America’s Persian And Arabian Wars

Posted on March 5, 2016

by Richard Edmondson

[Ed. note – a very incisive and insightful  analysis on US wars by former diplomat Chas Freeman. If the name sounds familiar, it should. In 2009, Freeman was tapped by the Obama administration to serve as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, but his appointment was quashed by the Israeli Lobby. One of those leading the fight against him was Steve Rosen, formerly of AIPAC, who at the time was awaiting trial on espionage charges. What Freeman provides here is a close look at America’s entangled alliances with countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia from the perspective of a career diplomat, as well as its ongoing and seemingly endless wars and the destructive–as well as self-destructive–impacts they have had. ]

America’s Persian and Arabian Wars
Remarks to Diplomatic and Consular Officers, Retired (DACOR)

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
DACOR Bacon House, Washington, DC 4 March 2016

Sometime between 460 and 450 B.C.E., Herodotus wrote The Persian Wars, his account of the Greeks’ two wars with the Persians, which spanned thirteen years.  Even in a time when trends and events unfolded more slowly than they seem to now, that was a famously lengthy conflict.  But the ancient Greeks and Persians have nothing on us Americans in that regard.

The United States has now been engaged in a cold war with Iran – Persia – for thirty-seven years.  It has conducted various levels of hot war in Iraq for twenty-six years.   It has been in combat in Afghanistan for fifteen years.  Americans have bombed Somalia for fifteen, Libya for five, and Syria for one and a half years.  One war has led to another.  None has yielded any positive result and none shows any sign of doing so.

The same might be said for the wars of others we Americans subsidize and supply.  Israel’s wars to subdue the Palestinians and deter other Arabs from challenging its ongoing dispossession of them are now sixty-eight-years-old – and counting.  U.S. drones have been killing Yemenis for fourteen years, Pakistanis for twelve, and Somalis for nine.  Saudi Arabia’s bloody effort to reinstall an ousted government in Yemen is almost a year old.  In none of these wars is an end in sight.

It’s hard to put a price tag on these inconclusive misadventures.  The unsuccessful Afghan and Iraq pacification campaigns alone have cost the United States an estimated $6 trillion in outlays and obligations.  Over 7,000 Americans have died in combat since these wars kicked off in 2001.  At least another 50,000 have been maimed.  A million have filed claims for war-related disabilities.  And well over two million Afghans, Arabs, Persians, and Somalis have perished.  This is a great deal of sacrifice and suffering for no apparent gain in the region and continuously escalating risks to our homeland.  Perhaps a bit of reflection is in order, followed by a change of course.

It is said in this regard that before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. (That way, when you criticize them, you’re a mile away, and you have their shoes.)  In that spirit, let me offer a few thoughts as well as a question or two about America’s Persian and Arabian wars.

What it is that we Americans are trying to accomplish?   Is there no better way than warfare to protect and advance our interests?  How can we finally end the many wars we have begun?  On what terms should they be ended and with whom?  At what point is enough enough?

Unraveling the tangle of wars in which the United States is now engaged with or against Arabs, Berbers, Hazaras, Israelis, Kanuris, Kurds, Palestinians, Persians, Pashtuns, Somalis, Syrians, Tajiks, Tuaregs, Turkmen, Turks, and Uzbeks – as well as Alawites, Christians, Druze, Jews, secular Muslims, Salafis, Shiites, Sunnis, and Yazidis – will not be easy.  In large measure through our involvement, their conflicts have become interwoven.  Ending one or another of them might alter the dynamics of the region but would not by itself produce peace.

That is certainly true of the longest-running of these hostilities – the struggle by Zionist settlers to displace Christian and Muslim Arabs from the Holy Land and to establish a Greater Israel [Eretz Israel] with indefinitely expandable borders.   This is shaping up as a tragedy with no catharsis. Israel’s cruelties to Palestinian Arabs provide daily reminders of two centuries of humiliating Muslim impotence in the face of Euro-American intrusions into the realm of Islam [Dar al Islam].   Israel’s policies have been a major driver of radicalization in Arab politics and in the popularization of terrorism as a tool of resistance to oppression and ethnic cleansing wherever it occurs in the region.

Resentment of Jewish colonialism, and American support for it, is now an elemental feature of Arab and Persian politics, with much  resonance among Muslims all over the world.  U.S. identification with Israel and its policies has made the United States the target of Israel’s burgeoning enemies.  Peace in the Holy Land now would not soon erase these resentments, which have become deeply entrenched.

More than most, Israel’s ongoing wars have also become a laboratory in which ways and means of waging war are developed.  I’m not just speaking here of Israeli innovations like targeted killings, enhanced interrogation techniques, drones, and pervasive surveillance systems.  Suicide bombing is a form of asymmetric warfare now identified with Islam.  But it came to the Middle East only when Lebanese were unable to find any other means of raising the cost to Israel of its insolent occupation of their country.  The technique had been invented by East Asians – Japan’s kamikaze pilots and the Viet Minh resistance to French rule in Indochina – and perfected by the Tamil Tigers.  It remains anathema to most Muslims.

First used in the Middle East by the Shiites of Hezbollah, suicide bombing was then taken up by Sunni Palestinians and applied to both soldiers and civilians in Israel and the occupied territories.  First used to strike the United States with airborne improvised explosive devices [IEDs] on September 11, 2001, suicide bombing then became an oft-used weapon in the resistance to U.S. pacification operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It now routinely spearheads assaults by the so-called “Islamic caliphate” (or “Daesh”) in its savage wars on the West, in the Fertile Crescent, and in Arabia and North Africa.

Suicide bombing is the poor man’s precision-guided munition.  It blows up targets of politico-military importance by using the human brain as a sophisticated guidance system and the human body as a versatile delivery mechanism for explosives.  So far – the splendidly uniformed men and women of TSA notwithstanding – there is no reliable counter to it.

The unending contention between Israelis and Arabs has also become a major factor in both Iran’s regional role and its estrangement from the United States.  Iranian support for Hezbollah and its Arab Shiite constituency during and after Israel’s assaults on Lebanon has given Iran significant sway in Lebanese politics.  Iran’s anti-Israel rhetoric was particularly noteworthy during the populist presidency of Iran’s version of President Donald Trump, Mahmoud Ahmedinejad.  It frightened Israelis while gaining Iran traction among Sunni Arabs dismayed by their own governments’ unwillingness to take action against Israel or to break with the United States on the issue.  Among other things, this enabled Shiite Iran to build a cooperative relationship with Hamas, a broad-based Sunni democratic movement that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and other Sunni Arab autocracies as well as Israel and the United States have sought to isolate.

Iran came to contemporary Baghdad as a hitchhiker on America’s 2003 experiment with hit-and-run democratization, which installed a pro-Iranian Shiite government in Iraq.  Our invasion eliminated Iraq as a balancer of Iran and enabled Iraq’s Kurds to achieve their independence in all but name, thus straining our relations with Turkey.  The so-called “surge” of U.S. troops to Iraq in 2007 consolidated the Shiite monopoly on political power in the Arab-inhabited regions of Iraq, leaving Arab Sunnis disaffected and rebellious.  In 2011, the smoldering sectarian warfare in Iraq spread to Syria, which – with a little help from the Gulf Arabs, Turkey, and the United States – it promptly engulfed.  Iran now presents itself as the protector of Shiite rule or rights in Bahrain, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, and Yemen.  Such protection is proving dangerous to the health of the protected.

Iran’s inroads in Palestine, Lebanon, and Iraq greatly increased anti-Iranian and anti-Shiite sentiment in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates.  The Gulf Arabs see themselves as threatened and encircled by surging Iranian influence.  Although they have little faith in America these days, they regard continuing American estrangement from Iran as a vital strategic asset to be preserved at almost any cost.  They would not acquiesce in the Iran nuclear deal until they received assurances that it would not open the way to Iranian-American rapprochement.

At the same time, Israeli paranoia about Iran found expression in unprecedentedly brazen manipulation of U.S. politics.  A senator wrote to the Iranian leadership urging them to reject the president as the representative of the United States in foreign affairs.  Presidential candidates declared that, if elected, they would obey Israeli dictates and repudiate what the Obama administration, Britain, China, France, Germany, and Russia have agreed with Iran.  In these circumstances, cooperation between the United States and Iran is essentially impossible.

This means that for now nothing can be built on the significant interests that the United States and Iran have in common.  This restricts options for dealing with Islamist terrorism in the Fertile Crescent.  It helps fuel the destructive region-wide geopolitical and religious rivalry between Iran and the Gulf Arabs.  It reduces the prospects for peace in Syria.  Even if refugees from the Levant did not threaten the unity of Europe, decency demands that ending the carnage there be an urgent policy objective.  In the past five years, half of Syria’s prewar population has been forced to flee their homes.  Somewhere between 350,000 and 470,000 Syrians have been killed.

The impasse in U.S. relations with Iran also complicates the prospects for stability in post-NATO Afghanistan, where the Obama administration has punted a lost war to the next administration.  It denies the American economy a market that its European and Asian competitors are now vigorously pursuing.  It perpetuates the rancor and mutual recriminations that require Americans to garrison the Persian Gulf at the expense of attending to strategic challenges elsewhere in Europe and Asia.  And while a freeze in US-Iranian relations may slow the worsening of US-Arab relations, it does not halt or cure it.

A parallel deterioration has taken place in US-Turkish relations.  Turkey has joined the Gulf Arabs in seeking regime change in Syria by supporting Islamist extremists.  It is determined to prevent the emergence of yet another Kurdish quasi-state on its southern border.  Turkey has always been an essential partner on a uniquely long list of issues.  Without Turkish cooperation or acquiescence, one cannot conduct policies toward Iraq, Syria, Iran, Israel, Central Asia, including Afghanistan, the Caucasus, the Black Sea countries, Russia, Greece, Cyprus, the Balkans, North Africa, the EU, the Gulf Arabs, NATO, or the Islamic world and its institutions.  Migration from the Levant has just joined that list.  But Turkey and the United States are at cross purposes over the Kurdish role in opposing Daesh and not in agreement about what else should happen in Syria.

This is as complex a skein of strife as one can imagine.  Like the Gordian knot, the beginnings of the tangle cannot be found to unsnarl it.  And the knot is visibly rotting, which risks releasing new horrors.

What is to be done?

We must begin by admitting that various projects to which we have given rhetorical, if not practical, support are now infeasible.  The “two-state solution” in the Holy Land is first among these.   Israel continues to insist that it can find no partner for peace.  In this argument, Israelis resemble no one so much as the kid who kills his parents and then appeals for sympathy on the grounds that he is an orphan.  Under cover of the so-called “peace process,” Israel has assassinated every Palestinian leader of promise – by some counts some 800 individuals over the years – while incarcerating many others and  recruiting some to serve as kapos for the occupation.  Guns, bombs, booby traps, poison, biological agents, and drones have ensured that there is indeed no one with the vision and political standing to agree to a further subdivision of Palestine.

But, as the South African example shows, democracy in a master race cannot legitimize tyranny over other populations.  Young Palestinians no longer have even a Bantustan to look forward to.  Their despair has become anomie – a collapse of social norms and constraints.  The result is an upsurge in random violence by young Palestinians against their Jewish oppressors.

American leaders spent more than four decades attempting to secure acceptance for a Jewish state in the Middle East.  We had some success in this regard, brokering peace with Egypt in 1978 and with Jordan in 1994.  In 2002, the Arabs offered Israel a comprehensive peace.   They received no reply at all.  The price of domestic tranquility for Israel has always been an end to its land seizures and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.  Israel has been unable to curb its appetite for Arab land.  Now the world is no longer prepared to give Israel – or the United States – the benefit of the doubt.  There will either be a one-state solution or escalating low-intensity conflict with increasing collateral damage to American global and regional interests.

It’s impolitic to say so, but the United States and Israel are now seriously estranged, with little prospect of reconciliation.  Israeli accommodations of its captive Arab population or its Arab neighbors seem less likely than ever, given the Jewish state’s settler-dominated politics.  In the  absence of efforts by Israel to reconcile others in the Middle East to its existence, its international delegitimization will accelerate.  The United States can no longer protect Israel from the consequences of its own behavior.

What’s worse – the interests of Israel and the United States now clash on a growing list of issues.  Iran, the security architecture of the Persian Gulf, and the imperative of cooperation with Turkey are at the head of the list.  But US-Israeli differences now prominently include relations with Islam, which Israel has sought to demonize, a task in which it has had enormous help from Islamist extremists.  Absent American self-identification with Israel, the United States has nothing to gain and much to lose by allowing an establishment of religion to guide its foreign policy.

Contemporary Israeli values are also increasingly at odds with those of both the United States and Jewish tradition.  Doctrines of racial supremacy, religious intolerance, and ethnic cleansing were once very American but un-Jewish.  They are now anathema to Americans even as they flourish in Israel.  American Jews find it hard to overcome the tribal impulses that incline them to rally behind the Jewish state but are more and more offended by the way an aggressively expansionist Israel is redefining Judaism and its image.

The partnerships of the United States with Saudi Arabia and others in the Gulf are also in increasing jeopardy, as the Gulf Arabs double down on foreign policies based on sectarian intolerance of Shi`ism as well as rivalry with Iran, the self-proclaimed protector of Shi`ites everywhere.  Like Israeli Jews, Saudi Muslims react badly to even the most well-meant criticism by outsiders.  They talk about their problems only to themselves, reinforcing their self-righteous self-perceptions and failing to understand the way others see them.  (It couldn’t happen here!)

Islam is inherently among the most tolerant and humane of faiths.  But Saudi Islam is intolerant of other traditions within Islam, the other Abrahamic religions, and actively hostile to faiths not rooted in Judaism like Animism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shamanism, Shintoism, Yazidism, or Zoroastrianism.  And it is adamantly opposed to secularism and secular doctrines like Confucianism.

More to the point, Saudi Salafism – pejoratively labeled “Wahhabism” abroad – is kin to the xenophobic doctrines espoused by Islamist extremists, like Daesh or al Qaeda, even if it clearly lacks the zeal for bloody massacres that is their hallmark.  This theological affinity makes Saudi Arabia either a reluctant opponent or even clandestine collaborator with Islamist extremists or the ideal partner to combat the perverted Salafism of Daesh.  It has been hard for either Americans or Saudis to sort out which it is. That’s a problem.

Saudi and American values never coincided.  The European Enlightenment occurred while Arabia was remote from it and in an Islamic Reformation, inspired by Mohammed ibn `Abd al-Wahhab.  The Saudis are Muslim originalists and profoundly anti-secular. They are not impressed by democracy as a political system – especially in its current dysfunctional state in America – and do not aspire to adopt it.  These differences never mattered in the past because U.S. and Saudi interests coincided in so many ways.  But they matter now.

Until recently, the United States had no political or ideological agenda of its own in the Middle East.  It was satisfied to enjoy preferred access to the region’s oil and to provide the Saudis and others protection in return for this.  A grateful Saudi Arabia had America’s back on foreign policy issues affecting its region or the realm of Islam.  On occasion, it was helpful farther afield.

For decades, the shared American and Saudi obsession with countering Soviet communism sidelined differences over Israel and its policies as well as human and civil rights in the Kingdom.  No more.  Since 9/11, the entrenchment of U.S. Islamophobia, American unilateralism, and Saudi ambivalence about Salafi jihadism have soured the undemanding friendship of the past.

Contradictions between the American and Arab political cultures were increasingly prominent even before the 21^st century began.

With the end of the Cold War, Americans felt free to insist that the price of good relations with us was to accept our deeply held conviction that Western democratic values are self-evidently universal and to demand that foreign partners act accordingly.  This inevitably distanced the United States from conservative non-Western societies, of which  Saudi Arabia is the epitome.  The emergence of feminism and libertarian tolerance of a variety of sexual orientations and behavior in America has added to the mutual distaste.  Restoring a sense of common purpose will not be easy, despite the existence of a common enemy in Daesh.

American policies in the Middle East have produced a mess in which we are estranged from all the key actors – Arab, Iranian, Israeli, and Turkish – and on a different page than the Russians.  The state of our relations with the region is symbolized by the sight of U.S. diplomats cowering behind barriers surrounding fortress embassies that resemble nothing so much as modern-day Crusader castles.  Diplomacy is all but impossible when we must ask host governments to protect our diplomats from their people by placing our embassies under perpetual siege by police.  The fact that other countries don’t have to do this is suggestive of something.  After so many years, it should be obvious that bombing, drone warfare, and commandos just make things worse.  It is time for Americans to end our wars and support for the wars of others in the Middle East and to try something else.

What might that be?  Well, we might start by recognizing a few unpalatable realities.  In the Levant, the world brought into being by Messrs. Sykes and Picot has ended.  All of our bombers and all of our men can’t put Humpty Dumpty together again.  We and our friends in the region are going to have to accept the rise of new states within changed borders.  Where we cannot fix things, we must at least do no harm.

The Arabs have made it clear that they recognize the reality of Israel’s presence in their midst and do not expect it to disappear.  It’s clear that, if Israel did indeed disappear, this would be because it did itself in, not because it was militarily overwhelmed.  Israel has had a free ride on the United States for forty years.  It is in denial about the ultimate consequences for it of moral self-destruction, political self-compression, and rising personal insecurity.  Israelis will not address these perils without shock treatment.  They need to make short-term political sacrifices to secure domestic tranquility and well-being over the long term.

If Americans could muster the political will, we could easily administer the requisite tough love to Israel through selective suspensions of the unconditional UN vetoes, aid, and tax subsidies that make counterproductive behavior by the Jewish state cost-free.  If we are politically unable to cease the enablement and creation of moral hazard for Israel, we should consider how best to minimize the damage to ourselves as Israel self-destructs.  We should not support or appear to support Israeli policies we consider misguided.

Similarly, America should restructure its relationship with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arabs to be more two-sidedly collaborative.  Like Israel, these countries have effectively declared their independence from us.  Their continued dependence on us does not oblige us to support their policies.  When these policies do not serve American purposes we should withhold our backing for them.

Americans neither understand nor have any interest in involving ourselves in theological rivalries between Sunnis and Shiites.  When it is in our interest to do so, we should feel free to cooperate with Iran, as we do with Israel, rather than automatically deferring to Gulf Arab (or Israeli) objections.  Our policies in Syria are the palsied offspring of an unholy marriage of convenience between liberal interventionists and Gulf Arab rulers obsessed with deposing Bashar al-Assad, establishing Sunni dominance in Syria, and breaking Syria’s alliance with Iran.

But, with the exception of the Iranian angle, would these outcomes necessarily serve U.S. interests?  Is the unconditional support of the Gulf Arabs for military dictatorship in Egypt likely to end well?  Is the perpetuation of the fighting in Yemen something we favor?  It is time to restructure U.S. relations with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and Iran to reflect the challenges of the post-Sykes-Picot and Cold War eras, the need for mutual accommodation between Arabs and Persians, and the rise of Daesh.

Greater flexibility in the U.S. relationship with the Gulf Arabs as well as with Iran is essential to end our cold war with Iran and our hot wars elsewhere in the region.  It is necessary to restore a basis for a balance of power in the Persian Gulf that can relieve us of the burden of permanently garrisoning it.  We should be looking to internationalize the burden of assuring security of access to energy supplies and freedom of navigation in the region.  We should be using the United Nations to forge a coalition of great powers and Muslim states to contain and crush Daesh, criminalize terrorism, and build effective international structures to deal with it.

It is time to cut a knot or two in the Middle East. Enough is now enough.

Sayyed Nasrallah to KSA: Enough for Aggression, You’re to Face Great Threats…Yemenis Victorious

Zeinab Essa 

17-04-2015 | 20:08

Hizbullah Secretary General His Eminence Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah sent on Friday a clear message to the Saudi kingdom by saying: Enough for Aggression.

Addressing the huge crowd of people at Sayyed Shuhadda complex in Dahyieh [Southern Suburbs of Beirut] under the title, “Rally for Supporting Yemen: A Word of Right in Face of a Brutal Tyrant”, Sayyed Nasrallah declared that Hizbullah’s position is not the position of deaf hearts.

“We declare our rejection and condemnation to the US-Saudi aggression on Yemen as we reiterate our solidarity and sympathy with the oppressed people of Yemen,” he said.
In parallel, His Eminence stated: “Nothing will stop us, neither repercussions nor threats, from declaring our condemnation to the US-Saudi aggression on Yemen and our support and solidarity with the people of Yemen.”

According to Sayyed Nasrallah: “It is our human, jihadist and religious duty to take this stance and all the sons of this nation must reassess their responsibilities and take the appropriate stance. Intimidation or threats will not prevent us from continuing to declare our condemnation of the aggression against Yemen.”

“They say it’s a war of Arabs. However, have the Arab people authorized them to wage a war on Yemen? This is a war against an Arab people.”

On the anniversary of the “Israeli” 1996 “Grapes of Wrath aggression on Lebanon”, Sayyed Nasrallah said: “We stand with reverence before the sacrifices of our people in Lebanon, especially in its South. The Zionist enemy waged the Grapes of Wrath aggression against Lebanon with Arab and Western blessing and our army and resistance stood in its face.”

“This paved the way for the 2000 victory, which transferred Arabs from the era of defeat to the era of victories,” he asserted.

Responding to the Saudi claims for the reasons of the aggression, Sayyed Nasrallah clarified that “the war’s real objective is restoring the Saudi-American hegemony over Yemen, as I have already announced.”

In addition, His Eminence called those who talk about the so-called “War of Arabs”, “look to their [Yemeni people’s] dialect, language, eloquence, nobility, courage, generosity and presence, if the Yemeni people were not from the Arabs, who are the Arabs?””No one accepts to label the events in Yemen as a Shiite-Sunni war other than those who are controlled by money,” he mentioned, noting that “Yemenis do not need to prove their Arab or Islamic identity and those invading Yemen today must seek to verify their Arab identity.”

Moreover, the Resistance Leader wondered: “Does defending the Yemeni people means to kill the Yemenis?”

“They are saying that they are defending the Yemeni state. They are doing this through bombing the state’s administrations, airports, ports and military bases. Is this how you defend the state?”

On this level, Sayyed Nasrallah stressed: “They said that the war’s objective is to defend the Yemeni people. They are defending the Yemeni people through an air and sea blockade against 42 million Yemenis, who are being left without food, water or medical aid.”

On the claims that the US-Saudi aggression was waged to protect the Holy mosques in al-Madina and Macca, His Eminence asked: “Who is threatening the Two Holy Mosques? Ansarullah? The Yemenis? I can confirm to you that there is a threat against the Two Holy Mosques, but it is coming from Daesh [ISIL], which after declaring a caliphate in Mosul announced that it will demolish the Holy Kaaba.”

“After the founding king seized control of Hijaz, his Wahhabi followers – inspired by their culture – demolished all historic artifacts that have to do with the Prophet in April 1926,” he mentioned.

Moreover, Hizbullah Secretary General wondered: “Where did the ideology of the groups that are destroying societies and countries come from? From which school of thought and books? From whose culture and fatwas? Who is spreading this ideology across the world? Who is building schools all over the world to teach Muslim youths this destructive, takfiri ideology? Very clearly it is Saudi Arabia. It is using the pilgrimage revenues in the process.”

In addition, Sayyed Nasrallah highlighted: “They claimed that the objective is to prevent the arrival of the Yemeni army and People’s Committees to Aden, but failed.”

“They said that the goal of the aggression is to prevent the arrival of the army to the rest of the provinces and that also failed, and the provinces have become in the hands of the Yemeni army and al-Qaeda retreated. They said that the goal is to break the will of the Yemeni people and to subject it to conditions, but the Yemenis showed a great steadfastness.”

He further said: “Remember the July War and observe the resemblance. A fierce media campaign was waged, but we “the adventurers” emerged victorious. It is the same war, same thinking and same management and the outcome will be the same.”

“Does anyone believe that this war’s objective is to return Abedrabbo Mansour to the presidency?” His Eminence questioned.

On another note, Sayyed Nasrallah hailed the Yemeni people and the revolutionary leadership of Ansar Allah, “This Great Leader Sayyed Abdul-Malik Badriddine al-Houthi, now has the chance to attack and infiltrate into Saudi Arabia. However, he doesn’t because he is performing what is called a strategic patience.”

He also predicted that the only outcome of the Saudi offensive is failure: “After 28 days of aerial and naval bombardment, fierce airstrikes and all forms of intelligence and logistical support that were offered by the Americans, there has been failure to return Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi to Yemen, as he is still in Riyadh.”

To the Saudis, Sayyed Nasrallah said: “The tribal community doesn’t forget its victims … Because of this aggression, Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi has lost any chance to return to the presidency, and any political settlement cannot return him to the presidency.”

“Yemenis so far did not go to their true choices. Till now the Yemenis did nothing. But you [the Saudis] have reached to the end of the line. You have no solution but to go to a ground invasion.”

As His Eminence clarified that the ground offensive is futile and the aggressors’ defeat is obvious, he urged the Yemenis to only depend on their resilience, which will defeat the aggression. “They must also prepare for a political solution but the war must stop first.”

As for the consequences of the aggression, Sayyed Nasrallah confirmed that the intervention countered the desired outcome by aggravating the threat against Saudi Arabia.

“You turned a possible threat to an absolute one. You have taken yourself towards greater threats,” he said, addressing the Saudi regime.

“It’s going to take time for Saudi Arabia to realize that the Yemeni people will not kneel,” he asserted, and pointed out that “but at the moment, no one is listening to calls for a political settlement and calls for dialogue.”

Meanwhile, Hizbullah Secretary General emphasized that “the Saudis have failed to turn the confrontation into a domestic confrontation between the North and the South, and the result was a national posture in the face of the aggression.”

“I do not want to open old files. What did the “kingdom of goodness” do in the Lebanese civil war in 1982, 1984 and 2006?”

On the international level, Sayyed Nasrallah confirmed that “most voices in the world have demanded an end to the war and called for a political solution.”

He advised those leading this war to show modesty and seek an exit. “It’s time to talk clearly, not a war by proxy. The Saudi Ambassador in Washington declared a war, and the Saudi army bombards, destroys, and kills.”

His Eminence also added: “Although we call for a political solution. It is time for the Muslims, Arabs and the world to stand and to tell the Saudis: Enough.”

“It’s about time Muslims and Arabs told Saudi Arabia enough is enough.”

To the Saudi people, Sayyed Nasrallah explained that “all what we want for Saudi Arabia is security and prosperity and we want stability for its people.”

However, he called for rescuing Yemen from this tragedy.

Commenting on Pakistan’s refrain from joining the US-Saudi strikes against the Yemeni people, he thanked the Pakistani government over its refusal to join the war.

In parallel, His Eminence called on Pakistan and the Egyptian leadership not to be partners in the war, “the same as they along with India prevented the demolition of the Holy Prophet’s grave in 1920.”

“I thank Syria today the same as I thanked it on March 8, 2005. Thank you for remaining resilient and thank you for not surrendering.”

On the Iranian position from the aggression against Yemen, the Resistance Leader revealed that “Iran is ready and it believes in dialogue with the Islamic states and with Saudi Arabia, but the latter is being stubborn because it has failed in all countries – in Iraq, Syria and Lebanon – and it is seeking a success before going to the table of negotiations.”

On the internal Front, Sayyed Nasrallah called on some parties in Lebanon not to do wrong calculations and not to prematurely declare the victory of the Firmness Storm campaign. “We do not want to have a dispute over Yemen in Lebanon.”

“Yemen, will be like Syria, let us have our own thoughts, and let us express our differences. We want to live together, continue together and work together. We should work together, like we did to protect Lebanon from the conflict in Syria, in order to protect Lebanon from a spillover from Yemen,” he concluded.

Source: al-Ahed news

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Yemen and The Militarization of Strategic Waterways

Securing US Control over Socotra Island and the Gulf of Aden

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky

Global Research, April 04, 2015

Global Research 7 February 2010

This article was first published by GR more than five years ago sheds light on America’s unspoken military agenda: the control over strategic waterways  (GR Ed. M. Ch)

“Whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean would be a prominent player on the international scene.” (US Navy Geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred Thayus Mahan (1840-1914))

The Yemeni archipelago of Socotra in the Indian Ocean is located some 80 kilometres off the Horn of Africa and 380 kilometres South of the Yemeni coastline. The islands of Socotra are a wildlife reserve recognized by (UNESCO), as a World Natural Heritage Site. 

Socotra is at the crossroads of the strategic naval waterways of the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (See map below). It is of crucial importance to the US military.

MAP 1

Among Washington’s strategic objectives is the militarization of major sea ways. This strategic waterway links the Mediterranean to South Asia and the Far East, through the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden.

It is a major transit route for oil tankers. A large share of China’s industrial exports to Western Europe transits through this strategic waterway. Maritime trade from East and Southern Africa to Western Europe also transits within proximity of Socotra (Suqutra), through the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. (see map below). A military base in Socotra could be used to oversee the movement of vessels including war ships in an out of the Gulf of Aden.

“The [Indian] Ocean is a major sea lane connecting the Middle East, East Asia and Africa with Europe and the Americas. It has four crucial access waterways facilitating international maritime trade, that is the Suez Canal in Egypt, Bab-el-Mandeb (bordering Djibouti and Yemen), Straits of Hormuz (bordering Iran and Oman), and Straits of Malacca (bordering Indonesia and Malaysia). These ‘chokepoints’ are critical to world oil trade as huge amounts of oil pass through them.” (Amjed Jaaved, A new hot-spot of rivalry, Pakistan Observer, July 1, 2009)

MAP 2

Sea Power

From a military standpoint, the Socotra archipelago is at a strategic maritime crossroads. Morever, the archipelago extends over a relatively large maritime area at the Eastern exit of the Gulf of Aden, from the island of Abd al Kuri, to the main island of Socotra. (See map 1 above and 2b below) This maritime area of international transit lies in Yemeni territorial waters. The objective of the US is to police the entire Gulf of Aden seaway from the Yemeni to Somalian coastline. (See map 1).

MAP 2b

Socotra is some 3000 km from the US naval base of Diego Garcia, which is among America’s largest overseas military facilities.

The Socotra Military Base

On January 2nd, 2010, President Saleh and General David Petraeus, Commander of the US Central Command met for high level discussions behind closed doors.

The Saleh-Petraeus meeting was casually presented by the media as a timely response to the foiled Detroit Christmas bomb attack on Northwest flight 253. It had apparently been scheduled on an ad hoc basis as a means to coordinating counter-terrorism initiatives directed against “Al Qaeda in Yemen”, including “the use [of] American drones and missiles on Yemen lands.”

Several reports, however, confirmed that the Saleh-Petraeus meetings were intent upon redefining US military involvement in Yemen including the establishment of a full-fledged military base on the island of Socotra. Yemen’s president Ali Abdullah Saleh was reported to have “surrendered Socotra for Americans who would set up a military base, pointing out that U.S. officials and the Yemeni government agreed to set up a military base in Socotra to counter pirates and al-Qaeda.” (Fars News. January 19, 2010)

On January 1st, one day before the Saleh-Petraeus meetings in Sanaa, General Petraeus confirmed in a Baghdad press conference that “security assistance” to Yemen would more than double from 70 million to more than 150 million dollars, which represents a 14 fold increase since 2006. (Scramble for the Island of Bliss: Socotra!, War in Iraq, January 12, 2010. See also CNN January 9, 2010, The Guardian, December 28, 2009).

This doubling of military aid to Yemen was presented to World public opinion as a response to the Detroit bomb incident, which allegedly had been ordered by Al Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

The establishment of an air force base on the island of Socotra was described by the US media as part of the “Global war on Terrorism”:

“Among the new programs, Saleh and Petraeus agreed to allow the use of American aircraft, perhaps drones, as well as “seaborne missiles”–as long as the operations have prior approval from the Yemenis, according to a senior Yemeni official who requested anonymity when speaking about sensitive subjects. U.S. officials say the island of Socotra, 200 miles off the Yemeni coast, will be beefed up from a small airstrip [under the jurisdiction of the Yemeni military] to a full base in order to support the larger aid program as well as battle Somali pirates. Petraeus is also trying to provide the Yemeni forces with basic equipment such as up-armored Humvees and possibly more helicopters.” (Newsweek,  Newsweek, January 18, 2010, emphasis added)

Existing runway and airport

US Naval Facility?

The proposed US Socotra military facility, however, is not limited to an air force base. A US naval base has also been contemplated.

The development of Socotra’s naval infrastructure was already in the pipeline. Barely a few days prior (December 29, 2009) to the Petraeus-Saleh discussions (January 2, 2010), the Yemeni cabinet approved a US$14 million loan by Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development (KFAED) in support of the development of Socotra’s seaport project.

MAP 3

The Great Game

The Socotra archipelago is part of the Great Game opposing Russia and America.

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union had a military presence in Socotra, which at the time was part of South Yemen.

Barely a year ago, the Russians entered into renewed discussions with the Yemeni government regarding the establishment of a Naval base on Socotra island. A year later, in January 2010, in the week following the Petraeus-Saleh meeting, a Russian Navy communiqué “confirmed that Russia did not give up its plans to have bases for its ships… on Socotra island.” (DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia), January 25, 2010)

The Petraeus-Saleh January 2, 2010 discussions were crucial in weakening Russian diplomatic overtures to the Yemeni government.

The US military has had its eye on the island of Socotra since the end of the Cold War.

In 1999, Socotra was chosen “as a site upon which the United States planned to build a signal intelligence system….” Yemeni opposition news media reported that “Yemen’s administration had agreed to allow the U.S. military access to both a port and an airport on Socotra.” According to the opposition daily Al-Haq, “a new civilian airport built on Socotra to promote tourism had conveniently been constructed in accordance with U.S. military specifications.” (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pennsylvania), October 18, 2000)

The Militarization of the Indian Ocean

The establishment of a US military base in Socotra is part of the broader process of militarization of the Indian Ocean. The latter consists in integrating and linking Socotra into an existing structure as well as reinforcing the key role played by  the Diego Garcia military base in the Chagos archipelago.

The US Navy’s geostrategist Rear Admiral Alfred T. Mahan had intimated, prior to First World War, that “whoever attains maritime supremacy in the Indian Ocean [will] be a prominent player on the international scene.”.(Indian Ocean and our Security).

What was at stake in Rear Admiral Mahan’s writings was the strategic control by the US of major Ocean sea ways and of the Indian Ocean in particular: “This ocean is the key to the seven seas in the twenty-first century; the destiny of the world will be decided in these waters.”

MAP 4

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal,  which hosts the award winning website:www.globalresearch.ca . He is the author of the international best-seller “The Globalisation of Poverty and The New World Order”. He is contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, member of the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

Related Global Research Article: See Rick Rozoff,  U.S., NATO Expand Afghan War To Horn Of Africa And Indian Ocean, Global Research,  8 January 2010.

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AMERICA’S “WAR ON TERRORISM”

by Michel Chossudovsky

CLICK TO ORDER

America’s “War on Terrorism”

In this new and expanded edition of Michel Chossudovsky’s 2002 best seller, the author blows away the smokescreen put up by the mainstream media, that 9/11 was an attack on America by “Islamic terrorists”.  Through meticulous research, the author uncovers a military-intelligence ploy behind the September 11 attacks, and the cover-up and complicity of key members of the Bush Administration.

The expanded edition, which includes twelve new chapters focuses on the use of 9/11 as a pretext for the invasion and illegal occupation of Iraq, the militarisation of justice and law enforcement and the repeal of democracy.

According to Chossudovsky, the  “war on terrorism” is a complete fabrication based on the illusion that one man, Osama bin Laden, outwitted the $40 billion-a-year American intelligence apparatus. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalisation is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

Chossudovsky peels back layers of rhetoric to reveal a complex web of deceit aimed at luring the American people and the rest of the world into accepting a military solution which threatens the future of humanity.

The last chapter includes an analysis of the London  7/7 Bomb Attacks.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Unbelievable: “ISIS beheads to save American lives”, says radical preacher

 

Published on Monday, 15 December 2014

Source 

The so-called Islamic State’s bloody campaign of public beheadings is actually intended to save American lives, Britain’s most notorious Islamic cleric declared in a radio interview Sunday.

“One of the primary reasons why you see what you are seeing on your own television and Internet is to try to end the war quickly,” stated radical preacher Anjem Choudary when asked to justify the ISIS beheadings.

“This kind of terrorizing and horrifying the enemy is saying to them, ‘Look don’t engage with them. Stay away.’ This is supposed to be something which drives the enemy away and therefore saves many lives.”

Anjem Choudary

Choudary was speaking on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio” on New York’s AM 970 The Answer, audio of which was obtained in advance by WND.

Choudary, founder of the banned terrorist supporting group Al Muhajiroun, attempted to use the Quran to justify the ISIS beheadings, which until now include the public executions of two American journalists as well as one American and two British aid workers.

On Friday it was reported ISIS beheaded four Christian children in Iraq for refusing to denounce Jesus and convert to Islam, according to the leader of the Anglican church in Baghdad.

Speaking to Klein, Choudary quoted chapter 8 verse 60 of the Quran, which states:

“And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may terrify the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know [but] whom Allah knows. And whatever you spend in the cause of Allah will be fully repaid to you, and you will not be wronged.”

Choudary continued:

“I mean, you may see in Somalia with the film ‘Black Hawk Down’ that the Americans withdrew because they could not tolerate what was taking place to their own soldiers.

“And you now however gruesome it may seem, you know, the propaganda element and the kind of terrorizing effect of this cannot be denied … it is intended to have that effect. To say, ‘Look don’t come to the area.’”

Choudary praised France, Italy and Turkey for engaging in hostage exchanges.

“And yet,” he added, “the Americans and British refused and obviously you can see the consequences of that.”

Source: wnd.com

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

IS AND THE IDF: CANADA’S DOUBLE STANDARD

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2014 AT 10:51AM GILAD ATZMON

By Eric Walberg

http://ericwalberg.com/

Why can westerners join the IDF while westerners joining IS are despised and killed? In what sense is the IDF scenario any less reprehensible than the IS one?

In recent weeks there has been a spate of articles about western youth flocking to Syria and now Iraq to join the IS “caliphate”. An estimated 11,000 such fighters have already made the leap. Up to 130 Canadians have joined them, including Hamiltonian York University student, Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, a Somalian Canadian, known to his friends and family as sociable and well-adjusted, wearing the latest fashions, listening to pop music and watching teen movies like all the rest of Canada’s multicultural happy family.

Mohamud Mohamed Mohamud, pictured here, is a 20-year-old Hamilton man beleived to have been killed while fighting for ISIS in northern Syria. (Calamada.com)

In September, Mohamud was declared the first Canadian killed by US-backed Kurdish forces in Syria.

As Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper enthusiastically volunteers Canadian bombers and ground forces — 70 of the proposed 600-member contingent are already there — soon Canadian soldiers will be targeting Canadian jihadists like Mohamud far from home. Few Canadians feel that Canada’s Afghanistan mission, which killed 158 and has left almost 2,000 Canadian soldiers traumatized and wounded, produced anything of value for Afghans. Nor does anyone believe that it contributed to Canada’s security, which is presumably the purpose of armed forces. Now he is eager to repeat this disaster, even as frustrated Canadian youth react by joining the latest jihad against western occupation of the Middle East.

Both Mohamud and Harper’s commitment to multiculturalism is clearly skin deep. Mohamud actually believes that Islam is special, that the West intends to destroy it, and he came to reject western pop culture as undermining his faith. For Harper, multiculturalism is the glue that binds Canadians to the US-regulated global market, where countries like Canada have a privileged economic place. He can’t really believe Canadian war planes killing Iraqis — and Canadians — will somehow improve the situation in Iraq.

On the contrary, the jingoism generated by fighting a war far from home is a great vote-getter as Harper prepares for the next election in 2015. As in Afghanistan, once the troops are there and dying, “patriotic” Canadians will support them — and those returning in body bags, even though deep down, like Harper, no one believes their sacrifice does anyone any good. Good for Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, who actually called Harper on his latest foreign policy fiasco-in-the-making:

“Once again [Harper] relied on rhetoric rather than facts and information. He has no plan, he has not justified his case for going to war in Iraq.”

Youth such as Mohamud are denounced as misguided and naïve. But they are really just responding to the West’s cynical call to overthrow the Syrian government, a decades-old western policy and still the goal of the US government, despite President Bashir Assad being the main force resisting IS.

It is hard to believe that behind Mohamud’s angelic face lurks a bloodthirsty head-chopper intent on ethnically cleansing Shia, Christians and secularists. Yet he is officially a “terrorist”, and the Canadian soldiers already on the ground in Iraq are officially the good guys, now tracking down the Mohamuds and killing them without compunction, to the applause of the western media.

Yes, Mohamud went illegally to a foreign country to fight in an illegal war, as defined by western politicians. Why was he eager to go there, abandoning the safety and economic prosperity his family had achieved for him in Canada? Where were such jihadists even 50 years ago? Why now?

The answer of course is “Israel”. The violent occupation of Arab lands in 1948 was bad enough, but the seizure and rapid colonization of all of Palestine since 1967 radicalized the Middle East and became a rally cry for jihad by Muslims around the world. The momentum is still building and will keep on building as long as Israel is doing what it’s doing.

Though IS is busy now creating a caliphate where there is the least resistance — Syria and Sunni Iraq, its goal is to oust not only Shia and Christians, but all Jews from Palestine. From the start, Israel’s actions have been and continue to be “illegal” in light of international law, and they will continue to inspire such jihadists long into the apocalyptic future.

So what about the steady stream of Jewish youth “making Aliyah” (the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to the land of Israel), following almost the same physical journey as the Mohamuds, and like the Mohamuds, picking up guns to fight the enemy? Why can’t they be nice multicultural Canadians, observing their rituals in quiet Canadian suburbs, just as most Canadian Muslims quietly observe their rituals without killing anyone?

Because Jews around the world have the legally recognized option of supporting Israel’s jihad against its Muslim neighbors. Yes, jihad, because Eretz Israel (Greater Israel) is still aggressively expanding, 70 years after it was founded. Israel has no agreed borders, calling itself a “Jewish state” where Jewish is defined according to racial heritage rather than religious belief (Israel’s founder, Ben Gurion was a self-proclaimed atheist).

Canadians with Jewish ancestry can hop on a plane for Tel Aviv and receive citizenship and an Israeli passport automatically at the border, a privilege which no other Canadian ethnicity enjoys. If you are between 18 and 49, you will also be expected to serve in the army. For some Jewish youth eager for adventure, this is part of the lure if Israel:

go there, get a gun and legally kill Arabs “in defense of Israel”.

And if the discomforts of life in Israel become too frustrating, book a return flight to Toronto and relax in your quiet suburban home, far from the fighting. No questions asked.

This defies international law, where citizens should have equal rights regardless of race, and a government is expected to negotiate acceptable borders with its neighbors. Yet, unlike IS, Israel and its Canadian armed supporters face no international sanctions.

Why are such youth tolerated and even lauded in the West while the Mohamuds are despised and killed? In what sense is the IDF scenario any less reprehensible than the IS one? Avram is acting much like his jihadist counterpart Mohamud, looking for adventure, for a chance to expand the territories of Greater Israel, just as Mohamud is eager to expand the caliphate.

Who is the real terrorist?

The answer is of course “both”.

Both are pursuing a war to violently expand their territories in defiance of international law. But western culture lauds Israel and lets Avram literally get away with murder while demonizing Mohamud. Avram will now be assisted by Canadian soldiers to kill fellow Canadians like Mohamud.

To fight terrorism, both Mohamud and Avram must be discouraged. In fact, if Israel is made to abide by international law, the Mohamuds would not be duped into joining a dubious campaign which is far from the original Quranic intent of jihad. That brand of terrorism would dry up overnight.

Instead, this steady stream of Aliyah-makers and jihadists will continue, and in both cases the blowback from their violence will eventually visit Canada, bringing battle-hardened killers — Muslims and Jews — back to Canadian soil, some suffering from post-traumatic stress and capable of perpetrating “terrorist” attacks in peaceful Canada. And they will be joined by the thoroughly legal Canadian soldiers, sent to Muslim lands to fight jihadists, only to return to face an uncertain future in Canada, suffering from their own traumas.

US’ anti-ISIS campaign: Emulating the ‘success’ in Somalia and Yemen?

The United States and its Arab allies unleashed deadly bomb and missile strikes on jihadists in Syria on Tuesday, opening a new front in the battle against the Islamic State group. (Photo: AFP)

By: Adam Hudson

Published Thursday, September 25, 2014

US President Barack Obama pointed to “successful” campaigns in Yemen and Somalia as models for his strategy to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). But in both countries, US military action has only worked to embolden extremist groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and al-Shabaab.

Recently, US President Barack Obama gave a speech delineating his strategy to eliminate ISIS, the militant group that has taken over swaths of eastern Syria and northern and western Iraq. One part of Obama’s speech was particularly galling and revealing in terms of what it says about US military strategy:

“But I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil. This counterterrorism campaign will be waged through a steady, relentless effort to take out ISIL wherever they exist, using our air power and our support for partner forces on the ground. This strategy of taking out terrorists who threaten us, while supporting partners on the front lines, is one that we have successfully pursued in Yemen and Somalia for years.”

This means the Obama administration is modeling its military campaign in Iraq and Syria on its campaigns in Yemen and Somalia – air and drone strikes, missile attacks, training and supporting local forces, and missions conducted by special operations forces. Since entering office in 2009, President Obama has favored this style of militarism. It projects American power with less financial cost and risk to US military personnel. So it is no surprise that he would implement the same strategy in Iraq and Syria.

This means the Obama administration is modeling its military campaign in Iraq and Syria on its campaigns in Yemen and Somalia – air and drone strikes, missile attacks, training and supporting local forces, and missions conducted by special operations forces.

But for him to call the US military campaigns in Yemen and Somalia “successful” completely obliterates history as US militarism in Yemen and Somalia has been far from triumphant. The impacts of US militarism, particularly the killing of civilians, has emboldened groups like al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) in Yemen and al-Shabaab in Somalia. To duplicate that strategy essentially means that the US will swell, rather than quell, ISIS.

US intelligence agencies and many counterterrorism experts say that ISIS is not an immediate threat to the United States. They even point out that ISIS could become a threat if the US launches a military action against them. But this has not stopped the march to war.

However, the latest American military adventure in Iraq and Syria has less to do with mitigating extremist threats and more to do with protecting US “interests” in the region. One of those “interests” is oil. ISIS’ presence in northern Iraq puts it dangerously close to the city of Erbil, the oil-rich capital of the Kurdish Regional Government. American oil and gas companies ExxonMobil and Chevron have contracts to drill in Kurdistan. Along with the oil companies come American facilities and personnel like “the usual contractors, the oilfield service companies, the accountants, the construction firms, the trucking firms, and, at the bottom of the economic chain, diverse entrepreneurs digging for a score,” according to the New Yorker. ISIS may not be a threat to domestic American security, but its presence could upset the flow and American control of Iraqi oil, which is something the United States is deeply concerned about.

Before Obama’s speech, by September 10, US Air Force and Navy aircrafts had already flown more than 2,700 missions in Iraq, including 156 airstrikes. As of now, the US has launched around 190 airstrikes in Iraq since bombing began in August. These strikes will increase as the US military campaign continues.

Recently, the United States, along with Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, launched airstrikes against ISIS targets in Syria, marking the beginning of a longer military campaign.

Meanwhile, the United States unilaterally fired Tomahawk cruise missiles at an al-Qaeda splinter group called theKhorasan Group in sites near Aleppo. The US government alleges Khorasan – largely unknown by the public until now – was plotting “imminent” attacks against the West. However, it is likely that the threat is overblown. Keep in mind that the Obama administration destroyed the meaning of the word “imminent” to the point where, according to aWhite House memo, in order to launch a strike against al-Qaeda and its affiliates, it is not required to have “clear evidence that a specific attack on US persons and interests will take place in the immediate future.” As of this writing, while US airstrikes hit dozens of militant targets, they also killed at least 10 civilians, according to the Syrian Human Rights Committee.

The United States already has 1,600 troops in Iraq, mainly special operations forces to protect US personnel and facilities and advise Iraqi and Kurdish fighters. As the war continues, the US may put more. The US government insists these troops will not serve a combat mission but, rather, focus on advising local forces. Should airstrikes not work, the US military might recommend sending ground troops to join Iraqi and Kurdish forces in combat missions against ISIS. However, according to a Daily Beast eye-witness report, American special operations commandos are already on the ground fighting in Iraq alongside Iraqi and Kurdish forces despite President Obama’s assurancesthat the US will not get bogged down in another ground war in Iraq and Syria.

Along with the US Congress’ 2002 Iraq invasion resolution, the Obama administration is using the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) to justify military action in Iraq and Syria. Passed merely days after 9/11, the AUMF authorized the President to use “all necessary and appropriate force” against those responsible for or who aided the 9/11 attacks. This makes it the legal linchpin for the global war on terror.

As of this writing, while US airstrikes hit dozens of militant targets, they also killed at least 10 civilians, according to the Syrian Human Rights Committee.

For military action in Syria, the Obama administration’s twist of the 2002 Iraq resolution is particularly clever. Administration officials told the New York Times, that “the 2002 Iraq war authorization can be read in part as promising to help foster a stable, democratic government in Iraq, which would include defending it from terrorist attacks.”

However, the AUMF has been stretchedfar beyond its original mandate. It is now used to go after groups neither responsible for, nor active at the time of the 9/11 attacks, such as AQAP and al-Shabaab. The AUMF is used to support drone strikes and other special operations in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia. To do this, the Obama administration stretched the AUMF to cover not just al-Qaeda and the Taliban but also “associated forces”, or co-belligerents, of those groups. This makes it apply to AQAP, al-Shabaab, and other Islamic militant groups. Thus, not only is the Obama administration applying the Yemen and Somalia military strategies to Iraq, it is also using the same legal authority to justify it. This is despite ISIS being a different and antagonistic organization to al-Qaeda.

Somalia: Strengthening al-Shabaab through air strikes

The covert US war in Somalia has been destructive and counterproductive. On September 1, a US airstrike killed al-Shabaab leader Ahmed Abdi Godane in a vehicle and compound south of Mogadishu. Months before that, in late January, another US airstrike killed Godane’s associate Ahmed Mohammed Amey. The US government presented Godane’s death as a major success. After confirming Godane’s death, Pentagon press secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said, “Removing Godane from the battlefield is a major symbolic and operational loss to al-Shabaab.”

However, al-Shabaab quickly overcame that “major symbolic and operational loss.” A few days after Godane’s death, al-Shabaab appointed a new leader to replace him – a man named Ahmed Umar, also known as Abu Ubaidah. So the US killed one al-Shabaab leader who was then quickly replaced by someone else. Success?

The story of al-Shabaab’s rise goes back almost a decade. After 9/11, the United States formed a strong alliance with Ethiopia. In 2008, the US gave the country $1 billion in aid, making Ethiopia one of the largest African recipients of American aid. As a predominantly Christian country bordered by Muslim countries, such as Somalia, with alleged ties to al-Qaeda, Ethiopia was seen by the US as a natural ally in the global “war on terror.”

In 2006, the Islamic Court Union (ICU) – a loose organization of Islamic judiciaries – rose to power in Somalia and provided a sense of order during a time of great instability, which earned it substantial support among Somalis. Meanwhile, the United States and Ethiopia suspected the ICU had ties to al-Qaeda and other Islamic militant groups and sought to eliminate it. However, at the time, there were very few al-Qaeda fighters in Somalia. Al-Shabaab was one faction, among 13, of the ICU but had very little power.

The covert US war in Somalia has been destructive and counterproductive.

Initially, Ethiopia was hesitant to invade Somalia because it lacked the resources to implement such a large military operation. But thanks to US pressure, it did. In December 2006, Ethiopia, withsubstantial American help, invaded and occupied Somalia until 2009. During the war, the US provided Ethiopian troops with intelligence, training, weapons, andlaunched its own airstrikes against alleged Islamic militant fighters that wound up killing civilians in the process. The Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia was essentially a US proxy war in the Horn of Africa.

The 2006-2009 US-backed Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia was a total disaster. The war killedthousands of people, including many civilians, displaced millions, and created further human suffering and turmoil in Somalia. As a result of the war’s destruction, more Somalis supported the Islamic militant group al-Shabaab. While the group preaches a very extreme branch of Islam, it also offers social services to a suffering population. Moreover, it proved itself as a formidable fighting force against the invaders. Rather than rooting out extremism, the US-backed Ethiopian war in Somalia exacerbated it.

Given these lessons, Obama’s war against ISIS will likely embolden rather than quell the group.

Now the US is waging a covert war against an enemy it helped create. The US conducts air and drone strikes, helicopter and AC-130 gunship attacks,commando raids, and backs local warlords to hunt down or kill alleged al-Shabaab fighters. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, US covert operations in Somalia, so far, havekilled about 171 people, including 48 civilians, since 2007.

Yemen: Exacerbating extremism

In Yemen, the US has waged another covert war against AQAP in the form of air and drone strikes, missile attacks, and backing Yemeni security forces. This war, like the US war in Somalia, has destabilized and inflicted further human suffering in Yemen.

America’s covert war in Yemen began when the Bush administration launched a drone strike in 2002 that killed six people, including a US citizen. Since 2009, the Obama administration ramped up that war by increasing air and drone strikes. When the Obama administration first came into office, in December 2009, it launched a cruise missile attack in southern Yemen that massacred 52 people,including 14 women and 21 children. They were mostly civilians.

The American covert war in Yemen, so far, has killedanywhere between 489 and 1,400 people, including around 200 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. However, these figures don’t tell the full story. The Obama administration considers any military-age male in a strike zone to be a “militant,” unless proven innocent after death. Drone strikes often target and kill low-level fighters involved in internal struggles in countries like Pakistan or Yemen, but who pose little threat to the United States. Targeting for drone strikes is based on tracking and metadata analysis of cell phone SIM cards rather than human intelligence. Because SIM cards often switch hands in places like Pakistan and Yemen, drone strikes often accidentally kill innocent civilians. Under Obama’s watch, US drone strikes have killed over 2,400 people in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia.

AQAP came into existence in 2009. As with the war in Somalia, US covert operations in Yemen have exacerbated, rather than deterred, extremism. In 2009, AQAP had no more than 300 fighters. By 2012, after the intensification of drone strikes, their numbers grew to over 700. The civilian deaths, trauma, and other human suffering inflicted by US drone strikes and other covert operations anger civilian populations and encourage them to support AQAP.

Given these lessons, Obama’s war against ISIS will likely embolden rather than quell the group. American military campaigns strenghtened AQAP and al-Shabaab in Yemen and Somalia respectively. The New York Times recentlyreported that American airstrikes have not pushed back ISIS from the territory it controls. If this trend continues, the United States will likely be drawn into another ground war in Iraq. This would further destabilize the region, kill more innocent people, and further devastate Iraq and Syria.

Adam Hudson is a freelance journalist and writer based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He covers US national security, war and peace issues, Guantanamo, human rights, police brutality, and institutional racism. He tweets @adamhudson5

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River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian   

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Blog!

Is the USA’s action against Al-qaeda in Africa just a cover for supporting them in Syria

http://www.legitgov.org/US-special-forces-capture-Anas-al-Liby-who-was-captured-2002

US special forces ‘capture’ Anas al-Liby who was captured in 2002 —US commando raids target Islamist leaders in Africa
06 Oct 2013

US special forces have carried out two separate raids in Africa targeting senior Islamist militants, American officials say. In Libya, US commandos captured an al-Qaeda [al-CIAduh] leader accused of the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Anas al-Liby was seized in the capital Tripoli. [Negative. Anas al-Liby was captured in 2002. Am I the *only one* who doesn’t fall for these phony ‘al-Qaeda’ raids that seem to only transpire when the US government ‘needs’ a weapon of mass distraction to cover for Wall Street’s phony budget battles and miscellaneous false flags?

Anas al-Liby was one of the FBI’s list of most-wanted. He was captured in eastern Afghanistan in January 2002. –LRP]

US Snatches Al-Qaeda Leader in Libya, Targets Shebab Commander in Somalia

Local Editor
 

US forces staged two military operations in Africa late Saturday, detaining al-Qaeda leader in Tripoli and raiding a home for Shebab commander in Somalia.

Unlike Somalia raid, the operation in Libya was successful. The US military arrested Abu Anas al-Libi, a long-sought Al-Qaeda operative indicted in the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

A separate operation raid in the southern Somali port of Barawe failed to capture a senior Shebab militant and it was unclear whether he had been killed, but a US official said several members of the Somali movement were killed.

“As the result of a US counterterrorism operation, Abu Anas al-Libi is currently lawfully detained by the US military in a secure location outside of Libya,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said in a statement.

A source close to Libi told AFP he was snatched by armed men in Tripoli.

Libi, who was on the FBI’s most wanted list with a $5 million reward, was indicted in US federal court in New York for allegedly playing a key role in the east Africa bombings.

A US official said the operation in Somalia sought to capture a “high-value” Shebab leader, and that no US personnel were injured or killed.

The operation marked the most significant US assault in Somalia since commandos killed key Al-Qaeda operative Saleh Ali Saleh Nabhan in the same area four years ago.

It followed an attack by Shebab gunmen last month on the upscale Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi that left 67 people dead during a four-day siege.

Source: AFP	06-10-2013 – 11:37 Last updated 06-10-2013 – 11:37

Mo Farah held as suspected terrorist by US customs because he was born in Somalia

British Olympic hero held as suspected terrorist by US customs

 

Mo Farah, a British citizen who won two gold medals for running during London 2012 was held by US customs when leaving the country to see his family for Christmas, as they suspected he might be a terrorist, because he was born in Somalia.
Farah, a British Olympic hero who has been awarded a CBE by the Queen, was detained for questioning in the US after border officials saw he was born in Somalia.

A CBE stands for Most Excellent Oder of the British Empire and means the person it is awarded to can be called “sir” or “dame”. It is awarded to people who have done something remarkable for the UK, in any profession or walk of life.

Farah, who won the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at London 2012, came to Britain from Somalia with his British born father as a child.

29 year old Farah moved to Portland in the northwestern US state of Oregon last year to work with his coach Alberto Salazar at Nike’s HQ. He was travelling back to spend Christmas with his wife and children. But even after presenting the overzealous officials with his two gold medals didn’t help his cause.

“I couldn’t believe it. Because of my Somali origin I get detained every time I come through US customs. This time I even got my medals out to show who I am, but they wouldn’t have it,” he told the UK newspaper the Sun.

Farah had similar problems with US customs when he tried to get a residency permit to live in Portland. Along with his family he visited Portland as a tourist, before they exited the country to go to Toronto in Canada, only then returning again as authorized residents.

When they returned they were told they were under investigation as a terrorist threat.
“Nike signed it all off and we thought it was going to be straight forward.But when we got there we got a letter telling us we were under investigation as a terrorist threat and we would have to stay away for 90 days,” Farah said.

In desperation he got in touch with Coach Alberto Salazar.

“As luck would have it Alberto has a friend who works for the FBI. This guy happens to be a massive running fan, knew exactly who I was and got it sorted then and there,” said Mo.

The New Year honors award comes after his double Olympic gold and public popularity failed to get him into the top three of the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year.

“I suppose it is a difficult one to get my head round but it doesn’t upset me. It’s because each and every person in the lineup deserved to win, it was such a strong year and Bradley Wiggins is a phenomenal athlete,” said Farah in reference to the cycling superstar who came top in the BBC’s award.

But he was ecstatic at being awarded a CBE, “I’m blown away, so honored,” he said

More here
 

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Romney’s Five Wars

Posted on 10/09/2012 by Juan Cole

 

Mitt Romney’s speech at VMI on foreign policy has been widely condemned as vague and lacking in substance, sort of like the man who gave it. But the speech is also full of suggestions and criticisms of the Obama administration that are simply not realistic. The speech is Romney’s “Mission Impossible,” only without the cool theme music and also without a prayer of being actually achievable short of launching a series of 5 wars. I’ve decided that my initial assumption that a businessman of Romney’s experience must know something about the world was dead wrong. Apparently it is possible to sit in cushy big offices in companies like Bain, and to remain completely ignorant of foreign affairs. Romney’s speeches are all just a replaying for us of the prejudices of CEOs when they play golf together and complain vaguely about the Chinese, Russians, Arabs, and so forth. Or, maybe Romney has gotten so many campaign contributions from arms manufacturers that he can’t help see foreign affairs through the lens of new wars he wants to fight.

1. The First War: Return to Iraq

Romney wants to send US troops back into Iraq and complained again about Obama’s “abrupt” withdrawal from that country. I don’t know how many ways there are of saying this, but it was from the beginning absolutely impossible for US troops to remain in Iraq legally. Romney apparently let Dan Senor, Bremer’s Neocon spokesman who came out to lie to us every day in Baghdad, write the following paragraph:

: “In Iraq, the costly gains made by our troops are being eroded by rising violence, a resurgent Al-Qaeda, the weakening of democracy in Baghdad, and the rising influence of Iran. And yet, America’s ability to influence events for the better in Iraq has been undermined by the abrupt withdrawal of our entire troop presence. The President tried—and failed—to secure a responsible and gradual drawdown that would have better secured our gains.”

Romney’s premise, that the US military in Iraq had some sort of ‘achievement’ that is in danger of being lost now that it is out of the country is ridiculous. The United States launched an illegal war of aggression on Iraq that virtually destroyed the country and kicked off a power vacuum that eventuated in a civil war that still continues at a low level. In 2006 when there were over 150,000 US troops in Iraq, in some months the death toll from political violence was 2500. That doesn’t even count all the armed Iraqis the US military was killing. The United States military never controlled Iraq and could never prevent bombings and attacks. When the US troops stopped patrolling major cities, the death toll promptly fell, because guerrillas were no longer setting improvised explosive devices to hit US convoys– operations that often wounded Iraqi by-standers as well.

In August, 2012, the death toll from political violence in Iraq was 164, half what it had been in July, after a crackdown by Iraqi army and police. So Romney is just wrong that there is some sort of secular trend in Iraq toward the kind of violence that had racked the country half a decade ago, and it is wrong to think that the US military was anyway primarily responsible for the end of the mass killings. What appears to have happened is that in 2006-2007, Iraqis living in mixed neighborhoods having both Sunnis and Shiites ethnically cleansed one another. Once the neighborhoods were mostly only one sect, the killing subsided (you’d have to get in your car and drive a while to find someone of a different persuasion to kill). That wasn’t a US achievement, it was a US failure!

By the way, it seems likely that more people are still being killed monthly in Mexico’s drug war than die in Iraq of sectarian strife. Does Mr. Romney want to put Woodrow Wilson’s troops back into Mexico along with W.’s troops in Iraq?

It was the then leader of the Republican Party, George W. Bush, who negotiated the December 31, 2011, deadline for withdrawing US troops from Iraq with the Iraqi parliament. Obama simply implemented the agreement Bush signed. The reason the accord had to be worked out with the Iraqi parliament was that Bush wanted to be sure that US officers and troops could not be prosecuted for military actions they undertook in Iraq. The only way to forestall such prosecutions was a bilateral agreement authorizing US troops to fight in Iraq, and signed by the Iraqi government. Simply negotiating it with the prime minister would not have made it legally solid enough to protect the troops. Their presence had to be authorized by the Iraqi legislature. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was barely able to get the agreement passed, and only succeeded because it seemed to a lot of members of parliament their best bet for ushering US troops out of the country.

For that agreement to be renegotiated so that US combat units remained in Iraq would have required another vote of parliament. The Iraqi parliament is dominated by Shiites, along with Sunnis and a minority of Kurds. The Kurds were the only group that might have voted to keep US troops in the country, and they just don’t have that many seats. The Islamic Mission (Da’wa) Party of al-Maliki, the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, and the Sadrists or followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, dominate parliament, along with Sunni nationalists. None of them wanted US troops in their country in the first place. They would never, ever have voted for a continued US troop presence in Iraq, and there would have been no way for Romney to make them do so if he had been president. His snide implication that Obama had a shot at this endeavor, and took it and missed, is just inside the beltway wishful thinking.
 
Guys! The Iraqis don’t like you. They didn’t want you in their country. They didn’t give you candy or put garlands around your neck. They killed over 4,000 of your troops, hundreds more of your contractors, and only failed to kill more because they were poorly armed compared to you.
After 8 years of ‘shaping’ Iraq, you got a Shiite government allied with Iran and Syria, the leader of which is now in Moscow seeking a $5 billion arms deal from Mr. Putin, so as to become more independent of the US. That was your best shot at empire, with hundreds of thousands of troops cycling through and a trillion dollars to play with, and it didn’t work. Because in today’s world it doesn’t work. Political-military empire is over. People are mobilized.
 
The only way for the US to dominate Iraq any more would be to re-invade the country, which would be Romney’s first war.

2. War number 2: Syria

Romney apparently wants to get deeply involved in the civil war in Syria. It is not clear why, except that he wants to differentiate himself from Obama. On Libya, he had grudgingly accepted the no-fly zone but called anything beyond that ‘mission creep’ and ‘mission muddle,’ and he thought too many resources were going into overthrowing Gaddafi. But apparently he isn’t afraid of mission creep were he to put his hand into the Syrian beehive. He said,

“The President has failed to lead in Syria, where more than 30,000 men, women, and children have been massacred by the Assad regime over the past 20 months. Violent extremists are flowing into the fight. Our ally Turkey has been attacked. And the conflict threatens stability in the region.”

He goes on to say later in the speech,

“we are missing an historic opportunity to win new friends who share our values in the Middle East—friends who are fighting for their own futures against the very same violent extremists, and evil tyrants, and angry mobs who seek to harm us. Unfortunately, so many of these people who could be our friends feel that our President is indifferent to their quest for freedom and dignity. As one Syrian woman put it, “We will not forget that you forgot about us.” It is time to change course in the Middle East . . . “

“In Syria, I will work with our partners to identify and organize those members of the opposition who share our values and ensure they obtain the arms they need to defeat Assad’s tanks, helicopters, and fighter jets.”

So, it seems clear that Romney wants to “lead” in Syria, i.e., get involved in the war there.
But the reason that not only Obama but the entirety of Europe has declined to get involved in Syria is that there is no UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. In its absence, any army that used force except in self defense would be open to being hauled before judges in the Hague or judges in some country where the judiciary claims universal jurisdiction.
 
If the US went into Syria unilaterally, the same thing would happen to Romney as happened to Bush– the US would bear all the costs and would gradually become isolated and alone in the enterprise. As for fearing that people won’t forget that the US did not come to their aid, you could equally fear all the people who will be upset that the US intervened militarily, or you could fear ingratitude even if we did intervene (there are lots of examples of both).

3. The Third War is with Iran

Romney couldn’t stop Iran’s nuclear enrichment program if he were president, any more than Obama can. That step would require an invasion and occupation of the country. Simply bombing the facilities would only briefly set them back.
Romney said,

“I will put the leaders of Iran on notice that the United States and our friends and allies will prevent them from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. I will not hesitate to impose new sanctions on Iran, and will tighten the sanctions we currently have. I will restore the permanent presence of aircraft carrier task forces in both the Eastern Mediterranean and the Gulf region—and work with Israel to increase our military assistance and coordination.
For the sake of peace, we must make clear to Iran through actions—not just words—that their nuclear pursuit will not be tolerated. I will reaffirm our historic ties to Israel and our abiding commitment to its security—the world must never see any daylight between our two nations. I will deepen our critical cooperation with our partners in the Gulf. “

)
But close cooperation with Israel against Iran would ensure that none of our Arab allies would be willing to associate themselves with such a campaign. There is a reason that George H. W. Bush kept PM Yitzhak Shamir out of the Gulf War.

And, Romney can’t tighten sanctions on Iran any further without going all the way to an actual naval blockade of Iranian commerce. The US already has a financial blockade against Iran. Blockades, like ultimatums, cause wars. Countries threatened with strangulation frequently strike out. Even more stringent sanctions and blockades risk pushing Iran into reacting violently for self-preservation.

4. The fourth war is in Afghanistan. 

Although Romney said he would wind down the war there by 2014, just as Obama has pledged, he intended to ‘remain strong’ and to ‘consult our military,’ i.e. he implicitly is reopening the question of the US withdrawal from that country. He said,

“President Obama would have you believe that anyone who disagrees with his decisions in Afghanistan is arguing for endless war. But the route to more war – and to potential attacks here at home – is a politically timed retreat that abandons the Afghan people to the same extremists who ravaged their country and used it to launch the attacks of 9/11.
I will evaluate conditions on the ground and weigh the best advice of our military commanders. And I will affirm that my duty is not to my political prospects, but to the security of the nation. ”

There is no reason for Romney to bring up his political prospects being damaged unless he is considering reneging on Obama’s pledge to get out of Afghanistan. Likewise, that is implied by his reference to ‘evaluating conditions on the ground’ and taking ‘the best advice of our military commanders.’
 
On Afghanistan, Romney is pulling an anti-Nixon. He appears to have a secret plan not to end the war in Afghanistan.

5. The small wars: 

Intervention in Yemen, Somalia, perhaps even Libya in a ‘war on terror.’
The US has hit Yemen and Somalia with drone strikes and is occasionally kind of at war in those countries, though it is a desultory, occasional, and limited sort of conflict.

Romney says that drones are not enough. What would you use in such conflicts besides drones? Infantry? The implication of being ‘more forceful’ and dismissing drone strikes is that you would support the insertion of troops into those conflicts.

Romney’s various wars would, if pursued, bankrupt the country and cause more backlash and terrorism against the United States. Romney thinks that US prestige flows from strength, defined as military might.
 
But in fact what people in the Middle East admire about the US is its values, such as democracy and the rule of law. They hate our military hubris and still have not forgiven us for what we did to Iraq.
The only positive thing about Romney’s speech was his commitment to getting a two-state solution, with a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Unfortunately, we know from his leaked fundraiser recording of last May that he intends to ‘kick the can down the road’ on the Israel-Palestine issues, and that he does not trust the Palestinians with a state. So that positive language is just lies.

Four or five wars and lots of other conflicts are not a foreign policy vision, they are a nightmare.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian
The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

Our undeclared wars in Yemen & in Somalia?!

Via FLC

“…In Somalia, the U.S. military has worked to counter the terrorist threat posed by al-Qa’ida and al-Qa’ida-associated elements of al-Shabaab. In a limited number of cases, the U.S. military has taken direct action in Somalia against members of al-Qa’ida, including those who are also members of al-Shabaab, who are engaged in efforts to carry out terrorist attacks against the United States and our interests.The U.S. military has also been working closely with the Yemeni government to operationally dismantle and ultimately eliminate the terrorist threat posed by al-Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the most active and dangerous affiliate of al-Qa’ida today. Our joint efforts have resulted in direct action against a limited number of AQAP operatives and senior leaders in that country who posed a terrorist threat to the United States and our interests…”

Posted by G, M, Z, or B at 11:21 AM

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The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

David Cameron: ‘Somalia is great threat to UK’

Rehmat’s World

Posted on December 26, 2011 |

After bombing the oil-rich Muslim Libya to stone-age, Israel-Firster UK prime minisher, David Cameron, is aiming at military intevention in another war-torn African Muslim nation, Somalia. The country lies at the core of the Horn of Africa, the newly found oil/gas rich region. Somalia is located just miles away across the Red Sea from American assets – Saudi Arabia, Israel and Yemen.

Last month, David Cameron called Somalia a “failed state that directly threatens British interests.” David Cameron has scheduled a London summit in February to bring together the countries currently active in the Horn of Africa to discuss how to address the situation. Key decisions are expected to be made on a number of issues, ranging from humanitarian aid to a possible Libya-type NATO military mission.

­Earlier this week, the UK’s international development minister, Andrew Mitchell, called for “urgent action” in the impoverished country, as “Somalia is a very direct threat to the security of the United Kingdom”. Andrew Mitchell is a member of ‘Conservatives Friends of Israel’.

Washington has increased its covert war activities in Somalia including drone attacks. It’s running a Guantanamo Bay prison in Mogadishu where thousands of Somalis are being tortured. According to Associated Press, Washington has given $45-million in military equipment to Uganda and Burundi to fund their forces in Somalia plus $24-million to Kenya, which invaded southern Somalia this year.
“Yesterday it was slavery, then colonialism and now the dictators Obama, Cameroon and Sarkozy are attempting to colonize Africa again,” said Made’ Gueu during the American Embassy protest.
“There is a huge Somali community round here that I represent, most of whom are from the South, but not all. And they are not saying to me, ‘Please, intervene!’ They are saying,’Can we please have support to get a functioning system of government and peace in Somalia?,” says Jeremy Corbin, Labour MP and UK ‘Stop the War Coalition‘ activist.

Somalia has not a functional government since 1991. Washington has a long history of interventions in Somalia – from dictator Said Barre to the ‘Black Hawk Down‘, ‘Israeli Sea piracy‘, ‘Al-Qaeda‘ to ‘War on Terror‘.

In August 2010, Gwynne Dyer wrote: “The US decision in 2006 to send Ethiopian troops into Somalia was one of the stupidest moves in a very stupid decade. Alas, the United States panicked, or at least its intelligence agencies did. The mere word “Islamic” set off alarm bells in the Bush administration, which had the lamentable habit of shooting first and thinking later”.

Watch a video below and learn from Sanum Ghafour various Hasbara terms western leaders and media use to cover their Nazi-type attrocities.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this Blog!

The last two victories

By Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban

American victories proliferated recently; and every time an American president declares victory, millions of civilians in remote countries pay the price with their lives. These victories started after 9/11 by invading Afghanistan.

About ten years of rivers of blood, Afghani civilians are still being killed daily by warplanes and drones, and life has become hell for the people of that beautiful country: drug trafficking is on the rise and corruption is widespread.

Killing civilians has crossed the borders to Pakistan where thousands pay the price of ‘democracy’, ‘freedom of speech’, ‘women empowerment’ and other slogans imported from Washington and its media circles in order to create a perception completely separated from the suffering of Afghani and Pakistani civilians who have been sinking under a deluge of killing, displacement, shelling, violence and war.

The lies repeated by George Bush to justify his invasion and occupation of Iraq: weapons of mass destruction, importing uranium and supporting al-Qaeda led to his special ‘victory’ despite the killing of a million Iraqi civilians and the destruction inflicted by the American war machine against this people in support of ‘Israel’s security’.

Events have proved that all those claims have been false and that only one fact was true. The fact was expressed by Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense – known for sanctioning torture and setting up the disgraceful Guantanamo prison camp – that the plan for invading Iraq had been on the shelf since the 1970s; and all they did was to remove the dust and update it and make compatible with the instincts of the extremists of Likud and Kadima who have been ruling Israel since they assassinated their prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, and who subscribe to the policy of subjugating the peoples of region: Arabs, Turks, Iranians and Afghanis, by military force alone and who publicly reject dialogue and peace.

American victories over Muslims then spilled out to Somalia, Yemen and Sudan, where they sowed inner fighting, siege and destruction. Work is afoot to deprive two Arab counties, Egypt and Sudan, of their historical rights in the water of the Nile; while in Palestine, Israelis are killing Palestinians, destroying their houses and even killing those who dare ride the sea to give them humanitarian assistance.

In the last two episodes of its victories, the United States focused on two major powers: Iran and Helen Thomas.

The whole world, particularly the United States, knows that Israel is the only country in the Middle East in possession of a military nuclear program, because it funded the program and provided Israel with uranium, reactors, heavy water and expertise. Despite the fact that they have been calling on Iran for years to agree to uranium swap with another country, the bizarre reaction of the United States to the agreement reached between Iran, Brazil and Turkey on fuel swap was to step up sanctions against Iran and to spend months of hard work trying to persuade Russia and China in order to secure tougher sanctions which harm the lives of Iranian civilians, despite verbal assurances that these sanctions are not targeting at the Iranian people.

There is no doubt that the sanctions against Iran target its people in the same way they targeted Iraqi civilians and in the same way they target the innocent civilians of Gaza.

Iranian religious authorities stressed more than once that Iran believes that nuclear weapons should be banned universally, and that all countries have the right to possess peaceful nuclear energy. The US president had written a letter to Turkey and Brazil asking them to mediate with Iran for the exchange of high enrichment uranium. That is why everybody was surprised when the Security Council was asked to approve the fourth patch of sanctions against Iran.

Israel ‘expressed doubts’ concerning the agreement, minutes after it was signed and insisted on sanctions against Iran which left little room for the American state department and administration but to persevere in their efforts to convince China and Russia to endorse the sanctions. For Israel, this is important partly as a means of diverting attention from the bloody crime it committed against the flotilla carrying humanitarian aid to Gaza and murdering a number of human rights activists on board.

The fate of Helen Thomas was not irrelevant to the Iran nuclear file. Did not she ask President Obama: “which, in your opinion, is the Middle-Eastern state in possession of nuclear heads?” That question was the beginning of the end of the most prominent journalist working at the White House since the Kennedy administration, and who was known for her courageous stances and sharp questions.

All that Helen Thomas did was to call for an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and a restoration of this people’s rights. She did not fire, in cold blood – like the Israeli soldiers – at the heads or chests of human rights activists carrying food and medicine to the victims of the blockade on Gaza!!

The State Department spokesman immediately considered her statements ‘disgraceful’; ‘free’ publications stopped receiving her articles and she was isolated in an incident befitting the Stalinist regime in Soviet Russia. Where is, then, the ‘democracy’ and the ‘freedom of speech’ if this is the punishment for anyone daring to express a purely political opinion?

There are not many people in the United States who have the courage of a woman approaching ninety, like Helen Thomas, who spent a lifetime expressing her convictions, but was faced, under the rule of the Zionist McCarthyism dominating the corridors of power in Washington, with the inquisitions held by the Zionist lobby with its legendary financial capacities capable of buying consciences and blackmailing politicians and journalists.

The victories achieved by the United States by imposing more sanctions against another Muslim country, which it is boasting now, will be accounted for, one day, before millions of people against whom it is inflicting disasters and tragedies only to please fanatic extremists armed with racist hatred who do not know the meaning of moral values and have no respect for human life.

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

I had a Pirate on my phone …..today

Frustrated Arab’s Diary

my newly acquired customers ,
from Somalia……all applying for a Job in Israel

My phone ran….. !!

Hello yes , I said.

The man on the other end……. said :
is that you ??

I replied :
of course it is me ,
who else did you expect, when you call me  ??
and who is talking ?? please

My name is irrelevant
but my profession is very much so ,
said the other deep voice……

What profession would that be ??, I asked.
I hope you are not a tax-collector , or a Dentist  !!

No at all !! ,
I am a Pirate from Somalia
and I need your help , knowing that you have a way with
your sarcasm and  with your political-satyrs.

How did you find out about me ,
and what brings you here ????  I enquired firmly.
are you reading in my Blog ??

The Pirate said :
I need you to help me to draw a comparison
with our piracy- activities and the operations Israel does
on the international-waters……
and to focus on the immunity and impunity on the Israeli side.
How do they succeed ??
and we ,  the Somalians , end up in prisons each time ???

You have to pay me for that advice , I am not cheap,
and I usually charge to the terrorist-organisations for my PR services
can you afford me ??

I shall give you 25% of my next robbery…..
unless it is a ship with toxic-waist
coming to unload on our shores……
answered that Pirate.

Never mind , I said ,
I shall help you this time for free
provided you let pass my next shipment of  enriched uranium
destined for Iran …..ok ??

It is a deal !!
tell us now what to say…… and what to do ??
to get immunity and impunity for us, the Somalian-pirates,
as if we were the Israelis……
replied joyfully that deep voice.

Well , it is not that complicated  ,
it is just a bit of mystisism and cheap-naiivety :
You must declare that you, the Pirates of Somalia,
are the 13Th. Lost Tribe of Israel
and that you need to steal those ships only to finance
your return to the promised land , by Air ,
first-class tickets with Egypt-Air, via Zurich first
to deposit the exxess of earned cash .

Wounderfull !!,
and do you think Israel would accept Pirates ??
asked me,  that increasenly happy voice.

My dear Pirates like you in Israel , are not an exception !!
it is rather the standart-rule……
So remember carefully :
you are the 13Th  Lost Tribe
and you are the cousins of those Ethiopian-Fallasha
and you firmly beleive in the Western-democracy´s values.
That will do !!

I hanged up………
and called immediatly my office in Tehran
to coordinate our next shipment of enriched-uranium
which will be ready next 4th of July……

Eng. Moustafa Roosenbloomadvisor to any and all evil…..

Posted by Тлакскала at 12:06 AM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian

The Two Faces of Interventionism

Link

Dr. Jekyll, Mr. Hyde, and public relations in the service of empire

by Justin Raimondo, January 20, 2010 |

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As the US military arrives in Haiti, with only the French and Hugo Chavez raising objections, our foreign policy of global intervention gets a new lease on life – especially on the home front, where it’s needed most. Even the hardest heart cannot be closed to the sight of Marines lifting the dead and the near-dead out of the rubble, handing out provisions to starving children and patrolling the lawless streets of Port au Prince amid scenes of desolation out of some post-apocalyptic Hollywood epic. We’re saving lives, not taking them. How can anyone be against that?

It isn’t the life-saving or the rubble-clearing that evokes the ire of such hard-core anti-interventionists as myself – it’s the dire prospect, confirmed by our own military and foreign policy officials, that we’ll be in Haiti for years to come. As David Wood reports over at Politics Daily: “US officials now anticipate a large and long-term US intervention in Haiti, including a major security role that will demand a commitment of troops and resources from an already stretched military.”

President René Préval is already telling the international donors conference that short-term solutions won’t be enough: the “international community” needs to stay in order to provide “long term” relief and help “build democratic institutions.” In good times dysfunctional, at best, Haiti’s government has given up even the pretext of exercising its authority: “Today there is a power vacuum, but that’s almost what the usual situation is,” says Pascal Buleon, a director of France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “There is no state.”
But of course there is a state, albeit one that doesn’t formally assert its authority, and that is the United States of America. Historically, the US has hovered over Haiti like a stern father, using both punishment and reward to steer the unruly Haitians onto the right path. This relationship is very much on the minds of Haitians, these days, and was invoked in a recent Associated Press piece:

“’We are happy that they are coming, because we have so many problems,’ said Fede Felissaint, a hairdresser. Given the circumstances, he did not even mind the troops taking up positions at the presidential palace. ‘If they want, they can stay longer than in 1915,’ he said, a reference to the start of a 19-year U.S. military presence in Haiti – something U.S. officials have repeatedly insisted they have no intention of repeating.”

Yet how they will avoid a repetition of this historical pattern is hard to say. We are already being lectured by foreigners about the need to “assume our responsibility” to nation-build, and even such an opponent of US interventionism as Eric Margolis is calling on Uncle Sam to do his duty:

“What Haiti really needs is to be again temporarily administered by a great power like the US or France. The UN should declare Haiti a protectorate of one or more of the great powers.
“This column despises all forms of imperialism. But genuine humanitarian intervention is different. US administration of Haiti may be necessary and the only recourse for this benighted nation that cannot seem to govern itself. … Most Haitians, I think, would welcome long-term US humanitarian administration…. This writer, a former soldier, prefers to see the US military saving rather than taking lives. Watching the US 82nd Airborne Division arrive in Port-au-Prince filled me with pride. That is what America is about, not bombing Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan and Somalia.
“The US will waste over $1.02 trillion this year on military operations in those nations. It can certainly afford a few hundred million dollars to rescue Haiti. But much more will be needed.”

Margolis says he “despises all forms of imperialism,” and yet it looks like some forms – the “humanitarian” form – are okay, as long as the motives of the imperialists are pure enough for his tastes.

Regardless of the motivation, however, the objective and all too predictable consequences of long-term US intervention in Haiti will benefit neither the Haitians nor the US. No humanitarian effort can be successful in the absence of security, and the 10,000 or so US troops currently in or on their way to Haiti will doubtless have to assume the security functions of the mythical Haitian “government,” which has collapsed along with most of the structures in the capital city of Port au Prince. This will inevitably lead to the US separating rival Haitian gangs, vying for power and advantage amid the ruins, and in effect becoming the de facto government of that tortured and luckless half of an island. In short, the logic of intervention will embroil the US in Haiti’s tumultuous and often murderous politics, and from that kind of quagmire there is no easy extrication.

It is also rather shortsighted of Margolis, normally a writer whom I admire, to imagine that our supposedly goodhearted rescue efforts in Haiti are unrelated to the bombing of Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, and Somalia. While the benevolent visage of the American hegemon is on full display in Haiti, pardon me if I question the purity of Washington’s motives, which are, as always, based on purely political calculations. As limbs are being amputated in the streets by doctors without benefit of anesthetics (except a bottle of vodka), Margolis informs us that “a French aircraft carrying a full operating theater was not allowed to land so that US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could fly in and make a speech.” Can’t miss that photo op!

But of course this is all about photo ops, and revamping Washington’s image in the eyes of Americans as much if not more than those of foreigners. We may be dropping bombs on Pakistan and Afghanistan, but we’re also dropping food aid and millions of dollars on Haiti – as if the latter makes up for or obscures the former. These are the two faces of interventionism, and yet there is a crucial link between Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, who are, after all, the same entity, and this is what Margolis misses.

What he and other endorsers of the “save Haiti from the Haitians” campaign have to answer is the following question: If we’re nation-building in Haiti, then why not in Afghanistan, too? Indeed, there is a parallel in the dire straits both countries find themselves in: the consequences of Afghanistan’s decades-long war, essentially a civil war stoked by numerous foreign invaders, could be likened to a natural disaster in terms of the costs and the scale of destruction: both countries are “failed states,” and Somalia, another example of US interventions of which Margolis disapproves, also fits into the same mold.

The headline on the Margolis piece – perhaps imposed by the clueless editors over at Huffpo, perhaps not – reads “Haiti Must Be Rescued From Itself.” One could easily insert Somalia, Afghanistan, and any number of similarly failed or failing states into that particular slot, and come out with an identical rationale for intervention.

Such a mindset is the very essence of modern, and specifically of American imperialism: the idea that the world must be saved from itself. But the world is too big, too unruly, and too ungrateful to be saved, from itself or anyone else: this is the bitter lesson history teaches us at every conjuncture.

Humanitarian aid is one thing: administering the country, under UN auspices or not, is quite another task, one that we should not take up – and are already taking up, even as I write these words of warning. Our “humanitarian” liberals cavil that Haiti has no government, but the problem goes much deeper: in its present state, the country is ungovernable. An inquiry into the reason for Haiti’s fate can perhaps be illuminated by asking why the other half of that Caribbean island, the Dominican Republic, is relatively stable and prosperous. Such a project, however, is far beyond the capabilities of the US military, which is a peerless fighting machine – and not so talented when it comes to advanced anthropology and sociology, in spite of its recent foray into that field.

This conception of the American military as an institution capable of performing any task, no matter how far removed from its legitimate functions, is a delusion shared by liberals and conservatives alike. It is a specifically American conceit, born of post-cold war hubris and an older tradition that can be traced all the way back to Presidents Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. “Send in the Marines!” is an almost magical invocation, a panacea capable of solving most if not all the world’s problems. Like all magical incantations, however, it is not based on reality – as we will learn in due course if our Haitian mission of mercy turns into a long-term or even medium-term project.

Not every problem has a solution: not every tragedy can be avoided or ameliorated, and certainly government – which is, in essence, armed force – is a notoriously blunt instrument, a broadsword where a surgical scalpel is what’s called for. The irony is that one of the few things we can do to immediately bring economic relief to Haiti is deemed “controversial” – abolishing trade restrictions [.pdf] imposed on Haitian products that enter the US. It’s doubtful President Obama’s union supporters will sit still for that.

River to Sea
 Uprooted Palestinian

Somalia: When is a pirate not a pirate?

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Pirates or Coast Guard?

From our friend Agustín Velloso Santisteban in Madrid.

Oh, the pirates! What a nice word. It brings us sweet memories from our childhood. Unscrupulous, merciless, astute characters, and today armed with automatic guns. We are longing to see before the High Court in Madrid, Spain, the two Somali pirates captured by our brave Atalanta operatives in the Indian Ocean on 4 October.[1]
We have had enough of the corrupt CEOs who sail towards offshore banks. We do not want to hear anymore about the prime ministers who attack and invade faraway countries. What we really want is to see real pirates. While those corsair and freebooter businessmen and politicians are well-known and still at large, you can confidently expect that the two detainees will spend a long time behind Spanish bars. Everyone knows that they are poor, black, Muslim and dared to attack a Spanish fishing boat.

PRISON PREFERABLE TO FREEDOM?
However, if you think twice, you might conclude that their future in prison is not so gloomy. First of all, they will enjoy three hot meals a day and they will see a doctor, probably for the first time in their lives. Besides, they will be spared the random bombing of their land by United States F-16s, and also the bullets shot by Ethiopians and Somalis working for imperialism.
In spite of the storytelling by NATO and European Union security high priests, who make a comfortable living out of sending troops to third world lands and seas like Somalia and the Indian Ocean, supposedly swamped by pirates on a rampage after European fishing boats, in the real world things are the other way round.
Perhaps Spanish fishers could forgive Somalis for not knowing the differences between the foreigners who approach their coasts in order to take away their fisheries, from those who land in order to impose a political regime, and both from those who just choose to dump their nuclear waste in the sea bed.
According to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Somali fishermen live in one of the world’s poorest countries. Life expectancy is approximately 48 years. Around 60 per cent of the population is illiterate, while there is no compulsory basic education law. Close to 36 per cent of infants are underweight. There are half a million refugees and another million internally displaced. Hundred of thousands undergo similar living conditions. Almost everything is scarce, especially human rights.
Unicef announces that ‘a Somali child’s chances of surviving to adulthood are among the lowest of children anywhere in the world. Add to this the fact that the odds of the child’s mother dying during pregnancy or in childbirth are also extremely high. These high death rates stem from the interaction of a number of causes set within a complex socio-political context, but are largely attributable to disease, dehydration, malnutrition, lack of safe water, and poor sanitation.’

GOOD PIRATE, BAD PIRATE
Perhaps Somalis could forgive Spanish fishers for not knowing the difference between illegally fishing in Somalia and in Norway, and not knowing the different ways each people has to protect their riches.
In 2005 a Norwegian Navy vessel seized a Galician boat illegally fishing halibut. The Navy communiqué says that ‘during the inspection we found out that the boat had big amounts of halibut hidden in its hold’. It also informs that ‘we ordered the boat to sail to Tromso (a north-western city), but the Spanish captain refused to comply with.’
Perhaps one could forgive the Norwegians for being so insistent. The very next day (20 November) they seized another Spanish fishing boat: ‘The Garoya is the second fishing boat captured in two days. It has been reported that it kept in the hold more than 100 tonnes of halibut, just like the Monte Meixueiro seized yesterday. Its captain has been charged with providing wrong information to the fishing authorities and tampering the books.’
Perhaps one could forgive Spanish mass media for not reporting these days about the story of the Spanish boats seized in the past, which took place in the seven seas. Boats have been captured by Norwegian, Moroccan, Irish, Canadian, South African, British patrol boats.
It is also rather ironic that the British engage today in chasing Spanish pirates, although they could be forgiven for this, since classical Spanish author Lope de Vega and Literature Nobel Prize winner Garcia Marquez – as well as various film directors – were inspired by Sir Francis Drake.

THE STATE OF SOMALIA
Somalia has not had a real government in the last fifteen years. During this period, the king of the seas (and indeed of the sky and the whole world), the greatest pirate of all times, ordered yet another military operation in Somalia.
Siad Barre, former Somalia president, was a client of the Soviets during the seventies, but this did not prevent the United States from supporting him during the eighties. When the White House decided to support the warlords in their war against the Islamists from 2000 on, the US president did not hesitate.
Westerners could be forgiven for remembering (and praising through a Hollywood film) the killing of 19 marines who took part in the Mogadishu military operation carried out by the United States in the early 90s, and forgetting the approximately 1000 Somalis that were killed in the attack.
This operation capped many years of US actions in Somalia. Somalis, like other lesser peoples, enjoyed US international aid, which mainly means shipping arms to a country in order for the beneficiaries to kill each other, and at the same time providing political support to justify the killing according to the motive in fashion: Communism, drug trafficking, Islamist terror, tribal fighting and so on.
One has to add the dumping of US-subsidised agricultural produce in Somalia, and other political and economic interventions related to oil and strategic interests, to produce a ravaged nation, physically and morally devastated.
Somali seas have not been spared foreign interventions. As Johann Hari writes in ‘You are being lied to about the pirates’ (The Independent, January 9th, 2009), some Western countries have taken advantage of the lack of government in Somalia to dump their nuclear waste in its waters. For Somalis, the consequences are as harmful as the consequences of war and long lasting.
To make matters worse, Somali fishers watch huge foreign ships taking away tons of fish while they barely manage to obtain some kilos with their skiffs.
Perhaps Somali fishers could be forgiven for dreaming of their sons and daughters enjoying the riches the foreigners take away for their children.

HOW THE WEST WINS
Spanish fishers fishing in the seas around Somalia and people who eat their produce back in Spain, could be forgiven for cherishing basic wishes: Working unmolested and ingesting fish proteins respectively. They could also be forgiven for electing politicians who guarantee the fulfilment of their wishes, no matter what price, other people’s life included.
These politicians could also be forgiven for setting up a Holy Alliance with their neighbours, in order to send war boats supported by war planes to compete for food with poor Somalis in the Indian Ocean, although they could negotiate fishing permits before fishing, or even pay fines if they are caught cheating, as it has happened many times in the past with Spanish vessels.
However, it cannot be forgiven that Spanish and other Westerners – who know how Somalis are mercilessly being crushed – put the blame on Somalis and hunt them when they confront the real pirates.
Pirates have traditionally been well considered by the people, in novels and in films. How revolting they became when they took over governments and corporations.

NOTES
[1] Operation Atalanta is campaign of the European Union to stop the ‘piracy off the Somali coast’. The joint naval patrol includes vessels from Belgium, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden.
A Spanish frigate captured two of the bunch of ‘pirates’ who seized the Spanish fishing boat Alacrana, and both are now in a Spanish prison awaiting to be taken to court.

Obama Awarded the Nobel Prize for Making War With Muslims

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Posted by realistic bird under Caricature, Politics Tags: Afghanistan, Caricature, Iraq, Muslims, nobel peace prize, Obama, Pakistan, palestine, Politics, Somalia, war

{Nobel peace prize with Obama and peace with Netanyahu} by Jalal Al Rifa’i-Al Dustour newspaper-Jordan

By Abid Mustafa, source

On October 9 2009, US President Barack Obama was awarded Nobel Peace Prize for astounding services in the name of world peace. In its statement, the Nobel Committee said he had “created a new climate in international politics. …

Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world’s attention and given its people hope for a better future.” It continued, “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” Usually awards are conferred upon people when they have accomplished something tangible and not for mere pledges to achieve meaningful results. In Obama’s case he has neither achieved peace nor has he undertaken efforts to establish the foundations for world peace. On the contrary, he is a warmonger and a crusader who is spearheading America’s war against Islam and the Muslim world.

No sooner had Obama received the prize for peace he convened his war council to discuss how best to wage war in Afghanistan. “The president had a robust conversation about the security and political challenges in Afghanistan and the options for building a strategic approach going forward,” an administration official told AFP. One of the measures Obama will endorse is to increase the number of US soldiers deployed in Afghanistan. This will be on top of the huge number of private security contractors that already work for the Pentagon and are responsible for much of the mayhem and the slaughter of innocent Afghan civilians.

Obama’s war council is also deliberating options to expand America’s war in Pakistan. American officials are openly debating whether to launch missile attacks on Quetta– Baluchistan’s largest city. If the nod is given this will mark a new phase in America’s war against Pakistan and means that fortification of the US embassy in Islamabad–one of the largest in the Muslim world– will be used as the nerve centre to plan and orchestrate the killing of Muslims.

Additionally, America has mandated two private US security firms Blackwater and InterRisk to hound and terrorize Pakistanis.

In Iraq, Obama’s so called draw down policy masks a similar sinister plan that relies heavily on private security contractors to strengthen America’s military presence in the country and to compensate for the withdrawal of US troops. The private security contractors operate with complete impunity, spilling Muslim blood and humiliating ordinary Iraqis.

According to new statistics released by the Pentagon this year, there has been a 23% increase in the number of private security contractors working for the Department of Defense in Iraq in the second quarter of 2009. The figure for the same period in Afghanistan is a 29% increase. Overall, contractors (armed and unarmed) now make up approximately 50% of the “total force in Centcom AOR [Area of Responsibility].” This means there are a 242,657 contractors working on these two US wars under the leadership of commander in chief Barack Obama. This exceeds the present number of forces in Iraq and Afghanistan which amounts to 132,610 and 68,197 respectively.

Under Obama’s watch the civil war in Somalia is mushrooming at an alarming rate. The war is fuelled by Washington through the supply of US arms and weapons to the beleaguered US puppet government of Sharif Ahmed. Last month, Obama gave the signal to his military to directly intervene in Somalia and conduct air strikes against militants–very much reminiscent of America’s invasion of Somalia in 1993.

Against Iran, Obama is not advocating peace, but urging crippling sanctions that will surely hurt ordinary Iranians and incubate resentment against America for decades to come. Likewise Obama’s continued support for autocratic rulers of the Muslim world has convinced many Muslims that Obama is no different to his predecessor George Bush.

However, nowhere is Obama’s failure to deliver peace more pronounced than Palestine. As a prelude to his inauguration, Obama displayed resolute determination not to condemn Israeli savagery in Gaza. In fact, Obama’s refusal to censure Israel over war crimes has ushered in a new standard that pays pittance to the value of Muslim life, blood and honour. In office, Obama’s indifference to the Jewish state’s intransigence to halt settlements has shot down all efforts to commence pseudo peace talks.

Clearly then, Obama’s peace endeavors equate to making pieces of Muslim countries through war and bloodshed. The political climate Obama has presided over is one of intimidation and tyranny. The values Obama espouses are based on deceit and injustice. By awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama, the Nobel committee has avowed that waging war against Muslims and Islam under the guise of peace is a noble action. Obama may have captured the hearts of the Nobel committee, but amongst Muslims and much of the world, Obama epitomizes an imperialistic empire that is an enemy of humanity and world peace.

– Abid Mustafa is a political commentator who specializes in Muslim affairs.

PIRACY OFF THE PROMISED LAND

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PIRACY OFF THE PROMISED LAND: THE RAMMING

OF THE DIGNITY WITH CLEAR LETHAL INTENT

By David Halpin FRCS

April 21, 2009

Information Clearing House

Piracy 1. the practice of attacking and robbing ships at sea. Compact Oxford English Dictionary

The British have affection for Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta The Pirates of Penzance. These pirates are jolly rascals. No such description can be applied to the pirates of Somalia and even less to the Pirates of the Levant, the Israeli navy.

Wide publicity has been given to piracy in Somalian waters since Captain Phillips of the American crewed Maersk Alabama was captured. The arrival of a US missile cruiser and US destroyer added the tension and glamor required by the Hollywood confederation.

The killing of three young Somalians and the release of the captain provided the blood and the triumph for the star spattered banner.

Piracy in the Gulf of Aden and along the long shoreline of Somalia started in 1995 in response to rapacious fishing, mostly by Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean vessels.(1)

The dumping of toxic waste by European nations stoked more resentment (2).

Foreign fishing boats were the first targets, but when these got protection from local warlords, the Somalian pirates turned to commercial and cruise shipping. With at least 20,000 vessels on passage, they had plenty to choose from. Since the US navy Seals shot their men, over sixty more seamen have been taken hostage.

Chinese fishermen fighting off Somalian pirates.

In contrast to the actions of young Muslim fishermen from an impoverished and broken Somalian nation, the entity carries out its piracy under the title of the Israeli Occupation Force, out of a country with the greatest wealth and with the pretense of a fully fledged legal system. As it turns out, its maritime law is the British Maritime Law of 1856, a hangover from the British Mandate.

Why is it that little is heard of the piracy

off the coast of the Zionist entity and

the strip it dominates called Gaza?

Free Gaza advanced the sailing of its 66ft 50 tonne MV Dignity from 6 January 2009 to 29 December in response to the ‘greater shoah (holocaust)’ promised to the people of Gaza by the deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai in February 2008, this massacre having started with the killing of over two hundred people within the first fifteen minutes of the blitzkrieg on 27 December.

The British master and the Greek mate had the boat readied as fourteen passengers joined in Larnaca. One was Cynthia McKinney. This erstwhile congress woman and very recent presidential candidate had come from the US at a day’s notice.

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney

There were also two surgeons and a Palestinian physician. 3.5 tonnes of medical supplies were loaded; the majority had been given by the Cyprus government. Cypriot customs and excise officers had inspected the vessel and its cargo.

The Dignity slipped its moorings in the dark at 07.00 hrs and the two Detroit 840 hp engines drove it hard and south towards Gaza.

Two of these military vessels, under cover of darkness, attacked the Dignity

At 04.55 hrs EMT on 30 December, searchlights appeared astern. There were two Israeli gunboats. They came abreast, circled and stayed with us. These boats can do over 45 knots, carry ten tonnes of fuel and have sophisticated weapon systems including Hellfire missiles (3)

Tracer bullets were fired skywards, forming ellipses, and flares put up. At 05.30 hrs approximately, one gunboat was playing its searchlight on the port side of Dignity.

Suddenly there was a tremendous crash at the bow, and then another almost simultaneously, and another on the port beam across from where the author had sat vomiting for eight hours.

The bow dipped and it seemed the boat was breaking up. It was dark, the wind force was 4 to 5 and there was a 10ft sea. The master shouted ‘we have been rammed’. It was feared the boat would sink. He broadcast a Mayday distress signal; there was no later response.

Cynthia Mc Kinney and Caoimhe Butterly could not swim; the life vests were rapidly deployed to all. The hull was taking water but bilge pumps were working. The first words from a commander of one of the gun boats came over the radio.

First there was the accusation that the ship’s company was involved with terrorists and that it was subversive. Then there came the threat to shoot. The master was forbidden from making for Gaza or further south to El Arish in Egypt.

He was ordered to return for Larnaca ~ about 160 miles, though the boat was badly damaged and the Israeli did not know whether there was sufficient fuel, which there was not. He set a northerly course and the boat stayed buoyant in a moderating sea. A crew member arranged with the Lebanese authorities for a safe harbour in Sour (Tyre) where jubilant crowds thronged the quays.

Lebanese fishermen cheer as the vessel SS Dignity arrives at Tyre, Lebanon, on Tuesday after being turned back and damaged by the Israeli navy, according to organizers of the trip. (Mohammed Zaatari / AP)

Was there lethal intent?

A gun boat came out of the black of night with no lights showing whilst a searchlight from the other gun boat displayed the port hull of its target. It would have approached at about 30 degrees to the Dignity’s port and at speed.

The intention to sink the Dignity and

thus to drown its company was clear (4).

If the hull had been GRP (Glass Reinforced Plastic) it would have shattered and the boat would have sunk like a stone where it was rammed 53 nautical miles off Haifa. Fortunately, the hull was constructed of marine ply with timber ribs and the company survived.

The Zionist entity greatly resents anyone coming to the aid of the native population, whatever its depth of suffering, and war lust was growing by the day.

A Lebanese vessel, the Tali ~ 1500 tonnes gross, with food, medical aid, plasma, toys etc mattresses in the hold steamed from Tripoli via Larnaca with Gaza its final port. The entity insisted 5 February that it make for El Arish.

The master persisted in his aim and changed course for Gaza. Warning shots were fired and the boat was boarded by armed soldiers. It is alleged they beat some of the twenty on board.

The vessel was forced to dock in Ashdod from where it is said the 1000 units of plasma were transferred to Gaza. The entity was to transfer the remaining aid later.

The ship’s company were repatriated except for a resolute Scot, Theresa McDermott. She was imprisoned silently in Ramleh gaol. (5)

When the British Consulate in Israel was contacted for assistance in finding Teresa, staff refused to help locate Teresa saying they couldn’t provide assistance to a UK citizen unless she personally requested it. She was released after six days, her ‘crime’ probably being a member of the International Solidarity Campaign like Rachel Corrie before her.

These evil doings of the Zionist entity pale besides the piracy suffered by the fishermen of Gaza since the second intifada was triggered by Sharon striding into the Temple Mount with many dozens of border guards in September 2000.

Hosing the fishing vessel. Usually tainted,

diseased or body water is used for this.

The disastrous 1993 Oslo Accords did ‘allow’ the fishermen to go out 20 nautical miles and south along Sinai. Altogether they had access to 75,000 square kilometres of sea.

There has been a steady increase in the attacks on these men and their boats (6).

Destroyed along with the small crew.

Now they are being attacked by the shore. Since 2000, 15 men have been killed and over 200 injured. Precious high quality protein is being kept from the mouths of often malnourished children.

A Palestinian doctor tries to treats fisherman Hani al-Najar, 27, who later died of his wounds after Israeli forces shot him off of the Gaza coast, October 2006. (Hatem Omar/MaanImages)

Some believe the discovery of over one trillion cu ft of natural gas by BP off the Gazan shore is the prime reason for fencing in the fishermen by force. (7)

Some in Gaza believe the gas is already coming ashore in Israel, at Ashkelon.

Since mid-March, 20 men have been snatched by the entity and one shot. (8)

They are forced to strip off and swim naked to the Israeli war ship. They were all taken for interrogation in Ashdod and then released but some of the vessels remained impounded.

All this is the maritime equivalent of the robbery being done in the ineptly named ‘West Bank’ and in Silwan, as well as the imprisonment of thousands in Israeli gaols (sometimes without charge) and the 1.5 million in the concentration camp which is Gaza.

The Somali pirates have netted about 100 million dollars per year but this is very small fry compared with the many billions burnt by the banks of the US and UK. And no hostage has been killed by his captor.

The fourth Security Council resolution on Somali piracy to be passed in 2008 was brought by Condoleeza Rice. ‘The U.N. Security Council has unanimously adopted a resolution authorizing member states to fight pirates in Somali territory by land, sea and air.‘ (9)

As of December 18, 2008, naval ships from eleven NATO, four SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation), and 4 other countries were deployed in the region in order to serve as escorts and to deter acts of piracy.

What are the UN and all the western nations doing about the more dangerous piracy of the Israeli state? These nations are silent and lift no finger showing they approve of Israel’s murderous actions against the Palestinian fishermen and foreign nationals bringing aid. This is a grotesque hypocrisy and a sure sign ‘the powerful own the law’ ~ for the time being.

The USS Liberty before the attack.

The greatest act of piracy by the Israeli state was the all out attack on the communications ship USS Liberty on June 8 1967. (10)

Rockets, napalm and torpedoes killed 34, wounded more than 170 crew members and damaged the ship severely. The ship was in international waters north of the Sinai Peninsula, about 25.5 nautical miles northwest from the Egyptian city of El Arish.

USS Liberty after Israeli attack

There were inquiries and many words. Crew members were silenced.

An independent commission reported on Capitol Hill in October 2003. Alison Weir reported this in Counterpunch but the US media buried it. (11)

These key findings are to be noted:~

* That the attack, by a US ally, was a “deliberate attempt to destroy an American ship and kill her entire crew”

* That the ally committed “acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States”

* That the attack involved the machine-gunning of stretcher-bearers and life rafts

* That “the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of the ship. Never before in American naval history has a rescue mission been canceled when an American ship was under attack”

* That surviving crew members were later threatened with “court-martial, imprisonment or worse” if they talked to anyone about what had happened to them; and were “abandoned by their own government”

* That due to the influence of the ally’s “powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people”

* That due to continuing pressure by this lobby, this attack remains “the only serious naval incident that has never been thoroughly investigated by Congress”

* That “there has been an official cover-up without precedent in American naval history”

* That “the truth about Israel’s attack and subsequent White House cover-up continues to be officially concealed from the American people to the present day and is a national disgrace”

* That “a danger to the national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation” and that this policy “endangers the safety of Americans and the security of the United States”

One of the attacking pilots speaks out.

Nothing has changed.

Blue and white creatures

do not change their spots.

1914

1.JayBahadurhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article6100783.ece

2. BBC News Roger Middleton http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/8001183.stm

‘However, people who have been forgotten by the world and who hear of toxic waste being dumped on their beaches and foreigners stealing their fish have difficulty being concerned when representatives of that world are held to ransom.’

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Dvora_Mk_III

4. http://sydney.indymedia.org.au/image/dignity-rammed-israeli-patrol-boat

5.http://www.freegaza.org/en/home/740-disappeared-free-gaza-activist-theresa-mcdermott-found-in-israels-ramleh-prison

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=87NrkNV_owM

7. http://www.freegaza.org/en/links-a-gaza-info/stealing-gazas-gas

8. http://www.williambowles.info/isrl-pal/2009/0309/gaza-abductions060409.html

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_pirate#cite_note-115

10. http://www.gtr5.com/

11. http://www.counterpunch.org/weir06232007.html

Posted by Barbara L at 9:39 PM Links to this post
Labels: crimes against humanity, fishermen, Foreign Aid, Gaza, genocide, Israel, war crimes, zionists

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
Readers Number : 471

Johann Hari – Huffington Post
April 13, 2009

Who imagined that in 2009, the world’s governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy – backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China – is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as “one of the great menace of our times” have an extraordinary story to tell — and some justice on their side.

Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the “golden age of piracy” – from 1650 to 1730 – the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can’t? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then – plucked from the docks of London’s East End, young and hungry – you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O’ Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.

Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains – and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century.” They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed “quite clearly – and subversively – that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy.” This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.

The words of one pirate from that lost age – a young British man called William Scott – should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: “What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live.” In 1991, the government of Somalia – in the Horn of Africa – collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a ‘tax’ on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and it’s not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters… We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking – and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country’s territorial waters.” During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause – our crimes – before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled, and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.” Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today – but who is the robber?

The Somalian Pirates, What You’re Not Being Told.

Source

You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
by Johann Hari

(excerpt from the below link)

In 1991, the government of Somalia – in the Horn of Africa – collapsed. Its 9 million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the U.N. Envoy to Somalia, tells me: “Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury – you name it.” Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian Mafia to “dispose” of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: “Nothing. There has been no cleanup, no compensation and no prevention.”

At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia’s seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish stocks by over-exploitation – and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300 million worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia’s unprotected seas.

The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: “If nothing is done, there soon won’t be much fish left in our coastal waters.”

This is the context in which the men we are calling “pirates” have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a “tax” on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coast Guard of Somalia – and it’s not hard to see why.

In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters … We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.” William Scott would understand those words.

No, this doesn’t make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters – especially those who have held up World Food Program supplies. But the “pirates” have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking – and it found 70 percent “strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defense of the country’s territorial waters.”

During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America’s founding fathers paid pirates to protect America’s territorial waters, because they had no navy or coast guard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?

Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn’t act on those crimes – but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit corridor for 20 percent of the world’s oil supply, we begin to shriek about “evil.” If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause – our crimes – before we send in the gunboats to root out Somalia’s criminals.

The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarized by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know “what he meant by keeping possession of the sea.” The pirate smiled and responded: “What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor.”

Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today – but who is the robber?

http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/you-are-bein…-about-pirates/

Somalia’s secret dumps of toxic waste washed ashore by tsunami
From Jonathan Clayton in Johannesburg

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/worl…ticle418665.ece

‘Toxic waste’ behind Somali piracy

By Najad Abdullahi

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2…4223218644.html

Maersk Tankers looking at sea transport of CO2

By Robert Wright in London
Published: March 14 2009 02:00

http://cquestor.blogspot.com/2009/03/maers…-transport.html

Putting Today’s ‘Pirate’ Attack in Context
By Jeremy Scahill April 8, 2009

http://rebelreports.com/post/94198014/putt…tack-in-context

Posted by Faisal Tehrani at 12:18 AM