http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/ What's on the minds of young leaders from around the globe? en-us http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/205453 Strategic interests behind US-Ethiopian alliance


by Carl Bloice

Global Research, May 14, 2007
Black Commentator


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Carl Bloice elucidates the failure or unwillingness of the Western media to accurately report the invasion and occupation of Somalia by a US backed Ethiopian government. He asserts that behind the US-Ethiopian political alliance lies a strategic move to secure positioning in this oil region.
The US bombing of Somalia took place while the World Social Forum was underway in Kenya, three days before a large anti-war action in Washington on 27 January 2007.

Nunu Kidane, network coordinator for Priority Africa Network (PAN), was present in Nairobi. After returning home, she asked: how 'to explain the silence of the US peace movement on Somalia?'

Writing in the San Francisco community newspaper Bay View, Kidane suggested one valid reason: 'Perhaps US-based organizations don't have the proper analytical framework to understand the significance of the Horn of Africa region. Perhaps it is because Somalia is largely seen as a country with no government and in perpetual chaos; with "fundamental Islamic" forces, not deserving of defense against the military attacks by US in search of "terrorists".'

To that it may be added the role of the major US media in the lead up to the invasion and the suffering now taking place in the Horn of Africa.

'The carnage and suffering in Somalia may be the worst in more than a decade - but you'd hardly know it from your nightly news', wrote Andrew Cawthorne for Reuters from Nairobi last week.

Amy Goodman's Democracy Now recently examined the coverage of ABC, NBC and CBS on Somalia in the evening newscasts since the invasion.

ABC and NBC had not mentioned the war at all. CBS mentioned the war once, dedicating three whole sentences to it. Despite the fact that there have been more casualties in this war than in the recent fighting in Lebanon.

While the major US print media have not completely ignored the conflict, their reporting is even more shallow than prior to the invasion of Iraq.

As recently as last week, Reuters was still maintaining that Ethiopian troops had invaded its neighbour with the 'tacit' support of the United States.

At least The New York Times has taken to describing it as 'covert American support'. Both characterisations obscure the truth.

The attack on Somalia was pre-planned. It would never have taken place without the approval of the White House.

We now know that the Bush administration gave the Ethiopian government the go ahead to ignore its own imposed ban on weapons purchases from North Korea, in order to gear up for the battle ahead. US military forces took part in the assault.

'The US political and military alliance with Ethiopia - which openly violated international law in its aggression towards Somalia, is destabilizing the Horn region and begins a new shift in the way the US plans to have permanent and active military presence in Africa', wrote Kadane.

Planning for the invasion actually began last summer when the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) took control of the Somali government.

The US-Ethiopian version of shock and awe was to swiftly bring about the desired regime change, installing the Washington-favoured, government-in-exile of President Abdullahi Yusuf.

Only a few days after their troops entered the country, Ethiopian officials said their forces lacked the resources to stay in Somalia, and that they would be leaving soon.

At one point, the Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi declared - Bush-like - that the invaders' mission had been successfully accomplished and that two-thirds of his troops were returning home.

That turned out not to be true. Three months later, the Ethiopians are still in Somalia committing what numerous observers are calling horrendous war crimes.

'The obviously indiscriminate use of heavy artillery in the capital has killed and wounded hundreds of civilians, and forced over 200,000 more to flee for their lives', Walter Lindner, German ambassador to Somalia, wrote to the country's acting president last week.

Displaced persons are 'at great risk of being subjected to looting, extortion and rape - including by uniformed troops' at a various "checkpoints". Cholera - endemic to the region during the rainy season - is beginning to cut a swathe through the displaced', he continued. Adding that attempts by international groups to offer assistance to the victims are being obstructed by militias who are stealing supplies, demanding 'taxes', and threatening relief workers.

On 3 April, Associated Press reported that a senior European Union security official had sent an email to the head of the EU delegation for Somalia warning that:

'Ethiopian and Somali military forces there may have committed war crimes...donor countries could be considered complicit if they do nothing to stop them. I need to advise you that there are strong grounds to believe that the Ethiopian government and the transitional federal government of Somalia and the African Union (peacekeeping) Force Commander, possibly also including the African Union Head of Mission and other African Union officials have, through commission or omission, violated the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.'

In the meantime, the Bush administration has worked hard to raise troops from nearby cooperative states to take over the job. Promises were made, but with one exception, remain unfulfilled.

In a telephone conversation with Bush, Ugandan president Yoweri Museveni promised to provide between 1,000-2,000 troops to protect Somalia's transitional government and train its troops.

The Ugandans arrived. But they are said to have been largely confined to their quarters, refraining from taking part in the effort to crush the opposition.

Meanwhile, the 'transitional government' and Ethiopian forces have been reported shelling civilian areas in the capital from the government compound they are supposedly guarding.

None of the reporters on the scene appear to have explored the question of why the other African governments have failed to send troops. But I think the answer is obvious.

They would be called 'peacekeepers' but would be called upon to inject themselves into a civil conflict on the side of an unpopular puppet government, something they are loath to do.

Three months ago, I wrote:

'If the unfolding events in Iraq are any indication, what started out as a swift invasion and occupation could turn out to be a long and widening war.'

That was an understatement. At the time of writing, about 1,300 people are reported to have perished in the fighting. Over 4,300 wounded, and nearly 400,000 have fled their homes. Refugees trying to cross the Red Sea are reportedly drowning off the Somali coast.

'There is a massive tragedy unfolding in Mogadishu, but from the world's silence, you would think it's Christmas', the head of a Mogadishu political think-tank told Cawthorne. 'Somalis, caught up in Mogadishu's worst violence for 16 years, are painfully aware of their place on the global agenda.'

'Nobody cares about Somalia, even if we die in our millions', Cawthorne was told by Abdirahman Ali, a 29 year-old father-of-two, who works as a security guard in Mogadishu.

And, just as in Iraq, US supported forces - the small army of the enthroned and very unpopular government and the invaders - are caught up in a civil war, set in motion by invasion and occupation.

Additional to the forces loyal to the overthrown Islamist government, the regime in power is opposed by the Hawiye, one of the country's largest clans.

A spokesman for the clan recently called upon 'the Somali people, wherever it exists, to unity in the fight against the Ethiopians. The war is not between Ethiopia and our tribe, it is between Ethiopia and all Somali people', he said.

'For the major [world] leaders, there is a tremendous embarrassment over Somalia', Michael Weinstein, a US expert on Somalia at Purdue University told Reuters.

'They have committed themselves to supporting the interim government - a government that has no broad legitimacy, a failing government. This is the heart of the problem. But Western leaders can't back out now, so of course they have 100% no interest in bringing global attention to Somalia. There is no doubt that Somalia has been shoved aside by major media outlets and global leaders, and the Somali Diaspora is left crying in the wilderness.'

Last week, during what was described as a lull in the fighting, Ethiopian soldiers were moving from house to house in the capital Mogadishu, taking hundreds of men away by the truckload to an uncertain fate.

Meanwhile, the traumatised residents of the rubble strewn city were reported gathering up bodies, many of them rotting, for burial.

'Most of the displaced civilians are encamped on Mogadishu's outskirts, where the scenes are medieval', reported The Economist last week.

On 26 April, Martin Fletcher wrote in The (London) Times about five days he spent in Mogadishu, during which he canvassed many ordinary Somalis:

'People lack water, food and shelter. Cholera has broken out. The sick sometimes have to pay rent even to sit in the shade of trees. Things will get worse with the rains, which have started. Aid agencies say people will soon start dying in large numbers. Some reckon Somalia is facing its biggest humanitarian crisis, worse than in the early 1990s, when the state collapsed amid famine and slaughter. Overwhelmingly, they loathed a government they consider a puppet of the hated Ethiopians.'

Last week the Washington Post reported that interviews it conducted in Ethiopia and testimony given to diplomats and human rights groups 'paint a picture of a nation that jails its citizens without reason or trial, and tortures many of them - despite government claims to the contrary'.

The paper commented that such cases are especially troubling because the US government, a key Ethiopian ally, has acknowledged interrogating terrorism suspects in Ethiopian prisons, where some detainees were sent after being arrested in connection with Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia in December.

The following day the paper reported: 'More than 200 FBI and CIA agents have set up camp in the Sheraton Hotel here in Ethiopia's capital and have been interrogating dozens of detainees -- including a US citizen picked up in Somalia and held without charge and without attorneys in a secret prison somewhere in this city, according to Ethiopian and U.S. officials who say the interrogations are lawful.'

History will probably record the Ethiopian government's decision to team up with the US administration for regime change in Somalia as the height of folly. The country has enough problems at home, brought into sharp relief on 24 April, when forces of an ethnic-Somali separatist group, the Ogaden National Liberation Front, raided an oil exploration facility, killing 74 people, including nine employees of a Chinese oil company.

'As much as China's - and indeed America's - ally Meles Zenawi, the Ethiopian prime minister, might like to be on top of security across the Horn, he is not always able to deliver. His army is the region's most powerful conventional force. But under his rule, Ethiopia is fraying again around the edges', said the Financial Times editorial on 26 April.

Armed separatist groups are now changing tactics. Unable to match the army on the battlefield, the Ogaden National Liberation Front has chosen the spectacular to draw attention to its cause.

Only recently, a separatist group in the north tried something similar, by kidnapping a group of British diplomats. Both horrific events can be attributed partly to fallout from Ethiopia's messy intervention in neighboring Somalia.

Initial battles last December were decisively in Ethiopia's favour. But like the Americans in Iraq, the Ethiopians in Somalia were ill prepared for the aftermath. A growing insurgency has delayed the withdrawal of their troops, exposing the government to attacks at home. It has also inflamed tension among ethnic Somalis in Ethiopia. And ironically, the Chinese workers killed near Ethiopia's border with Somalia may have been victims more of Washington's policy in the region than of Beijing's.

The US has actively backed Meles Zenawi's Somali adventure. In doing so it has undermined multilateral efforts to bring about peace. 'There are two main questions that Colonel Yusuf's and Ethiopia's Western backers should now ask themselves', said The (London) Guardian 26 April 26.

First, what was gained by encouraging the Ethiopian army to topple the Islamic Courts? The US allowed Ethiopia to arm itself with North Korean weapons and also participated in the turkey shoot by using gunships against suspected insurgents hiding in villages near the Kenyan border.

Second, Washington was convinced that the Islamic Courts were sheltering foreign terror suspects: 'But how many did they get and what price have Somalis paid?'

'America can be more heavily criticised for subordinating Somali interests to its own desire to catch a handful of al-Qaeda men who may (or may not)have been hiding in Mogadishu', said The Economist.

Chatham House, a British think tank of the independent Royal Institute of International Affairs, has concluded:

'None has been caught, many innocents have died in air strikes, and anti-American feeling has deepened. Western, especially European, diplomats watching Somalia from Nairobi, the capital of Kenya to the south, have sounded the alarm. Their governments have done little.

In an uncomfortably familiar pattern, genuine multilateral concern to support the reconstruction and rehabilitation of Somalia has been hijacked by unilateral actions of other international actors - especially Ethiopia and the United States following their own foreign policy agendas.'

Actually, there is no more reason to believe the Bush administration promoted this war, in clear violation of international law and the UN Charter, 'to catch a handful of al-Qaeda men', than that the invasion of Iraq was to eliminate weapons of mass destruction. What has unfolded over the past three months flows from much larger strategic calculations in Washington.

The invasion and occupation of Somalia coincided with the Pentagon's now operational plan to build a new 'Africa Command' to deal with what the Christian Science Monitor dubbed 'strife, oil, and Al Qaeda'.

When I first visited this subject shortly after the invasion, I quoted 10 per cent as the figure which is the proportion of our country's petroleum from Africa; and noted that some experts were saying the US would need to up that to 25 per cent by 2010. Wrong again.

Last week came the news that the US now imports more oil from Africa than from the Middle East; with Nigeria, Angola and Algeria providing nearly one-fifth of it - more than from Saudi Arabia.

The rulers in Addis Ababa claim the invasion was a pre-emptive attack on a threatening Somalia. The Bush administration says giving a wink and a nod to the attack was merely a chance to capture a few terrorist holed up in Somalia. But for most of the media and diplomatic observers outside the US, this was another strategic move to secure positioning in a region where there is a lot of oil.

On file are plans - put on hold amid continuing conflicts - for nearly two-thirds of Somalia's oil fields to be allocated to the US oil companies Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips.

It was recently reported that the US-backed prime minister of Somalia has proposed enactment of a new oil law to encourage the return of foreign oil companies to the country.

Salim Lone, spokesperson for the UN mission in Iraq in 2003, now a columnist for The Daily Nation in Kenya, recently told Democracy Now:

'The prime minister's attempt to lure Western oil companies is on a par with his crying wolf about al-Qaeda at every turn. Every time you interview a Somalia official, the first thing you hear is al-Qaeda and terrorists. They're using that. No one believes it. No one believes it at all, because all independent reports say the contrary.'

I spoke with Kidane last week and she conceded that the situation in Somalia might seem complex to many in the peace and social justice movements.

However, she said, it is impossible to overlook the parallel with the situation in the Iraq: 'It's aggression, that is undeniable, and the same language is being used to justify it.'

Kidane is spot on to insist that the movements for peace and justice in the US - and elsewhere - must take up the issue. The unlawful US- Ethiopian invasion and occupation of that country and the accompanying human suffering and human rights abuses constitute a new - and still mostly hidden - war, which is in many ways is similar to that in Iraq. And, waged for the same reason.



Carl Bloice is a writer based in San Francisco. He is a member of the National Coordinating Committee of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism. He is on the editorial board of Black Commentator where a version of this article was originally published on 2 May 2007.
]]> Wed, 16 May 2007 15:10:00 EDT http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/205453 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/163011 http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partid=267

On 14 April 2006, the Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University in New York brought together John Pilger, Seymour Hersh, Robert Fisk and Charles Glass for a discussion entitled 'Breaking the Silence: War, lies and empire'.

Tne following is a transcript of John Pilger's address - 'War by Media':

"During the Cold War, a group of Russian journalists toured the United States. On the final day of their visit, they were asked by their hosts for their impressions. “I have to tell you,” said their spokesman, “that we were astonished to find, after reading all the newspapers and watching TV, that all the opinions on all the vital issues were, by and large, the same. To get that result in our country, we imprison people, we tear out their fingernails. Here, you don't have that. What's the secret? How do you do it?”

What is the secret? It's a question now urgently asked of those whose job is to keep the record straight: who in this country have extraordinary constitutional freedom. I refer to journalists, of course, a small group who hold privileged sway over the way we think, even the way we use language.

I have been a journalist for more than 40 years. Although I am based in London, I have worked all over the world, including the United States, and I have reported America's wars. My experience is that what the Russian journalists were referring to is censorship by omission, the product of a parallel world of unspoken truth and public myths and lies: in other words, censorship by journalism, which today has become war by journalism.

For me, this is the most virulent and powerful form of censorship, fuelling an indoctrination that runs deep in western societies, deeper than many journalists themselves understand or will admit to. Its power is such that it can mean the difference between life and death for untold numbers of people in faraway countries, like Iraq.

During the 1970s, I filmed secretly in Czechoslovakia, then a Stalinist dictatorship. I interviewed members of the dissident group, Charter 77. One of them, the novelist Zdener Urbanek, told me, “We are more fortunate than you in the West, in one respect. We believe nothing of what we read in the newspapers and watch on television, nothing of the official truth. unlike you, we have learned to read between the lines of the media. unlike you, we know that that real truth is always subversive.” By subversive, he meant that truth comes from the ground up, almost never from the top down. (Vandana Shiva has called this 'subjugated knowledge').

A venerable clichй is that truth is the first casualty in wartime. I disagree. Journalism is the first casualty. The first American war I reported was Vietnam. I went there from 1966 to the last day. When it was all over, the magazine Encounter published an article by Robert Elegant, another correspondent who covered Vietnam. “For the first time in modern history,” he wrote, “the outcome of a war was determined not on the battlefield but on the printed page and, above all, on the television screen.” He was accusing journalists of losing the war by opposing it in their work.

Robert Elegant's view became the received wisdom in America and still is. This official truth has determined how every American war since Vietnam has been reported. In Iraq, the “embedded” reporter was invented because the generals believed the Robert Elegant thesis: that critical reporting had “lost” Vietnam. How wrong they are.

On my first day as a young reporter in Saigon, I called on the bureaus of the main newspapers and TV companies. I noticed most of them had a gruesome photo gallery pinned on the wall -- pictures of the bodies of Vietnamese and American soldiers holding up severed ears and testicles. In one office was a photograph of a man being tortured. Above the torturer's head was a stick-on comic strip balloon with the words: “That'll teach you to talk to the press.”

None of these pictures had ever been published, or even put on the wire.

I asked why. The response was that "New York" would reject them, because the readers would never accept them. Anyway, to publish them would be to “sensationalise”; it would not be "objective" or "impartial". At first, I accepted the apparent logic of this: that atrocities surely were aberrations by definition. I, too, had grown up on John Wayne movies of the "good war" against Germany and Japan, an ethical bath that had left us westerners pure of soul and altruistic towards our fellow man and heroic. We did not torture. We did not kill women and children. We were the permanent good guys.

However, this did not explain the so-called “free fire zones” that turned entire provinces into places of slaughter: provinces like Quang Ngai, where the My Lai massacre was only one of a number of unreported massacres. It did not explain the helicopter “turkey shoots”. It did not explain people dragged along dirt roads, roped from neck to neck, by jeeps filled with doped and laughing GIs and why they kept human skulls enscribed with the words, “One down, one million to go.”

The atrocities were not aberrations. The war itself was an atrocity. That was the “big story” and it was seldom news. Yes, the tactics and effectiveness of the military were questioned by reporters, but the word "invasion" was almost never used. The fiction of a well-intentioned, blundering giant, stuck in an Asian quagmire, was promoted by most journalists, incessantly. It was left to whistleblowers at home to tell the subversive truth -- those like Daniel Ellsberg, and mavericks like Seymour Hersh with his extraordinary scoop of the My Lai massacre. There were 649 reporters in Vietnam at the time of My Lai on March 16, 1968. Not one of them reported it.

The invasion of Vietnam was deliberate and calculated, as were policies and strategies that bordered on genocide and were designed to force millions of people to abandon their homes. Experimental weapons were used against civilians. Chemicals banned in the United States -- Agent Orange -- were used to change the genetic and environmental order in Vietnam. All of this was rarely news at the time. The unspoken task of the reporter in Vietnam, as it was in Korea, was, to normalise the unthinkable - to quote Edward Herman's memorable phrase. And that has not changed.

In 1975, when the Vietnam war just over, I witnessed the full panorama of what the American military machine had done, and I could barely believe my eyes. In the north, it seemed as if I had stumbled on some great, unrecorded natural disaster. On my office wall in London is a photograph I took of a town in Vinh province that was once home to 10,000 people. The photograph shows bomb craters and bomb craters, and bomb craters. Obliteration.

The Hollywood movies that followed the war were an extension of the journalism. The first was The Deerhunter, whose director Michael Cimino fabricated his own military service in Vietnam, and invented scenes of Vietnamese playing Russian roulette with American prisoners. The message was clear. America had suffered, America was stricken, American boys had done their best. It was all the more pernicious because it was brilliantly made and acted. I have to admit it remains the only time I have shouted out in protest, in a packed cinema.

This was followed by Apocalyse Now, whose writer, John Millius, invented a sequence about the Vietcong cutting off the arms of children. More oriental barbarity, more American angst, more purgative for the audience. Then there was the Rambo series and the “missing in action” films that fed the lie of Americans still imprisoned in Vietnam. Even Oliver Stone's Platoon, which gave us glimpses of the Vietnamese as human beings, promoted the invader as victim.

Even the official truth, or the liberal version, that the “noble cause” had failed in Vietnam, was a myth. From Kennedy to Ford, the American war establishment had seen Vietnam as a threat, because it offered an alternative model of development. The weaker the country, the greater the threat of a good example to his region and beyond. By the time the last US Marine had left the roof of the American embassy in Saigon, Vietnam was economically and environmentally crushed and the threat had been extinguished.

In the acclaimed movie The Killing Fields, the story of a New York Times reporter and his stringer in Cambodia, scenes that showed the Vietnamese as liberators of Cambodia in 1979 were filmed, but never shown.

These showed Vietnamese soldiers as the liberators they were, handing out food to the survivors of Pol Pot. To my knowledge, this censorship was never reported. The cut version of The Killing Fields complied with the official truth then dominant I the United States, especially in the liberal press, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post and the New York Review of Books. This set out to justify the crime of the Vietnam war by dehumanising the Vietnamese communists and confusing them, in the public mind, with Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge.

In the post war period, the policy in Washington was revenge, a word that officials used in private, but never publicly. Famous insider journalists, like James Reston of the New York Times, embraced it and disguised it in anti-Vietnamese disinformation. An economic embargo was imposed on Vietnam and Cambodia. Supplies of milk were cut off to the children of Vietnam. This barbaric assault on the very fabric of life in two of the most stricken societies on earth was rarely reported in the United States.

During this time, I made a number of documentaries about Cambodia. The first, in 1979, Year Zero: the Silent Death of Cambodia described the American bombing that had provided a catalyst for the rise of Pol Pot and showed the human effects of the embargo. Year Zero was broadcast in some 60 countries, but never in the United States. When I flew to Washington and offered Year Zero to the national public broadcaster, PBS. I received a curious reaction from PBS executives. They were shocked by the film, and they also spoke admiringly of it, even though but I could see them collectively shaking their heads. One of them finally said to me, “John, we are disturbed that your film says the United States played such a destructive role in Cambodia, and we may have an issue of objectivity. So we have decided to call in a Journalistic Adjudicator.”

“Journalistic Adjudicator” was straight out of Orwell. But it was real, and PBS appointed one Richard Dudman, a reporter on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dudman was one of the few Westerners to have been invited by Pol Pot to visit Cambodia. His dispatches reflected none of the savagery then enveloping that country; he even praised his hosts. Not surprisingly, he turned his thumb down on my film and Americans never saw the film. Months later, one of the PBS executives, told me, “These are difficult days under Reagan. Your film would have given us problems. Sorry.”

The lack of truth about what had really happened in South East Asia - the media promoted myth of an honourable “blunder” into a “quagmire” and the cover-up of the true scale of the slaughter -- allowed Ronald Reagan to renew the same “noble cause” in Central America and rescue, as the Reaganites saw it, America's lost prestige in the world. The target, once again, was an impoverished nation without resources, whose threat, like Vietnam, was in trying to establish a model of development different from that of the corrupt, colonial dictatorships, backed by Washington. This was Nicaragua: population three million, one of the poorest nations on earth.

I reported the so-called Contra War from the Nicaraguan side; but it was not a war. Like all the attacks of the American superpower on small, defenceless countries, it was about murder, bribery and “perception management”. A CIA-armed and trained rabble known as the Contra would slip across the border from Honduras and cut the throats of midwives, or blow up schools and clinics. Reagan called them the equivalent of his nation's Founding Fathers. The Iran-Contra scandal that followed produced some excellent investigative reporting in he United States, yet when it was all over, the overall impression was of a mildly embarrassed administration in Washington, not the barbarity of its actions. Thanks to journalists, Reagan emerged smiling and waving, “the great communicator”. According to the American historian Greg Grandin (Empire's Workshop: Metropolitan Books), 300,000 people in Nicaragua, Guatemala and El Salvador had paid with their lives.

Is Iraq different? Yes, there are many differences, but for journalists there are haunting similarities of both Vietnam and Central America. The "noble cause" of “bringing democracy to the Middle East”, the promotion of a civil war and the killing of tens of thousands of invisible people. On August 24 last year, a New York Times editorial declared: “If we had known then what we know now, the invasion [of Iraq] would have been stopped by a popular outcry.” This amazing admission was saying, in effect, that journalists had betrayed the public by accepting and amplifying and echoing the lies of Bush and Blair, instead of challenging and exposing them. The result is a human disaster of epic proportions, for which journalists in the so-called mainstream bear much of the responsibility; and that includes responsibility for the lives lost and destroyed.

This is true not only in America. In Britain, where I live, the BBC - which promotes itself as a nirvana of objectivity and impartiality and truth - has blood on its corporate hands. There are two interesting studies of the BBC's reporting. One of them, in the build-up to the invasion, shows that the BBC gave just two per cent of its coverage of Iraq to anti-war dissent. That was less than the anti-war coverage of all the American networks. A second study by the respected journalism school at University College in Cardiff shows that 90 per cent of the BBC's references to weapons of mass destruction suggested that Saddam Hussein actually possessed them and that, by clear implication, Bush and Blair were right.

We now know that the BBC and other British media were used by MI6, the secret intelligence service. In what they called Operation Mass Appeal, MI6 agents planted stories about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, such as weapons hidden in his palaces and in secret underground bunkers. All of these stories were fakes. However, that is not the point. The point is that the dark arts of MI6 were quite unnecessary, because a systematic media self-censorship produced the same result.

Recently, the BBC's Director of News, Helen Boaden, was asked to explain how one of her “embedded” reporters in Iraq could possibly describe the aim of the Anglo-American invasion as “bring [ing] democracy and human rights” to Iraq. She replied with quotations from Tony Blair that this was indeed the truth, as if Blair and the truth were in any way related. This servility to state power is hotly denied, of course, but routine. It is even called “objectivity”. This is the BBC's correspondent in Washington, Matt Frei, shortly after the invasion of Iraq. “There is no doubt,” he reported, "that the desire to bring good, to bring American values to the rest of the world, and especially now in the Middle East ... is now increasingly tied up with military power". Last year, he lauded the architect of the invasion, Paul Wolfowitz, as "someone who believes passionately in the power of democracy and grassroots development." This is not unusual. On the third anniversary of the invasion, a BBC newsreader described the invasion as a "miscalculation". Not illegal. Not unprovoked. Not based on lies. Not a crime as defined by the judegment at Nuremberg. But a miscalculation. Thus, the unthinkable was normalised.

There is a new book out in Britain called “Guardians of Power”. The authors are David Edwards and David Cromwell, who edit a remarkable website called MediaLens. Their work is about the parallel worlds of unspoken truths and official lies. They have not bothered with soft targets, like the Murdoch press. They concentrate on the liberal media, which is proud of its objectivity and impartiality, its “balance” and “professionalism”. They studied the reporting of the invasions of Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq and the current build-up to an invasion of Iran. What they reveal is a pattern. In the British media, as in the United States, as in Australia, rapacious western actions are reported as moral crusades, or humanitarian interventions. At the very least, they are represented as the management of an international crisis, rather than the cause of the crisis. This truthful, bracing book has not been reviewed in a single British newspaper, even though informed people have offered to write about it.

Now consider the treatment of Harold Pinter, Britain's greatest living dramatist. In accepting the Nobel Prize in Literature last December, Harold Pinter made an epic speech. He asked why “the systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought” in Stalinist Russia were well known in the west while American state crimes were merely “superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone acknowledged.” Across the world, he pointed out, the extinction and suffering of countless human beings could be attributed to rampant American power, “but you wouldn't know it”, he said. “it never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening, it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest.” For the BBC, Pinter's speech never happened. Not a word of it was broadcast. It never happened.

Pinter's threat is that he tells a subversive truth. He makes the connection between imperialism and fascism and he describes it as a battle for history. I would add that it is also a battle for journalism. Language has become a crucial battleground. Noble words, like “democracy”, "liberation", “freedom”, “reform” have been emptied of their true meaning and refilled by the enemies of these concepts. Their counterfeits dominate the news. "War on terror” is used incessantly, yet it is a false metaphor that insults our intelligence. We are not at war. Instead, American, British and Australian troops are fighting insurrections in countries where their invasions have caused mayhem and grief. And where are the pictures of “our” atrocities? How many Americans and Britons know that, in revenge for 3,000 innocent lives taken on September 11th, 2001, up to 20,000 innocent people have died in Afghanistan? How many know that the equivalent of the population of a middle-sized American city have been killed in Iraq, most of them by American firepower?

It is too easy to blame everything on Bush, and to plead, as liberal journalists do, that the “neo-cons” have hi-jacked America. Ask the Native Americans how benign the system used to be. Or listen to Richard Nixon on the Watergate tapes, talking about power and bombing. "You're so goddamned concerned about the civilians," Nixon said to Kissinger, "and I don't give a damn. I don't care .... I'd rather use the nuclear bomb ... I just want you to think big." In the nuclear age, from Harry Truman to George W Bush, there is no evidence that Nixon was unique.

The lies told about Iraq are no different from the lies that ignited the Spanish-American war, that allowed the Vietnam and Korean wars to happen and the Cold War to endure. They are no different from the myths of World War Two that justified the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities. It is as if we journalists are being constantly groomed to swallow the fables of empire. Richard Falk at Princeton has described the process. We are indocrinated to see foreign policy, he wrote, “through a self-righteous, one-way moral/legal screen [with] positive images of western values and innocence portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted violence.”

In my career as a journalist, there has never been a war on terror but a war of terror. Not long ago I walked down a leafy street in Jakarta, Indonesia, where the former dictator General Suharto is living out his life in luxury, having stolen from his people an estimated $10 billion. A United Nations truth commission had just released a report, based on official files, that credits Suharto with the deaths of 180,000 people in East Timor. It says that the United States played a "primary role" in this terror. Britain and Australia are named as accessories to this vast suffering.

After I had filmed in East Timor in 1993, I interviewed Philip Liechty, a former CIA officer who, at his embassy desk in Jakarta, had seen the evidence of Suharto's horrors committed with American approval and American arms. He told me that, when he retired, he had tried to alert the media to East Timor. “But there was no interest,” he said, echoing Harold Pinter. And yet the deaths in East Timor are more than six times greater than all the deaths caused by terrorist incidents throughout the world over past 25 years, according to the State Department. The “mainstream” deals with this by reporting humanity in terms of its worthy victims and unworthy victims, its good tyrants and bad tyrants. The victims of September 11, 2001, are worthy. The victims of East Timor are unworthy. Israeli victims are worthy; Palestinians are unworthy. Saddam Hussein was once a good tyrant. Now he is a bad tyrant. Saddam must be envious of Suharto, who has always been a good tyrant, an acceptable mass murderer.

In the 1960s, the New York Times greeted Suharto's blood-soaked seizure of power in Indonesia as "a gleam of light in Asia". After Suharto had killed off 180,000 East Timorese, Bill Clinton called him “our kind of guy”. Margaret Thatcher offered similar unction, as did the Australian prime ministers Bob Hawke and Paul Keating on a regular basis. The media both led and echoed this chorus.

If we journalists are ever to reclaim the honour of our craft, we need to understand, at least, the historic task that great power assigns us. This is to “soften-up” the public for rapacious attack on countries that are no threat to us. We soften them up by de-humanising them, by writing about "regime change" in Iran as if that country is an abstraction, not a human society. Currently, journalists are softening up Iran, Syria and Venezuela.

Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is likened to Hitler. That he has won nine democratic elections and referenda -- a world record -- is of no interest.

A few weeks ago, Channel 4 News in Britain - regarded as a liberal news service - carried a major item that might have been broadcast by the State Department. The reporter, Jonathan Rugman, the Washington correspondent, presented Chavez as a cartoon character, a sinister buffoon whose folksy Latin way camouflaged a man “in danger of joining a rogue gallery of dictators and despots - Washington's latest Latin nightmare.” In contrast, Condaleeza Rice was afforded gravitas and Rumsfeld was allowed to call Chavez Hitler, unchallenged.

Indeed, almost everything in this travesty of journalism was viewed from Washington, only fragments of it from the barrios of Venezuela, where President Chavez enjoys 80 per cent popularity. In crude Soviet-flick style, Chavez was shown with Saddam Hussein when this brief encounter only had to do with OPEC and oil. According to the reporter, Venezuela under Chavez was helping Iran develop nuclear weapons. No evidence was given for this absurdity.

The softening-up of Venezuela is well advanced in the United States.

Ninety-five per cent of 100 media commentaries surveyed by the media watch dog FAIR expressed hostility to Chavez. “Dictator”, “strongman”, “demagogue” were the familiar buzz words, so that people reading and watching had no idea that Venezuela was the only oil-producing country in the world to use its oil revenue for the benefit of poor people. They would have no idea of spectacular developments in health, education, literacy. They would have no idea that Venezuela has no political jails - unlike the United States.

So that if the Bush administration launches “Operation Balboa”, a mooted plan to overthrow the Chavez government, who will care, because who will know? For we shall only have the media version - another lousy demagogue got what was coming to him. The poor of Venezuela, like the poor of Nicaragua, like the poor of Vietnam and Cambodia, like the poor of Fallujah, whose dreams and lives are of no interest, will be invisible in their grief -- a triumph of censorship by journalism.

What should journalists do? I mean, journalists who give a damn? They need to act now. Governments fear good journalists. The reason the Pentagon spends millions of dollars on PR, or “perception management” companies that try to bend the news is because it fears truth tellers, just as Stalinist governments feared them. There is no difference. Look back at the great American journalists: Upton Sinclair, Edward R Murrow, Martha Gellhorn, I. F.Stone, Seymour Hersh. All were mavericks. None embraced the corporate world of journalism and its modern supplier: the media college.

It is said the internet is an alternative; and what is wonderful about the rebellious spirits on the World Wide Web is that they often report as journalists should. They are mavericks in the tradition of the great muckrakers: those like the Irish journalist Claud Cockburn, who said: "Never believe anything until it is officially denied." But the internet is still a kind of samidzat, an underground, and most of humanity does not log on; just as most of humanity does not own a cell phone. And the right to know ought to be universal. That other great muckraker, Tom Paine, warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the "Bastille of words". That time is now."

]]> Wed, 21 Feb 2007 09:13:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/163011 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/162593 Muslims in Auschwitz
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=786453

By Gil Anidjar

As the end nears, it is said, the entire course of a life flashes before one's eyes. Is there time then to learn the lessons of history? Perhaps this is what Walter Benjamin was asking when, evoking the "tradition of the oppressed," he wrote of an image "flashing in a moment of danger." We reside in this moment, and the "image of our time," which Primo Levi placed before our eyes as recapitulating the course of our history, is that of Muslims in Auschwitz. The sound is that of one civilization clashing.

This is not an indictment of that civilization. It is an acknowledgment of its self-proclaimed achievements and of the name it has claimed for itself. The West is Christian, which is to say that it follows and replicates the map of Western Christendom, whether Roman Catholic, Lutheran and post-Lutheran, and ultimately "secular." All of which does indicate that significant changes have occurred within it, of course, yet throughout these changes, and throughout its expansion, the West understood itself as Christian (more recently, as "Judeo-Christian").

Mission and conquest (the Americas, India, the "scramble for Africa"), science (linguistics, biological racism and eugenics, nuclear weapons), politics (the modern state, direct or indirect rule), and economics (slavery, wage labor, the corporation, the financial market, famine) have all contributed to the unfinished project of devastation of entire regions of the globe, the extermination of countless communities and cultures. One could, I suppose, present the same course of events or developments and point to the advances otherwise made, but it is possible that, in a moment of danger, pride is not what is most urgently called for. But we hear the sound of one civilization clashing.

That there were Muslims in Auschwitz means that we have an image (one among many, but a striking one, and rarely considered) in which is contained the geographical, scientific, political and economical achievements of the Christian West. It means that the history of Orientalism (from the Crusades to the oilfields) is "the history of a strange, secret sharer of Western anti-Semitism," as Edward Said effectively put it. Why "secret"? Because the peculiar and millennial investment of the West in the joined figure of Jew and Arab (or, if you will, in the rule over Jerusalem, heavenly or earthly) is one of the crucial knots tying together geography, science, politics and economics.

It is not a matter of mere ideology therefore, but the cooperation in one theological-political figure an image that flashes in a moment of danger - of a series of pursuits undertaken in the name of Christ and Christendom, in the subsequent name of Christian civilization (and for a brief period under the "secular" marker of the "white race"), and finally, in that of "civilization" itself. Thus the sound of one civilization clashing.

The Christian West invented the "Semites." That is no secret. Less commented upon are the earlier gestures that, responding to oft-expressed anxieties, sought to prevent any alliance (real or imagined) between Jews and Muslims. The 19th-century equation of Jew and Arab did not manage to undo the older and weightier contention that Jews are not Muslims (read: they should not be allies of Muslims). Beyond the familiar phantasms of a fifth column, we witness the sedimentation of a rhetoric of "security" on the part of the paranoid powerful.

Having subjugated the world, the Christian West managed to invent a knowledge ("science") that construes the world as full of hatred and danger, full of animosity toward it. The Jews (and the witches) were perceived as an internal danger, the Muslims (and the "dark hordes") as an external one. What was needed was therefore walls, between and within, to protect "us" from "them," and most importantly, perhaps, to divide among "them" (indirect rule perfected the technique, with the results we know: sectarianism and civil war in Lebanon, communalism and partition in India, tribalism and apartheid in Africa; and there are more examples). Jews and Muslims, and more precisely, their fabricated, scientific image - "Semites" - constituted an early laboratory within which Western Christendom concocted the geographic, scientific, political and economic "object" to its soon-to-be-modern "subject."

Geography (globalization and the unequal division of passports), science (high bio-tech), politics (the UN Security Council) and economics (the World Bank, the IMF) why refer to these as "the Christian West"? Because the secret is out, it is international, and its name is vera religio. From under the bombs and behind the walls being built in Palestine, North Africa and Mexico, behind the countless virtual barriers that separate Western Christendom from its others, one can hear a familiar noise. It is the sound of one civilization clashing. And in this moment of danger, the image that flashes still is the image Primo Levi figured as the "image of our time." It is the name of our collective blindness enduring.

There were Muslims in Auschwitz.

Gil Anidjar is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures. His most recent book is The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy (Stanford University Press, 2003).

]]> Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:18:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/162593 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/161627

February 11, 2007
Munich

http://www.kremlin.ru/eng/speeches/2007/02/11/0138_type82914type84779_118135.shtml

VLADIMIR PUTIN: Thank you very much dear Madam Federal Chancellor, Mr Teltschik, ladies and gentlemen!

I am truly grateful to be invited to such a representative conference that has assembled politicians, military officials, entrepreneurs and experts from more than 40 nations.

This conference’s structure allows me to avoid excessive politeness and the need to speak in roundabout, pleasant but empty diplomatic terms. This conference’s format will allow me to say what I really think about international security problems. And if my comments seem unduly polemical, pointed or inexact to our colleagues, then I would ask you not to get angry with me. After all, this is only a conference. And I hope that after the first two or three minutes of my speech Mr Teltschik will not turn on the red light over there.

Therefore. It is well known that international security comprises much more than issues relating to military and political stability. It involves the stability of the global economy, overcoming poverty, economic security and developing a dialogue between civilisations.

This universal, indivisible character of security is expressed as the basic principle that “security for one is security for all”. As Franklin D. Roosevelt said during the first few days that the Second World War was breaking out: “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.”

These words remain topical today. Incidentally, the theme of our conference – global crises, global responsibility – exemplifies this.

Only two decades ago the world was ideologically and economically divided and it was the huge strategic potential of two superpowers that ensured global security.

This global stand-off pushed the sharpest economic and social problems to the margins of the international community’s and the world’s agenda. And, just like any war, the Cold War left us with live ammunition, figuratively speaking. I am referring to ideological stereotypes, double standards and other typical aspects of Cold War bloc thinking.

The unipolar world that had been proposed after the Cold War did not take place either.

The history of humanity certainly has gone through unipolar periods and seen aspirations to world supremacy. And what hasn’t happened in world history?

However, what is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making.

It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within.

And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. Because, as you know, democracy is the power of the majority in light of the interests and opinions of the minority.

Incidentally, Russia – we – are constantly being taught about democracy. But for some reason those who teach us do not want to learn themselves.

I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. And this is not only because if there was individual leadership in today’s – and precisely in today’s – world, then the military, political and economic resources would not suffice. What is even more important is that the model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation.

Along with this, what is happening in today’s world – and we just started to discuss this – is a tentative to introduce precisely this concept into international affairs, the concept of a unipolar world.

And with which results?

Unilateral and frequently illegitimate actions have not resolved any problems. Moreover, they have caused new human tragedies and created new centres of tension. Judge for yourselves: wars as well as local and regional conflicts have not diminished. Mr Teltschik mentioned this very gently. And no less people perish in these conflicts – even more are dying than before. Significantly more, significantly more!

Today we are witnessing an almost uncontained hyper use of force – military force – in international relations, force that is plunging the world into an abyss of permanent conflicts. As a result we do not have sufficient strength to find a comprehensive solution to any one of these conflicts. Finding a political settlement also becomes impossible.

We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. And independent legal norms are, as a matter of fact, coming increasingly closer to one state’s legal system. One state and, of course, first and foremost the United States, has overstepped its national borders in every way. This is visible in the economic, political, cultural and educational policies it imposes on other nations. Well, who likes this? Who is happy about this?

In international relations we increasingly see the desire to resolve a given question according to so-called issues of political expediency, based on the current political climate.

And of course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this – no one feels safe! Because no one can feel that international law is like a stone wall that will protect them. Of course such a policy stimulates an arms race.

The force’s dominance inevitably encourages a number of countries to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Moreover, significantly new threats – though they were also well-known before – have appeared, and today threats such as terrorism have taken on a global character.

I am convinced that we have reached that decisive moment when we must seriously think about the architecture of global security.

And we must proceed by searching for a reasonable balance between the interests of all participants in the international dialogue. Especially since the international landscape is so varied and changes so quickly – changes in light of the dynamic development in a whole number of countries and regions.

Madam Federal Chancellor already mentioned this. The combined GDP measured in purchasing power parity of countries such as India and China is already greater than that of the United States. And a similar calculation with the GDP of the BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – surpasses the cumulative GDP of the EU. And according to experts this gap will only increase in the future.

There is no reason to doubt that the economic potential of the new centres of global economic growth will inevitably be converted into political influence and will strengthen multipolarity.

In connection with this the role of multilateral diplomacy is significantly increasing. The need for principles such as openness, transparency and predictability in politics is uncontested and the use of force should be a really exceptional measure, comparable to using the death penalty in the judicial systems of certain states.

However, today we are witnessing the opposite tendency, namely a situation in which countries that forbid the death penalty even for murderers and other, dangerous criminals are airily participating in military operations that are difficult to consider legitimate. And as a matter of fact, these conflicts are killing people – hundreds and thousands of civilians!

But at the same time the question arises of whether we should be indifferent and aloof to various internal conflicts inside countries, to authoritarian regimes, to tyrants, and to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction? As a matter of fact, this was also at the centre of the question that our dear colleague Mr Lieberman asked the Federal Chancellor. If I correctly understood your question (addressing Mr Lieberman), then of course it is a serious one! Can we be indifferent observers in view of what is happening? I will try to answer your question as well: of course not.

But do we have the means to counter these threats? Certainly we do. It is sufficient to look at recent history. Did not our country have a peaceful transition to democracy? Indeed, we witnessed a peaceful transformation of the Soviet regime – a peaceful transformation! And what a regime! With what a number of weapons, including nuclear weapons! Why should we start bombing and shooting now at every available opportunity? Is it the case when without the threat of mutual destruction we do not have enough political culture, respect for democratic values and for the law?

I am convinced that the only mechanism that can make decisions about using military force as a last resort is the Charter of the United Nations. And in connection with this, either I did not understand what our colleague, the Italian Defence Minister, just said or what he said was inexact. In any case, I understood that the use of force can only be legitimate when the decision is taken by NATO, the EU, or the UN. If he really does think so, then we have different points of view. Or I didn’t hear correctly. The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN. And we do not need to substitute NATO or the EU for the UN. When the UN will truly unite the forces of the international community and can really react to events in various countries, when we will leave behind this disdain for international law, then the situation will be able to change. Otherwise the situation will simply result in a dead end, and the number of serious mistakes will be multiplied. Along with this, it is necessary to make sure that international law have a universal character both in the conception and application of its norms.

And one must not forget that democratic political actions necessarily go along with discussion and a laborious decision-making process.

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

The potential danger of the destabilisation of international relations is connected with obvious stagnation in the disarmament issue.

Russia supports the renewal of dialogue on this important question.

It is important to conserve the international legal framework relating to weapons destruction and therefore ensure continuity in the process of reducing nuclear weapons.

Together with the United States of America we agreed to reduce our nuclear strategic missile capabilities to up to 1700-2000 nuclear warheads by 31 December 2012. Russia intends to strictly fulfil the obligations it has taken on. We hope that our partners will also act in a transparent way and will refrain from laying aside a couple of hundred superfluous nuclear warheads for a rainy day. And if today the new American Defence Minister declares that the United States will not hide these superfluous weapons in warehouse or, as one might say, under a pillow or under the blanket, then I suggest that we all rise and greet this declaration standing. It would be a very important declaration.

Russia strictly adheres to and intends to further adhere to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as well as the multilateral supervision regime for missile technologies. The principles incorporated in these documents are universal ones.

In connection with this I would like to recall that in the 1980s the USSR and the United States signed an agreement on destroying a whole range of small- and medium-range missiles but these documents do not have a universal character.

Today many other countries have these missiles, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Republic of Korea, India, Iran, Pakistan and Israel. Many countries are working on these systems and plan to incorporate them as part of their weapons arsenals. And only the United States and Russia bear the responsibility to not create such weapons systems.

It is obvious that in these conditions we must think about ensuring our own security.

At the same time, it is impossible to sanction the appearance of new, destabilising high-tech weapons. Needless to say it refers to measures to prevent a new area of confrontation, especially in outer space. Star wars is no longer a fantasy – it is a reality. In the middle of the 1980s our American partners were already able to intercept their own satellite.

In Russia’s opinion, the militarisation of outer space could have unpredictable consequences for the international community, and provoke nothing less than the beginning of a nuclear era. And we have come forward more than once with initiatives designed to prevent the use of weapons in outer space.

Today I would like to tell you that we have prepared a project for an agreement on the prevention of deploying weapons in outer space. And in the near future it will be sent to our partners as an official proposal. Let’s work on this together.

Plans to expand certain elements of the anti-missile defence system to Europe cannot help but disturb us. Who needs the next step of what would be, in this case, an inevitable arms race? I deeply doubt that Europeans themselves do.

Missile weapons with a range of about five to eight thousand kilometres that really pose a threat to Europe do not exist in any of the so-called problem countries. And in the near future and prospects, this will not happen and is not even foreseeable. And any hypothetical launch of, for example, a North Korean rocket to American territory through western Europe obviously contradicts the laws of ballistics. As we say in Russia, it would be like using the right hand to reach the left ear.

And here in Germany I cannot help but mention the pitiable condition of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.

The Adapted Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe was signed in 1999. It took into account a new geopolitical reality, namely the elimination of the Warsaw bloc. Seven years have passed and only four states have ratified this document, including the Russian Federation.

NATO countries openly declared that they will not ratify this treaty, including the provisions on flank restrictions (on deploying a certain number of armed forces in the flank zones), until Russia removed its military bases from Georgia and Moldova. Our army is leaving Georgia, even according to an accelerated schedule. We resolved the problems we had with our Georgian colleagues, as everybody knows. There are still 1,500 servicemen in Moldova that are carrying out peacekeeping operations and protecting warehouses with ammunition left over from Soviet times. We constantly discuss this issue with Mr Solana and he knows our position. We are ready to further work in this direction.

But what is happening at the same time? Simultaneously the so-called flexible frontline American bases with up to five thousand men in each. It turns out that NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders, and we continue to strictly fulfil the treaty obligations and do not react to these actions at all.

I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?

The stones and concrete blocks of the Berlin Wall have long been distributed as souvenirs. But we should not forget that the fall of the Berlin Wall was possible thanks to a historic choice – one that was also made by our people, the people of Russia – a choice in favour of democracy, freedom, openness and a sincere partnership with all the members of the big European family.

And now they are trying to impose new dividing lines and walls on us – these walls may be virtual but they are nevertheless dividing, ones that cut through our continent. And is it possible that we will once again require many years and decades, as well as several generations of politicians, to dissemble and dismantle these new walls?

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

We are unequivocally in favour of strengthening the regime of non-proliferation. The present international legal principles allow us to develop technologies to manufacture nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes. And many countries with all good reasons want to create their own nuclear energy as a basis for their energy independence. But we also understand that these technologies can be quickly transformed into nuclear weapons.

This creates serious international tensions. The situation surrounding the Iranian nuclear programme acts as a clear example. And if the international community does not find a reasonable solution for resolving this conflict of interests, the world will continue to suffer similar, destabilising crises because there are more threshold countries than simply Iran. We both know this. We are going to constantly fight against the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Last year Russia put forward the initiative to establish international centres for the enrichment of uranium. We are open to the possibility that such centres not only be created in Russia, but also in other countries where there is a legitimate basis for using civil nuclear energy. Countries that want to develop their nuclear energy could guarantee that they will receive fuel through direct participation in these centres. And the centres would, of course, operate under strict IAEA supervision.

The latest initiatives put forward by American President George W. Bush are in conformity with the Russian proposals. I consider that Russia and the USA are objectively and equally interested in strengthening the regime of the non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their deployment. It is precisely our countries, with leading nuclear and missile capabilities, that must act as leaders in developing new, stricter non-proliferation measures. Russia is ready for such work. We are engaged in consultations with our American friends.

In general, we should talk about establishing a whole system of political incentives and economic stimuli whereby it would not be in states’ interests to establish their own capabilities in the nuclear fuel cycle but they would still have the opportunity to develop nuclear energy and strengthen their energy capabilities.

In connection with this I shall talk about international energy cooperation in more detail. Madam Federal Chancellor also spoke about this briefly – she mentioned, touched on this theme. In the energy sector Russia intends to create uniform market principles and transparent conditions for all. It is obvious that energy prices must be determined by the market instead of being the subject of political speculation, economic pressure or blackmail.

We are open to cooperation. Foreign companies participate in all our major energy projects. According to different estimates, up to 26 percent of the oil extraction in Russia – and please think about this figure – up to 26 percent of the oil extraction in Russia is done by foreign capital. Try, try to find me a similar example where Russian business participates extensively in key economic sectors in western countries. Such examples do not exist! There are no such examples.

I would also recall the parity of foreign investments in Russia and those Russia makes abroad. The parity is about fifteen to one. And here you have an obvious example of the openness and stability of the Russian economy.

Economic security is the sector in which all must adhere to uniform principles. We are ready to compete fairly.

For that reason more and more opportunities are appearing in the Russian economy. Experts and our western partners are objectively evaluating these changes. As such, Russia’s OECD sovereign credit rating improved and Russia passed from the fourth to the third group. And today in Munich I would like to use this occasion to thank our German colleagues for their help in the above decision.

Furthermore. As you know, the process of Russia joining the WTO has reached its final stages. I would point out that during long, difficult talks we heard words about freedom of speech, free trade, and equal possibilities more than once but, for some reason, exclusively in reference to the Russian market.

And there is still one more important theme that directly affects global security. Today many talk about the struggle against poverty. What is actually happening in this sphere? On the one hand, financial resources are allocated for programmes to help the world’s poorest countries – and at times substantial financial resources. But to be honest -- and many here also know this – linked with the development of that same donor country’s companies. And on the other hand, developed countries simultaneously keep their agricultural subsidies and limit some countries’ access to high-tech products.

And let’s say things as they are – one hand distributes charitable help and the other hand not only preserves economic backwardness but also reaps the profits thereof. The increasing social tension in depressed regions inevitably results in the growth of radicalism, extremism, feeds terrorism and local conflicts. And if all this happens in, shall we say, a region such as the Middle East where there is increasingly the sense that the world at large is unfair, then there is the risk of global destabilisation.

It is obvious that the world’s leading countries should see this threat. And that they should therefore build a more democratic, fairer system of global economic relations, a system that would give everyone the chance and the possibility to develop.

Dear ladies and gentlemen, speaking at the Conference on Security Policy, it is impossible not to mention the activities of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). As is well-known, this organisation was created to examine all – I shall emphasise this – all aspects of security: military, political, economic, humanitarian and, especially, the relations between these spheres.

What do we see happening today? We see that this balance is clearly destroyed. People are trying to transform the OSCE into a vulgar instrument designed to promote the foreign policy interests of one or a group of countries. And this task is also being accomplished by the OSCE’s bureaucratic apparatus which is absolutely not connected with the state founders in any way. Decision-making procedures and the involvement of so-called non-governmental organisations are tailored for this task. These organisations are formally independent but they are purposefully financed and therefore under control.

According to the founding documents, in the humanitarian sphere the OSCE is designed to assist country members in observing international human rights norms at their request. This is an important task. We support this. But this does not mean interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, and especially not imposing a regime that determines how these states should live and develop.

It is obvious that such interference does not promote the development of democratic states at all. On the contrary, it makes them dependent and, as a consequence, politically and economically unstable.

We expect that the OSCE be guided by its primary tasks and build relations with sovereign states based on respect, trust and transparency.

Dear ladies and gentlemen!

In conclusion I would like to note the following. We very often – and personally, I very often – hear appeals by our partners, including our European partners, to the effect that Russia should play an increasingly active role in world affairs.

In connection with this I would allow myself to make one small remark. It is hardly necessary to incite us to do so. Russia is a country with a history that spans more than a thousand years and has practically always used the privilege to carry out an independent foreign policy.

We are not going to change this tradition today. At the same time, we are well aware of how the world has changed and we have a realistic sense of our own opportunities and potential. And of course we would like to interact with responsible and independent partners with whom we could work together in constructing a fair and democratic world order that would ensure security and prosperity not only for a select few, but for all.

Thank you for your attention.

]]> Sun, 11 Feb 2007 04:39:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/161627 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/161391 Ex-national security adviser warns that Bush is seeking a pretext to attack Iran
By Barry Grey in Washington DC
2 February 2007

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/feb2007/brze-f02_prn.shtml

Testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser in the Carter administration, delivered a scathing critique of the war in Iraq and warned that the Bush administration’s policy was leading inevitably to a war with Iran, with incalculable consequences for US imperialism in the Middle East and internationally.

Brzezinski, who opposed the March 2003 invasion and has publicly denounced the war as a colossal foreign policy blunder, began his remarks on what he called the “war of choice” in Iraq by characterizing it as “a historic, strategic and moral calamity.”

“Undertaken under false assumptions,” he continued, “it is undermining America’s global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by Manichean principles and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional instability.”

Brzezinski derided Bush’s talk of a “decisive ideological struggle” against radical Islam as “simplistic and demagogic,” and called it a “mythical historical narrative” employed to justify a “protracted and potentially expanding war.”

“To argue that America is already at war in the region with a wider Islamic threat, of which Iran is the epicenter, is to promote a self-fulfilling prophecy,” he said.

Most stunning and disturbing was his description of a “plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran.” It would, he suggested, involve “Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks, followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure, then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the US blamed on Iran, culminating in a ‘defensive’ US military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.” [Emphasis added].

This was an unmistakable warning to the US Congress, replete with quotation marks to discount the “defensive” nature of such military action, that the Bush administration is seeking a pretext for an attack on Iran. Although he did not explicitly say so, Brzezinski came close to suggesting that the White House was capable of manufacturing a provocation—including a possible terrorist attack within the US—to provide the casus belli for war.

That a man such as Brzezinski, with decades of experience in the top echelons of the US foreign policy establishment, a man who has the closest links to the military and to intelligence agencies, should issue such a warning at an open hearing of the US Senate has immense and grave significance.

Brzezinski knows whereof he speaks, having authored provocations of his own while serving as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. In that capacity, as he has since acknowledged in published writings, he drew up the covert plan at the end of the 1970s to mobilize Islamic fundamentalist mujaheddin to topple the pro-Soviet regime in Afghanistan and draw the Soviet Union into a ruinous war in that country.

Following his opening remarks, in response to questions from the senators, Brzezinski reiterated his warning of a provocation.

He called the senators’ attention to a March 27, 2006 report in the New York Times on “a private meeting between the president and Prime Minister Blair, two months before the war, based on a memorandum prepared by the British official present at this meeting.” In the article, Brzezinski said, “the president is cited as saying he is concerned that there may not be weapons of mass destruction found in Iraq, and that there must be some consideration given to finding a different basis for undertaking the action.”

He continued: “I’ll just read you what this memo allegedly says, according to the New York Times: ‘The memo states that the president and the prime minister acknowledged that no unconventional weapons had been found inside Iraq. Faced with the possibility of not finding any before the planned invasion, Mr. Bush talked about several ways to provoke a confrontation.’

“He described the several ways in which this could be done. I won’t go into that... the ways were quite sensational, at least one of them.

“If one is of the view that one is dealing with an implacable enemy that has to be removed, that course of action may under certain circumstances be appealing. I’m afraid that if this situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate, and if Iran is perceived as in some fashion involved or responsible, or a potential beneficiary, that temptation could arise.”

At another point Brzezinski remarked on the conspiratorial methods of the Bush administration and all but described it as a cabal. “I am perplexed,” he said, “by the fact that major strategic decisions seem to be made within a very narrow circle of individuals—just a few, probably a handful, perhaps not more than the fingers on my hand. And these are the individuals, all of whom but one, who made the original decision to go to war, and used the original justifications to go to war.”

None of the senators in attendance addressed themselves to the stark warning from Brzezinski. The Democrats in particular, flaccid, complacent and complicit in the war conspiracies of the Bush administration, said nothing about the danger of a provocation spelled out by the witness.

Following the hearing, this reporter asked Brzezinski directly if he was suggesting that the source of a possible provocation might be the US government itself. The former national security adviser was evasive.

The following exchange took place:

Q: Dr. Brzezinski, who do you think would be carrying out this possible provocation?

A: I have no idea. As I said, these things can never be predicted. It can be spontaneous.

Q: Are you suggesting there is a possibility it could originate within the US government itself?

A: I’m saying the whole situation can get out of hand and all sorts of calculations can produce a circumstance that would be very difficult to trace.
]]> Thu, 08 Feb 2007 16:29:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/161391 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/160647
Liberty, equality and colony
By Olivier Le Cour Grandmaison , Le Monde Diplomatique, June 2001
http://www.algeria-watch.org/en/analyses/grandmaison_torture_algeria.htm

The war in Algeria has a long history. It started on 31 January 1830 when Charles X captured Algiers. The official aim was to avenge an affront to the French Consul by the Dey of Algiers and put an end to piracy in the vicinity. Unofficially the objective was to restore the prestige of the French crown and establish a foothold in North Africa, thus preventing the British from having a free hand in the Mediterranean. The July Monarchy, which came to power the following summer, inherited this burden.

The undertaking proved costly, mobilising large numbers of troops and reaping meagre benefits. A number of deputies at the National Assembly called for the troops to be withdrawn. Others suggested that they stay and occupy a limited amount of territory. A third group advocated colonisation and full-scale war, claiming that repeated raids were essential to destroy the power of Abdel Kader and ruin the tribes that supported him. At the end of 1840 the supporters of this policy gained the upper hand.

On 29 December of that year General Thomas Bugeaud, just appointed governor of the colony, arrived in Algeria, marking the real start of the country’s conquest. The means employed were atrocious. The army massacred or deported villagers en masse; raped women and took children hostage; stole harvests and livestock and destroyed orchards. Louis-Philippe, and subsequently Napoleon III, awarded their generals with promotion. The careers of several field marshals and a minister of war owed a great deal to the piles of Algerian and Kabyle corpses (1).

"In France I have often heard people I respect, but do not approve, deplore [the army] burning harvests, emptying granaries and seizing unarmed men, women and children. As I see it, these are unfortunate necessities that any people wishing to make war on the Arabs must accept," wrote the French political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59). He added: "I believe the laws of war entitle us to ravage the country and that we must do this, either by destroying crops at harvest time, or all the time by making rapid incursions, known as raids, the aim of which is to carry off men and flocks" (2).

De Tocqueville wrote this in October 1841 after visiting Algeria. He supported colonisation in general, and in particular the colonisation of Algeria. As well as making two trips to the country, he addressed the matter in letters, in several speeches on France’s foreign affairs, and in two official reports presented to the National Assembly in March 1847 on behalf of an ad hoc commission. He repeatedly commented on and analysed the issue in his voluminous correspondence. In short, De Tocqueville developed a theoretical basis for French expansion in North Africa.

He collected an impressive library on the subject for he planned to write a book on India and British colonisation, comparing it with French achievements in what was then known as the Regency of Algiers. He even studied the Koran, sharply concluding that the religion of Muhammad was "the main cause of the decadence ... of the Muslim world". His contemporaries were therefore right to see De Tocqueville as an important figure in modern colonialism, to which he devoted much time and energy between 1837 and 1847.

French specialists, however, have little to say on the subject. They either pretend not to know about his writings on the subject or they gloss over their idol’s positions to avoid damaging his image as a liberal and a democrat (3) - focusing on works such as Democracy in America and The Old Regime and the Revolution is more conducive to academic canonisation than detailed examination of his works on Algeria. These texts, which have all been published, do not seem to have made a lasting impression on the eminent academics who explore De Tocqueville’s ideas and marvel at the subtlety of his analysis. Yet the texts provide an interesting insight into some his opinions. They are also instructive about the early years of the French conquest and how the colonial state was first set up and organised. De Tocqueville emerges as an advocate of "total domination" in Algeria and "devastation of the country" (4).

De Tocqueville thought the conquest of Algeria was important for two reasons: first, his understanding of the international situation and France’s position in the world, and, second, changes in French society. He despised the July Monarchy, which he described as mediocre and cowardly. He believed it impaired the internal affairs of the country. But its effect on foreign affairs was, he thought, even more disastrous at a time when the crisis in the Ottoman Empire, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, offered new opportunities for the European powers. France, he believed, should be daring enough to seize this opportunity and not be intimidated by Britain.
De Tocqueville was obsessed with halting France’s decline, restoring its standing and power. He was convinced that without a vigorous policy of conquest, it would soon become a second-grade country and the monarchy itself might disappear. In this context, he thought that withdrawing from Algiers would be irresponsible. The army should stay and the government should encourage the French to settle there, ruling the country and controlling the central part of the Mediterranean. He thought that two large ports, for the navy and trade, should be built, one in Algiers, the other in Mers al-Kabir.
Undertaking these projects would restore national pride, threatened, he believed, by "the gradual softening of social mores" in the middle classes. Their taste for "material pleasures" was spreading to the whole of society, giving it "an example of weakness and egotism" (5). War and colonisation therefore seemed to provide a remedy for France’s social and political ills. De Tocqueville accordingly came out in favour of radical measures to end 10 years’ procrastination and open the way for the rapid conquest of Algeria.

War in Africa is a science
He tirelessly defended a policy of controlling Algeria to colonise it - and colonising it to establish lasting control. The ends dictated the means to be employed. Abdel Kader was constantly on the move, drawing support from numerous tribes which supplied him with men, arms and food. The army must relentlessly pursue Kader, he believed, and above all destroy the social and economic roots of the various tribes, striking at Kader’s power base and putting an end to his influence.

After explaining that he was in favour of banning trade with local people, De Tocqueville added: "Large-scale expeditions seem necessary now and then: first, to continue showing the Arabs and our soldiers that there are no obstacles to our progress through the country; and second, to destroy anything resembling a permanent settlement, or in other words a town. I believe it is of the greatest importance to leave no town standing in the lands of Abdel Kader, now or in the future" (6).

De Tocqueville clearly approved the methods of General Bugeaud and defended them publicly on several occasions. Bugeaud’s approach consisted of laying waste to Algeria and seizing anything that might be useful for the army - "using war to keep the war alive", as General Lamoricière put it. He drove the native population further and further back to secure complete control of conquered territory. Once these objectives had been achieved, through mass terror, settlements were established, making it impossible for the original population to return.

De Tocqueville did not rely exclusively on military might. He intended to protect and extend expropriation by the rule of law. He therefore advocated setting up special courts, based on what he himself called a "summary" procedure, to carry out massive expropriation for the benefit of French and other European settlers who would thus be able to purchase land at an attractive price and live in villages that the colonial government had equipped with fortifications, schools, churches and even fountains. De Tocqueville was apparently concerned about the material and moral welfare of the colonisers. He recommended that they should form armed militia, led by an army officer, to defend the population and their possessions. The network formed by the various villages would secure their hold on the conquered territory. The local people, who had been driven out by the army and robbed of their land by the judges, would gradually die out.

The French colonial state, as he conceived it and as it took shape in Algeria, was a two-tiered organisation, quite unlike the regime in mainland France. It introduced two different political and legal systems which, in the last analysis, were based on racial, cultural and religious distinctions. According to De Tocqueville, the system that should apply to the colonisers would enable them alone to hold property and travel freely, but would deprive them of any form of political freedom, which should be suspended in Algeria. "There should therefore be two quite distinct legislations in Africa, for there are two very separate communities. There is absolutely nothing to prevent us treating Europeans as if they were on their own, as the rules established for them will only ever apply to them" (7).

It could hardly be clearer. The people from glorious, enlightened Europe were entitled to rights. As for the "barbarians", there was no question of their enjoying equality, freedom or the universal rule of law. Nor did De Tocqueville set any time limit for this arrangement. Predictably, the system that applied to the Arab and Kabyle populations resulted in a permanent state of war, designed to keep them under the brutal yoke of the colonisers and an all-powerful government.

In 1847, after several years of ruthless fighting, De Tocqueville wrote, "Experience has not only shown us where the natural theatre of war is located. It has also taught us to make war. It has revealed the strengths and weaknesses of our adversaries. It has made us understand how to beat them and, once beaten, how we should keep the upper hand. It can now be said that war in Africa is a science. Everyone is familiar with its rules and everyone can apply those rules with almost complete certainty of success. One of the greatest services that Field Marshal Bugeaud has rendered his country is to have spread, perfected and made everyone aware of this new science" (8). There was clearly nothing exceptional about the crimes committed by the French army and state in Algeria in 1955-62. On the contrary, they were part of a long ongoing story.

Translated by Harry Forster

* Lecturer in political science at Evry-Val d’Essonne University and editor of 17 octobre 1961: un crime d’Etat à Paris, La Dispute, Paris, May 2001.

Notes

(1) In a work that seeks to defend the army’s excesses, Pierre Montagnon wrote of the victims: "500,000? A million? The truth must lie somewhere between these figures. Anything less would be to play down a terrible reality," La conquête de l’Algérie, Paris, Pygmalion, 1986, p 414. If we compare these figures with historian Denise Bouche’s estimate of the total population in 1830 at "about three million people", the scale of the massacres becomes clearer; see her Histoire de la colonisation française, volume 2, Paris, Fayard, 1998, p 23.

(2) Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l’Algérie in Oeuvres complètes, Paris, Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1991, pp 704 and 705.

(3) With the notable exception of Tzvetan Todorov who has presented several of de Tocqueville’s pieces on Algeria. See De la colonie en Algérie, Complexe, Brussels, 1988, and Nous et les Autres, Seuil, Paris, 1989, "Tocqueville", pp 219-234.

(4) Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l’Algérie, op cit, pp 699 and 706.

(5) Alexis de Tocqueville, Letter to J S Mill, 18 March 1841, in Oeuvres complètes, "Correspondance anglaise", volume VI, 1, Gallimard, Paris, 1954, p 335.

(6) Alexis de Tocqueville, Travail sur l’Algérie, op cit, p 706.

(7) Idem, p 752.

(8) Alexis de Tocqueville, "Rapports sur l’Algérie", in Oeuvres complètes, op cit, p 806.

Quotes
"When people talk about cannibals we smile with pride at our superiority over such savages. But who are the real savages? The people who fight to eat their victims or the ones who fight just to kill? We take a fancy to a town in China. To capture it we massacre 50,000 Chinese. A further 10,000 French are slaughtered in the process. The town will be of no use to us. It is just a question of national honour. So the national honour that drives us to capture a city that does not belong to us, will gain all the more by the death of 50,000 Chinese and 10,000 French." Guy de Maupassant, Gil Blas, 11 December 1883.

"They consider any village that gives refuge to a group [of rebels] or fails to report its presence to be responsible and guilty. They have the chief and the three or four most important villagers beheaded, then set fire to the village and raze it to the ground." Jean-Louis de Lanessan, Principes de colonisation, Paris, 1897.
]]> Sat, 03 Feb 2007 13:55:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/160647 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/160117 by the Sunday Herald / Scotland

America ‘Poised to Strike at Iran’s Nuclear Sites’ from Bases in Bulgaria and Romania
Report suggest that ‘US defensive ring’ may be new front in war on terror.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines07/0128-05.htm

by Gabriel Ronay

President Bush is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities before the end of April and the US Air Force's new bases in Bulgaria and Romania would be used as back-up in the onslaught, according to an official report from Sofia.

"American forces could be using their two USAF bases in Bulgaria and one at Romania's Black Sea coast to launch an attack on Iran in April," the Bulgarian news agency Novinite said.

The American build-up along the Black Sea, coupled with the recent positioning of two US aircraft carrier battle groups off the Straits of Hormuz, appears to indicate president Bush has run out of patience with Tehran's nuclear misrepresentation and non-compliance with the UN Security Council's resolution. President Ahmeninejad of Iran has further ratcheted up tension in the region by putting on show his newly purchased state of the art Russian TOR-Ml anti-missile defence system.

Whether the Bulgarian news report is a tactical feint or a strategic event is hard to gauge at this stage. But, in conjunction with the beefing up of America's Italian bases and the acquisition of anti-missile defence bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, the Balkan developments seem to indicate a new phase in Bush's global war on terror.

Sofia's news of advanced war preparations along the Black Sea is backed up by some chilling details. One is the setting up of new refuelling places for US Stealth bombers, which would spearhead an attack on Iran. "The USAF's positioning of vital refuelling facilities for its B-2 bombers in unusual places, including Bulgaria, falls within the perspective of such an attack." Novinite named Colonel Sam Gardiner, "a US secret service officer stationed in Bulgaria", as the source of this revelation.

Curiously, the report noted that although Tony Blair, Bush's main ally in the global war on terror, would be leaving office, the president had opted to press on with his attack on Iran in April.

Before the end of March, 3000 US military personnel are scheduled to arrive "on a rotating basis" at America's Bulgarian bases. Under the US-Bulgarian military co-operation accord, signed in April,2006,an airbase at Bezmer, a second airfield at Graf Ignitievo and a shooting range at Novo Selo were leased to America. Significantly, last year's bases negotiations had at one point run into difficulties due to Sofia's demand "for advance warning if Washington intends to use Bulgarian soil for attacks against other nations, particularly Iran".

Romania, the other Black Sea host to th US military, is enjoying a dollar bonanza as its Mihail Kogalniceanu base at Constanta is being transformed into an American "place d'arme". It is also vital to the Iran scenario.

Last week, the Bucharest daily Evenimentual Zilei revealed the USAF is to site several flights of F-l5, F-l6 and Al0 aircraft at the Kogalniceanubase. Admiral Gheorghe Marin, Romania's chief of staff, confirmed "up to 2000 American military personnel will be temporarily stationed in Romania".

In Central Europe, the Czech Republic and Poland have also found themselves in the Pentagon's strategic focus. Last week, Mirek Topolanek, the Czech prime minister, and the country's national security council agreed to the siting of a US anti-missile radar defence system at Nepolisy. Poland has also agreed to having a US anti-missile missile base and interceptor aircraft stationed in the country.

Russia, however, does not see the chain of new US bases on its doorstep as a "defensive ring". Russia's defence chief has branded the planned US anti-missile missile sites on Czech and Polish soil as "an open threat to Russia".

Sergey Ivanov, Russia's defence minister,spoke more circumspectly while emphasizing Moscow's concern. He said: "Russia is no worried. Its strategic nuclear forces can assure in any circumstance its safety. Since neither Tehran, nor Pyongyang possess intercontinental missiles capable of threatening the USA, from whom is this new missile shield supposed to protect the West? All it actually amounts to is that Prague and Warsaw want to demonstrate their loyalty to Washington."

Bush's Iran attack plan has brought into sharp focus the possible costs to Central and Eastern Europe of being "pillars of Pax Americana".


]]> Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:44:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/160117 http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/160113
Iraq: The Genocide Option

By Edward Herman
Z Net Commentary
http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2007-01/24herman.cfm

It was claimed early in 2005 that the United States was considering resort to what has been called the "Salvadoran Option" in Iraq, in which, as had been done in El Salvador in the 1980s, U.S. Special Forces would train paramilitary squads to hunt down and assassinate rebel leaders and their supporters. [1] A year earlier, it was reported that a sizable fund had been appropriated for the creation of an exile-based paramilitary unit for Iraq, and that the money would more broadly "support U.S. efforts to create a lethal, and revengeful Iraqi security force." It was expected that this would lead to "a wave of extrajudicial killings" of armed rebels, but also of "nationalists, other opponents of the U.S. occupation and thousands of civilian Baathists." [2]

The rise of the death rate in Iraq, and the evidence of large-scale assassinations and slaughters frequently carried out by uniformed men, suggests that the Salvadoran option was put in place and that it has done its work well even if failing to bring victory to the Shiite leaders and militias and their sponsors.

However, along with the Salvadoran option the U.S. military had also stepped up its own activities in one of a series of "surges," among them the assault on Fallujah in November 2004, and using the Fallujah model, with the application of massive firepower in Sunni-dominated areas, much of it from the air, moving from town to town, in an effort to kill Sunni resistance fighters and render their home bases unusable. Because of the lavish use of firepower and limited concern with Iraqi civilian casualties, this process is very costly to civilians in the area of attack. Civilians also suffer from the fact that the invading troops not only don't speak their language, but become extra hostile as they suffer casualties from a resistance that lives among the local population. This results in greater ruthlessness and increasing numbers of cases of literal direct mass murder as in Haditha. [3]

This is reminiscent of U.S. policy during the Vietnam war, where torture and multiple Haditha-type massacres, enormous firepower, napalm, B-52 bombing raids, and chemical warfare applied to jungles and peasant farms, ravaged the country, leaving much of it a wasteland, killing several million civilians, and leaving a heritage of traumatized, injured and chemically damaged people as well.

It is important to understand that the most violent warfare, including My Lai and its many many look-alikes, as well as the use of napalm and dioxin-based herbicides, was applied in the southern part of the country, which the United States was allegedly "protecting" from an invasion from the north. The methods of warfare themselves demonstrated that the alleged protection and "saving" was a lie, but it should be recognized that the reason these horrors could be applied more lavishly in the south rather than the north is that the south was controlled by the U.S. occupation and its puppet government, so that, unlike North Vietnam, the terrible violence wrought against the southern peasantry could be relatively hidden and kept from public and international scrutiny.

The U.S. attack on Vietnam may be termed the "Genocide Option," as the killing and destruction went far beyond anything that took place in El Salvador, and threatened the survival of the southern population. Southern Vietnam had its U.S.-organized death squads, with Operation Phoenix famously accounting for possibly 40,000 assassinations of NLF cadres and unknown other victims of this murder program.

El Salvador also had impressive death squads, but couldn't match the scope and intensity of the violence wrought by the United States on the distant peasant society, which brought into play all weapons in the U.S. high-tech arsenal short of the nuclear-many being tested against live experimental victims--used in enormous volume, without moral restraint (and with minimal protest from the "international community").

By 1967 the level of violence had reached a point where Vietnam scholar Bernard Fall warned that "Vietnam as a cultural and historic entity…is threatened with extinction..[as]…the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size." [4] In the south, 9,000 out of 15,000 hamlets were damaged or destroyed, along with some 25 million acres of farmland and 12 million acres of forests. One and a half million cattle were killed, and the war left a million widows and 800,000 orphans. The chemical defoliation operations were vast and their effects could take many generations to reverse, and they resulted in a further generation of malformed children (500,000 in one 1997 estimate). [5]

This was a truly genocidal attack, both in volume and threat to viability and with its demand that the resistance surrender as the condition for termination of the assault. (In a marvel of transference, the oft-expressed U.S. position was that the refusal to surrender demonstrated a low Vietnamese valuation of Vietnamese life! In a further marvel of Western impudence, the Krstic decision by the NATO-organized Yugoslavia tribunal found that "genocide" had been committed by a NATO target group [Bosnian Serbs] because killings--which explicitly spared women and children--might have ended the viability of a single small town in Bosnia.)

Another feature of the Vietnam War of relevance today is that all through its murderous course it was argued in the United States that it must go on in order to avoid a post-occupation "bloodbath"! The huge ongoing and genocidal bloodbath was needed to prevent a hypothetical one that never did materialize. [6]

The genocide option threatens Iraq, where the United States is engaged in direct military action against another virtually defenceless population-in contrast with El Salvador where proxies did the dirty work. Military technology has advanced further, and the complete amorality of the Deciders and their willingness to kill without limit to achieve their goals or save face is clear. It is important for the Deciders that not too many U.S. service personnel be killed, as this has a definite negative effect on the national willingness to move forward to "victory" (or at least temporarily fending off acknowledging defeat). If U.S. casualties can be reduced by more intensive firepower, at the expense of greater Iraqi civilian casualties, that has been and will continue to be the route taken. Furthermore, U.S. pacification violence applied to Sunni-dominated towns is implemented out of sight of the mainstream media (although not completely hidden given the bravery of some non-imbedded Western journalists and Al Jazeera).

The Bush "surge" is a desperation maneuver, and in a context of ever-stronger political objections to more U.S. personnel in Iraq and sensitivity to U.S. casualties, there is good reason to believe that the Bush answer will be even more intensive firepower in Baghdad and other cities and villages in which the insurgents mingle easily with the civilian population. Bush even warns U.S. citizens of more blood and gore "even if our new strategy works exactly as planned." Furthermore, partly via the use of the Salvadoran Option and partly by U.S. manipulation of sectarian conflict, [7] the invasion-occupation has produced a deadly civil war in which the Sunnis and Shiites engage in large-scale communal ethnic cleansing and killing, adding to the toll.

There can be little doubt that the rate of civilian killing in Iraq is about to rise from something like the recent Lancet estimate of 655,000 to a larger figure. If "genocide" was committed in Bosnia, where recent establishment analysts concluded--embarrassingly, given the earlier institutionalized total of 250,000-- that approximately 100,000 people died on all sides, including military personnel, [8] surely we have a case of genocide in Iraq just during the period 2003-2006. And Bush is about to give us more, with the Democrats and UN looking on but doing nothing to restrain the killing machine.

Wouldn't it be nice if democracy worked and a popular antiwar vote had some effect? And if the global double standard now in force was not so gross and the perpetrators responsible for this genocidal outburst could be brought before a real tribunal in the interest of real global justice before their next surge?



Endnotes:


1. Michael Hirsh and John Barry, "'The Salvadoran Option'," Newsweek, January 14, 2005.

2. Quoted in Craig Murrary, "Civil War in Iraq: The Salvadoran Option and US/UK Policy," http://www.uruknet.org.uk/?s1=1p=27587s2=20.

3. Tom Engelhardt, "Collateral Damage: the 'Incident' at Haditha" http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/printer_060806O.shtml; Chris Floyd, "Lesson Plan" http://www.moscowtimes.ru/stories/2006/06/02/120.html; Linda Heard, "Media and Tal Afar": http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/63044; Ghalil Hassan, "Iraq: A Criminal Process," Global Research, Nov. 27, 2005.

4. Bernard Fall, Last Reflections on a War (New York: Doubleday, 1967).

5. Peter Waldman, "Body Counts: In Vietnam, the Agony of Birth Defects Calls an Old War to Mind," Wall Street Journal, Dec. 12, 1970.

6. Gareth Porter, "The Bloodbath We Created," http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1214-32.htm

7. Ibid.

8. See Ewa Tabeau and Jakub Bijak, "War-related Deaths in the 1992-1995 Armed Conflicts in Bosnia and Herzegovina: A Critique of Previous Estimates and Recent Results," European Journal of Population, Vol. 21, No. 2-3, June, 2005, pp. 187-215, www.yugofile.co.uk/onlynow/EJP_all.zip . Also see the ongoing work of Mirsad Tokaca et al. at the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center, which produces month-by-month updates of the latest estimates for deaths attributable to the war on the webpage "The Status of Database by the Centers," http://www.idc.org.ba/aboutus/Overview_of_jobs_according_to_centers.htmFear of Shia death squads, perhaps secretly controlled by the Badr Brigade, the leading Shia militia, frightens the Sunni. The patience of the Shia is wearing very thin. But their leaders want them to consolidate their strength within the government after their election victory in January.
]]> Tue, 30 Jan 2007 21:41:00 EST http://Arslanik.tigblog.org/post/160113