Showing posts with label islamic fundamentalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label islamic fundamentalism. Show all posts
Thursday, August 11, 2011
From "The Rag Blog" -Ed Felien : Breivik's Norwegian 'Putsch' Has Historical Echoes
Click on the headline to line to The Rag Blog entry listed in the headline.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Daily NATO War Crimes in Libya - by Stephen Lendman
Markin comment :
Agree or disagree, and mostly disagree on the solutions questions (nothing short of a workers government is going to make a dent, even a small dent in the systemic social problems we face today), I am always glad to put the prolific SteveLendmanBlog on this site. It gives me a feel for the pulse of the old-time (and vanishing) non-party (non-Democratic Party) progressives out there.
*****
Daily NATO War Crimes in Libya
by Stephen Lendman
Daily NATO War Crimes in Libya - by Stephen Lendman
Among them is waging war on truth, Western managed news calling lawless imperial wars liberating ones. No wonder John Pilger says journalism is the first casualty of war, adding:
"Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship (and deception) that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries...."
In their book, "Guardians of Power," David Edwards and David Cromwell explained why today's media are in crisis and a free and open society at risk. It's because press prostitutes substitute fiction for fact. News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, and supporting wealth and power substitutes for full and accurate reporting.
It's a cancer, corrupting everything from corporate-run print and broadcast sources, as well as operations like BBC and what passes for America's hopelessly compromised public radio and TV. They put out daily managed and junk food news plus infotainment, treating consumers like mushrooms - well-watered and in the dark.
During wars, in fact, they cheerlead them, reporting agitprop and misinformation no respectable journalist would touch.
On the Progressive Radio News Hour, Middle East/Central Asia analyst Mahdi Nazemroaya, in Tripoli, said some journalists also perform fifth column duties, collecting intelligence and locating targets to supply NATO bombing coordinates, notably civilian targets called military ones.
In a July 28 email, he said tell listeners that "NATO is trying to negotiate with the government in Tripoli." More on that below. He added that they're also "planning a new stage of the war against the Libyan people through (predatory) NGOs and fake humanitarian missions." A likely UN Blue Helmet occupying force also, paramilitaries masquerading as peacekeepers Gaddafi controlled areas won't tolerate.
NATO, in fact, calls civilian targets legitimate ones, including one or more hospitals, a clinic, factories, warehouses, agricultural sites, schools, a university, one or more mosques, non-military related infrastructure, a food storage facility, and others.
Notably on July 23, a Brega water pipe factory was struck, killing six guards. It produces pipes for Libya's Great Man-Made River system (GMMR), an ocean-sized aquifer beneath its sands, making the desert bloom for productive agriculture, and supplying water to Libya's people.
The previous day, a water supply pipeline was destroyed. It will take months to restore. The factory produced vital pipes to do it, a clear war crime like daily others. Moreover, the entire GMMR is threatened by a shortage of spare parts and chemicals. As a result, it's struggling to keep reservoirs at a level able to provide a sustainable supply. Without it, a humanitarian disaster looms, very likely what NATO plans as in past wars.
On July 27, AFP said that:
"NATO warned that its warplanes will bomb civilian facilities if (Gaddafi's) forces use them to launch attacks." At the same time, a spokesman said great care is taken to minimize civilian casualties.
NATO lied. Daily, it's attacking non-military related sites to destroy Libya's ability to function in areas loyal to Gaddafi. Earlier, in fact, a spokesman claimed there was "no evidence" civilian targets were hit or noncombatants killed, except one time a major incident was too obvious to hide. Reluctantly it admitted a "mistake," covering up a willful planned attack, knowing civilians were affected.
Libya (satellite) TV calls itself "a voice for free Libya....struggling to liberate Libya from the grip of the Gaddafi regime...." In fact, it's a pro-NATO propaganda service, reporting misinformation on air and online.
On July 25, it headlined, "No evidence to support Gaddafi's allegations that civilian targets were hit," when, it fact, they're struck daily.
Nonetheless, it claimed only military sites are bombed, saying Tripoli-based journalists aren't taken to affected areas, "suggesting NATO's gunners are hitting military targets, at least in the capital."
In fact, corporate and independent journalists are regularly taken to many sites struck. Independent accounts confirm civilian casualties and non-military facilities bombed. Pro-NATO scoundrels report managed news, complicit in daily war crimes.
On July 28, Libya TV claimed "captured Gaddafi soldiers say army morale is low," when, in fact, most Libyans support Gaddafi. Millions are armed. Gaddafi gave them weapons. They could easily oust him if they wish. Instead, they rally supportively, what Western media and Libya TV won't report.
Moreover, captured soldiers say what they're told, likely threatened with death or torture if they refuse, especially in rebel paramilitary hands, under NATO orders to terrorize areas they control.
As a result, civilian casualties mount, up to 1,200 or more killed and thousands wounded in pro-Gaddafi areas, many seriously as war rages. In addition, unknown numbers of combatant casualties on both sides aren't known, nor is the civilian toll in rebel held areas.
Nonetheless, daily sorties and strikes continue. Since mid-July alone through July 27, they include:
July 14: 132 sorties and 48 strikes
July 15: 115 sorties and 46 strikes
July 16: 110 sorties and 45 strikes
July 17: 122 sorties and 46 strikes
July 18: 129 sorties and 44 strikes
July 19: 113 sorties and 40 strikes
July 20: 122 sorties and 53 strikes
July 21: 124 sorties and 45 strikes
July 22: 128 sorties and 46 strikes
July 23: 125 sorties and 56 strikes
July 24: 163 sorties and 43 strikes
July 25: 111 sorties and 54 strikes
July 26: 134 sorties and 46 strikes
July 27: 133 sorties and 54 strikes
Daily patterns are consistent. However, information on numbers and types of bombs, as well as other munitions aren't given. Instead, misinformation claims a humanitarian mission protects civilians - by terrorizing, killing, and injuring them, solely for imperial aims. It's why all US-led wars are fought, never for liberating reasons.
The entire campaign is based on lies. It's standard war time procedure, to enlist popular support for campaigns people otherwise would reject.
In fact, no humanitarian crisis existed until NATO arrived. Moreover, in paramilitary controlled areas, Amnesty International confirmed only 110 pro and anti-Gaddafi supporter deaths combined, most likely more of the former than latter as rebel cutthroats rampaged through areas they occupy. Currently, the numbers of dead and injured civilians are many times that amount, largely from NATO attacks.
NATO, in fact, is code language for the Pentagon, paying the largest share of its operating and military budgets. Except for Germany and Britain, other members pay small shares, most, in fact, miniscule amounts.
Since NATO began bombing on March 19, daily attacks inflicted lawless collective punishment against millions in Gaddafi supported areas. Affected is their ability to obtain food, medicines, fuel and other basic supplies, exposing another lie about humanitarian intervention.
On July 25, OCHA's fact-finding team said Tripoli contained "pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance." Medical supplies are running low. The last major delivery was in January, and concerns are increasing about the "unsustainable food supply chain for the public distribution systems, especially as Ramadan approaches (on or around August 1 to about August 29) and the conflict persists."
Moreover, "Libyan oil experts warned that fuel stocks could run out in two weeks." Public transportation costs have tripled. Food prices have also soared. Tripoli residents experience electricity cuts, and clean water supplies are endangered.
Before conflict erupted, Libyans had the region's highest standard of living and highest life expectancy in Africa because Gaddafi's oil wealth provided healthcare, education, housing assistance and other social benefits. Imperial war, of course, changed things. Libyans now hang on to survive.
Seeking an End Game
On July 26, UPI headlined, "NATO seeks urgent exit strategy in Libya," knowing this phase of the war is lost. Nonetheless, future strategies and campaigns will follow.
For now, however, "NATO is seeking an urgent exit strategy (to end) fighting and decide the future of (Gaddifi), even if that means letting him stay in the country though out of power, it emerged Tuesday after British and French foreign ministers met in London."
In tribal Libya, Gaddafi's power, in fact, is far less than reported, social anthropologist Ranier Fsadni saying:
"Gaddafi's feeling for tribal Libya is certainly one factor that explains how he has managed to rule the country for so many years. (However), (t)here is no tribal office giving a single man a monopoly of institutional power at the apex....Several factors account for his longevity in power," including sharing Libya's oil wealth.
UPI said diplomacy is driven by a failed military campaign. As a result, "(i)ntense mediation efforts are underway at different levels at the United Nations and Europe, in African, European and Middle Eastern capitals and Russia."
Neither side is commenting, but some observers think operations may wind down in weeks, based on an unannounced face-saving solution, despite continued destabilization and future conflict planned. It's similar to Balkan and Iraq war strategies, a combination of tactics until Washington prevailed.
Libya faces the same end game, though years could pass before it arrives. As a result, Libyans can expect continued hardships. When imperial America shows up, that strategy persists until it prevails, no matter the pain and suffering inflicted.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
Agree or disagree, and mostly disagree on the solutions questions (nothing short of a workers government is going to make a dent, even a small dent in the systemic social problems we face today), I am always glad to put the prolific SteveLendmanBlog on this site. It gives me a feel for the pulse of the old-time (and vanishing) non-party (non-Democratic Party) progressives out there.
*****
Daily NATO War Crimes in Libya
by Stephen Lendman
Daily NATO War Crimes in Libya - by Stephen Lendman
Among them is waging war on truth, Western managed news calling lawless imperial wars liberating ones. No wonder John Pilger says journalism is the first casualty of war, adding:
"Not only that: it has become a weapon of war, a virulent censorship (and deception) that goes unrecognised in the United States, Britain and other democracies; censorship by omission, whose power is such that, in war, it can mean the difference between life and death for people in faraway countries...."
In their book, "Guardians of Power," David Edwards and David Cromwell explained why today's media are in crisis and a free and open society at risk. It's because press prostitutes substitute fiction for fact. News is carefully filtered, dissent marginalized, and supporting wealth and power substitutes for full and accurate reporting.
It's a cancer, corrupting everything from corporate-run print and broadcast sources, as well as operations like BBC and what passes for America's hopelessly compromised public radio and TV. They put out daily managed and junk food news plus infotainment, treating consumers like mushrooms - well-watered and in the dark.
During wars, in fact, they cheerlead them, reporting agitprop and misinformation no respectable journalist would touch.
On the Progressive Radio News Hour, Middle East/Central Asia analyst Mahdi Nazemroaya, in Tripoli, said some journalists also perform fifth column duties, collecting intelligence and locating targets to supply NATO bombing coordinates, notably civilian targets called military ones.
In a July 28 email, he said tell listeners that "NATO is trying to negotiate with the government in Tripoli." More on that below. He added that they're also "planning a new stage of the war against the Libyan people through (predatory) NGOs and fake humanitarian missions." A likely UN Blue Helmet occupying force also, paramilitaries masquerading as peacekeepers Gaddafi controlled areas won't tolerate.
NATO, in fact, calls civilian targets legitimate ones, including one or more hospitals, a clinic, factories, warehouses, agricultural sites, schools, a university, one or more mosques, non-military related infrastructure, a food storage facility, and others.
Notably on July 23, a Brega water pipe factory was struck, killing six guards. It produces pipes for Libya's Great Man-Made River system (GMMR), an ocean-sized aquifer beneath its sands, making the desert bloom for productive agriculture, and supplying water to Libya's people.
The previous day, a water supply pipeline was destroyed. It will take months to restore. The factory produced vital pipes to do it, a clear war crime like daily others. Moreover, the entire GMMR is threatened by a shortage of spare parts and chemicals. As a result, it's struggling to keep reservoirs at a level able to provide a sustainable supply. Without it, a humanitarian disaster looms, very likely what NATO plans as in past wars.
On July 27, AFP said that:
"NATO warned that its warplanes will bomb civilian facilities if (Gaddafi's) forces use them to launch attacks." At the same time, a spokesman said great care is taken to minimize civilian casualties.
NATO lied. Daily, it's attacking non-military related sites to destroy Libya's ability to function in areas loyal to Gaddafi. Earlier, in fact, a spokesman claimed there was "no evidence" civilian targets were hit or noncombatants killed, except one time a major incident was too obvious to hide. Reluctantly it admitted a "mistake," covering up a willful planned attack, knowing civilians were affected.
Libya (satellite) TV calls itself "a voice for free Libya....struggling to liberate Libya from the grip of the Gaddafi regime...." In fact, it's a pro-NATO propaganda service, reporting misinformation on air and online.
On July 25, it headlined, "No evidence to support Gaddafi's allegations that civilian targets were hit," when, it fact, they're struck daily.
Nonetheless, it claimed only military sites are bombed, saying Tripoli-based journalists aren't taken to affected areas, "suggesting NATO's gunners are hitting military targets, at least in the capital."
In fact, corporate and independent journalists are regularly taken to many sites struck. Independent accounts confirm civilian casualties and non-military facilities bombed. Pro-NATO scoundrels report managed news, complicit in daily war crimes.
On July 28, Libya TV claimed "captured Gaddafi soldiers say army morale is low," when, in fact, most Libyans support Gaddafi. Millions are armed. Gaddafi gave them weapons. They could easily oust him if they wish. Instead, they rally supportively, what Western media and Libya TV won't report.
Moreover, captured soldiers say what they're told, likely threatened with death or torture if they refuse, especially in rebel paramilitary hands, under NATO orders to terrorize areas they control.
As a result, civilian casualties mount, up to 1,200 or more killed and thousands wounded in pro-Gaddafi areas, many seriously as war rages. In addition, unknown numbers of combatant casualties on both sides aren't known, nor is the civilian toll in rebel held areas.
Nonetheless, daily sorties and strikes continue. Since mid-July alone through July 27, they include:
July 14: 132 sorties and 48 strikes
July 15: 115 sorties and 46 strikes
July 16: 110 sorties and 45 strikes
July 17: 122 sorties and 46 strikes
July 18: 129 sorties and 44 strikes
July 19: 113 sorties and 40 strikes
July 20: 122 sorties and 53 strikes
July 21: 124 sorties and 45 strikes
July 22: 128 sorties and 46 strikes
July 23: 125 sorties and 56 strikes
July 24: 163 sorties and 43 strikes
July 25: 111 sorties and 54 strikes
July 26: 134 sorties and 46 strikes
July 27: 133 sorties and 54 strikes
Daily patterns are consistent. However, information on numbers and types of bombs, as well as other munitions aren't given. Instead, misinformation claims a humanitarian mission protects civilians - by terrorizing, killing, and injuring them, solely for imperial aims. It's why all US-led wars are fought, never for liberating reasons.
The entire campaign is based on lies. It's standard war time procedure, to enlist popular support for campaigns people otherwise would reject.
In fact, no humanitarian crisis existed until NATO arrived. Moreover, in paramilitary controlled areas, Amnesty International confirmed only 110 pro and anti-Gaddafi supporter deaths combined, most likely more of the former than latter as rebel cutthroats rampaged through areas they occupy. Currently, the numbers of dead and injured civilians are many times that amount, largely from NATO attacks.
NATO, in fact, is code language for the Pentagon, paying the largest share of its operating and military budgets. Except for Germany and Britain, other members pay small shares, most, in fact, miniscule amounts.
Since NATO began bombing on March 19, daily attacks inflicted lawless collective punishment against millions in Gaddafi supported areas. Affected is their ability to obtain food, medicines, fuel and other basic supplies, exposing another lie about humanitarian intervention.
On July 25, OCHA's fact-finding team said Tripoli contained "pockets of vulnerability where people need urgent humanitarian assistance." Medical supplies are running low. The last major delivery was in January, and concerns are increasing about the "unsustainable food supply chain for the public distribution systems, especially as Ramadan approaches (on or around August 1 to about August 29) and the conflict persists."
Moreover, "Libyan oil experts warned that fuel stocks could run out in two weeks." Public transportation costs have tripled. Food prices have also soared. Tripoli residents experience electricity cuts, and clean water supplies are endangered.
Before conflict erupted, Libyans had the region's highest standard of living and highest life expectancy in Africa because Gaddafi's oil wealth provided healthcare, education, housing assistance and other social benefits. Imperial war, of course, changed things. Libyans now hang on to survive.
Seeking an End Game
On July 26, UPI headlined, "NATO seeks urgent exit strategy in Libya," knowing this phase of the war is lost. Nonetheless, future strategies and campaigns will follow.
For now, however, "NATO is seeking an urgent exit strategy (to end) fighting and decide the future of (Gaddifi), even if that means letting him stay in the country though out of power, it emerged Tuesday after British and French foreign ministers met in London."
In tribal Libya, Gaddafi's power, in fact, is far less than reported, social anthropologist Ranier Fsadni saying:
"Gaddafi's feeling for tribal Libya is certainly one factor that explains how he has managed to rule the country for so many years. (However), (t)here is no tribal office giving a single man a monopoly of institutional power at the apex....Several factors account for his longevity in power," including sharing Libya's oil wealth.
UPI said diplomacy is driven by a failed military campaign. As a result, "(i)ntense mediation efforts are underway at different levels at the United Nations and Europe, in African, European and Middle Eastern capitals and Russia."
Neither side is commenting, but some observers think operations may wind down in weeks, based on an unannounced face-saving solution, despite continued destabilization and future conflict planned. It's similar to Balkan and Iraq war strategies, a combination of tactics until Washington prevailed.
Libya faces the same end game, though years could pass before it arrives. As a result, Libyans can expect continued hardships. When imperial America shows up, that strategy persists until it prevails, no matter the pain and suffering inflicted.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen (at) sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
See also:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com
This work is in the public domain
Tuesday, July 19, 2011
Nato and Rebel Atrocities in Libya - by Stephen Lendman
Thursday, July 14, 2011
NATO and Rebel Atrocities in Libya
Nato and Rebel Atrocities in Libya - by Stephen Lendman
Previous articles discussed:
-- NATO's illegal Libya aggression;
-- American and Western media in the lead cheerleading it; some reporters, in fact, complicit with NATO forces by supplying target coordinates;
-- planning it many months (perhaps years) before fighting began last winter;
-- waging it to conquer, colonize, loot, and balkanize Libya, masquerading as humanitarian intervention;
-- covertly funding, arming and training mercenary insurgents, including Al Qaeda linked Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) paramilitaries;
-- establishing an illegitimate Transitional National Council (TNC) government with CIA/British Intelligence (SIS/MI6) links;
-- terror bombing Libya daily since March 19, using depleted uranium weapons, cluster bombs and perhaps other illegal weapons;
-- bombing nonmilitary civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, heritage sites, a bus with civilians, a hotel, a restaurant, a food storage facility, commercial sites, a university, civilian neighborhoods, fishermen at sea, Gaddafi's personal compound to kill him and his family, as well as other nonmilitary targets;
-- collectively punishing Libyans; in government-controlled areas, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is about 10 to one;
-- blocking shipments of food, fuel and medicine; and
-- overall laying waste to large areas, what Pentagon-led wars always do, destroying countries to save them, never waging wars for humanitarian reasons or even contemplating the idea.
War Rages Unabated
Meanwhile, duplicitous congressional posturing assures pro-war support despite rhetorical opposition against it. In France, despite strong anti-war sentiment, lawmakers just reauthorized French participation, while officials claim a negotiated solution is possible.
According to Prime Minister Francois Fillon, "A political solution in Libya is more indispensable than ever and it is beginning to take shape." Defense Minister Gerard Longuet suggested insurgents negotiate with Gaddafi, drawing Washington's ire for saying it.
Some analysts believe France is looking for a face-saving way out. Parliamentarians, however, just overwhelming endorsed war, voting 482 - 27 in France's lower house and 311 - 24 in its upper one.
Like Obama and Britain's David Cameron, Sarkozy remains committed to press on despite low approval ratings ahead of next May's presidential election. The three main co-belligerents began hostilities to incite rebellion against Gaddafi or kill him. Instead, Libyans strongly support him the way populations usually respond when attacked by foreign powers, rallying behind leaders against them.
As a result, NATO so far is losing, despite last March claiming victory would be swift, Obama notably saying Washington's involvement would be "days, not weeks."
In fact, America remains very much involved, despite diminishing chances of prevailing given Libyans resolve to defend their sovereignty by resisting.
Daily it's evident, especially Fridays after prayer followed by huge pro-Gaddafi rallies, at least twice in Tripoli a million or more turning out in Green Square, raging as well against NATO.
Moreover, Libyans are well armed. Gaddafi made sure everyone has weapons to defend against Western belligerents. Seventy years ago they united and routed Italy. They'll do it again if NATO invades, even at the cost of many lives to live free of foreign occupation.
At the same time, divisions in NATO are evident. Italy called for a halt in bombing. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said waging war was a mistake, ending his country's participation and halting air strikes from Italian bases. Norway also pulled out. Perhaps other participants will follow.
Early in the campaign, Germany recalled two frigates and AWACS surveillance Mediterranean flights, but recently agreed to supply munitions.
Cracks in TNC unity are also apparent, noticeably after chairman Mustapha Abdul-Jalil backtracked after saying Gaddafi could stay in Libya if he stepped down. Other TNC members disagreed, spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga claiming that option was never considered.
Despite main co-belligerents pressing on, months of bombing produced stalemate, suggesting new ways of resolving conflict may follow. On July 10, the Algerian newspaper El Khabar quoted Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam saying, "The truth is that we are negotiating with France and not with the rebels....France said, '(w)hen we reach an agreement with you, we will force (TNC members) to cease fire.' "
On July 11, Le Monde said Sarkozy met with Gaddafi's chief of staff, Bachir Saleh, in June. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe confirmed that contacts were made, saying "(t)here is a consensus on how to end the crisis, which is that Gaddafi has to leave power. That was absolutely not a given two or three months ago."
In fact, ousting or killing him was intended all along, replacing him with new pro-Western puppet leadership like governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anything short of that is defeat, including Washington's grand strategy for Libya as a base for greater North and sub-Saharan African control, using counterproductive tactics not working.
Reporting from Libya, Franklin Lamb reported regular NATO atrocities he witnessed afterwards firsthand, including:
On June 20, NATO attacked Khaled Al-Hamedi's home, killing 15 people in total, including his pregnant wife, three children, and sister. NATO lied calling it a military strike, saying civilians are never attacked. In fact, they're prime targets.
Later in June, a TOW missile hit a public bus, killing all 12 passengers, NATO saying military personnel were being transported. Foreign observers, however, confirmed no military presence. Police secure Libyan cities, neighborhood watch teams suburban areas.
On June 6, central Tripoli's Higher Committee for Children administrative complex was struck with 12 bombs and rockets. Of no military significance, it housed the National Downs Syndrome center, the Crippled Women's Foundation, the Crippled Children Center, and the National Diabetic Research Center. NATO called it a legitimate military target.
On June 16, NATO bombed a central Tripoli hotel and restaurant, killing three civilians. Sirte Central Hospital and the Libyan Lawyers Group representing war victims said attacks caused sharp increases in strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, miscarriages, and stress-related illnesses, besides bomb-related injuries.
Paramilitary Insurgent Cutthroats
Previous articles discussed rebel paramilitary atrocities, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/03/plaanned-regime-change-in-libya_28.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/05/libyan-rebels-killing-civilians-in.html
On July 12, New York Times writer CJ Chivers headlined, "Libyan Rebels Accused of Pillage and Beatings," saying:
"Rebels in the mountains in Libya's west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). They also "beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes" after ravaging Benghazi and other areas earlier.
On July 13, HRW headlined, "Libya: Opposition Forces Should Protect Civilians and Hospitals," saying:
Instead they're "responsible for looting, arson, and abuse of civilians in recently captured towns....in the Nufusa Mountains."
They've "damaged property, burned some homes, looted from hospitals, homes, shops, and beaten some (alleged pro-Gaddafi) supporte(rs)."
HRW representatives witnessed some of these events firsthand, interviewed others about them, and spoke to a rebel commander, asking for accountability. Nonetheless, they continue "indiscriminate attacks on civilian-inhabited areas."
According to HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson:
"Grad rocket attacks are launched almost every day into residential areas with no discernible military target. Why would (they) think there is a purpose to spraying shrapnel into people's homes or mosques and hospitals?"
Rebel military commander Col. El-Moktar Firnana admitted abuses occurred, saying doing so violated orders, whether or not true. Since conflict began last winter, insurgents terrorized Benghazi and other controlled areas - pillaging, raping, brutalizing, and killing suspected anti-NATO residents, especially dark-skinned ones.
On July 7, HRW saw rebels loading looted items on trucks. "Five houses....seen intact the (previous) day (were) on fire." Three more and a shop were burned a few days later, and another six appeared newly burned.
As a result, Al-Awaniya and Zawiyat al-Bagul "appeared empty of residents." Houses on streets HRW visited were ransacked, stores on main streets broken into and looted. One resident said rebels stole medical equipment from a polyclinic. Visiting the facility, HRW saw vandalized rooms, broken windows and doors, as well as "evidence of missing....equipment, including an x-ray machine and possibly an electrocardiogram machine."
Al-Awaniya's hospital was damaged and looted the same way. Well-equipped, a staffer said everything was taken. In Rayaninah, 300 to 400 people stayed behind when rebels arrived. HRW saw evidence of beatings and people shot. Others had wrists tied with dusty wire, then beaten.
Rebel commander Firnana claimed people in the town worked for Gaddafi. "Houses that were robbed and broken into were ones that the army used," he said. "Those people who were beaten were working for Gaddafi's brigades," whether or not true.
HRW quoted "opposition forces say(ing) they are committed to human rights, but the looting, arson, and abuse (raise) concerns about how civilians will be treated if rebels (enter) other towns where the government has support."
Co-belligerents Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy reside far from NATO war zones, including other theaters to satisfy their imperial appetites, no matter how much death and destruction it takes to achieve it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:46 AM
NATO and Rebel Atrocities in Libya
Nato and Rebel Atrocities in Libya - by Stephen Lendman
Previous articles discussed:
-- NATO's illegal Libya aggression;
-- American and Western media in the lead cheerleading it; some reporters, in fact, complicit with NATO forces by supplying target coordinates;
-- planning it many months (perhaps years) before fighting began last winter;
-- waging it to conquer, colonize, loot, and balkanize Libya, masquerading as humanitarian intervention;
-- covertly funding, arming and training mercenary insurgents, including Al Qaeda linked Libya Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) paramilitaries;
-- establishing an illegitimate Transitional National Council (TNC) government with CIA/British Intelligence (SIS/MI6) links;
-- terror bombing Libya daily since March 19, using depleted uranium weapons, cluster bombs and perhaps other illegal weapons;
-- bombing nonmilitary civilian infrastructure, hospitals, schools, heritage sites, a bus with civilians, a hotel, a restaurant, a food storage facility, commercial sites, a university, civilian neighborhoods, fishermen at sea, Gaddafi's personal compound to kill him and his family, as well as other nonmilitary targets;
-- collectively punishing Libyans; in government-controlled areas, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is about 10 to one;
-- blocking shipments of food, fuel and medicine; and
-- overall laying waste to large areas, what Pentagon-led wars always do, destroying countries to save them, never waging wars for humanitarian reasons or even contemplating the idea.
War Rages Unabated
Meanwhile, duplicitous congressional posturing assures pro-war support despite rhetorical opposition against it. In France, despite strong anti-war sentiment, lawmakers just reauthorized French participation, while officials claim a negotiated solution is possible.
According to Prime Minister Francois Fillon, "A political solution in Libya is more indispensable than ever and it is beginning to take shape." Defense Minister Gerard Longuet suggested insurgents negotiate with Gaddafi, drawing Washington's ire for saying it.
Some analysts believe France is looking for a face-saving way out. Parliamentarians, however, just overwhelming endorsed war, voting 482 - 27 in France's lower house and 311 - 24 in its upper one.
Like Obama and Britain's David Cameron, Sarkozy remains committed to press on despite low approval ratings ahead of next May's presidential election. The three main co-belligerents began hostilities to incite rebellion against Gaddafi or kill him. Instead, Libyans strongly support him the way populations usually respond when attacked by foreign powers, rallying behind leaders against them.
As a result, NATO so far is losing, despite last March claiming victory would be swift, Obama notably saying Washington's involvement would be "days, not weeks."
In fact, America remains very much involved, despite diminishing chances of prevailing given Libyans resolve to defend their sovereignty by resisting.
Daily it's evident, especially Fridays after prayer followed by huge pro-Gaddafi rallies, at least twice in Tripoli a million or more turning out in Green Square, raging as well against NATO.
Moreover, Libyans are well armed. Gaddafi made sure everyone has weapons to defend against Western belligerents. Seventy years ago they united and routed Italy. They'll do it again if NATO invades, even at the cost of many lives to live free of foreign occupation.
At the same time, divisions in NATO are evident. Italy called for a halt in bombing. Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said waging war was a mistake, ending his country's participation and halting air strikes from Italian bases. Norway also pulled out. Perhaps other participants will follow.
Early in the campaign, Germany recalled two frigates and AWACS surveillance Mediterranean flights, but recently agreed to supply munitions.
Cracks in TNC unity are also apparent, noticeably after chairman Mustapha Abdul-Jalil backtracked after saying Gaddafi could stay in Libya if he stepped down. Other TNC members disagreed, spokesman Abdel Hafiz Ghoga claiming that option was never considered.
Despite main co-belligerents pressing on, months of bombing produced stalemate, suggesting new ways of resolving conflict may follow. On July 10, the Algerian newspaper El Khabar quoted Gaddafi's son Saif al-Islam saying, "The truth is that we are negotiating with France and not with the rebels....France said, '(w)hen we reach an agreement with you, we will force (TNC members) to cease fire.' "
On July 11, Le Monde said Sarkozy met with Gaddafi's chief of staff, Bachir Saleh, in June. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe confirmed that contacts were made, saying "(t)here is a consensus on how to end the crisis, which is that Gaddafi has to leave power. That was absolutely not a given two or three months ago."
In fact, ousting or killing him was intended all along, replacing him with new pro-Western puppet leadership like governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. Anything short of that is defeat, including Washington's grand strategy for Libya as a base for greater North and sub-Saharan African control, using counterproductive tactics not working.
Reporting from Libya, Franklin Lamb reported regular NATO atrocities he witnessed afterwards firsthand, including:
On June 20, NATO attacked Khaled Al-Hamedi's home, killing 15 people in total, including his pregnant wife, three children, and sister. NATO lied calling it a military strike, saying civilians are never attacked. In fact, they're prime targets.
Later in June, a TOW missile hit a public bus, killing all 12 passengers, NATO saying military personnel were being transported. Foreign observers, however, confirmed no military presence. Police secure Libyan cities, neighborhood watch teams suburban areas.
On June 6, central Tripoli's Higher Committee for Children administrative complex was struck with 12 bombs and rockets. Of no military significance, it housed the National Downs Syndrome center, the Crippled Women's Foundation, the Crippled Children Center, and the National Diabetic Research Center. NATO called it a legitimate military target.
On June 16, NATO bombed a central Tripoli hotel and restaurant, killing three civilians. Sirte Central Hospital and the Libyan Lawyers Group representing war victims said attacks caused sharp increases in strokes, diabetes, high blood pressure, miscarriages, and stress-related illnesses, besides bomb-related injuries.
Paramilitary Insurgent Cutthroats
Previous articles discussed rebel paramilitary atrocities, accessed through the following links:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/03/plaanned-regime-change-in-libya_28.html
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/05/libyan-rebels-killing-civilians-in.html
On July 12, New York Times writer CJ Chivers headlined, "Libyan Rebels Accused of Pillage and Beatings," saying:
"Rebels in the mountains in Libya's west have looted and damaged four towns seized since last month," according to Human Rights Watch (HRW). They also "beat people suspected of being loyalists and burned their homes" after ravaging Benghazi and other areas earlier.
On July 13, HRW headlined, "Libya: Opposition Forces Should Protect Civilians and Hospitals," saying:
Instead they're "responsible for looting, arson, and abuse of civilians in recently captured towns....in the Nufusa Mountains."
They've "damaged property, burned some homes, looted from hospitals, homes, shops, and beaten some (alleged pro-Gaddafi) supporte(rs)."
HRW representatives witnessed some of these events firsthand, interviewed others about them, and spoke to a rebel commander, asking for accountability. Nonetheless, they continue "indiscriminate attacks on civilian-inhabited areas."
According to HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson:
"Grad rocket attacks are launched almost every day into residential areas with no discernible military target. Why would (they) think there is a purpose to spraying shrapnel into people's homes or mosques and hospitals?"
Rebel military commander Col. El-Moktar Firnana admitted abuses occurred, saying doing so violated orders, whether or not true. Since conflict began last winter, insurgents terrorized Benghazi and other controlled areas - pillaging, raping, brutalizing, and killing suspected anti-NATO residents, especially dark-skinned ones.
On July 7, HRW saw rebels loading looted items on trucks. "Five houses....seen intact the (previous) day (were) on fire." Three more and a shop were burned a few days later, and another six appeared newly burned.
As a result, Al-Awaniya and Zawiyat al-Bagul "appeared empty of residents." Houses on streets HRW visited were ransacked, stores on main streets broken into and looted. One resident said rebels stole medical equipment from a polyclinic. Visiting the facility, HRW saw vandalized rooms, broken windows and doors, as well as "evidence of missing....equipment, including an x-ray machine and possibly an electrocardiogram machine."
Al-Awaniya's hospital was damaged and looted the same way. Well-equipped, a staffer said everything was taken. In Rayaninah, 300 to 400 people stayed behind when rebels arrived. HRW saw evidence of beatings and people shot. Others had wrists tied with dusty wire, then beaten.
Rebel commander Firnana claimed people in the town worked for Gaddafi. "Houses that were robbed and broken into were ones that the army used," he said. "Those people who were beaten were working for Gaddafi's brigades," whether or not true.
HRW quoted "opposition forces say(ing) they are committed to human rights, but the looting, arson, and abuse (raise) concerns about how civilians will be treated if rebels (enter) other towns where the government has support."
Co-belligerents Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy reside far from NATO war zones, including other theaters to satisfy their imperial appetites, no matter how much death and destruction it takes to achieve it.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:46 AM
Crackdowns, Torture and Intimidation in Bahrain - by Stephen Lendman
Saturday, July 16, 2011
Crackdowns, Torture and Intimidation in Bahrain
Crackdowns, Torture and Intimidation in Bahrain - by Stephen Lendman
Largely ignored by Washington, Western governments, and America's media, the ruling Al Khalifa monarchy continues cracking down brutally against nonviolent protesters since civil resistance began last February.
On July 14, UK Telegraph writer Richard Spencer headlined, "Bahraini woman poet tells of torture while in custody," saying:
Incarcerated after reciting a poem critical of government policies, "Ayat al-Qurmezi (age 20) became one of the symbols of the (ongoing) protests....After she was arrested....she was beaten, electro(shocked) and threatened with sexual assault while in custody."
On July 11, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) headlined, "Teachers ordeal in Bahrain: arrested, tortured, sacked, suspended and prosecuted," saying:
Teachers and Bahrain Teachers Association (BTA) members participated in protest demonstrations, demanding respect for human rights and democratic change. As a result, they faced "arbitrary arrests, military prosecution, torture, suspensions, salary cuts, and investigation."
BTA board members were arrested, held incommunicado with no access to family or lawyers. A month later, some were released. Others are still detained, including BTA President Mahdi Abu Deeb, charged with:
"deliver(ing) speeches haranguing and instigat(ing) protesters and inciting them against the political regime, flouting the real voluntary and lofty goals of the association."
On June 6, Deeb and BTA Vice President Jaleela Al Salman were tried in military court charged with:
"inciting others to commit crimes, calling for the hatred and overthrow of the ruling system, holding pamphlets, disseminating fabricated stories and information, leaving work on purpose and encouraging others to do so and taking part at illegal practices."
So far, at least 66 teachers were arrested. In addition, riot police repeatedly targeted 15 or more girls' schools. Teachers and students were arbitrarily arrested, detained, and "physically abused."
Other schools were also attacked. Many teachers were arrested, interrogated, intimidated, abused, charged with going on strike, participating in peaceful protests, and inciting anti-regime sentiment.
In custody, they were beaten and tortured. One female teacher said:
"Around 10 policewomen were asking me and beating me at the same time. Then they handcuffed me and kept beating me on the head and back while kicking me and stepping on my feet."
Others were threatened with rape and beaten. A woman who had major back surgery was repeatedly kicked there after explaining her medical condition.
Many faced secretive military trials and convicted. More trials are expected. Many others were arbitrarily suspended from positions or sacked. More remain under investigation. Intimidation throughout Bahrain is pervasive.
On June 14, Human Rights Watch headlined, "Bahrain: Stop Military Court Travesty of Justice," saying:
HRW called for ending military tribunal injustice, and "free(ing) everyone (including opposition politicians, medical professionals, students, teachers, journalists, and human rights activists) held solely for exercising their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly."
HRW's Middle East director Joe Stork said:
"Most defendants hauled before Bahrain's special military court are facing blatantly political charges and (unfair) trials."
Human Rights First (HRF) on Bahrain
On July 14, a HRF press release headlined, "NEW REPORT: Despite National Dialogue Crackdown Continues in Bahrain," saying:
The Bahraini government "continues to intimidate, torture, and detain human rights defenders, and shoot at civilians." According to HRF's Brian Dooley:
"Human rights defenders with whom we spoke are wary that the dialogue is (nothing) more than elaborate play-acting for the international community's benefit."
The report titled, "Bahrain: A Tortuous Process" presented findings based on a July 6 - 12 fact-finding mission. It included interviews with human rights defenders, other activists, victims and their families, dozens of recently released detainees, journalists, medical professionals, students, and Bahraini government officials.
In addition, HRF personnel "witnessed riot police firing on unarmed women without warning with a variety of weapons."
Nonetheless, peaceful marches and protests continue, despite security force attacks, using sound bombs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and live fire.
Human rights defenders are prime targets, facing arrests, detentions, torture, and illegitimate trials. In fact, (on June 21) prominent activist Abdulhadi Al Khawaja received life in prison in one of many show trials.
Others like him express views anonymously, fearing reprisals if go public. They also assume their phones are tapped and goings monitored. A Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights member said:
"We live under the constant fear of arrest. They can come at any time for us."
Another activist said homes and other facilities are regularly raided, adding:
"I still wake up scared. I have clothes ready, next to the bed. I get up sometimes in the middle of the night and look out the window if I hear a noise, thinking it's them again. It's a permanent fear that they could come at any time, day or night."
Human rights defenders complained about Washington's double standard, muting its regime criticism, stressing Bahrain's an important regional partner, ally, and home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Disingenuously on July 2, Obama welcomed Bahrain's National Dialogue, calling it "an important moment of promise....The United States commends King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his leadership in initiating the dialogue."
In contrast, one participant told HRF:
"There are four halls, each having between 50 to 80 participants" allowed five minutes to speak. "The session ends while some still have not talked. Nothing is known about how all these chaotically dispersed talks will end up...." King Hamad has final say.
"You have it all predetermined and the final document has already been decided. These meetings are nothing more than a camouflage. It is a joke to call it a dialogue to start with."
Based on numerous interviews, HRF reported "credible, consistent accounts of torture," other forms of abuse and humiliation, including detainees forced to kiss photos of the king, belly dance, make animal noises, and sign confessions.
One former detainee said he was blindfolded for weeks, forced to stand for hours, wasn't allowed to wash or pray, and was even beaten when permitted to use the toilet. Others had similar horror stories. Injured detainees were also abused, including on their wounds. Intimidation, humiliation, and forced confessions are routine.
On July 6, HRF's Brian Dooley witnessed riot police attacking peaceful pedestrians, saying:
"People were standing in doorways, chatting....It was a calm, chatty atmosphere....(S)uddenly riot police (with) shields appeared behind us." With no warning, they opened fire, using "sound bombs, tear gas canisters, and rubber bullets."
People started screaming. Some were struck, including by shrapnel. "I could see people ahead of us running, panicking. The police kept on firing at us....We were not part of a rally, or even near (one). There were a few dozen people spread out along the length of the street in small groups like ours, and the police just appeared and attacked us."
Others told HRF similar stories, police firing on unarmed, peaceful civilians without warning. People not in detention face harassment. No one feels safe. Abuses continue regularly.
Protected by Washington, Bahrain is a lawless police state, targeting anyone seen challenging regime authority and many others for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nonetheless, peaceful protests continue, despite punitive reprisals, including arrests, detentions, torture, show trials, and imprisonment. Nary a word from Washington complains.
A Final Comment
A new Zogby International Arab American Institute poll shows unfavorable attitudes about America. In fact, Obama's 10% or lower approval rating surpasses Bush's lowest level. In fact, he scores worst on Palestine and engagement with the Muslim world.
In five of six countries surveyed, Washington scored lower than Turkey, China, France or Iran. Specifically, "US interference in the Arab world" is called the greatest obstacle to regional peace and stability after Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Libya perhaps was one war too many. Waging it increased negative perceptions about America and Obama.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:44 AM
Crackdowns, Torture and Intimidation in Bahrain
Crackdowns, Torture and Intimidation in Bahrain - by Stephen Lendman
Largely ignored by Washington, Western governments, and America's media, the ruling Al Khalifa monarchy continues cracking down brutally against nonviolent protesters since civil resistance began last February.
On July 14, UK Telegraph writer Richard Spencer headlined, "Bahraini woman poet tells of torture while in custody," saying:
Incarcerated after reciting a poem critical of government policies, "Ayat al-Qurmezi (age 20) became one of the symbols of the (ongoing) protests....After she was arrested....she was beaten, electro(shocked) and threatened with sexual assault while in custody."
On July 11, the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) headlined, "Teachers ordeal in Bahrain: arrested, tortured, sacked, suspended and prosecuted," saying:
Teachers and Bahrain Teachers Association (BTA) members participated in protest demonstrations, demanding respect for human rights and democratic change. As a result, they faced "arbitrary arrests, military prosecution, torture, suspensions, salary cuts, and investigation."
BTA board members were arrested, held incommunicado with no access to family or lawyers. A month later, some were released. Others are still detained, including BTA President Mahdi Abu Deeb, charged with:
"deliver(ing) speeches haranguing and instigat(ing) protesters and inciting them against the political regime, flouting the real voluntary and lofty goals of the association."
On June 6, Deeb and BTA Vice President Jaleela Al Salman were tried in military court charged with:
"inciting others to commit crimes, calling for the hatred and overthrow of the ruling system, holding pamphlets, disseminating fabricated stories and information, leaving work on purpose and encouraging others to do so and taking part at illegal practices."
So far, at least 66 teachers were arrested. In addition, riot police repeatedly targeted 15 or more girls' schools. Teachers and students were arbitrarily arrested, detained, and "physically abused."
Other schools were also attacked. Many teachers were arrested, interrogated, intimidated, abused, charged with going on strike, participating in peaceful protests, and inciting anti-regime sentiment.
In custody, they were beaten and tortured. One female teacher said:
"Around 10 policewomen were asking me and beating me at the same time. Then they handcuffed me and kept beating me on the head and back while kicking me and stepping on my feet."
Others were threatened with rape and beaten. A woman who had major back surgery was repeatedly kicked there after explaining her medical condition.
Many faced secretive military trials and convicted. More trials are expected. Many others were arbitrarily suspended from positions or sacked. More remain under investigation. Intimidation throughout Bahrain is pervasive.
On June 14, Human Rights Watch headlined, "Bahrain: Stop Military Court Travesty of Justice," saying:
HRW called for ending military tribunal injustice, and "free(ing) everyone (including opposition politicians, medical professionals, students, teachers, journalists, and human rights activists) held solely for exercising their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly."
HRW's Middle East director Joe Stork said:
"Most defendants hauled before Bahrain's special military court are facing blatantly political charges and (unfair) trials."
Human Rights First (HRF) on Bahrain
On July 14, a HRF press release headlined, "NEW REPORT: Despite National Dialogue Crackdown Continues in Bahrain," saying:
The Bahraini government "continues to intimidate, torture, and detain human rights defenders, and shoot at civilians." According to HRF's Brian Dooley:
"Human rights defenders with whom we spoke are wary that the dialogue is (nothing) more than elaborate play-acting for the international community's benefit."
The report titled, "Bahrain: A Tortuous Process" presented findings based on a July 6 - 12 fact-finding mission. It included interviews with human rights defenders, other activists, victims and their families, dozens of recently released detainees, journalists, medical professionals, students, and Bahraini government officials.
In addition, HRF personnel "witnessed riot police firing on unarmed women without warning with a variety of weapons."
Nonetheless, peaceful marches and protests continue, despite security force attacks, using sound bombs, tear gas, rubber bullets, and live fire.
Human rights defenders are prime targets, facing arrests, detentions, torture, and illegitimate trials. In fact, (on June 21) prominent activist Abdulhadi Al Khawaja received life in prison in one of many show trials.
Others like him express views anonymously, fearing reprisals if go public. They also assume their phones are tapped and goings monitored. A Bahrain Youth Society for Human Rights member said:
"We live under the constant fear of arrest. They can come at any time for us."
Another activist said homes and other facilities are regularly raided, adding:
"I still wake up scared. I have clothes ready, next to the bed. I get up sometimes in the middle of the night and look out the window if I hear a noise, thinking it's them again. It's a permanent fear that they could come at any time, day or night."
Human rights defenders complained about Washington's double standard, muting its regime criticism, stressing Bahrain's an important regional partner, ally, and home to the US Navy's Fifth Fleet.
Disingenuously on July 2, Obama welcomed Bahrain's National Dialogue, calling it "an important moment of promise....The United States commends King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his leadership in initiating the dialogue."
In contrast, one participant told HRF:
"There are four halls, each having between 50 to 80 participants" allowed five minutes to speak. "The session ends while some still have not talked. Nothing is known about how all these chaotically dispersed talks will end up...." King Hamad has final say.
"You have it all predetermined and the final document has already been decided. These meetings are nothing more than a camouflage. It is a joke to call it a dialogue to start with."
Based on numerous interviews, HRF reported "credible, consistent accounts of torture," other forms of abuse and humiliation, including detainees forced to kiss photos of the king, belly dance, make animal noises, and sign confessions.
One former detainee said he was blindfolded for weeks, forced to stand for hours, wasn't allowed to wash or pray, and was even beaten when permitted to use the toilet. Others had similar horror stories. Injured detainees were also abused, including on their wounds. Intimidation, humiliation, and forced confessions are routine.
On July 6, HRF's Brian Dooley witnessed riot police attacking peaceful pedestrians, saying:
"People were standing in doorways, chatting....It was a calm, chatty atmosphere....(S)uddenly riot police (with) shields appeared behind us." With no warning, they opened fire, using "sound bombs, tear gas canisters, and rubber bullets."
People started screaming. Some were struck, including by shrapnel. "I could see people ahead of us running, panicking. The police kept on firing at us....We were not part of a rally, or even near (one). There were a few dozen people spread out along the length of the street in small groups like ours, and the police just appeared and attacked us."
Others told HRF similar stories, police firing on unarmed, peaceful civilians without warning. People not in detention face harassment. No one feels safe. Abuses continue regularly.
Protected by Washington, Bahrain is a lawless police state, targeting anyone seen challenging regime authority and many others for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Nonetheless, peaceful protests continue, despite punitive reprisals, including arrests, detentions, torture, show trials, and imprisonment. Nary a word from Washington complains.
A Final Comment
A new Zogby International Arab American Institute poll shows unfavorable attitudes about America. In fact, Obama's 10% or lower approval rating surpasses Bush's lowest level. In fact, he scores worst on Palestine and engagement with the Muslim world.
In five of six countries surveyed, Washington scored lower than Turkey, China, France or Iran. Specifically, "US interference in the Arab world" is called the greatest obstacle to regional peace and stability after Israel's occupation of Palestine.
Libya perhaps was one war too many. Waging it increased negative perceptions about America and Obama.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:44 AM
Washington's Ongoing Libya Terror Bombing - by Stephen Lendman
Monday, July 18, 2011
Washington's Ongoing Libya Terror Bombing
Washington's Ongoing Libya Terror Bombing - by Stephen Lendman
On July 14, Mossad-connected DEBKA file headlined, "The Libyan War ends. Obama makes Moscow peace broker. NATO halts strikes," saying:
"Bar the shouting, the war in Libya ended Thursday morning, July 14, when (Obama) called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hand Moscow the lead role in negotiations with (Gaddafi to end) the conflict - provided only that the Libyan ruler steps down in favor of a transitional administration."
More about Obama's demand below. For now, America's Libya terror bombing continues unabated, despite a White House July 13 Office of the Press Secretary release, saying:
Obama thanked "Russia's efforts to mediate a political solution in Libya, emphasizing that (Washington) is prepared to support negotiations that lead to a democratic transition....as long as (Gaddafi) steps aside."
In fact, Obama spurns democratic values abroad and at home, intolerable notions he won't accept, nor peace, waging multiple imperial wars with no letup. In Libya, moreover, at issue isn't Gaddafi, it's colonizing another country, controlling its resources, plundering its wealth, and exploiting its people, the same US aim always.
On July 15, Washington and about 30 European and Middle East countries illegally recognized insurgent leaders as Libya's legitimate government - the so-called Transitional National Council (TNC). Meeting in Istanbul (without China and Russia), the Libya Contact Group issued a statement, saying:
"Henceforth, and until an interim authority is in place, participants agreed to deal with the (TNC) as the legitimate government authority in Libya."
It added that Gaddafi no longer had legitimacy and must leave Libya with his family.
Explaining what's clearly illegitimate, Secretary of State Clinton said:
"We still have to work through various legal issues (in order words, avoid them entirely), but we expect this step on recognition will enable the TNC to access additional sources of funding," including $30 billion of up to $150 billion of Libya's stolen wealth, besides its rich oil, gas, and water resources worth many multiples more.
At the same time, frustration grows after four months of stalemated ground and air operations. As a result, despite saying Gaddafi must go, some NATO partners seem willing to let him stay, though not in his present capacity.
Gaddafi, in fact, vows never to leave or surrender to insurgents or NATO. In a July 16 audio address, he told supporters:
"They are asking me to leave. That's a laugh. I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me. After we gave our children as martyrs, we can't backtrack or surrender or give up or move an inch."
Libyans overwhelmingly back him, rallying in images (and reports) major media suppress, accessed through the following links:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25630
http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/07/libya-ground-scenes-tripoli-july-2011
No one called them out. No one demanded support for Gaddafi. They came on their own, what usually happens when nations are lawlessly attacked. People rally overwhelmingly behind leaders against foreign aggressors. Libyans know Washington and NATO, not Gaddafi, is their enemy.
Moreover, they're armed, ready to defend their country against invaders because Gaddafi gave about two million civilians weapons, more than enough to oust him if they wished. They don't!
DEBKA also said that:
"From July 9, (its) military sources (said) NATO discontinued its air strikes against Libyan pro-government targets in Tripoli and other places. (Though unannounced, it signaled) that 15,000 flight missions (actually 15,308 through July 15) and 6,000 (actually 5,767 through July 15) bombardments of Qaddafi targets had failed to achieve their object."
In fact, NATO's web site (http://www.aco.nato.int/page424201235.aspx) states the following:
For July 9: 112 sorties conducted, including 48 strike missions;
For July 10: 139 sorties conducted, including 54 strike missions;
For July 11: 132 sorties conducted, including 49 strike missions;
For July 12: 127 sorties conducted, including 35 strike missions;
For July 13: No data posted. The above pattern likely continued.
For July 14: 132 sorties conducted, including 48 strike missions.
For July 15: 115 sorties conducted, including 46 strike missions.
Reporting from Tripoli on July 17, Middle East/Central Asian analyst Mahdi Nazemroaya emailed that "(l)ast night was very bad here. They bombed like crazy and everything was shaking."
He elaborated in a Global Research.ca article, accessed through the following link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25658
Calling it an overnight "Blitzkrieg," he cited "large explosions....heard in the distance. Multiple urban areas were bombed simultaneously this morning."
According to eyewitnesses, about 60 - 75 bombs hit Tajura (14 km east of Tripoli) and the city's Seraj area. Continuing a regular pattern, civilian targets were struck, including residential areas. On July 16, Libyan state television reported mostly civilian casualties without specific numbers.
So far, in fact, for every combatant death, 10 civilians have been killed as a result of non-military sites struck, including residential neighborhoods.
Over night near bombing areas, "it was like an earthquake. Large buildings as far away as Al-Fatah Street....were shaking."
July 16 strikes, however, differed from previous ones. Burning smells and "a strange smoldering filled the air" and lingered. "It even remained on the skin (after) the bombings....The sounds (and smoke plumes) were different."
After previous bombings, smoke rose vertically "like a fire, but tonight (it was white and) horizontal....hovering above Tripoli."
One explosion caused "a huge mushroom cloud, pointing to the possible use of (nuclear) bunker buster bombs." Within a 15 km radius of targets, people "experienced burning eyes, lower back pain, (and) headaches," unexplained symptoms not previously felt.
Last week, in fact, Libya's prosecutor general Mohammed Zikri al-Mahjoubi accused NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of war crimes, saying he'll be criminally charged with:
"deliberate aggression against innocent civilians, the murder of children, as well as trying to overthrow the Libyan regime....(He's) responsible (for) attack(ing) unarmed people, killing 1,108 and wounding 4,537 others in bombardment of Tripoli and other cities and villages."
He also charged him with trying to murder Gaddafi.
On July 14, Rasmussen tried having it both ways, "encouraging all allies that have aircraft at their disposal to take part in operation," while calling for a pro-Western political solution Libyans won't accept, nor should they.
A Final Comment
Securing imperial control is the issue, an objective putting America at odds with millions of Libyans determined to resist and prevail.
In fact, Washington's strategy may have backfired. Most Libyans united behind Gaddafi, together with regional and other allies, including China and Russia (for their own strategic interests), against exploitive Western "liberation."
Though no end of conflict is imminent, perhaps this time people power may triumph. If so, the message to other imperial victims is don't quit. Struggling long enough to prevail at times succeeds. Maybe this time for Libyans.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:47 AM
Washington's Ongoing Libya Terror Bombing
Washington's Ongoing Libya Terror Bombing - by Stephen Lendman
On July 14, Mossad-connected DEBKA file headlined, "The Libyan War ends. Obama makes Moscow peace broker. NATO halts strikes," saying:
"Bar the shouting, the war in Libya ended Thursday morning, July 14, when (Obama) called Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to hand Moscow the lead role in negotiations with (Gaddafi to end) the conflict - provided only that the Libyan ruler steps down in favor of a transitional administration."
More about Obama's demand below. For now, America's Libya terror bombing continues unabated, despite a White House July 13 Office of the Press Secretary release, saying:
Obama thanked "Russia's efforts to mediate a political solution in Libya, emphasizing that (Washington) is prepared to support negotiations that lead to a democratic transition....as long as (Gaddafi) steps aside."
In fact, Obama spurns democratic values abroad and at home, intolerable notions he won't accept, nor peace, waging multiple imperial wars with no letup. In Libya, moreover, at issue isn't Gaddafi, it's colonizing another country, controlling its resources, plundering its wealth, and exploiting its people, the same US aim always.
On July 15, Washington and about 30 European and Middle East countries illegally recognized insurgent leaders as Libya's legitimate government - the so-called Transitional National Council (TNC). Meeting in Istanbul (without China and Russia), the Libya Contact Group issued a statement, saying:
"Henceforth, and until an interim authority is in place, participants agreed to deal with the (TNC) as the legitimate government authority in Libya."
It added that Gaddafi no longer had legitimacy and must leave Libya with his family.
Explaining what's clearly illegitimate, Secretary of State Clinton said:
"We still have to work through various legal issues (in order words, avoid them entirely), but we expect this step on recognition will enable the TNC to access additional sources of funding," including $30 billion of up to $150 billion of Libya's stolen wealth, besides its rich oil, gas, and water resources worth many multiples more.
At the same time, frustration grows after four months of stalemated ground and air operations. As a result, despite saying Gaddafi must go, some NATO partners seem willing to let him stay, though not in his present capacity.
Gaddafi, in fact, vows never to leave or surrender to insurgents or NATO. In a July 16 audio address, he told supporters:
"They are asking me to leave. That's a laugh. I will never leave the land of my ancestors or the people who have sacrificed themselves for me. After we gave our children as martyrs, we can't backtrack or surrender or give up or move an inch."
Libyans overwhelmingly back him, rallying in images (and reports) major media suppress, accessed through the following links:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25630
http://tv.globalresearch.ca/2011/07/libya-ground-scenes-tripoli-july-2011
No one called them out. No one demanded support for Gaddafi. They came on their own, what usually happens when nations are lawlessly attacked. People rally overwhelmingly behind leaders against foreign aggressors. Libyans know Washington and NATO, not Gaddafi, is their enemy.
Moreover, they're armed, ready to defend their country against invaders because Gaddafi gave about two million civilians weapons, more than enough to oust him if they wished. They don't!
DEBKA also said that:
"From July 9, (its) military sources (said) NATO discontinued its air strikes against Libyan pro-government targets in Tripoli and other places. (Though unannounced, it signaled) that 15,000 flight missions (actually 15,308 through July 15) and 6,000 (actually 5,767 through July 15) bombardments of Qaddafi targets had failed to achieve their object."
In fact, NATO's web site (http://www.aco.nato.int/page424201235.aspx) states the following:
For July 9: 112 sorties conducted, including 48 strike missions;
For July 10: 139 sorties conducted, including 54 strike missions;
For July 11: 132 sorties conducted, including 49 strike missions;
For July 12: 127 sorties conducted, including 35 strike missions;
For July 13: No data posted. The above pattern likely continued.
For July 14: 132 sorties conducted, including 48 strike missions.
For July 15: 115 sorties conducted, including 46 strike missions.
Reporting from Tripoli on July 17, Middle East/Central Asian analyst Mahdi Nazemroaya emailed that "(l)ast night was very bad here. They bombed like crazy and everything was shaking."
He elaborated in a Global Research.ca article, accessed through the following link:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25658
Calling it an overnight "Blitzkrieg," he cited "large explosions....heard in the distance. Multiple urban areas were bombed simultaneously this morning."
According to eyewitnesses, about 60 - 75 bombs hit Tajura (14 km east of Tripoli) and the city's Seraj area. Continuing a regular pattern, civilian targets were struck, including residential areas. On July 16, Libyan state television reported mostly civilian casualties without specific numbers.
So far, in fact, for every combatant death, 10 civilians have been killed as a result of non-military sites struck, including residential neighborhoods.
Over night near bombing areas, "it was like an earthquake. Large buildings as far away as Al-Fatah Street....were shaking."
July 16 strikes, however, differed from previous ones. Burning smells and "a strange smoldering filled the air" and lingered. "It even remained on the skin (after) the bombings....The sounds (and smoke plumes) were different."
After previous bombings, smoke rose vertically "like a fire, but tonight (it was white and) horizontal....hovering above Tripoli."
One explosion caused "a huge mushroom cloud, pointing to the possible use of (nuclear) bunker buster bombs." Within a 15 km radius of targets, people "experienced burning eyes, lower back pain, (and) headaches," unexplained symptoms not previously felt.
Last week, in fact, Libya's prosecutor general Mohammed Zikri al-Mahjoubi accused NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen of war crimes, saying he'll be criminally charged with:
"deliberate aggression against innocent civilians, the murder of children, as well as trying to overthrow the Libyan regime....(He's) responsible (for) attack(ing) unarmed people, killing 1,108 and wounding 4,537 others in bombardment of Tripoli and other cities and villages."
He also charged him with trying to murder Gaddafi.
On July 14, Rasmussen tried having it both ways, "encouraging all allies that have aircraft at their disposal to take part in operation," while calling for a pro-Western political solution Libyans won't accept, nor should they.
A Final Comment
Securing imperial control is the issue, an objective putting America at odds with millions of Libyans determined to resist and prevail.
In fact, Washington's strategy may have backfired. Most Libyans united behind Gaddafi, together with regional and other allies, including China and Russia (for their own strategic interests), against exploitive Western "liberation."
Though no end of conflict is imminent, perhaps this time people power may triumph. If so, the message to other imperial victims is don't quit. Struggling long enough to prevail at times succeeds. Maybe this time for Libyans.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 12:47 AM
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
Sunday, July 03, 2011
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
Daily, Israel keeps proving its lawless rogue credentials, notably by blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a result, it finds new ways to show contempt for human rights, rule of law standards, civility, fundamental Judaic tenets, and its very legitimacy as a nation state, established by mass slaughter and displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.
Today, its war against humanity dirty tricks/state terrorism arsenal includes propaganda, intimidating lawsuits, pressure on other governments, sabotage, subversion, cold-blodded murder, and whatever else it takes to ruthlessly commit slow-motion genocide against nearly 1.7 million Gazans, besides daily crimes against others in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
No wonder growing numbers of fed up Jews are leaving, voting with their feet, including studies showing half or more there actively consider it, and why not.
Israel is an armed camp, a warrior state, a modern-day Sparta, institutionalizing militarism as a way of life. Young children are taught this ideology in school, including to hate, not respect non-Jews, especially Muslims as violent enemies and human rights activists supporting them.
Freedom Flotilla II participants are among them - vilified, sabotaged, delayed, and now blocked from departing by Greece's complicit rogue government, after agreeing to surrender its sovereignty to Western bankers despite mass street protests against it.
In fact, Greece's Washington embassy published an "Announcement on the Flotilla," accessed through the following link:
http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/AuthoritiesAbroad/North+America/USA/EmbassyWashington/Articles/en-US/Announcement+on+the+Flotilla.htm
In part it says:
"Prohibition of the departure of ships with Greek and foreign flags from Greek ports to the maritime area of Gaza today."
In other words, Gaza-bound ships in Greek ports are prohibited from sailing because Israel and Washington demand it - a clear international law violation.
Moreover, "all appropriate measures are taken for the implementation of the said decision....Furthermore, the broader maritime area of eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating in such campaign."
On July 1, the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) headlined, "Greek cabinet votes to stop Flotilla as US Boat to Gaza forced back to port," saying:
Its planned departure already delayed over a week, "the US Boat to Gaza decided Friday to challenge" Greece's government by leaving Athens without permission. However, before reaching international waters, Greek Coast Guard vessels forced it back to port and arrested its captain for leaving port without permission, disturbing sea traffic, and endangering the lives of his passengers. In other words, when no legitimate charges exist, rogue authorities invent them.
Moreover, Greek officials told Canadian boat participants that "the Office of the President has demanded the seizure of their boat." At the same time, Greece's cabinet voted to keep participating boats from leaving, succumbing to Washington and Israeli pressure to block them.
Free Gaza Movement (FGM) founder Greta Berlin issued a statement, saying: "Israel is doing its very, very best to make sure we don't get out of port," stooping to any depth to do it with help from its Washington paymaster partner, equally contemptuous of human rights and rule of law standards.
In fact, Obama provides daily proof of his out-of-control lawlessness, showing perhaps he's America's worst ever president, a hard-earned distinction given challenging competition for top honors.
Regularly, however, he's outdistancing the pack, including his rogue predecessor, multiplying his wars by three, continuing his criminal policies, and adding new ones of his own.
Possible US/Israeli Sabotage
Suspicions are that US Navy Seals and/or Israeli Syayetet 13 commandos sabotaged one boat for Greek, Norwegian and Swedish passengers by cutting off its propeller shaft, and disabled an Irish one altogether in Gocek, Turkey (MV Saoirse), forcing it to abandon its mission but not its determination to try again.
Why not despite Senator Mark Kirk's (R. IL) early June statement saying America should:
"should make available all necessary special operation and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk."
In a free democratic country, those remarks would minimally get him censured, vilified and disgraced. in fact, he should be banned from government service and prosecuted for supporting sabotage and harm to humanitarian passengers, punishing him for supporting crimes against humanity and perhaps war.
However, he's not alone. Besides Obama, Clinton and other administration rogues, as well as legions of them in Congress, Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked Attorney General Eric Holder to take legal steps to stop US participants and prosecute them if they refuse. Perry, in fact, is a right-wing extremist with presidential ambitions, hoping to do to America what he's done to Texas, governing it like George Bush.
IMEMC also headlined another July 1 article, "Free Flotilla activists: 'Gaza blockade has been extended to Greece,' " saying:
Two boats were sabotaged, one disabled, another forced back to port after sailing, and Greek police boarded the Canadian vessel (the Tahrir), blocking its departure, making Greece complicit in Israeli/Washington crimes against humanity, what their street brutality does daily against angry citizen activism.
At first, "port authorities (tried) to take the Tahrir's official transit logs (required for sailing)." However, passengers balked, demanding an explanation why. "When authorities (got) photocopies," they lost interest in the originals. According to organizing committee member Irene McInnes:
"The government of Israel, shamefully with the tacit support of (Canada's) Harper government (a willing co-conspirator), is doing everything in its power to maintain the blockade. Yet we will persevere in our attempts," no matter what rogue governments do.
"We have a legal and moral obligation to challenge the blockade, given the failure of the international community to act," said committee member Dylan Penner. "This is why we must continue our attempts to sail to Gaza: to challenge the illegal and immoral blockade," and Canada's criminal support along with America's and Israel's.
They may win the battle. They've already lost the war, creating a worldwide cause celebre, shaming them for denying humanitarian justice. If Flotilla II vessels reach Gaza, it'll be a bonus, what criminal governments are too blind to see.
According to Reuters on July 1, Flotilla vessels will sail next week, "a spokeswoman said on Friday," adding:
"We want to move the boats by July 5 to get to our rendezvous point no later than July 6 or 7....We will go with what we have," hoping to defeat dirty tricks trying to stop them, including by suing to be allowed to sail.
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials call the mission "provocative." They lied, an Israeli specialty, disgracefully replicated by Washington, Canada, Greece, and other complicit governments, shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
In spite of determined efforts to stop them, activists hope to sail anyway. Perhaps Greece's Coast Guard will use "gunboat diplomacy" or worse to stop them, violating international law brazenly like rogue pirates, complicit with Israel and Washington ready to deploy commando killers against unarmed humanitarian activists.
US Boat/Audacity of Hope lead organizer Col. Ann Wright (a former State Department official who protested the Iraq war by resigning) said:
"We could see the handwriting on the wall, that they were going to try to shut down all the ports across the Mediterranean." As for Greece, she added: "It's not surprising (they) succumbed to the pressure," but lost what's left from its soul in the process, destroying its remaining credentials as democracy's birthplace.
After more a week blocked in Greek ports, every ship still can't sail, showing how far its government will violate international law for Israeli and Washington criminals.
On June 30, Netanyahu thanked Prime Minister Papandreou and other world leaders for acting "against the provocation flotilla."
On July 1, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich claimed Tarek Hamud, son-in-law of Khaled Mashal (Hamas' Damascus-based head) was a leading Flotilla organizer when, in fact, participants say they never heard of him.
Nonetheless, an agitprop Israeli press release said:
"According to Israeli military intelligence, the terrorist organization Hamas and several organizations behind the 2011 Gaza flotilla have similar funding sources. Three Islamic charity funds from the Hamas-affiliated Charity Coalition directly fund Hamas and some of the organizations connected to the 2011 Gaza flotilla."
With no corroborating evidence whatever, the statement is a bald faced lie, common Israeli/Washington fabrications to support their terror tactics.
In fact, Hamas spokesman Izzat al-Risheq emphatically said Hamud "has nothing to do with the flotilla in any way. He is in his house right now in Damascus. This is a lie by the Israeli Army aimed at getting people to oppose this humane mission."
The Flotilla, of course, has nothing to do with Hamas. Like earlier missions and others to come, it's about breaching Gaza's siege as a first step to ending it and liberating Palestine altogether. Because of growing support worldwide, sooner or later it's coming.
A Final Comment
At the same time Israel suffocates Gazans and blocks vital humanitarian aid, Obama's war on terror lawlessness persecutes innocent Muslims at home, prosecuting them for crimes they never conceived or committed.
An earlier article discussed entrapping innocent Muslims, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/entrapping-innocent-muslims.html
Another discussed the Newburgh 4, accessed through the link below:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-letup-in-political-witch-hunts-under.html
Every case involves manufacturing homegrown threats to incite fear as justification to wage global wars against nonbelligerent countries, posing no threat to America or their neighbors.
On May 20, 2009, four New York men were bogusly charged with planning to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center, as well as implausibly shoot down Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles. Prosecutions and convictions followed.
Then on June 29, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said three of the four got 25 year sentences even though there was no plot or crime. The fourth defendant will be sentenced later.
At issue was lawless entrapment, involving an FBI sting against unwitting victims - in this case, four poor black Newburgh, New York men who converted to Islam, two while in prison for unrelated minor offenses.
A Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain (aka Malik) was a paid FBI informant, facing prison and/or deportation on dozens of fraud counts. In return for leniency, he was enlisted to cooperate and well paid for his efforts.
He's the same man used earlier for four separate stings, Yassin Aref among them, another innocent man, entrapped and victimized, now serving a 15 year prison term unjustly.
In post-9/11 America, they're among many Muslim victims of police state justice. They've been targeted, persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, kept in isolation, denied bail, tried on secret evidence on trumped-up charges, convicted by juries too intimidated to acquit, and sentenced to long prison terms for being Muslims in America at the wrong time.
Others were targeted for their environmental and/or animal rights activism. Washington calls them "ecoterrorists." It went on under Bush and now Obama. He's also waging six global wars simultaneously, as well as funding, arming and supporting Israeli terror against nonviolent Palestinian civilians for being Muslims, not Jews.
A web of lies and international complicity sustain this, harming millions of victims globally, including in America and Israel, paying for their governments' crimes.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:00 AM
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism
Israeli Freedom Flotilla II Terrorism - by Stephen Lendman
Daily, Israel keeps proving its lawless rogue credentials, notably by blocking humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a result, it finds new ways to show contempt for human rights, rule of law standards, civility, fundamental Judaic tenets, and its very legitimacy as a nation state, established by mass slaughter and displacement of indigenous Palestinians from their homeland.
Today, its war against humanity dirty tricks/state terrorism arsenal includes propaganda, intimidating lawsuits, pressure on other governments, sabotage, subversion, cold-blodded murder, and whatever else it takes to ruthlessly commit slow-motion genocide against nearly 1.7 million Gazans, besides daily crimes against others in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
No wonder growing numbers of fed up Jews are leaving, voting with their feet, including studies showing half or more there actively consider it, and why not.
Israel is an armed camp, a warrior state, a modern-day Sparta, institutionalizing militarism as a way of life. Young children are taught this ideology in school, including to hate, not respect non-Jews, especially Muslims as violent enemies and human rights activists supporting them.
Freedom Flotilla II participants are among them - vilified, sabotaged, delayed, and now blocked from departing by Greece's complicit rogue government, after agreeing to surrender its sovereignty to Western bankers despite mass street protests against it.
In fact, Greece's Washington embassy published an "Announcement on the Flotilla," accessed through the following link:
http://www.mfa.gr/www.mfa.gr/AuthoritiesAbroad/North+America/USA/EmbassyWashington/Articles/en-US/Announcement+on+the+Flotilla.htm
In part it says:
"Prohibition of the departure of ships with Greek and foreign flags from Greek ports to the maritime area of Gaza today."
In other words, Gaza-bound ships in Greek ports are prohibited from sailing because Israel and Washington demand it - a clear international law violation.
Moreover, "all appropriate measures are taken for the implementation of the said decision....Furthermore, the broader maritime area of eastern Mediterranean will be continuously monitored by electronic means for tracking, where applicable, the movements of the ships allegedly participating in such campaign."
On July 1, the International Middle East Media Center (IMEMC) headlined, "Greek cabinet votes to stop Flotilla as US Boat to Gaza forced back to port," saying:
Its planned departure already delayed over a week, "the US Boat to Gaza decided Friday to challenge" Greece's government by leaving Athens without permission. However, before reaching international waters, Greek Coast Guard vessels forced it back to port and arrested its captain for leaving port without permission, disturbing sea traffic, and endangering the lives of his passengers. In other words, when no legitimate charges exist, rogue authorities invent them.
Moreover, Greek officials told Canadian boat participants that "the Office of the President has demanded the seizure of their boat." At the same time, Greece's cabinet voted to keep participating boats from leaving, succumbing to Washington and Israeli pressure to block them.
Free Gaza Movement (FGM) founder Greta Berlin issued a statement, saying: "Israel is doing its very, very best to make sure we don't get out of port," stooping to any depth to do it with help from its Washington paymaster partner, equally contemptuous of human rights and rule of law standards.
In fact, Obama provides daily proof of his out-of-control lawlessness, showing perhaps he's America's worst ever president, a hard-earned distinction given challenging competition for top honors.
Regularly, however, he's outdistancing the pack, including his rogue predecessor, multiplying his wars by three, continuing his criminal policies, and adding new ones of his own.
Possible US/Israeli Sabotage
Suspicions are that US Navy Seals and/or Israeli Syayetet 13 commandos sabotaged one boat for Greek, Norwegian and Swedish passengers by cutting off its propeller shaft, and disabled an Irish one altogether in Gocek, Turkey (MV Saoirse), forcing it to abandon its mission but not its determination to try again.
Why not despite Senator Mark Kirk's (R. IL) early June statement saying America should:
"should make available all necessary special operation and naval support to the Israeli Navy to effectively disable flotilla vessels before they can pose a threat to Israeli coastal security or put Israeli lives at risk."
In a free democratic country, those remarks would minimally get him censured, vilified and disgraced. in fact, he should be banned from government service and prosecuted for supporting sabotage and harm to humanitarian passengers, punishing him for supporting crimes against humanity and perhaps war.
However, he's not alone. Besides Obama, Clinton and other administration rogues, as well as legions of them in Congress, Texas Gov. Rick Perry asked Attorney General Eric Holder to take legal steps to stop US participants and prosecute them if they refuse. Perry, in fact, is a right-wing extremist with presidential ambitions, hoping to do to America what he's done to Texas, governing it like George Bush.
IMEMC also headlined another July 1 article, "Free Flotilla activists: 'Gaza blockade has been extended to Greece,' " saying:
Two boats were sabotaged, one disabled, another forced back to port after sailing, and Greek police boarded the Canadian vessel (the Tahrir), blocking its departure, making Greece complicit in Israeli/Washington crimes against humanity, what their street brutality does daily against angry citizen activism.
At first, "port authorities (tried) to take the Tahrir's official transit logs (required for sailing)." However, passengers balked, demanding an explanation why. "When authorities (got) photocopies," they lost interest in the originals. According to organizing committee member Irene McInnes:
"The government of Israel, shamefully with the tacit support of (Canada's) Harper government (a willing co-conspirator), is doing everything in its power to maintain the blockade. Yet we will persevere in our attempts," no matter what rogue governments do.
"We have a legal and moral obligation to challenge the blockade, given the failure of the international community to act," said committee member Dylan Penner. "This is why we must continue our attempts to sail to Gaza: to challenge the illegal and immoral blockade," and Canada's criminal support along with America's and Israel's.
They may win the battle. They've already lost the war, creating a worldwide cause celebre, shaming them for denying humanitarian justice. If Flotilla II vessels reach Gaza, it'll be a bonus, what criminal governments are too blind to see.
According to Reuters on July 1, Flotilla vessels will sail next week, "a spokeswoman said on Friday," adding:
"We want to move the boats by July 5 to get to our rendezvous point no later than July 6 or 7....We will go with what we have," hoping to defeat dirty tricks trying to stop them, including by suing to be allowed to sail.
Netanyahu and other Israeli officials call the mission "provocative." They lied, an Israeli specialty, disgracefully replicated by Washington, Canada, Greece, and other complicit governments, shooting themselves in the foot in the process.
In spite of determined efforts to stop them, activists hope to sail anyway. Perhaps Greece's Coast Guard will use "gunboat diplomacy" or worse to stop them, violating international law brazenly like rogue pirates, complicit with Israel and Washington ready to deploy commando killers against unarmed humanitarian activists.
US Boat/Audacity of Hope lead organizer Col. Ann Wright (a former State Department official who protested the Iraq war by resigning) said:
"We could see the handwriting on the wall, that they were going to try to shut down all the ports across the Mediterranean." As for Greece, she added: "It's not surprising (they) succumbed to the pressure," but lost what's left from its soul in the process, destroying its remaining credentials as democracy's birthplace.
After more a week blocked in Greek ports, every ship still can't sail, showing how far its government will violate international law for Israeli and Washington criminals.
On June 30, Netanyahu thanked Prime Minister Papandreou and other world leaders for acting "against the provocation flotilla."
On July 1, IDF spokesman Lt. Col. Avital Leibovich claimed Tarek Hamud, son-in-law of Khaled Mashal (Hamas' Damascus-based head) was a leading Flotilla organizer when, in fact, participants say they never heard of him.
Nonetheless, an agitprop Israeli press release said:
"According to Israeli military intelligence, the terrorist organization Hamas and several organizations behind the 2011 Gaza flotilla have similar funding sources. Three Islamic charity funds from the Hamas-affiliated Charity Coalition directly fund Hamas and some of the organizations connected to the 2011 Gaza flotilla."
With no corroborating evidence whatever, the statement is a bald faced lie, common Israeli/Washington fabrications to support their terror tactics.
In fact, Hamas spokesman Izzat al-Risheq emphatically said Hamud "has nothing to do with the flotilla in any way. He is in his house right now in Damascus. This is a lie by the Israeli Army aimed at getting people to oppose this humane mission."
The Flotilla, of course, has nothing to do with Hamas. Like earlier missions and others to come, it's about breaching Gaza's siege as a first step to ending it and liberating Palestine altogether. Because of growing support worldwide, sooner or later it's coming.
A Final Comment
At the same time Israel suffocates Gazans and blocks vital humanitarian aid, Obama's war on terror lawlessness persecutes innocent Muslims at home, prosecuting them for crimes they never conceived or committed.
An earlier article discussed entrapping innocent Muslims, accessed through the following link:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/06/entrapping-innocent-muslims.html
Another discussed the Newburgh 4, accessed through the link below:
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2009/08/no-letup-in-political-witch-hunts-under.html
Every case involves manufacturing homegrown threats to incite fear as justification to wage global wars against nonbelligerent countries, posing no threat to America or their neighbors.
On May 20, 2009, four New York men were bogusly charged with planning to bomb a Bronx synagogue and community center, as well as implausibly shoot down Air National Guard jets with stinger missiles. Prosecutions and convictions followed.
Then on June 29, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said three of the four got 25 year sentences even though there was no plot or crime. The fourth defendant will be sentenced later.
At issue was lawless entrapment, involving an FBI sting against unwitting victims - in this case, four poor black Newburgh, New York men who converted to Islam, two while in prison for unrelated minor offenses.
A Pakistani man named Shahed Hussain (aka Malik) was a paid FBI informant, facing prison and/or deportation on dozens of fraud counts. In return for leniency, he was enlisted to cooperate and well paid for his efforts.
He's the same man used earlier for four separate stings, Yassin Aref among them, another innocent man, entrapped and victimized, now serving a 15 year prison term unjustly.
In post-9/11 America, they're among many Muslim victims of police state justice. They've been targeted, persecuted, arrested, imprisoned, kept in isolation, denied bail, tried on secret evidence on trumped-up charges, convicted by juries too intimidated to acquit, and sentenced to long prison terms for being Muslims in America at the wrong time.
Others were targeted for their environmental and/or animal rights activism. Washington calls them "ecoterrorists." It went on under Bush and now Obama. He's also waging six global wars simultaneously, as well as funding, arming and supporting Israeli terror against nonviolent Palestinian civilians for being Muslims, not Jews.
A web of lies and international complicity sustain this, harming millions of victims globally, including in America and Israel, paying for their governments' crimes.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.
Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:00 AM
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Killings, Detentions and Torture in Egypt - by Stephen Lendman
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Killings, Detentions and Torture in Egypt
Killings, Detentions and Torture in Egypt - by Stephen Lendman
On February 9, London Guardian writer Chris McGreal headlined, "Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture,' " saying:
Military forces "secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass (anti-Mubarak) protests began, (and) at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian."
Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights organizations cited years of army involvement in disappearances and torture. Former detainees confirmed "extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation." Electric shocks, Taser guns, threatened rapes, beatings, disappearances, and killings left families grieving for loved ones.
Under Mubarak, Egypt's military wasn't neutral. It's no different now, cracking down hard to keep power and deny change, policies Washington endorses, funds and practices at home and abroad.
On February 17, even New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, "Among Egypt's Missing, Tales of Torture and Prison," saying:
Trademark Mubarak practices continue under military rule, "human rights groups say(ing) the military's continuing role in such abuses raises new questions about its ability to midwife Egyptian democracy."
"We joined the protests to liberate the country and end the problems of the regime," said a man identified as Rabie. "After 18 days, the regime is gone but the same injustices remain." Indeed so without letup.
In fact, on February 11, everything in Egypt changed but stayed the same. Mubarak was out, replaced by military despots, reigning the same terror on Egyptians he did for nearly three decades. A new Amnesty International (AI) report explains, titled "Egypt Rises: Killings, Detentions and Torture in the '25 January Revolution.' "
Covering the period January 30 - March 3, it documents excessive force, killing hundreds and injuring thousands of Egyptians, as well as mass arrests, detentions and torture, policies still ongoing to prevent democracy from emerging.
On May 18, an AI press release headlined, "Egypt: Victims of Protest Violence Deserve Justice," calling trying former Interior Minister Habib El Adly "an essential first step, (but authorities) must go much further than this."
"Families of those who were killed, as well as all those who were seriously injured or subject to arbitrary detention or torture....should expect that the authorities will prioritize their needs."
AI's report provides "damning evidence of excessive force" against protesters posing no threat. In addition, it covers brutal torture in detention, "including beatings with sticks or whips, electric shocks," painful stress positions for long periods, verbal abuse, threatened rape, and other forms of ill-treatment.
Earlier in May, AI released another report titled, "State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: January to Mid-April 2011," covering all regional countries, including Egypt, saying ongoing human rights abuses continue.
Strikes, sit-ins, and protests persist for decent jobs, better wages, improved working conditions, human and civil rights, ending corruption, and real democratic change so far denied. More killings, arrests, detentions, and torture followed, showing that "Egypt's '25 January Revolution' is far from over." In fact, it's just begun.
AI's report documents dozens of individuals Egypt's security forces killed or injured in Cairo, Alexandria, Beni Suef governorate, Suez, Port Said, and El-Mahalla El-Kubra, Egypt's industrial heartland.
They attacked peaceful protesters with tear gas, water cannons, shotguns, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and at times running them over with armored vehicles. They also used disproportionate brutality, including beatings with batons or sticks as well as lethal force, followed by mass arrests, disappearances, detentions, torture, and at least 189 confirmed deaths in custody and hundreds injured.
Others targeted included human rights and online activists, independent journalists, people bringing supplies to protesters, doctors treating those injured, and anyone suspected of anti-regime activities. In detention, brutal treatment followed. One man identified as Fouad said:
"As we entered our block, we had to lie face down in the court yard and were beaten by soldiers. They beat us with cables and canes and used electric prods. The most severe beating in Sign al-Harbi (Military Prison) was on the day of arrival."
Detained for 19 days in numerous locations, Mohamed Hassan Abdel Samiee said he was tortured in all of them. Mohamed Essam Ibrahim Khatib said he was blindfolded, handcuffed, stepped on, beaten with a rifle butt, and administered electric shocks including to his face and neck, adding:
"When we got off the vehicle, we were ordered to take off our clothes, except the underpants, and we had to lie face down in the sand. There were three soldiers in camouflage uniforms belonging to the Saraya al-Sa'iqa (The Lightening Brigade), each of them with a different instrument to beat us. One had a whip, another a wooden stick and another an electric prod. The commander would blow into his whisle and the soldiers would start beating us for a few minutes until he blew his whistle again. They beat all of us without exception," an ordeal continuing throughout their detention.
Other detainees said they were blindfolded, handcuffed suspended upside-down by a rope, administered electric shocks, submerged head first in water, and ordered to confess they were trained by Israel or Iran. Some lost consciousness during the ordeal.
Another was warned if he didn't talk he "would face the same situation as (a man) I heard being raped and pleading with his rapist to stop. So I told the interrogator, 'I prefer that you shoot me.' "
Moreover, contact with lawyers, doctors, and family members was denied, unaware if loved ones were alive or dead. Thousands endured the same treatment. They still do with no letup under brutal military junta rule.
A Final Comment
On April 29, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) news release headlined, "Egypt: Military Trials Usurp Justice System," saying:
Egypt's military "should immediately end trials of civilians before military courts and release all those arbitrarily detained or convicted after unfair hearings...."
Since February, more than 5,000 civilians were tried in military tribunals. Nearly all participated in peaceful protests during and after Mubarak's dictatorship. "Trials of civilians before the military courts constitute wholesale violations of basic fair trial rights...."
Egypt's military courts administer wholesale justice for alleged "crimes," handling multiple cases simultaneously in proceedings lasting 20 to 40 minutes. Those convicted got sentences ranging from six months to 25 years or life imprisonment for protesting peacefully, breaking curfews, and various bogus charges, including possessing illegal weapons, destroying public property, theft, assault, or threatening violence. Those charged were judged guilty by accusation and denied lawyers of their choice to represent them.
Obama's embracing military commissions "justice" replicates Egypt's junta. His March 7 Executive Order reversed an earlier EO halting the practice for new cases. In response, the Center for Constitutional Rights condemned the ruling, saying:
His "reopening of flawed military commissions for business does nothing other than codify the status quo. (It's) a tacit acknowledgment that (his) administration intends to leave Guantanamo as a scheme for unlawful detention without charge and trial for future presidents to clean up."
Washington's Guantanamo detentions and "military tribunal system are no longer an inheritance from the Bush administration - they will be President Obama's legacy." In fact, they show American justice replicates Egypt, both nations revealed as police states.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:01 AM
Killings, Detentions and Torture in Egypt
Killings, Detentions and Torture in Egypt - by Stephen Lendman
On February 9, London Guardian writer Chris McGreal headlined, "Egypt's army 'involved in detentions and torture,' " saying:
Military forces "secretly detained hundreds and possibly thousands of suspected government opponents since mass (anti-Mubarak) protests began, (and) at least some of these detainees have been tortured, according to testimony gathered by the Guardian."
Moreover, Human Rights Watch (HRW) and other human rights organizations cited years of army involvement in disappearances and torture. Former detainees confirmed "extensive beatings and other abuses at the hands of the military in what appears to be an organized campaign of intimidation." Electric shocks, Taser guns, threatened rapes, beatings, disappearances, and killings left families grieving for loved ones.
Under Mubarak, Egypt's military wasn't neutral. It's no different now, cracking down hard to keep power and deny change, policies Washington endorses, funds and practices at home and abroad.
On February 17, even New York Times writer Liam Stack headlined, "Among Egypt's Missing, Tales of Torture and Prison," saying:
Trademark Mubarak practices continue under military rule, "human rights groups say(ing) the military's continuing role in such abuses raises new questions about its ability to midwife Egyptian democracy."
"We joined the protests to liberate the country and end the problems of the regime," said a man identified as Rabie. "After 18 days, the regime is gone but the same injustices remain." Indeed so without letup.
In fact, on February 11, everything in Egypt changed but stayed the same. Mubarak was out, replaced by military despots, reigning the same terror on Egyptians he did for nearly three decades. A new Amnesty International (AI) report explains, titled "Egypt Rises: Killings, Detentions and Torture in the '25 January Revolution.' "
Covering the period January 30 - March 3, it documents excessive force, killing hundreds and injuring thousands of Egyptians, as well as mass arrests, detentions and torture, policies still ongoing to prevent democracy from emerging.
On May 18, an AI press release headlined, "Egypt: Victims of Protest Violence Deserve Justice," calling trying former Interior Minister Habib El Adly "an essential first step, (but authorities) must go much further than this."
"Families of those who were killed, as well as all those who were seriously injured or subject to arbitrary detention or torture....should expect that the authorities will prioritize their needs."
AI's report provides "damning evidence of excessive force" against protesters posing no threat. In addition, it covers brutal torture in detention, "including beatings with sticks or whips, electric shocks," painful stress positions for long periods, verbal abuse, threatened rape, and other forms of ill-treatment.
Earlier in May, AI released another report titled, "State of Human Rights in the Middle East and North Africa: January to Mid-April 2011," covering all regional countries, including Egypt, saying ongoing human rights abuses continue.
Strikes, sit-ins, and protests persist for decent jobs, better wages, improved working conditions, human and civil rights, ending corruption, and real democratic change so far denied. More killings, arrests, detentions, and torture followed, showing that "Egypt's '25 January Revolution' is far from over." In fact, it's just begun.
AI's report documents dozens of individuals Egypt's security forces killed or injured in Cairo, Alexandria, Beni Suef governorate, Suez, Port Said, and El-Mahalla El-Kubra, Egypt's industrial heartland.
They attacked peaceful protesters with tear gas, water cannons, shotguns, rubber bullets, live ammunition, and at times running them over with armored vehicles. They also used disproportionate brutality, including beatings with batons or sticks as well as lethal force, followed by mass arrests, disappearances, detentions, torture, and at least 189 confirmed deaths in custody and hundreds injured.
Others targeted included human rights and online activists, independent journalists, people bringing supplies to protesters, doctors treating those injured, and anyone suspected of anti-regime activities. In detention, brutal treatment followed. One man identified as Fouad said:
"As we entered our block, we had to lie face down in the court yard and were beaten by soldiers. They beat us with cables and canes and used electric prods. The most severe beating in Sign al-Harbi (Military Prison) was on the day of arrival."
Detained for 19 days in numerous locations, Mohamed Hassan Abdel Samiee said he was tortured in all of them. Mohamed Essam Ibrahim Khatib said he was blindfolded, handcuffed, stepped on, beaten with a rifle butt, and administered electric shocks including to his face and neck, adding:
"When we got off the vehicle, we were ordered to take off our clothes, except the underpants, and we had to lie face down in the sand. There were three soldiers in camouflage uniforms belonging to the Saraya al-Sa'iqa (The Lightening Brigade), each of them with a different instrument to beat us. One had a whip, another a wooden stick and another an electric prod. The commander would blow into his whisle and the soldiers would start beating us for a few minutes until he blew his whistle again. They beat all of us without exception," an ordeal continuing throughout their detention.
Other detainees said they were blindfolded, handcuffed suspended upside-down by a rope, administered electric shocks, submerged head first in water, and ordered to confess they were trained by Israel or Iran. Some lost consciousness during the ordeal.
Another was warned if he didn't talk he "would face the same situation as (a man) I heard being raped and pleading with his rapist to stop. So I told the interrogator, 'I prefer that you shoot me.' "
Moreover, contact with lawyers, doctors, and family members was denied, unaware if loved ones were alive or dead. Thousands endured the same treatment. They still do with no letup under brutal military junta rule.
A Final Comment
On April 29, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) news release headlined, "Egypt: Military Trials Usurp Justice System," saying:
Egypt's military "should immediately end trials of civilians before military courts and release all those arbitrarily detained or convicted after unfair hearings...."
Since February, more than 5,000 civilians were tried in military tribunals. Nearly all participated in peaceful protests during and after Mubarak's dictatorship. "Trials of civilians before the military courts constitute wholesale violations of basic fair trial rights...."
Egypt's military courts administer wholesale justice for alleged "crimes," handling multiple cases simultaneously in proceedings lasting 20 to 40 minutes. Those convicted got sentences ranging from six months to 25 years or life imprisonment for protesting peacefully, breaking curfews, and various bogus charges, including possessing illegal weapons, destroying public property, theft, assault, or threatening violence. Those charged were judged guilty by accusation and denied lawyers of their choice to represent them.
Obama's embracing military commissions "justice" replicates Egypt's junta. His March 7 Executive Order reversed an earlier EO halting the practice for new cases. In response, the Center for Constitutional Rights condemned the ruling, saying:
His "reopening of flawed military commissions for business does nothing other than codify the status quo. (It's) a tacit acknowledgment that (his) administration intends to leave Guantanamo as a scheme for unlawful detention without charge and trial for future presidents to clean up."
Washington's Guantanamo detentions and "military tribunal system are no longer an inheritance from the Bush administration - they will be President Obama's legacy." In fact, they show American justice replicates Egypt, both nations revealed as police states.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.
http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.
posted by Steve Lendman @ 1:01 AM
From The Boston IndyMedia Website-Photos/Video-North Africa Revolutions Solidarity Rally-March
Click on the headline to link ot a Boston Indymedia Website entry for a May 22, 2001 Harvard Square solidarity demonstration with the struggles in the Middle East and North Africa.
Markin comment:
The beginning, and only the beginning, of wisdom here. Hey, U.S. Imperialism Hands Off The World!
Markin comment:
The beginning, and only the beginning, of wisdom here. Hey, U.S. Imperialism Hands Off The World!
Friday, May 20, 2011
From The Pages Of "Workers Vanguard"-"Egypt and the Near East-Permanent Revolution vs. Arab Nationalism"
Workers Vanguard No. 980
13 May 2011
Egypt and the Near East
Permanent Revolution vs. Arab Nationalism
(Young Spartacus pages)
We print below an edited and slightly excerpted New York Spartacus Youth Club forum given on March 9 at the City College of New York (CCNY).
Major events are rocking the Near East and North Africa. What we have to offer is a revolutionary internationalist program, captured in the placard here that says, “Down With the Oil Sheiks, Emirs, Kings, Colonels and Zionist Rulers—Workers to Power! For a Socialist Federation of the Near East!” This talk is going to motivate that perspective, which is a Marxist perspective. It is going to primarily focus on Egypt, the history of the Palestine/Israel question and the long and brutal role that imperialism has played in this region.
Recently Obama, the current U.S. imperialist Commander-in-Chief, has been praising the fight for “democracy.” But during the upheaval in Egypt, Obama expressed support for Hosni Mubarak’s regime, especially the “reforms” promised by Vice President Omar Suleiman, who has long played a key role in Washington’s “war on terror” torture program. The U.S. has poured $1.3 billion a year into arming the Egyptian military, as it does to prop up bloody dictators worldwide. After Mubarak resigned, Obama said that the U.S. stands for “a credible transition to a democracy.”
What U.S. imperialism means by “democracy” are the corpses of more than one million Iraqis who died as a result of the 2003 invasion and occupation, as well as the imperialist barbarism inflicted by U.S./NATO forces upon the peoples of Afghanistan. Last week, NATO aircraft shot down nine young boys collecting firewood in Afghanistan. The sheiks, despots and strongmen that litter the Near East, along with the Israeli rulers, act as U.S. imperialism’s agents. Take a recent back-page ad in the New York Times for Our Last Best Chance by King Abdullah of Jordan. The ad quoted Bill Clinton, who as president bombed and starved Iraq for eight long years, praising the Jordanian monarch—the same monarch who today suppresses protests against his rule. So don’t be fooled by these imperialist war criminals, whether in Democratic or Republican clothing. Now they are threatening Libya and have already implemented sanctions; we say imperialists hands off! [See “Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack!” WV No. 977, 1 April.]
It’s against these imperialists’ agents that the masses in Tunisia and Egypt have been revolting, fed up with unemployment, rising food prices and the widespread corruption of the Arab capitalist rulers and their families and cronies. Inspired by the protests in Tunisia, protesters in Egypt courageously faced down a massive crackdown that left hundreds dead. After nearly 30 years of governing Egypt with an iron fist, Mubarak stepped down following 18 days of unprecedented upheaval throughout the country, with demonstrators unleashing their fury at the regime by targeting police and security buildings as well as those belonging to the ruling National Democratic Party. These protests were significantly topped off by a wave of labor strikes.
I’m sure that everyone saw the mass celebrations of millions of people that erupted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in cities throughout the country over what seemed like the end of a brutal dictatorship that ruled under emergency law, imprisoning and disappearing its opponents in Egypt’s vast torture chambers. But while Mubarak is no longer in power, the central core of Egypt’s bonapartist capitalist state apparatus, the military, is now directly in power. A doctor in Cairo was quoted as saying, “They cut off the head, but the body is still moving.”
The military announced the dissolution of Mubarak’s sham parliament and the formation of a panel to “amend” the equally sham constitution. They have denounced the continuing strikes as leading to “negative results” and ordered workers to return to their jobs. Two weeks ago it was reported that soldiers beat protesters and burned down a reconstituted tent camp in Tahrir Square. In capitalist society, which is divided into antagonistic social classes whose interests are irreconcilably opposed, the question of the state is a crucial one. Together with the police, courts and prisons, the army is at the core of the capitalist state, which is an apparatus for the violent suppression of the working class and the oppressed. Above all, the drive to “restore stability” in Egypt is aimed at the working class.
The strikes launched by tens of thousands of workers amid the anti-Mubarak protests continued after Mubarak’s fall. These included some 6,000 workers on the Suez Canal, through which 8 percent of world trade travels, although Canal pilots continued to work, which meant ships kept moving. Thousands of textile and steel workers also went on strike in Suez, which saw some of the most militant protests. In the wake of Mubarak’s fall, strikes spread to steel workers outside the capital, postal workers, textile workers and thousands of oil and gas workers.
What is necessary in this situation is for the working class to emerge as an independent force and lead the struggles of the region’s unemployed youth, urban poor, peasants, women and other oppressed sectors fighting for freedom. Why the working class? Because this is the one class with the social power and historic interest to overthrow capitalism. In fighting for economic demands, such as against poverty-level wages, the working class is demonstrating the unique position it holds in making the wheels of the capitalist economy turn. This social power, to stop and take over those wheels, gives the working class the potential to lead all the impoverished masses in struggle against their unbearable oppression.
The Trap of Egyptian Nationalism
There is a lot of empty, classless talk about how “we are all Egyptian” (I guess minus Mubarak) and the “people’s revolution.” Other than the upper echelons of the Tunisian and Egyptian bourgeoisies, these upheavals have been characterized by an outpouring of all social classes. In demonstrations, Egyptian flags have been everywhere. What this reflects is a nationalist consciousness that is also expressed in widespread illusions that the army is a “friend of the people.” These illusions are a deadly danger to the working people and the oppressed.
From the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers’ coup in 1952, which toppled the monarchy and ended the British occupation of the country, the army has been viewed as the guarantor of Egyptian national sovereignty. In fact, the military has been the backbone of one dictatorship after another since that time. In 1952 it was mobilized by Nasser to shoot down textile strikers in Kafr Al-Dawwar near Alexandria. In 1977 it was mobilized by Anwar el-Sadat to “restore order” after a two-day countrywide upheaval over the price of bread. Today, despite claiming that it did not oppose the anti-Mubarak demonstrators, the military arrested hundreds and tortured many. We say: Down with the emergency law! Free all victims of state repression!
There has also been a lot of talk about the Facebook and Twitter “revolution,” which I guess the military is now a part of since they post communiqués on their Facebook page. But, as a young comrade said at a recent event, “The working class needs a vanguard party, not a Facebook profile!” One of the technologically savvy youth leaders, Google exec Wael Ghonim, was arrested for using Facebook to organize the early protests. He epitomizes the logic of a bourgeois-nationalist program: Upon his release, he kissed his captors, praised the “sincerity” of the military and told striking workers that now is not the time to fight for $100 a month if you only make $70. He is speaking for the capitalist class and fighting for its interests.
Nationalism arose in connection with the development of capitalism, which strove to establish unified national markets. While nationalism in Egypt is fueled by a history of imperialist subjugation, it has long served the bourgeois rulers by obscuring the class divide between the tiny layer of filthy rich at the top and the brutally exploited and impoverished workers and peasants at the bottom. Nationalism is a key obstacle to revolutionary proletarian consciousness. We oppose those fake socialists who promote bourgeois nationalism.
The Egyptian youth who initiated the “January 25 Revolution” have been hailed by one and all, including bourgeois oppositionists and the state-run media that had, until the fall of Mubarak, denounced them as foreign agents. Among these mainly petty-bourgeois youth, a good number have been animated not only by their own grievances but particularly by the struggles of the Egyptian proletariat. I mentioned the recent strikes, but what rarely gets reported is that, over the last ten years, the Egyptian workers have engaged in over 3,000 strikes, sit-ins and other actions, involving over two million workers. These strikes were carried out in defiance of the corrupt leadership of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, which was established by Nasser in 1957 as an arm of the state.
The petty bourgeoisie is an intermediate class comprising many layers with disparate interests, from students to peasants. It is incapable of advancing a coherent, independent perspective and will necessarily fall under the sway of one of the two main classes of capitalist society: the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Among the militant youth who showed incredible courage in taking on the Mubarak regime, those committed to fighting on behalf of the oppressed must be won to the revolutionary internationalist program of Trotskyism. Such elements will be crucial to forging a revolutionary party, which, like Lenin’s Bolsheviks, will be founded through a fusion of the most advanced workers with declassed intellectuals won to the side of the working class.
In Egypt, this party must fight for the program of permanent revolution. What do we mean by permanent revolution? This theory embodies the experience of the 1917 Russian Revolution. What we are talking about is the seizure of power by the working class in countries of uneven and combined development, which is the only way to break the chains of political despotism and economic and social backwardness. The victorious working class would fight to extend its revolutionary victory to the centers of world imperialism, laying the basis for an international planned economy that would end scarcity. Elementary democratic tasks such as legal equality for women, complete separation of religion and state, agrarian revolution to give land to the peasants—as well as ending joblessness and grinding poverty—cannot be achieved without the overthrow of the capitalist order. The indispensable instrument for the working class is a proletarian revolutionary party, which can be built only through relentless struggle against all bourgeois forces: the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the bourgeois liberals like ElBaradei, who all falsely claim to support the struggles of the masses.
Despite limited land reform carried out in the ’50s and early ’60s by nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the pattern of land ownership in the region still resembles what it was a century ago. Wealthy landowners possess large tracts of the best land while millions of desperate peasants, unable to scratch out a living on tiny plots of arid land, have settled in the vast shantytowns that ring Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. Cairo professionals have cell phones and computers and large numbers of Egyptian workers are concentrated in modern, foreign-owned auto plants. Meanwhile, you have barefoot villagers in the Nile valley tilling their fields with tools that have scarcely changed since the age of the pharaohs. With nearly half the population living on $2 a day or less, popular hatred for Mubarak was definitely driven by the estimated $70 billion fortune amassed by his family. Inhuman poverty and squalor compete with grotesque displays of wealth.
While Egypt is a regional power in its own right, it is nonetheless a neocolony whose brutal and murderous bourgeoisie is tied by a million strings to world imperialism, which benefits from the exploitation, oppression and degradation of the neocolonial masses. Beginning with Sadat’s rule in 1970, Egypt has also been a strategic ally of Zionist Israel and, in recent years, has aided in the starvation blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza, including by sealing the border in Sinai.
Conditions like those in Egypt are what Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution, described as uneven and combined development, in which modern industry has been superimposed on largely peasant-based societies. This was also true of Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Though itself an imperialist power, Russia at the time, unlike the more advanced capitalist countries of West Europe, had not had a bourgeois-democratic revolution and remained mired in social and economic backwardness. Emerging late in the capitalist era, the weak and corrupt Russian bourgeoisie was dependent on Western capital and feared the proletariat far too much to mobilize them for an onslaught against the tsarist autocracy. The autocracy ruled over a vast “prison house of peoples” and a mass of impoverished peasants. At the same time, foreign capitalist investment had given rise to a small but combative industrial working class that was concentrated in modern large-scale industry.
The Russian Revolution was a confirmation of permanent revolution: the working class overthrew bourgeois rule, freed the country from the imperialist yoke, gave land to the peasants and freed the many oppressed nations and peoples of the former tsarist empire. The achievement of democratic tasks was combined with socialist tasks, such as the expropriation of the means of production by the workers state, which laid the basis for the development of a collectivized planned economy. The destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92 was a world-historic defeat for working people and the oppressed and enormously strengthened the forces of capitalist reaction on a global scale.
What you learn when you study the Russian Revolution is that the victory of the revolution was possible only because of the Bolsheviks’ irreconcilable struggle against all variants of bourgeois nationalism, populism and liberalism. They struggled against the Menshevik opportunists, who tailed the liberal bourgeoisie, and also against the peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was hostile to proletarian class rule. As Lenin put it, “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism” [“Unity,” April 1914]. Later I will get to the opponents and distorters of Marxism today who tail the liberal and not-so-liberal bourgeois forces of our day.
So in summary, achieving genuine national and social liberation requires mobilizing the proletariat in revolutionary struggle against both the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie. A proletarian revolution in Egypt resulting in a workers and peasants government would have an electrifying impact on workers and the oppressed throughout North Africa, the Near East and beyond. Over one-quarter of all Arabic speakers live in Egypt, a country of over 80 million that has the largest working class in the region.
The Near East: Yesterday and Today
Now you can’t understand the Near East today without understanding that the region was literally carved up following World War I [1914-18] by the British and other colonial powers that drew the borders of Iraq and other countries of the Near East. Winston Churchill, that imperialist pig and major player in this chapter of history, said during WWI, “I think a curse should rest on me because I am so happy. I know this war is smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment—and yet—I cannot help it—I enjoy every second I live.” Following the mass slaughter of the war, the imperialists divvied up the loot. There was a sense of unity between the Arabs of Palestine, including what is today Jordan, and the Arabs of what is now Syria and Lebanon. They were divided into separate countries. In what is now Iraq, Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds and Turkmens wanted to live separately. They were forced to live together. The point was to carve up the region in such a way that ethnic and religious strife would perpetually plague it. This new Near East was duly approved by the League of Nations, which Lenin called a “den of thieves.” It served, as the United Nations does today, as a fig leaf for imperialist interests.
Even before WWI was finished, the British and French imperialists divided up the spoils of their impending victory in the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916. The publication of that document by the Soviet workers state exposed the imperialists’ machinations and had an electrifying effect across the region. The Bolshevik Revolution, and its extension to largely Muslim Central Asia in the course of the bloody three-year Russian Civil War [1918-20] against the imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary White armies, triggered a series of national revolts and popular uprisings in the Near East, which was occupied by the British and French imperialists from Egypt through the Fertile Crescent to Iran. In Egypt, as strikes and demonstrations swept the country in 1919, one observer reported that “news of success or victory by the Bolsheviks” in the Russian Civil War “seems to produce a pang of joy and content among all classes of Egyptians.” Also in 1919, open rebellion broke out in the Punjab in India; hundreds were shot down by British troops. The same war criminal Winston Churchill wrote to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs at the time, “The ruin of Lenin and Trotsky and the system they embody is indispensable to the peace and revival of the world.” I hope you have gathered by now that imperialist “peace” is anything but peace.
In this climate of social upheaval coming off WWI, Communist Parties were formed in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Persia, which is Iran today. However, the working class in the Near East at that time was small and the Communist Parties were politically inexperienced. So as a result of both internal weaknesses and external repression, most of these parties had effectively disappeared by the late 1920s.
By the time Communist Parties re-emerged in those countries beginning in the mid 1930s, the now-Stalinized Communist International had long since ceased to be an instrument for world socialist revolution. The defeat of the German revolution in 1923, which was a decisive factor in the isolation of the Soviet Union, and the virtual exclusion of the Trotskyist Left Opposition at the rigged Thirteenth Party Conference in January 1924, which coincided with Lenin’s death, marked the beginning of the Soviet Thermidor. This was the period in which political power was usurped from the proletarian vanguard by a conservative bureaucratic caste whose chief spokesman was Stalin.
The Stalinist bureaucracy repudiated the Bolshevik program of international socialist revolution in adopting the nationalist dogma of “socialism in one country.” This was a flat denial of the Marxist understanding that a socialist society could only be built on an international basis, through the destruction of capitalist imperialism as a world system and the establishment of a world socialist division of labor. Under Stalin’s rule, the Communist International was transformed from an instrument for world proletarian revolution into a border guard against imperialist attacks on the Soviet Union. The program and strategy that ensued was class collaborationism, which, following the triumph of Hitlerite fascism, was codified by 1935 as “the people’s front against fascism.” In the colonial world in the lead-up to World War II [1939-45], the Stalinist Communist Parties were transformed into open supporters of the “democratic” imperialists who oppressed the worker and peasant masses.
A series of Arab nationalist regimes came to power coming off the defeat in the 1948 War with Israel, which had thoroughly discredited the imperialist-backed Arab regimes. Arab nationalists used Israel as an external enemy to direct the masses’ anger and frustrations away from their own capitalist oppressors. We defend the Palestinians against the Zionist rulers and their U.S. backers and we also defend them against the Arab capitalist rulers who have played their own bloody part in subjugating and massacring the besieged Palestinian population spread throughout the region. We will not forget the Black September massacre of 10,000 Palestinians by the Jordanian monarchy in 1970. Over and over again history has shown that the Arab bourgeois states are no less an enemy of Palestinian liberation than the Zionist rulers.
Support to Arab nationalism by the Stalinist Communist Parties has led to the bloody defeat of workers movements throughout the Near East, not least in Egypt. Nasser, a bourgeois nationalist, came to power in 1952 with the support of the Egyptian Stalinists. He sought to appeal to the U.S. but was rebuffed, so he turned to the Soviet degenerated workers state for financial, military and political aid. Upon coming to power, Nasser sought to crush the combative Egyptian working class, which was heavily influenced by the Communist Party. But even as he was imprisoning, torturing and killing Communists, the Communist Party continued to support Nasser, liquidating into his Arab Socialist Union in 1965.
Behind this abject capitulation was the Stalinist schema of “two-stage revolution,” which meant postponing the socialist revolution to an indefinite future while in the first “democratic” stage the proletariat is subordinated to an allegedly anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie. But history shows that the “second stage” consists of killing communists and massacring workers. From the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 and Spain in 1936-37 to Iran and Iraq in the 1950s and Indonesia in 1965-66, two-stage revolution has been a recipe for bloody defeats for the working class. [See the Spartacus Youth League pamphlet The Stalin School of Falsification Revisited, 1975.]
Millions of workers who looked to the Communist Parties for leadership in these countries were betrayed by their Stalinist misleaders. In Egypt, such betrayal was sold as support for Nasser’s “Arab Socialism.” But “Arab Socialism” was a myth. What it amounted to was capitalism with heavy state investment. The role Nasser saw for the workers was captured by his statement, “The workers don’t demand; we give.” To curb the combative proletariat, Nasser instituted several reforms, raising wages and reducing unemployment. Eventually, state investment dried up and there was no longer much to “give.” But these reforms created strong illusions in Nasser, which are still prevalent today.
Nasser’s hand-picked successor, Anwar el-Sadat, brought Egypt fully into the fold of American imperialism in the ’70s. After Sadat came to power, the Communist Party sought to reorganize. Sadat responded by unleashing the Muslim Brotherhood to effectively crush them. He expelled Soviet advisers and instituted the “open door” policy of economic liberalization, cutting food and other subsidies. Mubarak and his neoliberal program of mass privatizations took this further and deeper. Contrary to popular illusions, Mubarak did not represent a break from Nasserism, rather its legacy. Under Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, Egypt remained subjugated to the imperialist world market and its dictates. The real difference between Nasser and Mubarak is that while Nasser was a genuinely popular bonapartist ruler, Mubarak was widely despised.
Israel and Palestine
Now I want to talk some about the Israel/Palestine question, which is also key to understanding this region. Earlier I mentioned the 1948 War, which resulted in the consolidation of the state of Israel, a creation that arose out of the intersection of the Nazi Holocaust and the dissolution of the British Empire. The expulsion of nearly a million Arabs from Palestine—most of them to squalid refugee camps where they and their descendants live to this day—was also accompanied by a mass migration, which was driven by both the Arab regimes and the Zionists, of the so-called Oriental or Sephardic Jewish population from the Arab countries to Israel. We defend the national rights of the dispossessed Palestinian people against the Zionist butchers and demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Israeli troops and fascistic settler auxiliaries from the Occupied Territories. But we do not thereby deny the right of the Hebrew-speaking nation to exist.
Under capitalism, when two peoples lay claim to the same land—and in this case a very small sliver of land—the right of self-determination can be exercised only by the stronger national grouping driving out, oppressing or destroying the weaker one. This is what Israel, backed by tons of aid from the U.S., does to the Palestinians. In such cases, the only way to assure the right of national self-determination for both peoples lies in overturning capitalist rule and instituting the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the only class that has no interest in perpetuating national antagonisms. We fight to break the Hebrew-speaking workers from the poison of Zionist chauvinism and we fight to break Arab workers from the sway of petty-bourgeois nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.
To have a future free of bloodshed, what is necessary is Hebrew and Arab workers revolution against the murderous Israeli capitalist rulers and all the Arab regimes. We do not pretend that this will be easy, but it is historically possible and necessary. While there are certainly not many cracks in the Zionist citadel today, it is nonetheless a class-divided society. Some 25 percent of its citizens, disproportionately Arabs, live in poverty, and income disparities are higher in Israel than in Egypt or Jordan. Sephardic Jews, though overwhelmingly under the ideological sway of right-wing and religious parties, suffer widespread discrimination and poverty.
Our Leninist program advocates the right of all nations to self-determination, that is, the right to form independent nation-states, which is a basic democratic right. We do not make a distinction on this point between oppressed nations, which get the right to exist, and oppressor nations, which, according to some, do not. There is a widely held position that all Jews in Israel today represent an “occupation.” There is a group called the League for the Revolutionary Party that is active at CCNY. They are crass apologists for Arab nationalism. They argue an idea that is widespread on the left that there are “good” people, that is, the oppressed—one could say the “occupied” people—and “bad” people who are the oppressors and do not even have the right to exist. To speak of an “occupation” as a whole implies that the programmatic consequence is “get rid of them,” which has its own genocidal logic. In contrast to petty-bourgeois moralism, we advance a revolutionary internationalist solution in which all peoples have a right to exist.
When I was growing up as an Israeli American kid, I was taught by my parents all about the Holocaust, the horrific experiences my grandparents had gone through, and that no matter where Jews went in the world the only safe place free from persecution was Israel. In essence, I was taught that I was part of the oppressed people, and I was viewed that way in school. Actually, in ninth grade I had this terrible science teacher who made us get into groups by race. I didn’t want to stand with the white kids because, of course, they were oppressor peoples, and I didn’t know what to do. Then a black student who I was friends with said, “She’s from Israel and that’s near Africa so she’s standing with us.” And that’s what I did. I stood with the black students. A year or so later, I became best friends with an Egyptian student who, along with her brother, shattered my world by informing me that Israel was oppressing the Palestinians. So, I had gone pretty quickly from the “oppressed” peoples to the “oppressor” peoples. Learning the truth about what was happening to the Palestinians—that the Zionist rulers’ mentality toward the Palestinians is like the Nazis’ mentality toward the Jews—changed my whole view of the world. But it was only the Marxist program that decisively enabled me to break from the poison of bourgeois nationalism, which is very deeply ingrained in the consciousness of this region.
In What Is To Be Done? Lenin argues that the revolutionary party must be a “tribune of the people,” the defender of all the oppressed, not just the working class. That means defending the rights of oppressed minorities such as the Coptic Christians in Egypt. It means fighting for free abortion on demand. It means defending the rights of homosexuals against backwardness and religious and moralistic bigotry. And it means fighting anti-Semitism, which is rampant in Arab countries. Often the word “Jew” is used instead of “Zionist,” and still prevalent are centuries-old anti-Semitic themes that the Jews are plotting world domination, the Jews are the embodiment of all evil, and so on.
Capitalist rule fuels these national, ethnic and religious divisions that drive the constant bloodshed that defines the Near East. Marxists seek to shift the axis of struggle from Israeli against Arab to class against class. We stand with Lenin, who wrote: “Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the ‘most just,’ ‘purest,’ most refined and civilized brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism” [“Critical Remarks on the National Question,” October-December 1913]. This really differentiates us from the slew of other groups that falsely call themselves socialists.
WWP, ISO Tail Arab Nationalism, Anti-Women Reaction
In contrast to our revolutionary program, which is based on and confirmed by the lessons of history, virtually the entire left internationally has offered nothing but empty cheerleading for the “Egyptian Revolution.” This is exemplified by the Workers World Party [WWP] in the U.S., which, as the military took control of the country on February 11, headlined: “WWP Rejoices with the Egyptian People.” In Egypt, the Revolutionary Socialists [RS] group, which is promoted by the International Socialist Organization [ISO, a group active at CCNY], issued a statement on February 1, in which the RS dissolved the power of the working class into the classless demand for “all power to the people” and the call for a “popular revolution.” Left out of the statement is even the mention of the word “socialism.” This same group also appeals to crass Egyptian nationalism, declaring, “Revolution must restore Egypt’s independence, dignity and leadership in the region.”
The RS also fosters suicidal illusions in the Muslim Brotherhood. They try to invest these clericalist forces with “anti-imperialist” credentials and have pursued alliances with them over several years. We know that, whether or not it is currently in a position to make a bid for power, the Muslim Brotherhood represents a deadly danger to the working class, the Coptic Christian minority, all secularists, gays and the brutally oppressed women of Egypt. This is the same Brotherhood that, following the 1948 War, incited mobs that pillaged Jewish businesses, burned synagogues and slaughtered dozens of Jews. Henri Curiel and other leaders of Egyptian Communism were targeted.
The growing influence of these same forces is rightly feared by women in the region, including in Tunisia, where, as a recent article in the New York Times [20 February] described: “Tensions mounted here last week when military helicopters and security forces were called in to carry out an unusual mission: protecting the city’s brothels from a mob of zealots.” Tunisian society is relatively secular in contrast to Egypt and other countries in North Africa and the Near East. For example, many women do not wear the veil and abortion laws are relatively liberal. While the imperialists have used the “war on terror” to prop up “secular” dictators like Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, in reality the imperialists have long fostered the growth of Islamic fundamentalism as a bulwark against Communism and even left-bourgeois nationalism. This is no less true of the Arab rulers, who brutally repress the fundamentalists with one hand while promoting them with the other. In a 1994 interview, Ben Ali himself stated, “To some extent fundamentalism was of our own making, and was at one time encouraged in order to combat the threat of communism. Such groups were fostered in the universities and elsewhere at that time in order to offset the communists and to strike a balance.”
Now I want to end this talk with the woman question, as yesterday was International Women’s Day. It is also around the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, which caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, many of them immigrant Jewish women, who could not escape the burning building because the bosses had locked the doors to the stairwells.
Today in Egypt, women are a crucial part of the working class, where they have played a leading role in the strikes over the last decade, especially in the textile industry. One of the most dramatic of these was the December 2006 textile strike in Mahalla al-Kobra where more than 20,000 workers went out. It was the women workers who led the strike, walking out as the men continued working. They started chanting outside the plant, “Where are the men? Here are the women!” This had the intended effect, as the men joined them, launching one of the biggest strikes Egypt had seen in years.
At the same time, women’s oppression really is at the heart of Egyptian society. Together with religion, it is rooted in the country’s backwardness, which is reinforced by imperialist subjugation. Forty percent of all women in Egypt are illiterate. Although illegal, female genital mutilation is rampant and equally so among Muslims and Christians. According to the United Nations, 96 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone genital mutilation. Women who protested in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt were more often than not wearing the headscarf. More than 80 percent of women in Egypt wear the headscarf—not by law but by force of a social norm—which is much to the consternation of many of their mothers who courageously fought decades earlier to take it off.
As we wrote in a recent WV article, “The Egyptian woman may be the slave of slaves, but she is also a vital part of the very class that will lay the material basis for her liberation by breaking the chains of social backwardness and religious obscurantism through socialist revolution” [“Egypt: Military Takeover Props Up Capitalist Rule,” WV No. 974, 18 February]. As Trotsky stressed in a 1924 speech, “Perspectives and Tasks in the East,” “There will be no better communist in the East, no better fighter for the ideas of the revolution and for the ideas of communism than the awakened woman worker” [reprinted in Spartacist (English-language edition) No. 60, Autumn 2007].
When International Women’s Day was celebrated on March 8, 1917, in Russia, women textile workers led a strike of more than 90,000 workers. This signaled the end of tsarist rule and the beginning of the Russian Revolution, which culminated months later in the seizure of power by the working class led by the Bolshevik Party. Today we stand in the communist tradition of the Bolshevik Party and for workers rule from Egypt to the U.S. Join us!
13 May 2011
Egypt and the Near East
Permanent Revolution vs. Arab Nationalism
(Young Spartacus pages)
We print below an edited and slightly excerpted New York Spartacus Youth Club forum given on March 9 at the City College of New York (CCNY).
Major events are rocking the Near East and North Africa. What we have to offer is a revolutionary internationalist program, captured in the placard here that says, “Down With the Oil Sheiks, Emirs, Kings, Colonels and Zionist Rulers—Workers to Power! For a Socialist Federation of the Near East!” This talk is going to motivate that perspective, which is a Marxist perspective. It is going to primarily focus on Egypt, the history of the Palestine/Israel question and the long and brutal role that imperialism has played in this region.
Recently Obama, the current U.S. imperialist Commander-in-Chief, has been praising the fight for “democracy.” But during the upheaval in Egypt, Obama expressed support for Hosni Mubarak’s regime, especially the “reforms” promised by Vice President Omar Suleiman, who has long played a key role in Washington’s “war on terror” torture program. The U.S. has poured $1.3 billion a year into arming the Egyptian military, as it does to prop up bloody dictators worldwide. After Mubarak resigned, Obama said that the U.S. stands for “a credible transition to a democracy.”
What U.S. imperialism means by “democracy” are the corpses of more than one million Iraqis who died as a result of the 2003 invasion and occupation, as well as the imperialist barbarism inflicted by U.S./NATO forces upon the peoples of Afghanistan. Last week, NATO aircraft shot down nine young boys collecting firewood in Afghanistan. The sheiks, despots and strongmen that litter the Near East, along with the Israeli rulers, act as U.S. imperialism’s agents. Take a recent back-page ad in the New York Times for Our Last Best Chance by King Abdullah of Jordan. The ad quoted Bill Clinton, who as president bombed and starved Iraq for eight long years, praising the Jordanian monarch—the same monarch who today suppresses protests against his rule. So don’t be fooled by these imperialist war criminals, whether in Democratic or Republican clothing. Now they are threatening Libya and have already implemented sanctions; we say imperialists hands off! [See “Defend Libya Against Imperialist Attack!” WV No. 977, 1 April.]
It’s against these imperialists’ agents that the masses in Tunisia and Egypt have been revolting, fed up with unemployment, rising food prices and the widespread corruption of the Arab capitalist rulers and their families and cronies. Inspired by the protests in Tunisia, protesters in Egypt courageously faced down a massive crackdown that left hundreds dead. After nearly 30 years of governing Egypt with an iron fist, Mubarak stepped down following 18 days of unprecedented upheaval throughout the country, with demonstrators unleashing their fury at the regime by targeting police and security buildings as well as those belonging to the ruling National Democratic Party. These protests were significantly topped off by a wave of labor strikes.
I’m sure that everyone saw the mass celebrations of millions of people that erupted in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and in cities throughout the country over what seemed like the end of a brutal dictatorship that ruled under emergency law, imprisoning and disappearing its opponents in Egypt’s vast torture chambers. But while Mubarak is no longer in power, the central core of Egypt’s bonapartist capitalist state apparatus, the military, is now directly in power. A doctor in Cairo was quoted as saying, “They cut off the head, but the body is still moving.”
The military announced the dissolution of Mubarak’s sham parliament and the formation of a panel to “amend” the equally sham constitution. They have denounced the continuing strikes as leading to “negative results” and ordered workers to return to their jobs. Two weeks ago it was reported that soldiers beat protesters and burned down a reconstituted tent camp in Tahrir Square. In capitalist society, which is divided into antagonistic social classes whose interests are irreconcilably opposed, the question of the state is a crucial one. Together with the police, courts and prisons, the army is at the core of the capitalist state, which is an apparatus for the violent suppression of the working class and the oppressed. Above all, the drive to “restore stability” in Egypt is aimed at the working class.
The strikes launched by tens of thousands of workers amid the anti-Mubarak protests continued after Mubarak’s fall. These included some 6,000 workers on the Suez Canal, through which 8 percent of world trade travels, although Canal pilots continued to work, which meant ships kept moving. Thousands of textile and steel workers also went on strike in Suez, which saw some of the most militant protests. In the wake of Mubarak’s fall, strikes spread to steel workers outside the capital, postal workers, textile workers and thousands of oil and gas workers.
What is necessary in this situation is for the working class to emerge as an independent force and lead the struggles of the region’s unemployed youth, urban poor, peasants, women and other oppressed sectors fighting for freedom. Why the working class? Because this is the one class with the social power and historic interest to overthrow capitalism. In fighting for economic demands, such as against poverty-level wages, the working class is demonstrating the unique position it holds in making the wheels of the capitalist economy turn. This social power, to stop and take over those wheels, gives the working class the potential to lead all the impoverished masses in struggle against their unbearable oppression.
The Trap of Egyptian Nationalism
There is a lot of empty, classless talk about how “we are all Egyptian” (I guess minus Mubarak) and the “people’s revolution.” Other than the upper echelons of the Tunisian and Egyptian bourgeoisies, these upheavals have been characterized by an outpouring of all social classes. In demonstrations, Egyptian flags have been everywhere. What this reflects is a nationalist consciousness that is also expressed in widespread illusions that the army is a “friend of the people.” These illusions are a deadly danger to the working people and the oppressed.
From the time of Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Free Officers’ coup in 1952, which toppled the monarchy and ended the British occupation of the country, the army has been viewed as the guarantor of Egyptian national sovereignty. In fact, the military has been the backbone of one dictatorship after another since that time. In 1952 it was mobilized by Nasser to shoot down textile strikers in Kafr Al-Dawwar near Alexandria. In 1977 it was mobilized by Anwar el-Sadat to “restore order” after a two-day countrywide upheaval over the price of bread. Today, despite claiming that it did not oppose the anti-Mubarak demonstrators, the military arrested hundreds and tortured many. We say: Down with the emergency law! Free all victims of state repression!
There has also been a lot of talk about the Facebook and Twitter “revolution,” which I guess the military is now a part of since they post communiqués on their Facebook page. But, as a young comrade said at a recent event, “The working class needs a vanguard party, not a Facebook profile!” One of the technologically savvy youth leaders, Google exec Wael Ghonim, was arrested for using Facebook to organize the early protests. He epitomizes the logic of a bourgeois-nationalist program: Upon his release, he kissed his captors, praised the “sincerity” of the military and told striking workers that now is not the time to fight for $100 a month if you only make $70. He is speaking for the capitalist class and fighting for its interests.
Nationalism arose in connection with the development of capitalism, which strove to establish unified national markets. While nationalism in Egypt is fueled by a history of imperialist subjugation, it has long served the bourgeois rulers by obscuring the class divide between the tiny layer of filthy rich at the top and the brutally exploited and impoverished workers and peasants at the bottom. Nationalism is a key obstacle to revolutionary proletarian consciousness. We oppose those fake socialists who promote bourgeois nationalism.
The Egyptian youth who initiated the “January 25 Revolution” have been hailed by one and all, including bourgeois oppositionists and the state-run media that had, until the fall of Mubarak, denounced them as foreign agents. Among these mainly petty-bourgeois youth, a good number have been animated not only by their own grievances but particularly by the struggles of the Egyptian proletariat. I mentioned the recent strikes, but what rarely gets reported is that, over the last ten years, the Egyptian workers have engaged in over 3,000 strikes, sit-ins and other actions, involving over two million workers. These strikes were carried out in defiance of the corrupt leadership of the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, which was established by Nasser in 1957 as an arm of the state.
The petty bourgeoisie is an intermediate class comprising many layers with disparate interests, from students to peasants. It is incapable of advancing a coherent, independent perspective and will necessarily fall under the sway of one of the two main classes of capitalist society: the bourgeoisie or the proletariat. Among the militant youth who showed incredible courage in taking on the Mubarak regime, those committed to fighting on behalf of the oppressed must be won to the revolutionary internationalist program of Trotskyism. Such elements will be crucial to forging a revolutionary party, which, like Lenin’s Bolsheviks, will be founded through a fusion of the most advanced workers with declassed intellectuals won to the side of the working class.
In Egypt, this party must fight for the program of permanent revolution. What do we mean by permanent revolution? This theory embodies the experience of the 1917 Russian Revolution. What we are talking about is the seizure of power by the working class in countries of uneven and combined development, which is the only way to break the chains of political despotism and economic and social backwardness. The victorious working class would fight to extend its revolutionary victory to the centers of world imperialism, laying the basis for an international planned economy that would end scarcity. Elementary democratic tasks such as legal equality for women, complete separation of religion and state, agrarian revolution to give land to the peasants—as well as ending joblessness and grinding poverty—cannot be achieved without the overthrow of the capitalist order. The indispensable instrument for the working class is a proletarian revolutionary party, which can be built only through relentless struggle against all bourgeois forces: the military, the Muslim Brotherhood and the bourgeois liberals like ElBaradei, who all falsely claim to support the struggles of the masses.
Despite limited land reform carried out in the ’50s and early ’60s by nationalist regimes in Egypt, Syria and Iraq, the pattern of land ownership in the region still resembles what it was a century ago. Wealthy landowners possess large tracts of the best land while millions of desperate peasants, unable to scratch out a living on tiny plots of arid land, have settled in the vast shantytowns that ring Cairo, Damascus and Baghdad. Cairo professionals have cell phones and computers and large numbers of Egyptian workers are concentrated in modern, foreign-owned auto plants. Meanwhile, you have barefoot villagers in the Nile valley tilling their fields with tools that have scarcely changed since the age of the pharaohs. With nearly half the population living on $2 a day or less, popular hatred for Mubarak was definitely driven by the estimated $70 billion fortune amassed by his family. Inhuman poverty and squalor compete with grotesque displays of wealth.
While Egypt is a regional power in its own right, it is nonetheless a neocolony whose brutal and murderous bourgeoisie is tied by a million strings to world imperialism, which benefits from the exploitation, oppression and degradation of the neocolonial masses. Beginning with Sadat’s rule in 1970, Egypt has also been a strategic ally of Zionist Israel and, in recent years, has aided in the starvation blockade of the Palestinians in Gaza, including by sealing the border in Sinai.
Conditions like those in Egypt are what Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the 1917 Russian Revolution, described as uneven and combined development, in which modern industry has been superimposed on largely peasant-based societies. This was also true of Russia before the Bolshevik Revolution. Though itself an imperialist power, Russia at the time, unlike the more advanced capitalist countries of West Europe, had not had a bourgeois-democratic revolution and remained mired in social and economic backwardness. Emerging late in the capitalist era, the weak and corrupt Russian bourgeoisie was dependent on Western capital and feared the proletariat far too much to mobilize them for an onslaught against the tsarist autocracy. The autocracy ruled over a vast “prison house of peoples” and a mass of impoverished peasants. At the same time, foreign capitalist investment had given rise to a small but combative industrial working class that was concentrated in modern large-scale industry.
The Russian Revolution was a confirmation of permanent revolution: the working class overthrew bourgeois rule, freed the country from the imperialist yoke, gave land to the peasants and freed the many oppressed nations and peoples of the former tsarist empire. The achievement of democratic tasks was combined with socialist tasks, such as the expropriation of the means of production by the workers state, which laid the basis for the development of a collectivized planned economy. The destruction of the Soviet Union in 1991-92 was a world-historic defeat for working people and the oppressed and enormously strengthened the forces of capitalist reaction on a global scale.
What you learn when you study the Russian Revolution is that the victory of the revolution was possible only because of the Bolsheviks’ irreconcilable struggle against all variants of bourgeois nationalism, populism and liberalism. They struggled against the Menshevik opportunists, who tailed the liberal bourgeoisie, and also against the peasant-based Socialist Revolutionary Party, which was hostile to proletarian class rule. As Lenin put it, “Unity is a great thing and a great slogan. But what the workers’ cause needs is the unity of Marxists, not unity between Marxists, and opponents and distorters of Marxism” [“Unity,” April 1914]. Later I will get to the opponents and distorters of Marxism today who tail the liberal and not-so-liberal bourgeois forces of our day.
So in summary, achieving genuine national and social liberation requires mobilizing the proletariat in revolutionary struggle against both the imperialists and the domestic bourgeoisie. A proletarian revolution in Egypt resulting in a workers and peasants government would have an electrifying impact on workers and the oppressed throughout North Africa, the Near East and beyond. Over one-quarter of all Arabic speakers live in Egypt, a country of over 80 million that has the largest working class in the region.
The Near East: Yesterday and Today
Now you can’t understand the Near East today without understanding that the region was literally carved up following World War I [1914-18] by the British and other colonial powers that drew the borders of Iraq and other countries of the Near East. Winston Churchill, that imperialist pig and major player in this chapter of history, said during WWI, “I think a curse should rest on me because I am so happy. I know this war is smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment—and yet—I cannot help it—I enjoy every second I live.” Following the mass slaughter of the war, the imperialists divvied up the loot. There was a sense of unity between the Arabs of Palestine, including what is today Jordan, and the Arabs of what is now Syria and Lebanon. They were divided into separate countries. In what is now Iraq, Shi’ite and Sunni Muslims and Kurds and Turkmens wanted to live separately. They were forced to live together. The point was to carve up the region in such a way that ethnic and religious strife would perpetually plague it. This new Near East was duly approved by the League of Nations, which Lenin called a “den of thieves.” It served, as the United Nations does today, as a fig leaf for imperialist interests.
Even before WWI was finished, the British and French imperialists divided up the spoils of their impending victory in the secret Sykes-Picot Treaty of 1916. The publication of that document by the Soviet workers state exposed the imperialists’ machinations and had an electrifying effect across the region. The Bolshevik Revolution, and its extension to largely Muslim Central Asia in the course of the bloody three-year Russian Civil War [1918-20] against the imperialist-backed counterrevolutionary White armies, triggered a series of national revolts and popular uprisings in the Near East, which was occupied by the British and French imperialists from Egypt through the Fertile Crescent to Iran. In Egypt, as strikes and demonstrations swept the country in 1919, one observer reported that “news of success or victory by the Bolsheviks” in the Russian Civil War “seems to produce a pang of joy and content among all classes of Egyptians.” Also in 1919, open rebellion broke out in the Punjab in India; hundreds were shot down by British troops. The same war criminal Winston Churchill wrote to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs at the time, “The ruin of Lenin and Trotsky and the system they embody is indispensable to the peace and revival of the world.” I hope you have gathered by now that imperialist “peace” is anything but peace.
In this climate of social upheaval coming off WWI, Communist Parties were formed in Turkey, Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Persia, which is Iran today. However, the working class in the Near East at that time was small and the Communist Parties were politically inexperienced. So as a result of both internal weaknesses and external repression, most of these parties had effectively disappeared by the late 1920s.
By the time Communist Parties re-emerged in those countries beginning in the mid 1930s, the now-Stalinized Communist International had long since ceased to be an instrument for world socialist revolution. The defeat of the German revolution in 1923, which was a decisive factor in the isolation of the Soviet Union, and the virtual exclusion of the Trotskyist Left Opposition at the rigged Thirteenth Party Conference in January 1924, which coincided with Lenin’s death, marked the beginning of the Soviet Thermidor. This was the period in which political power was usurped from the proletarian vanguard by a conservative bureaucratic caste whose chief spokesman was Stalin.
The Stalinist bureaucracy repudiated the Bolshevik program of international socialist revolution in adopting the nationalist dogma of “socialism in one country.” This was a flat denial of the Marxist understanding that a socialist society could only be built on an international basis, through the destruction of capitalist imperialism as a world system and the establishment of a world socialist division of labor. Under Stalin’s rule, the Communist International was transformed from an instrument for world proletarian revolution into a border guard against imperialist attacks on the Soviet Union. The program and strategy that ensued was class collaborationism, which, following the triumph of Hitlerite fascism, was codified by 1935 as “the people’s front against fascism.” In the colonial world in the lead-up to World War II [1939-45], the Stalinist Communist Parties were transformed into open supporters of the “democratic” imperialists who oppressed the worker and peasant masses.
A series of Arab nationalist regimes came to power coming off the defeat in the 1948 War with Israel, which had thoroughly discredited the imperialist-backed Arab regimes. Arab nationalists used Israel as an external enemy to direct the masses’ anger and frustrations away from their own capitalist oppressors. We defend the Palestinians against the Zionist rulers and their U.S. backers and we also defend them against the Arab capitalist rulers who have played their own bloody part in subjugating and massacring the besieged Palestinian population spread throughout the region. We will not forget the Black September massacre of 10,000 Palestinians by the Jordanian monarchy in 1970. Over and over again history has shown that the Arab bourgeois states are no less an enemy of Palestinian liberation than the Zionist rulers.
Support to Arab nationalism by the Stalinist Communist Parties has led to the bloody defeat of workers movements throughout the Near East, not least in Egypt. Nasser, a bourgeois nationalist, came to power in 1952 with the support of the Egyptian Stalinists. He sought to appeal to the U.S. but was rebuffed, so he turned to the Soviet degenerated workers state for financial, military and political aid. Upon coming to power, Nasser sought to crush the combative Egyptian working class, which was heavily influenced by the Communist Party. But even as he was imprisoning, torturing and killing Communists, the Communist Party continued to support Nasser, liquidating into his Arab Socialist Union in 1965.
Behind this abject capitulation was the Stalinist schema of “two-stage revolution,” which meant postponing the socialist revolution to an indefinite future while in the first “democratic” stage the proletariat is subordinated to an allegedly anti-imperialist national bourgeoisie. But history shows that the “second stage” consists of killing communists and massacring workers. From the Chinese Revolution of 1925-27 and Spain in 1936-37 to Iran and Iraq in the 1950s and Indonesia in 1965-66, two-stage revolution has been a recipe for bloody defeats for the working class. [See the Spartacus Youth League pamphlet The Stalin School of Falsification Revisited, 1975.]
Millions of workers who looked to the Communist Parties for leadership in these countries were betrayed by their Stalinist misleaders. In Egypt, such betrayal was sold as support for Nasser’s “Arab Socialism.” But “Arab Socialism” was a myth. What it amounted to was capitalism with heavy state investment. The role Nasser saw for the workers was captured by his statement, “The workers don’t demand; we give.” To curb the combative proletariat, Nasser instituted several reforms, raising wages and reducing unemployment. Eventually, state investment dried up and there was no longer much to “give.” But these reforms created strong illusions in Nasser, which are still prevalent today.
Nasser’s hand-picked successor, Anwar el-Sadat, brought Egypt fully into the fold of American imperialism in the ’70s. After Sadat came to power, the Communist Party sought to reorganize. Sadat responded by unleashing the Muslim Brotherhood to effectively crush them. He expelled Soviet advisers and instituted the “open door” policy of economic liberalization, cutting food and other subsidies. Mubarak and his neoliberal program of mass privatizations took this further and deeper. Contrary to popular illusions, Mubarak did not represent a break from Nasserism, rather its legacy. Under Nasser, Sadat and Mubarak, Egypt remained subjugated to the imperialist world market and its dictates. The real difference between Nasser and Mubarak is that while Nasser was a genuinely popular bonapartist ruler, Mubarak was widely despised.
Israel and Palestine
Now I want to talk some about the Israel/Palestine question, which is also key to understanding this region. Earlier I mentioned the 1948 War, which resulted in the consolidation of the state of Israel, a creation that arose out of the intersection of the Nazi Holocaust and the dissolution of the British Empire. The expulsion of nearly a million Arabs from Palestine—most of them to squalid refugee camps where they and their descendants live to this day—was also accompanied by a mass migration, which was driven by both the Arab regimes and the Zionists, of the so-called Oriental or Sephardic Jewish population from the Arab countries to Israel. We defend the national rights of the dispossessed Palestinian people against the Zionist butchers and demand the immediate, unconditional withdrawal of all Israeli troops and fascistic settler auxiliaries from the Occupied Territories. But we do not thereby deny the right of the Hebrew-speaking nation to exist.
Under capitalism, when two peoples lay claim to the same land—and in this case a very small sliver of land—the right of self-determination can be exercised only by the stronger national grouping driving out, oppressing or destroying the weaker one. This is what Israel, backed by tons of aid from the U.S., does to the Palestinians. In such cases, the only way to assure the right of national self-determination for both peoples lies in overturning capitalist rule and instituting the dictatorship of the proletariat, which is the only class that has no interest in perpetuating national antagonisms. We fight to break the Hebrew-speaking workers from the poison of Zionist chauvinism and we fight to break Arab workers from the sway of petty-bourgeois nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism.
To have a future free of bloodshed, what is necessary is Hebrew and Arab workers revolution against the murderous Israeli capitalist rulers and all the Arab regimes. We do not pretend that this will be easy, but it is historically possible and necessary. While there are certainly not many cracks in the Zionist citadel today, it is nonetheless a class-divided society. Some 25 percent of its citizens, disproportionately Arabs, live in poverty, and income disparities are higher in Israel than in Egypt or Jordan. Sephardic Jews, though overwhelmingly under the ideological sway of right-wing and religious parties, suffer widespread discrimination and poverty.
Our Leninist program advocates the right of all nations to self-determination, that is, the right to form independent nation-states, which is a basic democratic right. We do not make a distinction on this point between oppressed nations, which get the right to exist, and oppressor nations, which, according to some, do not. There is a widely held position that all Jews in Israel today represent an “occupation.” There is a group called the League for the Revolutionary Party that is active at CCNY. They are crass apologists for Arab nationalism. They argue an idea that is widespread on the left that there are “good” people, that is, the oppressed—one could say the “occupied” people—and “bad” people who are the oppressors and do not even have the right to exist. To speak of an “occupation” as a whole implies that the programmatic consequence is “get rid of them,” which has its own genocidal logic. In contrast to petty-bourgeois moralism, we advance a revolutionary internationalist solution in which all peoples have a right to exist.
When I was growing up as an Israeli American kid, I was taught by my parents all about the Holocaust, the horrific experiences my grandparents had gone through, and that no matter where Jews went in the world the only safe place free from persecution was Israel. In essence, I was taught that I was part of the oppressed people, and I was viewed that way in school. Actually, in ninth grade I had this terrible science teacher who made us get into groups by race. I didn’t want to stand with the white kids because, of course, they were oppressor peoples, and I didn’t know what to do. Then a black student who I was friends with said, “She’s from Israel and that’s near Africa so she’s standing with us.” And that’s what I did. I stood with the black students. A year or so later, I became best friends with an Egyptian student who, along with her brother, shattered my world by informing me that Israel was oppressing the Palestinians. So, I had gone pretty quickly from the “oppressed” peoples to the “oppressor” peoples. Learning the truth about what was happening to the Palestinians—that the Zionist rulers’ mentality toward the Palestinians is like the Nazis’ mentality toward the Jews—changed my whole view of the world. But it was only the Marxist program that decisively enabled me to break from the poison of bourgeois nationalism, which is very deeply ingrained in the consciousness of this region.
In What Is To Be Done? Lenin argues that the revolutionary party must be a “tribune of the people,” the defender of all the oppressed, not just the working class. That means defending the rights of oppressed minorities such as the Coptic Christians in Egypt. It means fighting for free abortion on demand. It means defending the rights of homosexuals against backwardness and religious and moralistic bigotry. And it means fighting anti-Semitism, which is rampant in Arab countries. Often the word “Jew” is used instead of “Zionist,” and still prevalent are centuries-old anti-Semitic themes that the Jews are plotting world domination, the Jews are the embodiment of all evil, and so on.
Capitalist rule fuels these national, ethnic and religious divisions that drive the constant bloodshed that defines the Near East. Marxists seek to shift the axis of struggle from Israeli against Arab to class against class. We stand with Lenin, who wrote: “Marxism cannot be reconciled with nationalism, be it even of the ‘most just,’ ‘purest,’ most refined and civilized brand. In place of all forms of nationalism Marxism advances internationalism” [“Critical Remarks on the National Question,” October-December 1913]. This really differentiates us from the slew of other groups that falsely call themselves socialists.
WWP, ISO Tail Arab Nationalism, Anti-Women Reaction
In contrast to our revolutionary program, which is based on and confirmed by the lessons of history, virtually the entire left internationally has offered nothing but empty cheerleading for the “Egyptian Revolution.” This is exemplified by the Workers World Party [WWP] in the U.S., which, as the military took control of the country on February 11, headlined: “WWP Rejoices with the Egyptian People.” In Egypt, the Revolutionary Socialists [RS] group, which is promoted by the International Socialist Organization [ISO, a group active at CCNY], issued a statement on February 1, in which the RS dissolved the power of the working class into the classless demand for “all power to the people” and the call for a “popular revolution.” Left out of the statement is even the mention of the word “socialism.” This same group also appeals to crass Egyptian nationalism, declaring, “Revolution must restore Egypt’s independence, dignity and leadership in the region.”
The RS also fosters suicidal illusions in the Muslim Brotherhood. They try to invest these clericalist forces with “anti-imperialist” credentials and have pursued alliances with them over several years. We know that, whether or not it is currently in a position to make a bid for power, the Muslim Brotherhood represents a deadly danger to the working class, the Coptic Christian minority, all secularists, gays and the brutally oppressed women of Egypt. This is the same Brotherhood that, following the 1948 War, incited mobs that pillaged Jewish businesses, burned synagogues and slaughtered dozens of Jews. Henri Curiel and other leaders of Egyptian Communism were targeted.
The growing influence of these same forces is rightly feared by women in the region, including in Tunisia, where, as a recent article in the New York Times [20 February] described: “Tensions mounted here last week when military helicopters and security forces were called in to carry out an unusual mission: protecting the city’s brothels from a mob of zealots.” Tunisian society is relatively secular in contrast to Egypt and other countries in North Africa and the Near East. For example, many women do not wear the veil and abortion laws are relatively liberal. While the imperialists have used the “war on terror” to prop up “secular” dictators like Ben Ali in Tunisia and Mubarak in Egypt, in reality the imperialists have long fostered the growth of Islamic fundamentalism as a bulwark against Communism and even left-bourgeois nationalism. This is no less true of the Arab rulers, who brutally repress the fundamentalists with one hand while promoting them with the other. In a 1994 interview, Ben Ali himself stated, “To some extent fundamentalism was of our own making, and was at one time encouraged in order to combat the threat of communism. Such groups were fostered in the universities and elsewhere at that time in order to offset the communists and to strike a balance.”
Now I want to end this talk with the woman question, as yesterday was International Women’s Day. It is also around the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire in New York City, which caused the deaths of 146 garment workers, many of them immigrant Jewish women, who could not escape the burning building because the bosses had locked the doors to the stairwells.
Today in Egypt, women are a crucial part of the working class, where they have played a leading role in the strikes over the last decade, especially in the textile industry. One of the most dramatic of these was the December 2006 textile strike in Mahalla al-Kobra where more than 20,000 workers went out. It was the women workers who led the strike, walking out as the men continued working. They started chanting outside the plant, “Where are the men? Here are the women!” This had the intended effect, as the men joined them, launching one of the biggest strikes Egypt had seen in years.
At the same time, women’s oppression really is at the heart of Egyptian society. Together with religion, it is rooted in the country’s backwardness, which is reinforced by imperialist subjugation. Forty percent of all women in Egypt are illiterate. Although illegal, female genital mutilation is rampant and equally so among Muslims and Christians. According to the United Nations, 96 percent of women between the ages of 15 and 49 have undergone genital mutilation. Women who protested in Tahrir Square and elsewhere in Egypt were more often than not wearing the headscarf. More than 80 percent of women in Egypt wear the headscarf—not by law but by force of a social norm—which is much to the consternation of many of their mothers who courageously fought decades earlier to take it off.
As we wrote in a recent WV article, “The Egyptian woman may be the slave of slaves, but she is also a vital part of the very class that will lay the material basis for her liberation by breaking the chains of social backwardness and religious obscurantism through socialist revolution” [“Egypt: Military Takeover Props Up Capitalist Rule,” WV No. 974, 18 February]. As Trotsky stressed in a 1924 speech, “Perspectives and Tasks in the East,” “There will be no better communist in the East, no better fighter for the ideas of the revolution and for the ideas of communism than the awakened woman worker” [reprinted in Spartacist (English-language edition) No. 60, Autumn 2007].
When International Women’s Day was celebrated on March 8, 1917, in Russia, women textile workers led a strike of more than 90,000 workers. This signaled the end of tsarist rule and the beginning of the Russian Revolution, which culminated months later in the seizure of power by the working class led by the Bolshevik Party. Today we stand in the communist tradition of the Bolshevik Party and for workers rule from Egypt to the U.S. Join us!
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