Clash of Civilizations or Clash of Values? The Rhetoric of War and Peace.

This article was published in a slightly different version at Iran's View that includes a comment on Obama's first speech in an American Mosque in Baltimore on February 3, 2016.

Values and the West's double standards approach to ethical pluralism.

Ethical pluralism is focused on individual preferences in modern pluralistic societies.  It does not dictate what is ethical or what is not.  It only creates a space for rational dialogue on the diversity of values aimed at reaching a consensus within the limits of reason.  Ethical pluralism is practised in the West for controversial moral issues like abortion, gay rights and Euthanasia.  Although laws are legislated in these cases in some Western countries,  in many cases they do not constrain those who oppose them to live by them.  It is believed that ethical pluralsim creates more tolerance and more freedoms for the individual.  The essence of ethical pluralism is that moral codes cannot be forced, they emerge by consensus through a rational discourse and dialogue on values.  

Within western societies, theorizing ethical diversity and pluralism requires a commitment to dialogue within the limits of reason in order to reach a consensus on values.  I am referring here to the Habermasian theory of ethics for modern democratic societies, which Habermas calls ‘Discourse ethics’.  These pillars of ethical pluralism are denied by the West when advancing its own set of values in non Western societies. 

As such, Western moral values, having emerged by consensus, cannot be forced on other cultures and societies who did not participate in the rational discourse leading to a consensus on these values.  In most non Western societies, values are anchored, not in individual preferences, but in community norms, elders’ wisdoms and local laws, which ancient Greeks used to call ‘nomos’.   Moreover, in most non Western societies, core values are transmitted between generations, not discussed in the public sphere, where they tend to play a cohesive social role in which the individual self identifies more with the community than with the ego.

There is a tension in the West’s approach to values which allows the individual a greater space of liberty within Western societies but denies this liberty to individuals in other societies attached to their traditions and the norms of their communities.  In fact, there is a faulty assumption in the West that the individual Self in non-western societies is modeled on the Western Self, despite historical and cultural differences.  This tension has become palpable with the advent of the globalization of markets, cultures and ideas.  The West stands as the promoter of one set of values, its own, over others.   In many cultures, this tension is being tackled differently, either by total assimilation, peaceful but active resistance, distrust and retreat, or violent resentful extremism directed against the West in the case of Sunni Islam. Colonialism was built on the assumption that the colonized were different in humanity while globalization is built on the assumption that 'there is no such thing as society' (as Margaret Thatcher famously said) whereby only individuals detached from their historical and cultural roots exist as consumers having an infinite set of preferences determined by the markets.

Ethical pluralism, although unequally practised by the West, is not part of the relations the West establishes with other societies, where it is assumed that only individuals exist and that they must consume the product of the ethical consensus built by other individuals in the West.   What we have witnessed so far since 911 is the forcing and enforcing of Western values through military campaigns, invasions and occupations preceded and followed by violent backlashes from extremist fundamentalists.  Post 911, international relations have become a domain of confrontations thought to be confrontations of civilizations and values.

Many Muslims today live in communities, societies and countries which emphasize traditional values and the supremacy of the community over the individual.   However, Muslims are not the only ones who live in traditions which are antagonists to Western values, but they are currently the main culture and religion to react and to be targeted by this confrontation of values and it is mainly Sunni Muslims who are engaged in this confrontation.

A broken dialogue on values.

This is the reason why a dialogue on values is urgently needed between the West and Muslims.  Some in the West as well as in Muslim countries do not believe in the dialogue on values, firmly standing on both sides of the values divide, committed to wars.  But others, and they aren’t many, believe in this dialogue. President Obama articulated his desire for dialogue with Muslims in his Cairo’s discourse early during his first mandate.  But due to many factors, including America’s previous war commitments and voices of confrontation inside his own administration, Obama wasn’t able to act on his Cairo’s discourse. We will never know if Obama was sincere about this dialogue.  But what we know is that he did not blindly follow those who wanted a confrontation to the end with Iran. Recently Ayatollah Khamenei wrote on his twitter account that Obama wrote him a second letter in 2009 full of affirmative statements about Iran.  Khamenei said he had the intention to reply to the letter but after Obama supported the protests against the government in Iran in 2009 he refrained from doing so.  Obama acted against the voices of confrontation with Iran, but not before the failure of the 2009 colour revolution for regime change.  He finally succeeded in reaching a deal with Iran that, if its implementation is unhindered by more confrontation, should naturally open a dialogue on values between Muslims and the West.

On the Iranian side, the deal reached between Iran and the West silenced the voices of confrontation and opened possibilities to initiate a dialogue between Muslims and the West.  Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was first to open this dialogue on the values of Islam with his two letters to western youth (January 2015 letter and November 2015 letter).  Khamenei’s initiatives came in a context of a renewed wave of Sunni terrorism by ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria), more barbaric and more sectarian than the terrorism witnessed since 911, and threatening this time the Near East, the Levant and Europe.

While the nuclear deal was being worked out between the West and Iran during the year 2015, many terrorist attacks by Sunni Muslim extremists hit Muslim countries, especially Iraq and Syria, as well as Europe.  Most notable were the attacks in France claimed by ISIS that attracted wide and sustained attention in Western media.  ISIS is virulently anti-Iran and anti-Shia.  It promotes a return to the  Sunni Caliphate.  The first attacks were on January 7th at the offices of Charlie Hebdo and on a Jewish surpermarket in Paris and its suburb and killed seventeen and wounded others.  Khamenei’s first letter was published merely two weeks after these attacks.  It spoke of a different kind of Islam, attempting to educate Western youth on Islam and the real sources of knowledge on Islam, away from the terrible and negative image that was being presented to the West by ISIS.  The letter was deliberately addressed to youth.  Khamenei argued that dialogue with Western leaders was futile because these leaders not only promoted the kind of Muslim extremism embodied by ISIS but also did not appear to be willing to learn about the true religion of Islam and Muslims beyond the terrorists clichés. The second series of attacks in France in 2015 happened on Novembre 13 at the Bataclan concert venue and a café in Paris and killed hundred and thirty people and wounded many.  Ayatollah Khamenei’s second letter to Western youth was published two weeks later on November 29.  In it, Ayatollah Khamenei chides the West for its double standards towards the victims of terrorism and for the imposition of Western culture by force uniformly on Muslim societies.

Although the lives lost to terrorism in France weren’t more precious than other lives taken by blind terrorism elsewhere, the attacks were alarming, not only because they touched the heart of Europe, its cultural symbols and its youth, but because they threatened to create a greater wedge between European and Muslim populations inside and outside Europe, in neighbouring countries around the Meditterranean basin, and beyond in the Asian and African continents where the majority of Muslims live.  While American neocons, who so much wished for the clash of civilizations after 911, could observe the increasing wedge between Muslims and non Muslims far from their own shores separated and shielded from this clash by two oceans, Europe is increasingly becoming the theatre of the clash.   

A clash of values is not a clash of civilizations

What is the nature of the clash between Sunni extremism and the West?  It is important to make a distinction here between the clash of civllizations and the clash of values.  While the clash of civilizations includes also a clash of values, it is about more than values.  It is confrontational in essence because civilizations aim for self preservation and fight against their annihilation.  The term ‘civilization’ means not only values but a geopolitical, economic and military space.  The clash of values can be resolved through dialogue.  Values tend to evolve slowly and by consensus according to each society’s needs.   They can intersect between two civilizations and they can be passed on peacefully between civilizations. Many civilizations’ values evolve from the inside, but also from contacts with other civlizations.  In the ancient times, these contacts were mostly established through wars.  The citizens of ancient Greece considered non Greeks as barbarians and non humans because ancient Greece was a ‘closed’ civilization.  This perception changed during the Hellenistic period after contacts were made by Alexander the great with other civilizations through conquest and wars. 

The term ‘clash of civilizations’ is greatly misleading.  It implies a confrontation.  It is both a testimony to the neocons’ warring agenda as well as to their backward thinking.  Wars aren’t needed today to establish contacts with other civilizations.  Today’s means of communication are many, multi-level, fast and easy.

The fall of the former communist bloc countries should have led us to a more cooperative, less confrontational world, militarily speaking.  Instead, the neocons created the clash of civilizations to produce more wars and more confrontations to advance American hegemony in a unipolar world.  With 911 and its aftermath, Sunni Muslim terrorism, initially born out from the collaboration of America’s cold war ideology & Sunni Wahhabism against the former communist bloc, set the scene worldwide for a spectacular and threatening clash of values, mistaken for a clash of civilizations.  Wherever there was a clash of values, the neocons created wars resembling a clash of civilizations with their lot of humiliations, provocations and blasphemy of religious symbols,  leading to a greater clash of values, reinforcing in a loop the ‘clash of civilizations’.   

It is Europe and Asia where most people on the planet, and most Muslims live, that are set to take the full impact of this clash being prepared for decades now by the neocons. The neocons’ game in Europe is to treat Europe’s woes resulting from a clash of  values between east and west, between  north and south, with more confrontations and wars. 

This is the post 911 reality created by the neocons. A world that has every possible tool to make communication and dialogue on many issues, including values, easy and natural, yet is locked in confrontations and wars. As often, it takes two to dance.  The neocons’ project to produce a clash of civilizations is greatly helped by resentful extremism and its state sponsors.

To be aware of this post 911 reality is to make everything possible to prevent a great war in Europe and its geopolitical surroundings.   And fortunately for us, the majority of Muslims do not want this clash of civilizations which has been hurting Muslim countries and Muslims more than others.  Fortunately for us too, Iran refuses to engage in the clash of civilizations.  Amid the tensions of the post 911 world, Iran has shown the world it can make peace without losing its dignity.  I have argued elsewhere that both the nuclear deal and Khamenei’s letter to western youth form a coherent approach by Iran to treat the woes of Islam and show the West that there is an alternative to confrontation with Islam and Muslims, that there is an alternative to terrorism.

Those in the West who want a dialogue on values with Muslims to peacefully resolve differences instead of a clash of civilizations and wars can now count on Iran’s leadership.   A dialogue on values can be much more enriching than the forcing of western values on Muslim societies.  A dialogue on values doesn’t and shouldn’t end by one set of values taking on another but by finding common ground amid differences.  That’s the essence of communication and diplomacy and the respect for the dingity of others and our common humanity. 

Russia, which has worked hard to end Iran’s isolation, has a diplomacy that instinctively understands the potential of resolving the issue of the clash of civilizations that feeds today’s devastating terrorism eating at the heart of all these civilizations.  Because Russia's neighbour, Europe, is by excellence the theatre for this clash.  And because a clash of civilizations that counts on terrorism to provoke a confrontation of values  will undoubtedly lead to the end of civilizations. 

The US however, despite the nuclear deal and the recent détente with Iran, is still very much sitting on the fence, between war and peace.  Hesitations and mixed messages, as well as Obama’s end of mandate, risk annihilitating the dialogue that the Iran deal is promising, putting the initiative back in the hands of the neocons.

As I wrote in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo tragedy, a dialogue on values is urgently needed to silence the voices of confrontation.  The clash of civilizations is an idea as backward as the barbaric terrorism it sets out to explain... and fight... by curtailing our civil liberties and creating an artificial wedge between civilizations otherwise destined to increase their common ground in an era of rapid communications where societies are becoming more open and more welcoming.  

The promoters of the clash of civilizations are the new enemies of the Open Society.

Arundhati Roy on the links between NGOs, global finance and US hegemonic interests

Arundhati Roy does a formidable job exposing these NGOs...

"...When corporate-endowed foundations first made their appearance in the US, there was a fierce debate about their provenance, legality and lack of accountability. People suggested that if companies had so much surplus money, they should raise the wages of their workers. (People made these outrageous suggestions in those days, even in America.) The idea of these foundations, so ordinary now, was in fact a leap of the business imagination. Non-tax-paying legal entities with massive resources and an almost unlimited brief—wholly unaccountable, wholly non-transparent—what better way to parlay economic wealth into political, social and cultural capital, to turn money into power? What better way for usurers to use a minuscule percentage of their profits to run the world? How else would Bill Gates, who admittedly knows a thing or two about computers, find himself designing education, health and agriculture policies, not just for the US government, but for governments all over the world?"

"...By the 1950s, the Rockefeller and Ford foundations, funding several NGOs and international educational institutions, began to work as quasi-extensions of the US government that was at the time toppling democratically elected governments in Latin America, Iran and Indonesia. (That was also around the time they made their entry into India, then non-aligned, but clearly tilting towards the Soviet Union.) The Ford Foundation established a US-style economics course at the Indonesian University. Elite Indonesian students, trained in counter-insurgency by US army officers, played a crucial part in the 1965 CIA-backed coup in Indonesia that brought General Suharto to power. Gen Suharto repaid his mentors by slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Communist rebels.
Eight years later, young Chilean students, who came to be known as the Chicago Boys, were taken to the US to be trained in neo-liberal economics by Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago (endowed by J.D. Rockefeller), in preparation for the 1973 CIA-backed coup that killed Salvador Allende, and brought in General Pinochet and a reign of death squads, disappearances and terror that lasted for seventeen years. (Allende’s crime was being a democratically elected socialist and nationalising Chile’s mines.)
In 1957, the Rockefeller Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay Prize for community leaders in Asia. It was named after Ramon Magsaysay, president of the Philippines, a crucial ally in the US campaign against Communism in Southeast Asia. In 2000, the Ford Foundation established the Ramon Magsaysay Emergent Leadership Award. The Magsaysay Award is considered a prestigious award among artists, activists and community workers in India. M.S. Subbulakshmi and Satyajit Ray won it, so did Jayaprakash Narayan and one of India’s finest journalists, P. Sainath. But they did more for the Magsaysay award than it did for them. In general, it has become a gentle arbiter of what kind of activism is “acceptable” and what is not.

Interestingly, Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement last summer was spearheaded by three Magsaysay Award winners—Anna Hazare, Arvind Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi. One of Arvind Kejriwal’s many NGOs is generously funded by Ford Foundation. Kiran Bedi’s NGO is funded by Coca Cola and Lehman Brothers."

"...The transformation of the idea of justice into the industry of human rights has been a conceptual coup in which NGOs and foundations have played a crucial part. The narrow focus of human rights enables an atrocity-based analysis in which the larger picture can be blocked out and both parties in a conflict—say, for example, the Maoists and the Indian government, or the Israeli Army and Hamas—can both be admonished as Human Rights Violators. The land-grab by mining corporations or the history of the annexation of Palestinian land by the State of Israel then become footnotes with very little bearing on the discourse. This is not to suggest that human rights don’t matter. They do, but they are not a good enough prism through which to view or remotely understand the great injustices in the world we live in."

The whole article can be found here.

WikiLeaks releases 349 cables on Lybia

The cables come from different US embassies around the world, most were created between 2006 and 2010 during US normalisation with Lybia.  Some date back as far as 1986.

Is the US Cowed by Saudi Arabia because of Oil?

The role of Saudi Arabia in 9/11 has never been investigated and that's not because the lack of evidence.  This evidence won't go away and is reemerging at the occasion of the10th anniversary of 9/11.

Saudi Arabia: Friend or Foe?

The Kingdom and the Towers
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OBL Dead

Osama Bin Laden is dead killed by a special unit of US forces in Pakistan. He was killed in his compound located in an urban area 30 miles from Islamabad.

Saudi Arabia and Pakistan must have known about his whereabouts during all these years. Saudi Arabia is in a difficult position now in the ME, with all those revolutions at its door, and badly needs US protection for the survival of its backward monarchy. Bin Laden is the price for this unconditional protection.

Bin Laden leaves behind him a trail of murders, wars, violence and multiple religious sectarianisms: Muslims versus Christians, Sunnis versus Shias. He discredited Muslims and Arabs all over the world and served well the US and Israel's imperial interests in the 'greater middle east area'.

UPDATE
US special forces told to kill, not capture, Bin Laden.

Reactions: 'Sunni Hamas condemns killing of Arab holy warrior'. Palestinian resistance movements are all corrupted by Saudi Arabia's money. Deprived of support and having to sustain a harsh occupation, Palestinian leaders turn to the wrong country, wrong ideology and wrong man...Ismail Hanyia's statement on Bin Laden is confirming what zionists say about Hamas. How dumb of him to call Bin Laden 'Arab holy warrior'. We need an Arab spring in Palestine now!
Sunni Lebanese Muslim preachers, Saudi kooks and Hariri tools, hail Bin Laden for attacking at the heart of the US. These people feel no shame. Bin Laden was fabricated by Saudi Arabia and the US, then served to us, and we should feel relieved at his death, not mournful and not a bit proud about his criminal enterprises.

Some perspective:

Angry Arab on the celebrations.

Angry Arab on OBL and his sponsors.

More from Angry Arab (this is an extract and I took the liberty to put it in paragraphs, it is known that Angry Arab doesn't like paragraphs):

Now, turning to the US, I also believe that in the wake of any US military operation, we are fed a large amount of lies, fabrication, sc fi scenarios, and exaggerations.  

I mean, other than Bin Laden has been killed by US troops, I am skeptical of the rest.  

Let us begin with the one about that Bin Laden received a "Muslim burial at sea."  I mean, do they think that Arabs/Muslims are idiots?  Burial at sea? Is that a new military term for tossing his body from the air?  Burial at sea? Who are you kidding? Just say what happened: most likely, soldiers scrawled slogans on his body, and then yelled: Allahu Akbar, you motherfucker, and then tossed his body in the water.  

Then the story that I instantly wrote about yesterday: the notion that the find was the product of painstaking hard work and research by US intelligence agents. I remember that we were told how US intelligence agents in Iraq did a family tree and complicated charts of the relatives and bodyguards of Saddam to locate him.  Later we learned that: a bodyguard of Saddam turned himself in to US troops and asked for the bounty.  There is now a beginning of insinuations US troops found him due to a tip.  Here is the beginning of the story in the US press.  First we were told that a courier was spotted by US agents.  Now we are told that Pakistani agents were the first to spot him.  

We were first told that a man in the compound took a woman as a human shield and that she was killed.  When I now hear a "human shield" story, I know that I am about to be lied to by Israeli or US military to justify yet another killing of civilians.  Later we were told that Bin Laden was the one who took a woman as a human shield.  I am sure that the human shield story will disappear later. Just remember the original early story of Pat Tillman: I mean some in the US military are experienced in movie scripts.  

To their credit, Politico has noticed the various inconsistencies and lies and the changes in the early accounts.   And `Abdul-Bari `Atwan of Al-Quds Al-`Arabi, who knew Bin Laden and liked him says in his editorial today that an aide to Bin Laden said that he requested that his bodyguards shoot him if he ever faced killing by enemies.  `Atwan leans to that theory for his killing: that his own bodyguard shot him.  I think this is very likely and may emerge later.  Is that why the body was thrown in the sea? Because Americans want to believe that an American bullet killed him?  Does this matter? Well, yes.  

The US has lied so much that it is understandable that it is not believed by Muslims especially that Arabs/Muslims can't celebrate the American celebrations of their killings, even if the person killed is Bin Laden: who may not be loved by Arabs and Muslims (and who clearly failed to win support among the masses) but any US president is hated more than Bin Laden. That is the key element to help you understand the complicated Arab/Muslim attitudes to Bin Laden and his death.  This explains the stupid foolish statement by Isma`il Haniyyah who called Bin Laden "mujahid" (holy struggler).  

Oh, and now Fox News is giving credit where it is due: it crediting torture for locating Bin Laden.  

And the stupidity can be seen in Arab media too: New TV who I generally like, yesterday aired a report on the possible successors to Bin Laden.  It said that Abu Zubayda is the most likely to emerge as the key commander of Al-Qa`idah. Can some one tell New TV that Abu Zubyayda won't be able to assume his duties because he is sitting in Guantanamo? 

Why Bin Laden might have been dead for years and why the US chose to announce his death now.

The daughter of a Bahraini human rights activist on hunger strike

Zainab Al-Khawadja announced her strike to president Obama to hold him responsible for what is happening to human rights in Bahrain where the US has a military base.

She is also tweeting her hunger strike.

Zainab spoke with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now


Amy Goodman: Bahrainis are suffering the same oppression as Lybians so why does Obama have nothing to say?

The Guardian has an article on Zainab Al Khawadja today.

US mired in policy hypocrisy as interests outweigh protesters lives

Whom are they fooling with their talk on human rights?

Bahrain opposition figure dies in custody.

Frost Interviews Assange

The interview is on AlJazeera English website. It is a good interview. It brings a lot of nuances on the Assange case, nuances the print media weren't able to achieve.

International diplomacy out of US hands

And with it the official dawn of a new era in world diplomacy.

With its feet dragged in Afghanistan and Iraq, its hands tied by the Israel lobby, its many crises at home, and its loss of credibility at the world stage when it comes to broker a peace deal, the US is no longer a real player when it comes to diplomacy.
Brazil and Turkey had just reached an agreement with Iran on their nuclear production.

Either way, skilful negotiating by two world leaders undermined the view, widely accepted in Washington, that Iran could only be made to compromise if it was threatened with sanctions and repeated warnings that the US would consider "all options" to block further progress in its nuclear program.

The New York Times is not happy about this: ''The agreement could well UNDERMINE the Obama administration’s chances of securing international approval for punitive measures against Iran.'' This journal which has advocated the war on Iraq and stands, most of the time, as a mouthpiece to Israel's interests in the region (i.e. no peace and war on every country and movement that emerges as strong) seems to consider that sanctions are the normal standard approach. So according to the New York Times, Peace may hinder sanctions and what sanctions can achieve ??? Famine instability and War. This is the logical contrary to their statement but they won't say it...

What this means also is that when countries genuinly want peace they can achieve it. Let Turkey broker the much needed peace between Palestinians and Israelis...I am sure the New York Times won't like it...because it may UNDERMINE current atrocities committed by Israelis toward Palestinians...

UPDATE: But the New York Times doesn't have to worry; In American wrestling parlance, it would be called the "P5 Smackdown". The permanent five members of the Security Council flattened Brazil and Turkey's effort at mediating the crisis, sending a clear message that only the big boys (and they are all boys) make or break the big deals.

''Fear, inc.''

It’s remarkable that the sharpest president we’ve had in a while didn’t dare get up in front of the American people after Flight 253 landed and tell everyone to calm down.  He didn’t, in fact, have a single intelligent thing to say about the event.  He certainly didn’t remind Americans that, whatever happened to Flight 253, they stood in far more danger heading out of their driveways behind the wheel or pulling into a bar on the way home for a beer or two.  Instead, the Obama administration essentially abjectly apologized, insisted it would focus yet more effort and money on making America safe from air terrorism, widened a new front in the Global War on Terror in Yemen (speeding extra money and U.S. advisors that way), and when the din from its critics didn’t end, “pushed back,” as Peter Baker of the New York Times wrote, by claiming “that they were handling terror suspects much as the previous administration did.”  It’s striking when a Democratic administration finds safety in the claim that it’s acting like a Republican one, that it’s following the path to the imperial presidency already cleared by George W. Bush.  Fear does that to you, and the fear of terror has been institutionalized at the top as well as the bottom of society.    

9/11 Never Ends

Fear has a way of re-ordering human worlds.  That only a relatively small number of determined fanatics with extraordinarily limited access to American soil keep Fear Inc. afloat should, by now, be obvious.  What the fear machine produces is the dark underside of the charming Saul Steinberg New Yorker cover, “A View of the World from 9th Avenue,” in which Manhattan looms vast as the rest of the planet fades into near nothingness. 

When you see the world “from 9th Avenue,” or from an all-al-Qaeda-all-the-time “news” channel, you see it phantasmagorically.  It’s out of all realistic shape and proportion, which means you naturally make stupid decisions.  You become incapable of sorting out what matters and what doesn’t, what’s primary and what’s secondary.  You become, in short, manipulable...

...So the next time a Flight 253 occurs and the Republicans go postal, the media morphs into its 24/7 national-security-disaster mode, the pundits register red on the terror-news scale, the president defends himself by reaffirming that he is doing just what the Bush administration would have done, the homeland security lobbyists begin calling for yet more funds for yet more machinery, and nothing much happens, remember those drunken drivers, arsonists, and tobacco merchants, even that single dust devil and say: 

Hold onto your underpants, this is not a national emergency.

Asked why the US doesn't condemn Human Rights violations by Israel, Obama offers a dumb and bittergate style response

This US president can explain everything with dumb and unfounded thinking and still appear smart...



Listen to the dumb statement at 1'39. Obama: ''The middle east is obviously an issue that has plagued the region for centuries.''
Angry Arab debunked the non sense in the response, as always

Read the article here.

Haiti's suffering is a result of calculated impoverishment

Last week's earthquake was a natural disaster, but the carnage is a result of a punitive relationship with the outside world. Writes Seumas Milne in The Guardian

Gaza residents send aid to Haiti

Israel's showy compassion in Haiti is meant to hide its ugly face in Gaza

A War Of Futility

Assessing the war on Al-Qaida

Help Yemen, not its current government

I have always found Brian most Whitaker's middle east analyses very informed and accurate. This article on the current crisis in Yemen is no exception...

Brian Whitaker is the author of an ebook 'The birth of modern Yemen'

Israel threatening the international community with war unless the Goldstone report is discarded by the UN

Zionists are quick to blame others for the lack of peace prospects in Palestine. They blamed Arabs, Palestinians, terrorists, the UN, and now they are blaming a 575 pages report for the UN on Israeli war crimes in Gaza. They wanted to bury it with the help of Mr. Nobel peace prize 09 and the collaboration of the illegitimate Mahmoud Abbas but they did not succeed. Palestinians were so angry with Abbas that he had to reverse his position in order to retain a semblance of legitimacy among his people.
Palestinians' thirst for justice can only be measured by the amount of injustice that was inflicted upon them by the zionist state and its acolytes. This time they are determined and hey want a clear condemnation from the international community of war crimes. A Jewish south african judge wrote a report for the UN on war crimes in Gaza with one concern, justice, not politics. But this is precisely what is infuriating Israel. Israel's attitude toward war and peace has become so extreme that it is alienating many in the Jewish diaspora and creating fracture lines. I can't wait to see these Israeli soldiers, commanders, politicians, judged for what they have done to the people of my region...And I don't care if Hamas has to be judged too. I have never been for any party, I am only for those who were dispossessed and are being daily oppressed by Zionists...

Israel says that if the case against it gains steam, the Jewish state will not be able to make the wide-ranging concessions necessary for any peace deal.

This is a bad argument since everybody can argue, based on the history of the Jewish state, the contrary: that Israel was never interested in peace. However, if Israel is genuinely determined to make peace, which comes with land concessions, so let them deliver first and then see what to make of the report.

Iraq: The Destruction Of A Civilization

By James Petras, Global Research.ca

The most important political force was also the least openly discussed. The Zionist Power Configuration (ZPC), which includes the prominent role of long-time, hard-line unconditional supporters of the State of Israel appointed to top positions in the Bush Pentagon (Douglas Feith and Paul Wolfowitz ), key operative in the Office of the Vice President (Irving (Scooter) Libby), the Treasury Department (Stuart Levey), the National Security Council (Elliot Abrams) and a phalanx of consultants, Presidential speechwriters (David Frum), secondary officials and policy advisers to the State Department. These committed Zionists ‘insiders’ were buttressed by thousands of full-time Israel-First functionaries in the 51 major American Jewish organizations, which form the President of the Major American Jewish Organizations (PMAJO). They openly stated that their top priority was to advance Israel’s agenda, which, in this case, was a US war against Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein, occupy the country, physically divide Iraq, destroy its military and industrial capability and impose a pro-Israel/pro-US puppet regime. If Iraq were ethnically cleansed and divided, as advocated by the ultra-right, Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and the ‘Liberal’ President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and militarist-Zionist, Leslie Gelb, there would be more than several ‘client regimes’.
Top pro-Israeli policymakers who promoted the war did not initially directly pursue the policy of systematically destroying what, in effect, was the entire Iraqi civilization. But their support and design of an occupation policy included the total dismemberment of the Iraqi state apparatus and recruitment of Israeli advisers to provide their ‘expertise’ in interrogation techniques, repression of civilian resistance and counter-insurgency. Israeli expertise certainly played a role in fomenting the intra-Iraqi religious and ethnic strife, which Israel had mastered in Palestine. The Israeli ‘model’ of colonial war and occupation – the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 – and the practice of ‘total destruction’ using sectarian, ethno-religious division was evident in the notorious massacres at the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, which took place under Israeli military supervision.

...Israeli advisers have played a major role in instructing US occupation forces in Iraq on the practices of urban counter-insurgency and repression of civilians, drawing on their 60 years of experience. The infamous massacre of hundreds of Palestinian families at Deir Yasin in 1948 was emblematic of Zionist elimination of hundreds of productive farming villages, which had been settled for centuries by a native people with their endogenous civilization and cultural ties to the soil, in order to impose a new colonial order. The policy of the total deracination of the Palestinians is central to Israel’s advise to the US policymakers in Iraq. Their message has been carried out by their Zionist acolytes in the Bush and Obama Administrations, ordering the dismemberment of the entire modern Iraqi civil and state bureaucracy and using pre-modern tribal death squads made up of Kurds and Shia extremists to purge the modern universities and research institutions of that shattered nation.

Thanks Homeyra for the link.

''Must there be nation-building invasions of Somalia, Yemen and other sovereignty vacuums?''

The best argument to date against western troops' involvment in Afghanistan ...

Supressing evidence of torture is a criminal offence

The Bush and Obama administrations have been, under different motives, hiding evidence of torture performed by US personnel, and Mrs Clinton is now asking their ally, the UK, to supress evidence of torture of one of their citizen, Binyam Mohammad, at Guantanamo.

This is clearly a criminal offence, says Human rights lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, and another exrecise in 'naked political power', according to the British judge who is in charge of the case of Mohammad.

Does The West Really Care About Human Rights In Iran ?

I suspect that the main reason Sen. McCain speaks out against the Iranian government is not its human-rights violations but rather he wants regime change in Iran. Sen. McCain wants a new regime that is subservient to the U.S. and does not pose any real or perceived threat to Israel.

It might be simpler if the West went ahead and ended economic sanctions on Iran. Then, a sizable number of Iranians, of their own free will, would probably import more of the junk that the West wants to dump on Iran, as has been shown by the popularity of many kinds of Western junk in such former official enemies of the capitalist West as China and Viet Nam.

Thanks Homeyra for the link.

Civil libertarians on Obama's speech adressing Guantanamo: All bells and whistles

Barely four months into the job, read what constitutional lawyer Michael Ratner had to say to the Huffington Post on Obama, Guantanamo, Torture, and military tribunals:

"He wraps himself in the Constitution, talks about American values and then proceeds to violate them."
..."Though we'd do it differently then Bush. We will set up rules. Well no matter how you repackage Guantanamo, with all kinds of rules on top of it -- that is what he is doing, he is re-wrapping a preventive detention scheme and giving it some more due process. In the end, it still comes down to holding people -- much like Minority Report or pre-crime stuff -- for being dangerous, and that is not something that I think is constitutional or this country should be engaged in."
..."I always believe that democracy dies behind closed doors, and the fact that these photos are being hidden right now -- if anything, it makes people think that there is a lot being hidden right now and that there is much more to this."
..."What is unfortunately effective about Obama is that he is able to use a setting like the National Archives, talk about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all that, get people to sincerely believe he is [committed to these principles] and then go ahead and in my view undercut the core aspects of those documents,"

Israel, the US administration, and the coming war on Iran: Update

The Israel lobby opposed the appointment of Chas Freeman at the National Intelligence Council in the Obama administration and it succeeded. Because the first step for a war on Iran will be to skew the intelligence. And Freeman, according to Juan Cole, didn't seem to be the right choice for this. The Obama administration caved and let Freeman go. Now, fasten your seat belt, maybe there won't be any war on Iran in the next four years, but there will be fabricated intelligence.

Freeman would have been in charge of editing future National Intelligence Estimates. As Andrew Sullivan rightly hinted, the Israel lobbies did not want someone there so unsympathetic to their conviction that Iran is an imminent and existential threat to Israel, and so unlikely to report out conclusions that would underpin a US war on Iran, or US permission to Israel to strike Iran. The NIC chairman's tenure can last for a decade, and the Israel lobbies' best hope for a war on Iran would come if the Republicans regained the presidency and at least the Senate in 2012. They would want cooked-up NIEs ready to go, as the deeply flawed 2002 Iraq NIE supported that war.

UPDATE: Obama's gestures toward Iran are ambiguous, to say the least.
Obama's recent video message which was seen as 'positive' by western analysts was not preceded neither followed by positive action, especially when it comes to sanctions against Iran confirming his secretary of state criticism during the democratic primary campaign that he is all words and no deeds.

Iranian analysts said easing sanctions held the key to allaying Tehran's suspicions.
Some said Obama's decision last week to renew the US boycott of Iran's oil industry was at odds with the message in his video.
Saeed Leylaz, a pro-reform analyst, said security guarantees would be needed to convince Khamenei that the US was serious about engagement. "I think Obama's message can be a significant step but it's not sufficient," Leylaz said.
Sadegh Kharazi, a former Iranian ambassador to Paris and the UN, said Obama's message changed US "body language" but still characterised Iran in a negative way.
"There's still a negative terminology towards Iran as terrorist-supporting and as a military problem and these descriptions aren't fair."

Obama and Israeli Leader Make Video Appeals to Iran I wonder where the idea for this apeal originated ? In Israel or in Washington DC ? The synchronisation of both appeals will be felt as a provocation by many in Iran. Ar least this is the way I personally feel. Expect nasty things from Mr. O.