In the latest absurdity upon absurdity in this fictitious “war on terror”, the UK Police have defended their actions in holding and interrogating for 9 hours Glenn Greenwald’s partner, David Miranda on the grounds that Miranda was suspected of terrorism because he may have been relaying truthful information about a wide range of Western governments’ illegal spying on its citizens.
As the headline above notes; the UK Police’s rationale for the infringement of Miranda’s rights, was that they “had a duty to protect the public and our national security ” (from such unwarranted journalism). With both the UK and US police forces being increasingly accused of both corrupt and violent behaviour, it is little wonder the public in those countries feel a sense of betrayal by the state. Who are their police and armed forces in fact protecting?
Certainly the deliberately manufactured farce of muslim terrorism ( funded with enthusiasm by the CIA, and various other “intelligence” western agencies around the globe- not to mention our “allies”- the Saudis), is providing an ever more thinly stretched excuse for heavy handed enforcement behaviours, surveillance and the erosion of civil rights.
Who and what is it all for?
It would appear that much of this deterioration in rights and freedoms is simply to improve the profits of those international corporates , whether media, arms manufacturers , energy companies telecommunications or security companies that are able to buy the required influence in western “democracies”.
As it becomes increasingly clear that we are nearing the end of the free capitalistic lunch-with the remainder of the world’s natural resources being rapidly frittered away for a few quick bucks – the corporate billionaires are rushing for the exits, and trampling us “little people” in the stampede.
A recent Guardian article about the lives of migrant workers in Qatar highlights the issues of forced labour and slavery in middle eastern and some European countries.
As the Guardian article notes; Qatra has the highest ratio of migrant workers to the domestic population in the world; more than 90%. Aidan McQaude of Anti-Slavery International has no hesitation in calling many of these migrants not just forced labour, but true slaves; people who are treated as objects.
Craig Murray, ex British ambassador to Uzbekistan and long time campaigner against child labour/slavery in their cotton fields, notes that both the tolerance and the exploitation of slavery or cheap labour inevitably goes right to the top. In Uzbekistan’s case, to its torture loving President Karimov and his daughter (who are such good friends with Tony Blair!) . Anti Slavery International describes the working conditions for children in the cotton fields thus: Cotton production in Uzbekistan is a state orchestrated forced-labour system. The Government of Uzbekistan forces over a million children, teachers, public servants and private sector employees to pick cotton under appalling conditions each year. Those who refuse are expelled from school, fired from their jobs, and denied public benefits or worse. The Government harasses and detains citizens seeking to monitor the situation.
In Qatar’s case, the official responses to the accusations of slavery are so far at odds with the reality on the ground , that it would be very surprising that the government authorities and companies involved did not have full cognisance of the systemic exploitation occurring.
Asia News notes that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) highlighted “contradictions with Qatari law” that fail “to give workers any real rights or protection from slavery conditions.”
ITUC General Secretary Sharan Burrow said the visa sponsorship system in Qatar allows the exaction of forced labour. “Under Qatari law, employers have near total control over workers. They alone choose if a worker can change jobs, leave the country or stay in Qatar,” she said.
In 2012, the Labour Relations Department in Qatar’s Labour Ministry received 6,000 worker complaints. The top concerns facing workers included exploitation, delays in paying wages, violence and work-related safety issues and fatalities.
In one of those most malignant of ironies, Qatar is one of the richest countries in the world for its Qatari citizenship population of 300,000 (total population of 1.9 million)
Similarly, across the border in Saudi Arabia, the Guardian in January 2013, noted that 45 foreign maids faced beheading by the State executioner . The International Labour Organisation’s (ILO) Committee of Experts on the Application of (Labour Rights) Conventions noted in 2012 that in Saudi Arabia the vulnerable situation of migrant workers, particularly domestic workers who are excluded from the provisions of the Labour Code, who are often confronted with employment policies such as the visa “sponsorship” system and subjected to abusive employer practices such as the retention of passports, non-payment of wages, deprivation of liberty and physical and sexual abuse which cause their employment to be transformed into situations that could amount to forced labour.
The Himalayan Times in July 2012 stated that up to 3,000 migrant workers from Nepal alone had died in Saudi Arabia since 2000.
However as Migrant Rights notes, the abuse of workers is not limited to Qatar or Saudi Arabia, abuse is epidemic and systemic in the middle east and beyond.
As I have noted in a previous blog , “We are all Immigrants”, none of us have any rights to this piece of land we currently plant our feet on. We are simply travelers, as were our ancestors before us. And to be fully human , we must welcome those new travelers amongst us too. And yet we continue to play this foolish and deadly game of “us’ and the “others”.
French attitudes towards the Roma are also indicative of the mindless attitude of those in power towards those who believe that simply because they and their ancestors happen to have lived in a geographically bounded state territory for some time, they are entitled to certain privileges, and those who are recent comers are not. The brutal and barbarous attitude by many in Australia towards the “boat people” from Asian countries, is a supreme example of this vicious mind-set.
The concept of “citizenship” is a useful mirage, a fiction created by states to marginalize some populations.
In reality any person who lives under the jurisdiction of a state geographic entity needs to be protected by its laws; whether they be occupiers of the lands for many generations, recent migrants, asylum seekers, or migrant workers.
As As’ad AbuKhalil, aka the Angry Arab states, it is the ignorance of racsim that drives these brutal policies and systems of exploitation and terror.
Now that Assad’s government in Syria has agreed to hand over supervision of its chemical weapons to the United Nations, some of the wind in the sails of the West’s determination to attack Syria has dissipated.
Yet France and its Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius are determined to ensure that a military strike remains likely, with France’s tabling of a UN resolution that would require “serious consequences” if the chemical weapons handover was not completed according to UN requirements or on time. Currently it is unclear what is motivating Fabius’ need to be the leader of the dogs of war against Syria. It is possibly some attempt by the Socialist government to regain some political support in France-although every French poll is indicating that French involvement in Syria would have the entirely opposite effect. Or is it an attempt to revive the glories of colonial France by re-bombing Damascus all over again , as it did in 1925-26 when those dark-skinned natives dared to fight for their own freedom from their French oppressors?
Or is it simply a matter of cash?, as Wayne Madsen reports for Iranian Press TV, where he states that the Saudi Arabian spy chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al Saud has been spending large amounts of Saudi oil money to “pay off” key members of the US Senate and House leadership as well as key ministers of the French government.
It may also be that Fabius’ war-mongering, like the UK foreign minister’s William Hague’s foreign policy decisions, appear wholly based on unconditional support for the Israeli state and its expansion. Hague the UK Foreign Minister , who , in an interview with the Israeli website YNetNews describes himself as “a natural friend of Israel”. Any actions that turn Shi-ite against Sunni in the countries surrounding Israel have to be, they reason, good for Israel.
Its my guess, that Al Qaeda think otherwise…
What is certain is that “Western” bombing of Syrian infrastructure will cause even greater suffering than Syrians from both sides are experiencing now. The experience of Libya in the last Western bombing campaign, is sadly illustrative. And what should by now be evident to anyone is that bombings or cruise missiles are not “precision targeted’ despite the hype . They frequently make errors both in their electronic targetting and, as is so often the case, the targeting coordinates are based on unreliable inadequate or false information.
Turkey, Saudi Arabia,Qatar, the UK, France and the US have been steadfast that there should be no negotiations while Assad is in power; in other words, that Assad’s forces will have to be defeated first before there are “negotiations”!-these are not the principles of those who espouse peace and reconciliation- what they appear to want is the destruction of the Syrian state, with their pundits arguing ( as they have done in Iraq) that Syria must be broken up into its constituent sectarian geographies. Such a breakup, (largely fomented by those outside powers themselves) will certainly not benefit the Syrian citizens of those enclaves, but will certainly benefit Israel (in the short term) and Saudi Arabia’s salafist mercenaries.
Everywhere you look in mainstream Western media you see the utter “reasonableness’ of our need to destroy this or that country because it is evil and isn’t democratic or reasonable enough.
History tells us a different story, but for some reason, we choose to ignore it. The recent non-revelation of the CIA and UK ‘intelligence” community’s overthrow of the democratically elected prime minister Mossaddegh of Iran, beginning on 19th August 1953 once again highlights what the Wikipedia entry aptly describes as the ongoing “grubby” adventures by these two states. Foolishly, Mossaddegh’s government had voted to nationalise the UK “owned’ oil fields production in Iran and so Mossaddegh and Iran had to pay the price- a lifetime of imprisonment and the re-installation of the brutal pretend-King of Persia -the Shah.
The UK and France’s ongoing adventure in Syria is another such example of history repeating itself, where the so-called socialist president of France, Hollande is salivating at the mouth with the opportunity to once again invade their old colony under the pretense of protecting its inhabitants ( identical story to last time), and the evil little UK Foreign Minister Hague will do absolutely anything to please his Israeli masters. Funding and supporting Al Qaeda is absolutely not a problem to Hollande and Hague and Obama -as it was no problem for the US in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. Read a great account of the French aerial bombing of Damascus in 1925 and again in 1926. The US has a 60 year history of conflict with Syria, as noted by Adam Curtis in his wonderful blog, “The Baby and the Baath Water.”
In Afghanistan,the US repeats the old adventures played out by its now junior ally, “Great Britain”, in its nineteenth century wars of 1839-1842, and 1878-1880 and then 1919.
Were those wars about peace, justice and democracy and the rights of women? Then, as now, protecting opium production was one of the driving forces; protecting the Western interests who make huge monies from addicting and selling opium and now heroin to Chinese, Russians or any other brutalised public.
Protecting Western oil interests and profits is of course, the other game; a game that heavily relies on Israel forming a “western” buttress against the Arab hordes revolting against the ‘masters and betters’. Hence the less than subtle tacit support for the Egyptian Army generals and their counter-revolution, and the West’s unconditional support for the Wahhabi extremist fiefdoms in Saudi Arabia Qatar and the UAE.
“The celebrated anthropologist Clifford Geertz has half-jokingly suggested that all states can be parceled into four types: pluralist, in which the state is seen by its people as having moral legitimacy; populist, in which government is viewed as an expression of the people’s will’; “great beast” in which the ruler’s power depends on using force to keep the populace cowed, and “great fraud” in which the elite uses smoke and mirrors to convince the people of its inherent authority” – 1491- New Revelations of the Americas”: Charles C Mann. I leave you to judge which of those categories of statehood the UK and US fit into.
The problem with all of these Western adventures is that they benefit only a tiny minority of the UK and US populations; the very very rich (or the less then ‘one-per cent’) , with the trickle-down effects to the British and US wider public negligible. The process can only continue while those publics can continue to be propagandized into believing that these wars and adventures are about peace democracy and justice and stopping evil terrorists blowing us all up..
The desperation of those in power and their mercenary backers can be seen in the massive state investment in knowing what everyone is writing and saying online and on the phone and the need to silence any whistleblowers quickly.
Universal male and female adult suffrage is a relatively recent phenomenon -in a nation state it first occurred in 1893 in New Zealand . Adult male suffrage ( regardless of property rights) first occurred in republican France in 1792. Universal suffrage (including blacks ) was only enforced in US Federal elections from 1965. The above dates clearly indicate true universal suffrage really only becoming the accepted norm in recent times in the Western world, let alone globally.
Democracy in a given geographical catchment works most fairly where voters have similar views and shared identities (ie in a nation-state composed of numerous well-defined minorities, only the majority group will consider its interests are represented by ruling governments unless coalitions of minorities are formed). Where there are long-standing minorities in a given electoral catchment, resentment and exclusion naturally follow .
Additionally in the last 10 years with the advent of the internet and the fictional “War on Terror”, a new set of issues, both constraining and enabling democracy, have arisen.
The capacity of private citizens to find truthful information on government decisions and responses has markedly improved over the last 10 years with the rise of the internet, justifiably causing the credibility of most Western politicians to be tarnished as their ongoing epidemic of lying and posturing is exposed.
In addition, Western state’s and private corporate’s attack on general elections in the past few years in countries such as Iran, the Russian Federation and the celebrated colour revolutions of Eastern Europe, have now enabled any electorally defeated opposition party to claim fraud and vote rigging and to “legitimately ” resort to revolution on the streets ; the principles of majority vote rules are now significantly undermined . This democratic revisionism has now also been exacerbated by the West’s recent tacit support for the Egyptian Army’s coup against Egypt’s legitimately elected government .
On top of that , the US and UK security apparatuses and other “democratic ” state apparatus’ insistence on total knowledge of their citizens’ online and phone conversations, is a further deliberate malign attempt to ensure that only those who currently have the power and money are able to circulate their view of the world to the voters, thereby attempting to maintain the “status quo”; somewhat in opposition to true democratic principles.
Democracy may or may not be, to paraphrase Churchill, the least worst alternative method of government representation, but the cracks are surely showing…
Richard Falk in his blog article, Reviving the Israel-Palestine Negotiations: The Indyk Appointment notes one of many absurdities in this current round of “peace negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, brokered by the U.S., is the US appointment of the chief negotiator, Martin Indyk. Martin Indyk, Falk notes, is a “former ambassador to Israel (1995-97; 2000-01), onetime AIPAC(the American Israel Public Affairs Committee) employee, British born, Australian educated American diplomat, with a long list of pro-Israeli credentials.” Hardly what might be described as an independent arbiter
As www.jadaliyya.com display in their simple but effective poster on the displacement of the Palestinian peoples since 1948 by Israeli soldiers and gunmen, by 2008, more than 5.3 million Palestinians were living in enforced exile, often in extreme conditions of hardship. Those who remain in the ghettos of the West Bank and Gaza, imprisoned behind ever higher Israeli concrete walls and for Gazans, facing increasing limitations to their access to food, medicine and the basic necessities of life, by the illegal Israeli blockade. In addition, thousands of Palestinian political prisoners are imprisoned in Israel for their rightful attempts to break a savage illegal occupation, or like the hundreds of young children imprisoned and often tortured, maybe threw a stone or two against an Israeli soldier or settler.
This is no round of equal party negotiations; this is negotiations between one all powerful (and totally supported in every way by the “independent arbiter” the U.S.) and the Palestinian agency which has no democratic legitimacy with its own people (Hamas does) and which has absolutely no negotiating leverage.
Falk also notes that “John Kerry, the U.S. Secretary of State, whose show this is, dutifully indicated when announcing the Indyk appointment, that success in the negotiations will depend on the willingness of the two sides to make ‘reasonable compromises.’” One might ask what further compromises the Palestinians may be asked to make; having lost almost all their land, hundreds of thousands of lives, the loss of a state entity and thousands of their “citizens’ in Israeli prisons. All the while, Israel continues to expand with more settler housing into the occupied territories, destroying more Palestinian homes and orchards and creating more Palestinian refugees.
Peace in Palestine, if it can be obtained, must surely require the just settlement of past wrongs and the creation of a stable, sustainable and just society for the inhabitants of that region. In my view, some elements of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission model, along with the reconciliations (and compensations) achieved via New Zealand’s Waitangi Tribunal for indigenous Maori, will achieve that goal.
This model translates, in the land of Palestine, to compensation for lands misappropriated by Israeli Jews, compensation for the deaths and torture of Palestinians and Israelis since the Nakba , and equal status for all citizens, whether Jewish, Muslim or any other religious or ethnic identity who currently inhabit those lands – in other words – a single state solution. A peace settlement requires a just settlement.
In every way, these current negotiations, as all the previous peace negotiations have been, are both a farce and tragedy.
So by now it should be clear to every Western and Arab citizen, that western governments don’t support the will of the majority; otherwise known as democracy-they support “their man”.
The removal of Mohammed Morsi as the legitimately elected President of Egypt by the US funded Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Egypt, Abdul Fatah al-Sisi, on the 3rd July after one year in office, with scarcely a murmur of concern from any Western “democracy” is indicative of the contempt the governing Western powers have for the will of the people.
It can certainly be argued that Morsi , whose Muslim Brotherhood renaissance was largely funded by Qatar, did not deliver on the promises he made in the pre-election process last year. However if that rule of thumb for instituting a coup were to be used against every democratically elected leader in this world, there would be few remaining in power after their first year in office!
Certainly Morsi changed his political agenda frequently over the past year based on the likelihood of funding becoming available from the US or Saudi Arabia or Qatar. But again, if that yardstick were used against elected leaders to define legitimacy, there are currently few “un-bought” leaders in democracies who would pass that measure.
Dodge van
Don’t get me wrong , I am not an apologist for any kind of religious based political agenda; whether Christian, Buddhist Muslim or any other sectarian view of the world. By definition, those sectarian views breed intolerance, fear, hypocrisy and violence. But then again we have many apparently non religious Western leaders whose non-religious sectarian views breed that same intolerance and fear.
No, the most significant issue is the breathtaking hypocrisy of those Western leaders who regularly call for “democracy” in this or that state (usually with some natural resources they want) , but whose agenda is now manifestly clear: ” regime change” is all that matters as long as the new regime is “our” regime.
Secondly what is also breathtakingly clear is the total corruption and fawning of the mainstream western media to the powers-that-be. No headlines on why the UK and US and its European “allies’ are supporting a military coup over democracy, in what has been trumpeted for so long as the new democratic “arab spring” ; no hint of dissonance expressed…..
A disturbing article by Cyrus Safdari of Iran Affairs about the rights of US citizens where ‘state secrets’ just could be involved…
The (Reuters article on Iran winning legal battles about blocking the activity Iranian banks) article goes on to mention the procedure used in the UK to present classified information as evidence in the court whilst minimizing the risk of disclosure by allowing the judge to see the “secret’ evidence privately. In this case the judge was apparently not terribly impressed by the quality of this evidence since he still ruled in favor of Iran.
The US has a similar procedure ( limited to criminal prosecutions) but I don’t know if any such lawsuits in US court would be as successful, for a variety of reasons not the least of which is the State Secrets Privilege, which once invoked by the govt has the effect of ending all lawsuits because the govt can prevent the disclosure of any evidence during the trial that it claims would risk exposure of national security secrets. All the govt lawyers have to do is say “State Secrets Privilege” and usually that’s the end of the case since crucial information is then prevented from being considered by the court.
And a wonderful little piece here by Peter Lee at Asian Times Online about three earlier NSA whistleblowers and what Snowden can expect in terms of US justice..
And a lovely piece by William Pfaff on the US’s indefatigable attempts to undermine the rule of international law here
Or this great little article by Digby at Hullabaloo analysing what is already very clear:-that these “spymasters” are about as incompetent and basically just as stupid as you can possibly imagine..
This post is a revised and modified version of an essay published as an Op/Ed two days ago by Al Jazeera English; it attempt to reflect on the significance of the Snowden disclosures, and why governments did not rebuff the American efforts to take Snowden into custody as an accused criminal by the simple assertion that ‘political crimes‘ should never be the subject of cooperative inter-governmental efforts to achieve the enforcement of criminal law in a foreign country. The world benefits from the safety valve of such sanctuary, as does the country that is seeking to arrest and punish the whistleblower even if most of its leaders and opinion makers do not realize this.
An interesting Wikipedia note on Russ Tice, NSA whistleblower in 2005, who noted the very same issues that Snowden refers to. ( note that Tice’s allegations were dismissed by the Inspector General , who stated in an unclassified report that found “no evidence” to support Tice’s claims.[4]
The Boston killings are just one of so many examples over the past 10 years since 9/11 of terrorist activities on Western soil which have pre-existing strong links to “intelligence” services. Actually the term ‘Intelligence Services’ is rather an oxymoron, given that those intelligence officers are the ones who want to play James Bond without any normal civilizational rules for the good of the “homeland ” or some other jingoist identity…
And a passing reference to Glen Greenwald as to why mass killers using guns in the US are not terrorists, but two brothers who apparently put together, and exploded two ? (now supposedly eight ) bombs, are terrorists.
But before you leap away muttering about paranoia and conspiracy theories, consider the following historical examples of false flag operations…
The Gulf of Mexico US battleship Maine’s explosion in Havana Harbour in 1898 , likely through an accidental bunker fire igniting munitions, was later used as a pretext for war with Spain; “Remember the Maine, to hell with Spain ‘ was the cry.
The Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964, in which the USS destroyer Maddox opened fire on two North Vietnamese torpedo boats and was then fired upon by the two small boats. The Maddox was approaching Hòn Mê Island, three to four miles (6 km) inside the twelve-mile (19 km) limit claimed by North Vietnam. This territorial limit was not recognized by the United States. The captain of the Maddox radioed to say the Vietnamese were attacking the US warship and US warplanes were used to attack the retreating patrol boats. The incident was subsequently used by President Johnson to escalate the war against North Vietnamese.
And today, intelligence services in the Western world have a wealth of opportunities to exploit opportunities for violence using angry young men ( and increasingly women) who have been marginalized in the society they currently live in, and see their cultures of origin destroyed and maligned by Western governments. Intelligence operatives are therefore in a unique position to justify their own jobs and the weapons manufacturers who “subsidise” such intelligence communities, by facilitating “terrorists” (really just violent criminals ); in many cases providing the information on bomb-making, funding, communications, physical resources etc to people who are simply angry and naive and , were it not for the intervention of these government agencies, would remain simply angry and frustrated.
See Michael German’s Manufacturing Terrorists article where he reviews journalist Trevor Aaronson’s The Terror Factory, which documents over 171 instances of the FBI creating faux terrorists using sting operations since 9/11.
To complicate matters, over the past 20 years there has also been an unprecedented rise in the creation of predominantly US based private armies funded by both state governments and the independently rich and powerful eg…G4S (the second largest employer in the world after Walmart), Blackwater, The Craft etc, along with a rise in the private armies of drug-runners and institutionalized mafia type organisations as can be seen in the War on Drugs drug-running activities by CIA operatives (whether independent of the CIA or as part of fund-raising initiatives) in Central America.
The Craft Logo
The clear identification of terrorism culprits has therefore been made much harder when a state entity can deny all knowledge of the violence committed through the entrapment of foolish radicals into violent acts by private but government contracted security forces. It is thus disturbing and revealing when clearly psychopathic personalities like Chris Kyle (“famed” sniper and ex- US Navy SEAL shot and killed in an ironic twist of fate by another war traumatised ex-SEAL) of The Craft (US mercenary trainers and deliverers of security, and apparently providers of contracted security to the Boston Marathon), have as their motto “Despite what your momma told you…. violence does solve problems”. Only in the United States could such an organization be permitted to exist with such puerile and overtly violent traits and be contracted to provide security.
While the paranoid culture of the United States on both the “left” and right wings have in a few days developed an amazing range of conspiracy theories explaining the reasons for the massacre, it is clear that in the case of the Boston bombings, some of the linkages with State and security agencies are unusual-not least the fact that the US appears to be a keen supporter of Chechen fighters in Russia. (Note that the two suspected Boston bombers are/were Chechen).
However it seems apparent that on the whole, governments and intelligence services exploit existing weaknesses or violent tendencies of others for their own political and economic purposes, rather than creating a terrorism threat from nothing.
That said, the linkages can be tenuous, as in the current Canadian case of two young men who it would appear, indulged in some foolish conversations about how they might like to blow up trains. However the intelligence of the security forces obviously came under a little strain when they made the implausible accusatory link (now retracted) between Al Qaeda and Iran -both of whose Islamic roots are violently anathema to each other. The fact that the clam was initially made at all by Canadian security forces is a wonderful example of both the intellectual capacity and the political motivations of those security agencies.
What is therefore very clear is that state agencies, their intelligence arms and the private mercenary armies operating in the world often at their behest, are absolutely clueless as to the impacts and likely blowbacks from their actions. They are quite literally, playing with fire.
It would appear that much of this deterioration in rights and freedoms is simply to improve the profits of those international corporates , whether media, arms manufacturers , energy companies telecommunications or security companies that are able to buy the required influence in western “democracies”.
New Antarctica 