitment to employ military force if and when evidences of the failure of economic sanctions and the imminence of a hardened Iranian nuclear weapons capability converge. 


…That is more than understandable, because the only really effective military action to be taken would have to be taken by the US, and the main point of an Israeli attack would be to precipitate it. Though it may not have been their conscious intent, the Americans have in effect called Netanyahu’s bluff. If he doesn’t realize it, he soon will.”

Let’s not forget that American airpower, while deadly, is not always effective. Remember “shock and awe” over Baghdad or the bombings of Hanoi? They were devastating, but did not achieve their militarily goals. All of this is war-gaming has to be predicated on the assumption that rationality will prevail on all sides. But as the American political campaign heats up, inflated rhetoric can be expected. Some currently unanticipated high-profile incident or covert provocation could change the equation creating some 911-type pretext for conflict. We live in a dangerous world.

News Dissector Danny Schechter blogs at Newsdissector.net. His latest books are Occupy: Dissecting Occupy Wall Street and Blogothon. He hosts a show on ProgressiveRadioNetwork.net. Comments to dissector

The Tehran NAM Summit Undermines US-Israeli War Plans Directed against Iran

by Kourosh Ziabari

The 16th summit of the Non-Aligned Movement kicked off in the Iranian capital of Tehran on August 25 and the heads of state and government of the 120-member organization are slated to meet on August 30 and 31 to discuss the most important international developments ranging from the violence and crisis in Syria and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Iran’s nuclear program. During the summit, the rotating presidency of NAM will be conferred to Iran by Egypt which had been assuming the movement’s presidency since 2009.

Consisted of nearly two third of the United Nations body, Non-Aligned Movement is the second largest international organization and its members are said to be politically independent of the world’s great powers, namely the United States and its European allies. As said by the Cuban revolutionary President Fidel Castro, the ultimate objective of the movement is to foster "the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries" in their "struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics."

The United States and Israel have been intensively trying to dissuade the world leaders and politicians from attending the summit through running an all-out media campaign aimed at derailing and undermining the largest diplomatic gathering in Iran’s contemporary history; however, as said by Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi, more than 100 countries will be sending delegations to the summit of which 51 countries will take part in the level of president, Prime Minister and vice president.

This year’s summit is important for Iran from different viewpoints. First of all, Iran can form regional and international alliances within the framework of the NAM to circumvent the biting economic sanctions which the United States and European Union have imposed on it over its nuclear program. Moreover, the summit will ostensibly foil the plots to isolate Iran and make it a secluded, unpopular country. And most importantly, by the virtue of the NAM summit, leaders will be visiting Iran who mostly shunned Iran over the past years as a result of the rigorous anti-Iranian propaganda of the mainstream, corporate media.

Bolivian President Evo Morales, Cuban President Raul Castro, Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Emir of Kuwait Sabah Al-Ahmad, Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, Sultan of Oman Qaboos bin Said al Said, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, Senegalese President Macky Sall, Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Turkish President Abdullah Gul are among the high-ranking guests of the 16th NAM summit in Tehran.

In an excruciating defiance of the calls by Israel and the United States, the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will also attend the summit.

Since several weeks ago, the U.S. mainstream media have been spreading falsehood and misinformation about Iran, decrying the fact that Iran has been selected to chair such an enormous international organization. The American journalists and political commentators didn’t spare any effort to portray Iran an isolated and hated country, even resorting to offensive and insulting adjectives in describing Iran and its people.

"Do any of the Non-Aligned Movement member states recognize the infuriating irony that an organization seeking to solve the world’s problems and enhance its own stature in the international arena is choosing to hold its summit in one of the world’s most dangerous and problematic nations, not to mention the most blatantly anti-Semitic one, while simultaneously honoring the meeting’s hosts who regularly commit egregious human-rights abuses?" wrote Laura Kam, the Executive Director of Global Affairs at The Israel Project, a supposedly "non-profit educational organization headquartered in Washington."

Ignoring the glorious civilization, rich culture and ancient past of Iran, the executive director of this pro-Israeli lobby has recklessly called Iran "one of the world’s most dangerous and problematic nations." However, such descriptions and attributions are not unprecedented. The pro-war, neo-conservative commentators and journalists have frequently talked of Iran in such a pejorative and derogatory way. In an October 12, 2011 article published on Foreign Policy titled "A History of Violence," Matthew Levitt, an American expert on "Islamist terrorism" posed the question that "Is there anyone who still doubts that Iran is a terrorist state?" and wrote, "Iran’s willingness to use brutal means to achieve its foreign-policy goals is nothing new. Since the creation of the Islamic Republic, U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly identified terrorism as one of the regime’s signature calling cards."

Writing for The Daily Mail, British journalist Max Hastings pointed out on March 7, 2012 that "bombing Iran may appear justified," adding that "[f]ew of us doubt that Iran is a rogue state led by dangerous fanatics. The world would be a safer place if Iran’s nuclear facilities disappeared beneath a heap of rubble."

Jonathan S. Tobin, the senior online editor of the Commentary Magazine wrote in a July 20, 2012 article after the deadly attack on the Israeli tourists in Bulgaria that Iran should be held responsible, given its long history of "promoting terrorism": "Iran is a terrorist state, infused with Jew-hatred and determined to achieve its nuclear goal. Until the administration starts talking — and acting — as if it understands this, its Iran policy will remain a muddle of half-hearted and ineffective measures."

Such statements are frequently heard from the Western political commentators and officials. They tend to consider Iran a threat to world peace and don’t refrain from calling for a military strike against Iran to eliminate this threat.

The NAM summit in Tehran, however, will demonstrate that the term "international community" cannot be exclusively used to refer to the United States and its allies. There are other countries in the world that are entitled to the right of self-determination and maybe are not willing to be entrapped in the neo-conservative war propaganda against Iran.

The gathering of some 51 heads of state and delegations from international organizations and observing members of the Non-Aligned Movement is surely disappointing for those who want to find Iran isolated, packed down, whether it’s the United States, Israel or the European powers.

Nuclear Crucifixion: Fake Data and Ficticious Reports used as A Pretext to Wage War on Iran

by Ismail Salami

With over 2000 highly operational nuclear weapons already in the world, it is ironic, to say the least, that Iran’s nuclear energy program is considered by the US and its allies as a threat to "global security".

In a recent report, the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) has published satellite imagery which it claims indicates ‘pink colored material’ covering a building at a sensitive military site in Iran which UN inspectors wish to visit. They claim the tarp at the Parchin military complex may be an effort to hide clean-up work. This think tank institute is run by David Albright who garnered extreme notoriety over the lies he spread about Iraq’s alleged WMDs.

In fact, it is widely believed that Mr. Albright’s ubiquitous lies infernally contributed to the outbreak of the US-led invasion of Iraq, wreaking a humanitarian havoc upon the country and claiming the lives of over one million Iraqis. In other words, Albright paved the way for US military aggression and an ongoing violence in Iraq. Crowned with duplicity of first water, Albright is now at the helm of a shadowy institute which works under the cloak of a think tank.

Prior to the outbreak of the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Albright held a string of interviews with different western media and argued that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. Several months before the war, he said in an interview with PBS, “I personally believe there’s plenty of evidence for biological and chemical, and there’s sufficient evidence to believe that there’s a reconstituted nuclear weapons program. As an inspection attitude, I think you have to assume that they have more than what the evidence suggests, and that it’s very important for inspectors to go in there with a very skeptical attitude and insist that the Iraqis prove them wrong.”

In another interview with CNN in 2002, Albright said, “In terms of the chemical and biological weapons, Iraq has those now. How many, how could they deliver them? I mean, these are the big questions.”

Unfortunately, Albright’s fictitious reports were deliberately and systematically cited in different western media which afforded Bush administration an excuse to justify the invasion of Iraq.

Now Albright is working as the president of an organization known as the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) which is more reminiscent of Pakistan’s intelligence agency (ISI). Clad in a different cloak, Albright is once again pursuing the same path of mischief he followed regarding Iraq.

These facts aside, what should really agitate international mind and perturb sensible people should include the states in possession of the myriad nuclear bombs across the world.

According to arms control website, these nuclear states are as follows:

1. United States: Approximately 5,000 total warheads: 1,737 deployed strategic warheads, approximately 500 operational tactical weapons (some 200 deployed in Europe), and approximately 2,700 reserve warheads (active and inactive) in storage.

2. Russia: Approximately 5,500 total warheads: 1,492 operational strategic warheads, approximately 2,000 operational tactical warheads (not deployed), and approximately 2,000 reserve warheads in storage.

3. China: About 240 total warheads.

4. France: Fewer than 300 operational warheads.

5. United Kingdom: Fewer than 160 deployed strategic warheads, total stockpile of up to 225.

Add to the list India, Israel, and Pakistan which have never joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and have constantly refused to sign any related treaties whatsoever.

In addition to the aforementioned report, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) revealed in June that at the start of 2012, “eight states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan and Israel—possessed approximately 4400 operational nuclear weapons. Nearly 2000 of these are kept in a state of high operational alert. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together possess a total of approximately 19,000 nuclear weapons.”

According to the SIPRI, Israel possesses 80 highly operational nuclear warheads.

Israel, which follows a policy of nuclear ambiguity, never comments on its nuclear capabilities. However, they are widely known to possess 300 to 400 nuclear warheads with 80 of them in high operational alert according to SIPRI, that is, they are ready to fire. On the other hand, Germany has generously helped Israel develop its military nuclear capabilities. In fact, they were largely paid for by the German government for reasons only known to themselves. According to Spiegel, a German shipyard has already built three submarines for Israel in the northern German city of Kiel, and three more are planned. Israel is reportedly arming the submarines with nuclear-tipped cruise missiles. Funny enough, the German government has been aware of Israel’s nuclear weapons program for years and commenced delivering the submarines in the full knowledge that they would equip them with nuclear missiles.

The idea that there are over 2000 highly operational nuclear weapons in the world is some beyond imagination. The definition of highly operation is that they can be shot at any desired time.

Given the destructive power of these nuclear weapons and the fact that they can easily bring the world to the brink of destruction if not to total chaos, the idea of a safe world is but absurdly grotesque. Even more grotesque is the fact that a number of the so-called international bodies lie through their teeth about Iran’s nuclear energy program which Iranian leaders vehemently enunciate are meant for only civilian purposes and shut their eyes to the potentially apocalyptic horror these weapons can unleash in the hands that hold them.

An inquisitive mind may ask: Why should Iran bear the brunt of nuclear crucifixion while there are already over 2000 highly operational nuclear bombs which are capable of plunging the world back into a state of the pre-creation cosmic blob?

The Dirty War on Syria

The Dirty War on Syria
John-Paul Leonard

The Not so Independent Independent?

Robert Fisk has been starting to doubt the official line a little in the pieces he’s writing from Damascus for the Independent. I submitted two comments to his latest article, “The bloody truth about Syria’s uncivil war – Those trying to topple Assad have surprised the army with their firepower and brutal tactics.”

(The first comment showed up after a few minutes, presumably it had passed computerized vetting for bad language, but it disappeared in an hour or two. Not sure if they ran afoul of the thought police, or if there is a rule against URL’s in posts. So here they are again without the URL’s, let’s hope they stay up. Most of the comments so far are pro-Syria and anti-US death squads.)

1. I hope this comment somehow reaches the Syrian Arab Army leadership. Fisk’s reports often give indications that the Syrian army needs a well-thought-out counter-insurgency doctrine on how to deal with terrorists, who take over urban districts and use civilians as human shields. That is a war crime, and the FSA are a criminal gang. Nonetheless, tanks and artillery are not really suitable for taking out snipers. Why not empower more civilians and army veterans to defend their own neighborhoods? For more details see the blog “The Dirty War on Syria”.

2. Dear Mr Fisk,

I’d like to ask if in repeating that “the revolt began after secret police officers tortured to death a 13-year-old boy,” have you checked into this or are you trusting the media – the corrupt warmongering mainstream media? There are two sides to every story and every time I dig out the Syrian side, I find that the tale put out everywhere by the CIA-trained FSA is a Big Lie.

In the case of Hamza al Khateeb, he was 17, not 13, and he was not arrested and tortured for writing graffiti. He joined by an armed mob that was firing at a police station, and was killed by three bullets – whether fired by the police or perhaps even by provocateurs, commandos tasked with stoking violence. The cause of death – gunshot wounds, and not torture – was established by the coroner before it was known who Hamza was. His body was taken from the scene of the shootings directly to the hospital.

The Syrian government narrative “True Story of Hamza al-Khateeb’s Death Belies Media Fabrications” can be found online as well as a youtube video “Medical Examiner Interview about Hamza Al-Khateeb.”

I think you too, the more you dig into the Syria story, the more you will find it is a dirty war based on a Big Lie against a small, proud, nation that dares to be INDEPENDENT.

Aug 24

Give Us Each Day Our Fill of Lies

A top story on Yahoo yesterday blared the headline, “Assad’s War on Syria’s Children.” The casual viewer will assume that Assad is massacring 1000s of kids. Read it and come to find out all they have is two kids who exhibit violent behavior, after their rebel father and uncle fought back against the army instead of evacuating. Moral: terrorists make terrible parents.

Typical, twisted, Goebbelsian MSM war propaganda, from the aptly named “Daily Beast.”

For that false flag the US is planning in order to get their war on Syria, I bet you their proxy insurgents the FSA Fanatic Saudi Assassins wipe out a school full of kids with chemical weapons and blame it on Assad. No war propaganda more potent than the killing of babies.

They have already recycled the phony Kuwait/Iraq incubator babies deaths tale from 1990 against Syria now. The FSA massacre at Houla was blamed on the Syrian government and used to justify sanctions against Syria – even after the truth had come out that it was done by US-sponsored death squads and not the Syrian Army.

They make up their own truth – and it’s the Big Lie every time.

Aug. 22

Turnabout is Fair Play – Syria should set up Local Militias, and put a Bounty on Terrorist Heads too

By now I’ve seen innumerable reports and videos of the gratitude of Syrians for the protection of their Army against the depredations of FSA terrorist gangs. The latest one appeared in The Telegraph, Aug. 21, Robert Fisk reporting:

At least a dozen civilians emerged from their homes, retirees in their 70s, shopkeepers and local businessmen with their families and, unaware that a foreign journalist was watching, put their arms round Syrian troops.

I also just came across a report from June in Global Research on how the largesse of the oil emirates Qatar and KSA trickles down to the smallest pawns in the game

The young people no longer want to work in the field. You can earn every day 5000, 8000, 1000 pounds, if they kill policemen. A man from Qusseir (Qusair), who has recently reported himself to the authorities, has confessed, that he has 150 000 Syrian pounds for committing the kidnapping and murder of six soldiers.

Syrian soldiers have said that they have received about 180 000 Syrian pounds [about $3000 US], to desert (from the Army), what is a fortune here in Syria.

Fisk also quotes an Army general on the terrorists:

They snipe at us and then they run and hide and in the sewers. Foreigners, Turks, Chechens, Afghans, Libyans, Sudanese.” And Syrians, I said. “Yes, Syrians too, but smugglers and criminals,” he said.

Juxtaposing these three facts, a tactic occurred to me that could help Syria win the counter-insurgency. Rather than making civilians wait for the army to save them, why not recruit trustworthy veterans or reservists for a neighborhood militia in civilian dress? Some neighborhoods and clans have already done this on their own, Christians in particular, setting up checkpoints with armed guards to protect themselves. Most Syrian men serve two years in the army, so they know how to fire a gun.

As an incentive, declare a bounty for the killing or capture of foreign terrorists. Of course, such a program needs to be well-planned to avoid abuses. Candidates for neighborhood counter-insurgency commando service would need to be vetted and trained to avoid chaos and killings of ordinary civilians, or infiltration by FSA sympathizers. But we already have those problems with the FSA. So with judicious application, such a program could be a game-changer.

Bounties should either be higher, or paid exclusively for, foreign combatants. For their protection, foreign journalists should wear Press jackets, carry a visa, and make themselves known to authorities in the areas where they are working. Reservists might need special training in stalking snipers, and their identities might need to be kept secret, to avoid being singled out by terrorists.

Chairman Mao said, “The guerrilla must swim among the people as the fish swims.” The same holds true for counter-insurgents. Well-targeted, hand-in-glove methods will also greatly reduce the physical and moral damage from the use of heavy weapons, which are at any rate poorly suited to hit-and-run guerrilla tactics.

It is understandable if the Syrian authorities may experience anxiety about loss of direct control over each weapon and soldier under such a policy, but adequate control can be maintained. The fact remains that the heroic Syrian Arab Army was built for a conventional war with Israel. Today’s war waged by the US and proxies is an insidious, unconventional model, requiring innovation and cunning to combat it.

Update Aug. 24. When i see a single FSA sniper terrorizing a whole neighborhood, or one terrorist blowing up a tank with an RPG, I really have to ask if the SAA are using the best mix of weapons. True, they keep killing terrorists, but can they afford the cost? NATO can send more insurgents and wear Syria down in a war of attrition.

Nowadays is the age of open source – you can’t concentrate all tasks and do everything yourself – got to harness the power of the people. The Evil Empire got to be as big as it is because it learned this long ago. Syria is under attack by a CIA People Power Coup, among other things. The Syrian people are so thankful to their army, I’m sure they would be glad to help.

A comment on Twitter today by @FadiSalem, quoting an Aleppo activist about the FSA: “They have no regards what so ever for civilian life. They hide among them, leave them when shelling starts.”

Aug. 20

REALITY AND DEMONOLOGY IN THE WAR ON SYRIA

It seems the real situation in Syria is never as bad as the hysteria pushed by the Western media. Of course, no news is always bad news for the media, but with Syria, there is an added motive – catastrophic reports raise the pressure for intervention.

That’s why I liked the concluding words of this unusually low-key, level-headed “Despatch from Damascus” by a German journalist, posted on Aug. 4th:

Damascus itself was placid, and normal life went on…I walked through the city, speaking to shop owners, taxi drivers, people on the streets, policemen, women in headscarves and in Western outfits. The answer was always the same – the international media completely distort what is happening. They singled out the Qatar-based TV station Al-Jazeera for particular criticism…

A final surprise came at the Lebanese side of the border. There I saw the first time the black-white-green rebel flag waving in the wind. Immediately beyond the Lebanese border station were a dozen Western TV teams, waiting for the ‘refugees’. Some of them were paying interviewees in dollars for short interviews; and the wilder the story, the better they seemed to like it. It seems that reality doesn’t mean all that much when the Western media talk about Syria.

From this account we not only learn of the exaggeration of violence, but also that the people overwhelmingly support the government.

In a recent interview, Alex Jones agreed with guest Syrian Girl Partisan that short of a chemical weapons false flag attack, the empire has few options open to intervene. The latest attempt to drum up such a pretext was aimed as much at Iran as Syria. The claim by Dep’t of Offense Secretary Panetta that Iran is training militias in Syria was a masterpiece of duplicity

– the US itself has already invaded both Iran and Syria with commandos, death squads and proxies,
– the allegation of a military intervention by Iran in Syria could be a pretext for an overt attack on either country.
– claims of a loyalist militia are constantly used to shift blame for killings by US proxy death squads onto the Syrian government, and to cover up the fact that Syrian civilians themselves are rejecting and even opposing the US-backed militants

Perhaps the US will be content just do as much damage to Syria as it can using the jihadist cannon fodder available, and let the conflict splutter on. They have been trying to crack Syria for 65 years now. Syria’s electoral reform will make it easier to buy influence in the country. Already in 2014, they can try to create a scandal over the question whether the constitution allows Assad to run for president again or not. While one school of thought was that Syria needed to be taken out before tackling Iran, tying up Syria with low-intensity warfare may be enough.

Facts vs. Acts — Analyzing Activist Assumptions

Let us look at some of the reasons given by opposition activists for supporting armed violence against the Syrian state.
– 42 years of rule by the Assad family
– Security forces allegedly firing on unarmed demonstrators
– Torture
– Shelling in civilian areas

Like Father Like Son?

When you ask Syria opposition activists, “Why not give the new reforms a chance?” they often answer, “Too little, too late. We suffered 42 years under the Assad dictatorship.” When you then ask why they are not supporting the protests against the Al Khalifa family of Bahrain, who have ruled there for over 200 years, you get no answer.

The opposition likes to conflate Hafez Assad the strongman with his son. Bashar Assad was chosen to be president by the Baath party, and does not appear to wield absolute, personal power. Yet the opposition blames him for everything from the houseflies to the weather.

My impression is that Bashar is on the soft side for a leader, rather than the strongman dictator type. In interviews, he conscientiously rejects any notion of his own personal power, speaking always of the constitution, the party, the office.

When Bashar was first elected, he announced plans for reforms. Unfortunately, they were too long in coming, true enough. Perhaps he couldn’t push them through over the old guard in the Baath party.

Another point of softness was B. Assad’s attempt to win Western favor by making concessions. A few years back, he let in the IMF austerity shamans — an entering wedge for destabilization. This spring, he tried to respect the UN ceasefire, which only let terrorists get more deeply entrenched.
If the US and the activists they support wanted reform, they could have pushed for reform and got it. Instead, the protests immediately turned to violence. Nevertheless, as soon as the protests started in Spring 2011, the Baathists saw the writing on the wall and started the political reform process.

Who pulled the trigger first? Who had the motive and the plan?

Another favorite opposition argument is that peaceful protesters restrained themselves for a long time, until the “brutal crack-down by the Assad regime” stoked their rage and they started to fight back. However, the facts show that violence began almost from the start, so quickly that it is very hard to figure out who fired first. Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research analysed the evidence in a May 2011 article, “Syria: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO ‘Humanitarian Intervention.’” He writes,

The Western media has presented the events in Syria as part of the broader Arab pro-democracy protest movement, spreading spontaneously from Tunisia, to Egypt, and from Libya to Syria.

Media coverage has focussed on the Syrian police and armed forces, which are accused of indiscriminately shooting and killing unarmed “pro-democracy” demonstrators. While these police shootings did indeed occur, what the media failed to mention is that among the demonstrators there were armed gunmen as well as snipers who were shooting at both the security forces and the protesters.

Chossudovsky notes that the protests started not in Damascus, where the authentic internal opposition is based, but in Daraa (or Deraa), a small town of 75,000 souls on the border with Jordan. The pattern has held throughout — the FSA always concentrates on targets near borders, as they must be supplied from foreign countries.

The first fatalities in Daraa were seven policemen and four armed protesters. Some or all of the dead may have been shot by mysterious snipers on rooftops, who were shooting at BOTH police and protesters. In Syrian state TV footage used by the BBC, it says on the screen, “You are seeing gunmen shooting at unarmed civilians and security forces.”

Why shoot at both sides? To stoke enmity and violence between the two sides. What would be the motive? For violent elements to take over the protest movement and overthrow the state.

In other words, as the BBC put it in their emotion-charged video “Inside the Secret Revolution,” the snipers were “agents provocateur.” But the BBC claims these provocateurs were plainclothes government thugs — the “Shabiha.” The word means “spooks,” and refers to a gang of Latakia port smugglers, among them a nephew of Hafez Assad, during the 70′s and ’80s. Hafez Assad suppressed them in the 90s, and they were disbanded in 2000.

Up until the stage of open warfare this summer made it impossible, drumbeaters for war on Syria have blamed all killings by terrorists on the Shabiha. Yet there is very little evidence for their “ghostly” existence (other than the usual “unconfirmed activist reports” and dubious videos).

Of course, the last thing a government wants to do is stoke internal violence, and even less, to kill its own security forces. The Syrian authorities were doing what any state does, to try and restore law and order, not to pour oil on flames and engulf itself.

Rather than “cracking down,” the authorities immediately tried to calm the situation by offering to release the students who had been arrested, but the mobs went ahead and set fire to government buildings. Were they paid or incited to do this?

The Biased Broadcasting Corporation, or BBC

The BBC don’t try to explain why the government would want to provoke violence. We know, however, from the US Unconventional Warfare manual TC 18-01, that the US does use this kind of violent destabilization tactic. The BBC then present a “witness” (with face dramatically hidden from the camera), allegedly a Syrian army defector. His wild story would have fetched a good price on the Lebanese border. Officers allegedly ordered their men at gunpoint to shoot, saying, “Don’t shoot the ‘armed groups,’ they are with us. There are no rebels, no conspirators, just the people. Shoot the people.” According to this Hollywood-cartoon-villain self-indictment, the officers shot dead seven men because they had refused to shoot the protesters! A shocking but inherently absurd script with a slick presentation that still makes a strong impression.

A month later, as the army occupies Daraa to try to restore order, Al-Jazeera reports this hellish scenario: people don’t dare to go in the streets because “plain clothes thugs and secret police” snipers on rooftops are shooting both civilians and soldiers. Based on “unconfirmed activist reports” of course. But we have a report from Webster Tarpley on the same situation in Homs in November. Tarpley told that the people of Homs begged for the Army to come restore orde. Meanwhile the Big Lie Media pinned blame on Assad for the havoc wreaked by the FSA there, always claiming the rooftop snipers were Assad’s – one form of their video lies.

Tarpley on Russia Today, Nov. 2011:

I’ve just completed about one week of fact-finding tour of the country and I’ve been in Homs, I’ve been in Tartus, Banias, I’ve been in the military hospital here in Baghdad, and I can tell you what average everyday Syrians of all ethnic groups – Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Alawite, Druze – what they say about this, is that they are being shot at by snipers. In Homs in particular they are saying that there are terrorist snipers shooting at civilians, men women and children. Blind terrorism, random killing, simply for the purpose of destabilizing the country. I would not call this a civil war by any stretch of the imagination. I think that’s a very, very misleading term in the following sense. What you’re dealing with here are death squads. You’re dealing here with terror commandos, the kind of thing that everybody remembers from Argentina and Central America. This is a typical CIA method. In this case it’s a joint production of the CIA, MI-6, Mossad, DGSE of the French. It’s got money coming from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar.

All throughout 2011 and up until the surge on Damascus and Aleppo, the MSM try to pretend that all killings have been carried out either by the army or the Shabiha, never by the FSA. FSA terrorists sometimes even dress in Syrian Army uniforms, to reflect blame for their terror acts on army. Total casualty figures are inflated, packaged as civilian deaths and laid at the government’s door in full, without detailing how many were combatants.

It takes careful analysis, but when the effort is made, it never seems to fail: the MSM narrative is always a Big Lie, where atrocities are groundlessly blamed on government forces. One is tempted to simply ignore the MSM.

When a government carries out a false flag, they are always quick to point the blame at their target. Thus the BBC was quick to blame “government death squads,” but the Syrians were puzzled. They did not leap to tell the story that would work for them and say, these are CIA death squads – they just called them “protesters.” A similar time lapse was seen after the Houla massacre, where the media accused the Syrian army of shelling civilians. The government was non-plussed and could only protest innocence. It took a while for the truth to come out – that the massacre was carried out by FSA jihadists, who had cut the throats of Assad supporters with knives. No traces of government shelling were to be seen, and the photo they had shown of bodies strewn everywhere was from a scene in Baghdad…But the media had scored their points, and the USUK had used the massacre to tighten sanctions on Syria, with no looking back. This is full-blooded war propaganda, creating facts on the ground, and the Anglo-Americans have always been the top specialists at it.

The “Shabiha” – Ghosts of Ghosts

I have seen innumerable cases where photos of civilians killed by “shabiha” were debunked as fakes, and not one confirmed one yet. If real photos were available, “activists” would not resort to faking them, with the risk of being found out. This leads to the conclusion that there are no real photos, and I have been assured by an anti-FSA activist who checked into this in the first few months and found that all photos of government atrocities were fakes.

It’s logical that the intentional civilian killings are carried out by the FSA, as they have the motive – it destabilizes Syria. One, they can blame the killings on “Shabiha.” Two, they hope to terrorize the populace into supporting them. Three, it weakens the country and may weaken the people’s will to resist takeover by the US proxies. Some grief-stricken families may turn against the government for not stopping the FSA from killing their loved ones. This is all tried and true insurrectionary tactics.

Meanwhile the government has every motive and makes every effort not to kill civilians, but it must defeat armed insurrection.

Torture

Another reason given for opposition to Assad is torture.
Torture is a bad thing, no question about it.
It causes psychological damage to victims, and even to its practitioners. And to no purpose – it doesn’t even work nearly as well as soft indoctrination.
Torture should be eliminated. However, it is not the reason the US wants to topple Assad.
A few years ago, under the practice of “extraordinary rendition,” the US even sent “terrorist suspects” to Syria to be tortured. The US also tortures inmates in Guantanamo. Torture is a worldwide problem.
If activists want to end torture, is making war on Syria the best way to go about it? No. Allowing reforms to take root, allowing a multiparty democracy to develop, is the best hope to end the practice.
War on Syria will lead to more, not less terror. Government officials lack experts in soft indoctrination methods, yet feel the need to find out if detainees are just “peaceful protesters” or armed militants. And the torture of civilians by the FSA is much more brutal than that by the state. The Al Berri clan were beaten and bloodied before being shredded in a machine gun fusillade.

Shelling Residential Areas

This is an issue that has worried me, as seen in earlier blog entries below.
The media like to call this “Assad using the army to attack his own people,” as they are fishing for a UN resolution under the R2P “responsibility to protect” theory.

Let’s ask opposition activists why the FSA is using residential areas as human shields? The activists will probably say it’s OK for revolutionaries.
Do they know this is a war crime, as security expert Charles Shoebridge pointed out the other day, in a tweet to Human Rights Watch reminding them of their own position – “all sides must avoid deploying military targets such as fighters or weapons in or near densely populated areas, and they must try to remove civilians from areas of military operations.”

In other words, endangering civilians by mounting a guerrilla warfare operation in cities and towns is a war crime in itself, not to mention the acts of terror against non-combatants by the invading mercenaries.
While sharing my sentiment that we’d like it if a more limited type of response could eradicate the insurgents’ occupation of urban areas, Shoebridge also noted, “A person who knows about military matters knows this is what happens in urban war. Rebels condemned by UN for exactly this.”

Sometimes the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) shells areas where FSA snipers have occupied the rooftops. Under cover of artillery fire, SAA is able to take back the high ground. It’s a question of tactics.

The army has made statements that they are striving to minimize civilian casualties, by advancing slowly on terrorist nests, giving civilians a chance to flee.

The FSA also do have some heavy weapons and mortars, which they are known to lob unprovoked into peaceful civilian areas.

According to carefully-laid plans

We’ve seen now that the motivation for violence rests squarely with the Evil Empire, not with the Syrian state. As for the Empire’s evil plan, an updated version of it was published by Michel Chossudovsky on Aug. 3 in “Towards A ‘Soft Invasion’? The Launching of a ‘Humanitarian War’ against Syria”. He writes,

Rather than carrying out an all out Blitzkrieg, the US-NATO-Israel military alliance has chosen to intervene under the diabolical R2P frame of “humanitarian warfare”. Modelled on Libya, the following broad stages are envisaged:

1) A US-NATO backed insurgency [involving] by death squads is launched under the disguise of a “protest movement” (mid-March 2011 in Daraa)

2) British, French, Qatari and Turkish Special Forces are on the ground in Syria, advising and training the rebels as well as overseeing special operations. Mercenaries hired by private security companies are also involved in supporting rebels forces

3) The killings of innocent civilians by the Free Syrian Army (FSA) are deliberately carried out as part of a covert intelligence operation. (See SYRIA: Killing Innocent Civilians as part of a US Covert Op. Mobilizing Public Support for a R2P War against Syria, Global Research, May 2012)

4) The Syrian government is then blamed for the resulting atrocities. Media disinformation is geared towards demonizing the Syrian government. Public opinion is led into endorsing a military intervention on humanitarian grounds.

5) Responding to public outrage, US-NATO is then “forced to step in” under a Humanitarian “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) mandate. Media propaganda goes into high gear. “The International Community” comes to the rescue of the Syrian people.”

6) Warships and fighter jets are then deployed to the Eastern Mediterranean. These actions are coordinated with logistical support to the rebels and Special forces on the ground.

7) The final objective is “regime change” leading to the “break-up of the country” along sectarian lines and/or the installation of an “Islamist-dominated or influenced regime” modelled on Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

8) War plans in relation to Syria are integrated with those pertaining to Iran. The road to Tehran goes through Damascus. The broader implications of US-NATO intervention are military escalation and the possible unleashing of a regional war extending from the Eastern Mediterranean to Central Asia, in which China and Russia could be directly or indirectly involved.

Stages 1 through 4 have already been implemented.

Stage 5 has been announced.

Progressives for and Against Assad Want the Same Things After All

If you ask progressive pro- and anti-government activists what is their vision for Syria, it probably comes down to the same shopping list:

– secular, pluralist, parliamentary democracy
– freedom of speech and political association
– security and safety, human rights, women’s rights, no police brutality
– continuation of the policy of resistance to Zionism, no peace without the Golan Heights
– national unity, economic independence and development

For some progressives like me, it was clear before the fiasco of Aleppo and Damascus that the best chance for Syria to reach these goals was to give the reform constitution a chance. After Aleppo, it became clear to many more people that the armed militants would deliver just the opposite. They represent the worst of all possible worlds – a descent into the kind of hell the Ugly American Empire has left behind in Somalia or Afghanistan. A shattered landscape of feuding warlords, a human rights catastrophe that makes feudalism look like Utopia, Syria as a pariah and an appendage of Israel, carved up like the map under the French mandate, and ironically under the same flag.

Why do Revolutions Backfire?

Like begets like. Due process leads to democracy. Violence leads to tyranny.

It’s not clear though how many “opposition activists” really are inspired by revolutionary or democratic sentiment, and how many are trolls. Neo-con wolves in lefty clothing reflect perfectly the duplicitous essence of Color Revolution Technology.