Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Found By USA ???!!!!

Iraq All Over Again!

By William Blum

04 September, 2013

@ Williamblum.org

Found at last! After searching for 10 years, the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have finally been found – in Syria!

Secretary of State John Kerry: “There is no doubt that Saddam al-Assad has crossed the red line. … Sorry, did I just say ‘Saddam’?”

A US drone has just taken a photo of Mullah Omar riding on a motorcycle through the streets of Damascus. 1

So what do we have as the United States refuses to rule out an attack on Syria and keeps five warships loaded with missiles in the eastern Mediterranean?

    >> Only 9 percent of Americans support a US military intervention in Syria. 2

    >> Only 11% of the British supported a UK military intervention; this increased to 25% after the announcement of the alleged chemical attack. 3

    >> British Prime Minister David Cameron lost a parliamentary vote August 29 endorsing military action against Syria 285-272

    >> 64% of the French people oppose an intervention by the French Army. 4 “Before acting we need proof,” said a French government spokesperson. 5

    >> Former and current high-ranking US military officers question the use of military force as a punitive measure and suggest that the White House lacks a coherent strategy. “If the administration is ambivalent about the wisdom of defeating or crippling the Syrian leader, possibly setting the stage for Damascus to fall to Islamic fundamentalist rebels, they say, the military objective of strikes on Assad’s military targets is at best ambiguous.” 6

    >> President Obama has no United Nations approval for intervention. (In February a massive bombing attack in Damascus left 100 dead and 250 wounded; in all likelihood the work of Islamic terrorists. The United States blocked a Russian resolution condemning the attack from moving through the UN Security Council)

    >> None of NATO’s 28 members has proposed an alliance with the United States in an attack against Syria. NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said that he saw “no NATO role in an international reaction to the [Syrian] regime.” 7

    >> The Arab League has not publicly endorsed support of US military action in Syria; nor have key regional players Saudi Arabia and Qatar, concerned about a possible public backlash from open support for US intervention. 8

    >> We don’t even know for sure that there was a real chemical attack. Where does that accusation come from? The United States? The al-Qaeda rebels? Or if there was such an attack, where is the evidence that the Syrian government was the perpetrator? The Assad regime has accused the rebels of the act, releasing a video showing a cave with alleged chemical-weapon equipment as well as claiming to have captured rebels possessing sarin gas. Whoever dispensed the poison gas – why, in this age of ubiquitous cameras, are there no photos of anyone wearing a gas mask? The UN inspection team was originally dispatched to Syria to investigate allegations of earlier chemical weapons use: two allegations made by the rebels and one by the government.

    >> The United States insists that Syria refused to allow the UN investigators access to the site of the attack. However, the UN request was made Saturday, August 24; the Syrian government agreed the next day. 9

    >> In rejecting allegations that Syria deployed poison gas, Russian officials have argued that the rebels had a clear motivation: to spur a Western-led attack on Syrian forces; while Assad had every reason to avoid any action that could spur international intervention at a time when his forces were winning the war and the rebels are increasingly losing world support because of their uncivilized and ultra-cruel behavior.

    >> President George W. Bush misled the world on Iraq’s WMD, but Bush’s bogus case for war at least had details that could be checked, unlike what the Obama administration released August 29 on Syria’s alleged chemical attacks – no direct quotes, no photographic evidence, no named sources, nothing but “trust us,” points out Robert Parry, intrepid Washington journalist.

So, in light of all of the above, the path for Mr. Obama to take – as a rational, humane being – is of course clear. Is it not? N’est-ce pas? Nicht wahr? – Bombs Away!

Pretty discouraging it is. No, I actually find much to be rather encouraging. So many people seem to have really learned something from the Iraqi pile of lies and horror and from decades of other American interventions. Skepticism – good ol’ healthy skepticism – amongst the American, British and French people. It was stirring to watch the British Parliament in a debate of the kind rarely, if ever, seen in the 21st-century US Congress. And American military officers asking some of the right questions. The Arab League not supporting a US attack, surprising for an organization not enamored of the secular Syrian government. And NATO – even NATO! – refusing so far to blindly fall in line with the White House. When did that last happen? I thought it was against international law.

Secretary of State John Kerry said that if the United States did not respond to the use of chemical weapons the country would become an international “laughingstock”. Yes, that’s really what America and its people have to worry about – not that their country is viewed as a lawless, mass-murdering repeat offender. Other American officials have expressed concern that a lack of a US response might incite threats from Iran and North Korea. 10

Now that is indeed something to laugh at. It’s comforting to think that the world might be finally losing the stars in their eyes about US foreign policy partly because of countless ridiculous remarks such as these.

United States bombings, which can be just as indiscriminate and cruel as poison gas. (A terrorist is someone who has a bomb but doesn’t have an air force.)

The glorious bombing list of our glorious country, which our glorious schools don’t teach, our glorious media don’t remember, and our glorious leaders glorify.

    Korea and China 1950-53 (Korean War)

    Guatemala 1954

    Indonesia 1958

    Cuba 1959-1961

    Guatemala 1960

    Congo 1964

    Laos 1964-73

    Vietnam 1961-73

    Cambodia 1969-70

    Guatemala 1967-69

    Grenada 1983

    Lebanon 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)

    Libya 1986

    El Salvador 1980s

    Nicaragua 1980s

    Iran 1987

    Panama 1989

    Iraq 1991 (Persian Gulf War)

    Kuwait 1991

    Somalia 1993

    Bosnia 1994, 1995

    Sudan 1998

    Afghanistan 1998

    Yugoslavia 1999

    Yemen 2002

    Iraq 1991-2003 (US/UK on regular no-fly-zone basis)

    Iraq 2003-2011 (Second Gulf War)

    Afghanistan 2001 to present

    Pakistan 2007 to present

    Somalia 2007-8, 2011 to present

    Yemen 2009, 2011 to present

    Libya 2011

    Syria 2013?

The above list doesn’t include the repeated use by the United States of depleted uranium, cluster bombs, white phosphorous, and other charming inventions of the Pentagon mad scientists; also not included: chemical and biological weapons abroad, chemical and biological weapons in the United States (sic), and encouraging the use of chemical and biological weapons by other nations; all these lists can be found in William Blum’s book “Rogue State: A Guide to the World’s Only Superpower”.

A story just released by Foreign Policy magazine, based on newly-discovered classified documents, reports how, in 1988, the last year of the 8-year Iraq-Iran War, America’s military and intelligence communities knew about and did nothing to stop a series of nerve gas attacks by Iraq far more devastating than anything Syria has seen. 11 Indeed, during that war the United States was the primary supplier to Iraq of the chemicals and hardware necessary to provide the Saddam Hussein regime with a chemical-warfare capability. 12

Now, apparently, the United States has discovered how horrible chemical warfare is, even if only of the “alleged” variety.

Humanitarian intervention

Some of those currently advocating bombing Syria turn for justification to their old faithful friend “humanitarian intervention”, one of the earliest examples of which was the 1999 US and NATO bombing campaign to stop ethnic cleansing and drive Serbian forces from Kosovo. However, a collective amnesia appears to have afflicted countless intelligent, well-meaning people, who are convinced that the US/NATO bombing took place after the mass forced deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo was well underway; which is to say that the bombing was launched to stop this “ethnic cleansing”. In actuality, the systematic forced deportations of large numbers of people from Kosovo did not begin until a few days after the bombing began, and was clearly a Serbian reaction to it, born of extreme anger and powerlessness. This is easily verified by looking at a daily newspaper for the few days before the bombing began the night of March 23/24, and the few days after. Or simply look at the New York Times of March 26, page 1, which reads:

    … with the NATO bombing already begun, a deepening sense of fear took hold in Pristina [the main city of Kosovo] that the Serbs would NOW vent their rage against ethnic Albanian civilians in retaliation.

On March 27, we find the first reference to a “forced march” or anything of that sort.

But the propaganda version is already set in marble.

    If you see something, say something. Unless it’s US war crimes.

“When you sign a security clearance and swear oaths, you actually have to abide by that. It is not optional.” – Steven Bucci, of the neo-conservative Heritage Foundation, speaking of Chelsea Manning (formerly known as Bradley) 13

Really? No matter what an individual with security clearance is asked to do? No matter what he sees and knows of, he still has to ignore his conscience and follow orders? But Steven, my lad, you must know that following World War II many Germans of course used “following orders” as an excuse. The victorious Allies of course executed many of them.

Their death sentences were laid down by the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, which declared that “Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring.”

Nuremberg Principle IV moreover states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his Government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”

Manning, and Edward Snowden as well, did have moral choices, and they chose them.

It should be noted that Barack Obama has refused to prosecute those under the Bush administration involved in torture specifically – he declares – because they were following orders. Has this “educated” man never heard of the Nuremberg Tribunal? Why isn’t he embarrassed to make this argument again and again?

I imagine that in the past three years that Manning has had to live with solitary confinement, torture and humiliation, adding mightily to her already existing personal difficulties, the thought of suicide has crossed her mind on a number of occasions. It certainly would have with me if I had been in her position. In the coming thousands and thousands of days and long nights of incarceration such thoughts may be Manning’s frequent companion. If the thoughts become desire, and the desire becomes unbearable, I hope the brave young woman can find a way to carry it out. Every person has that right, including heroes.

The United States and its European poodles may have gone too far for their own good in their attempts to control all dissenting communication – demanding total information from companies engaged in encrypted messaging, forcing the closure of several such firms, obliging the plane carrying the Bolivian president to land, smashing the computers at a leading newspaper, holding a whistle-blowing journalist’s partner in custody for nine hours at an airport, seizing the phone records of Associated Press journalists, threatening to send a New York Times reporter to jail if he doesn’t disclose the source of a leak, shameless lying at high levels, bugging the European Union and the United Nations, surveillance without known limits … Where will it end? Will it backfire at some point and allow America to return to its normal level of police state? On July 24, a bill that would have curtailed the power of the NSA was only narrowly defeated by 217 to 205 votes in the US House of Representatives.

And how long will Amnesty International continue to tarnish its image by refusing to state the obvious? That Cheleas Manning is a Prisoner of Conscience. If you go to Amnesty’s website and search “prisoner of conscience” you’ll find many names given, including several Cubans prominently featured. Can there be any connection to Manning’s omission with the fact that the executive director of Amnesty International USA, Suzanne Nossel, came to her position from the US Department of State, where she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations?

A phone call to Amnesty’s office in New York was unable to provide me with any explanation for Manning’s omission. I suggest that those of you living in the UK try the AI headquarters in London.

Meanwhile, at the other pre-eminent international human rights organization, Human Rights Watch, Tom Malinowski, the director of HRW’s Washington office, has been nominated by Obama to be Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor. Is it really expecting too much that a high official of a human rights organization should not go to work for a government that has been the world’s leading violator of human rights for more than half a century? And if that designation is too much for you to swallow just consider torture, the worst example of mankind’s inhumanity to man. What government has been intimately involved with that horror more than the United States? Teaching it, supplying the manuals, supplying the equipment, creation of torture centers in much of the world, kidnaping people to these places (“rendition”), solitary confinement, forced feeding, Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Chicago … Lord forgive us!

Surrounding Russia

One of the reactions of the United States to Russia granting asylum to Edward Snowden was reported thus: “There was a blistering response on Capitol Hill and calls for retaliatory measures certain to infuriate the Kremlin. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), long one of the Senate’s leading critics of Moscow, blasted the asylum decision as ‘a slap in the face of all Americans’ and called on the administration to turn up the pressure on Moscow on a variety of fronts, including a renewed push for NATO expansion and new missile-defense programs in Europe.” 14

But we’ve long been told that NATO expansion and its missiles in Europe have nothing to do with Russia. And Russia has been told the same, much to Moscow’s continuous skepticism. “Look,” said Russian president Vladimir Putin about NATO in 2001, “this is a military organization. It’s moving towards our border. Why?” 15 He subsequently described NATO as “the stinking corpse of the cold war.” 16

We’ve been told repeatedly by the US government that the missiles are for protection against an Iranian attack. Is it (choke) possible that the Bush and Obama administrations have been (gasp) lying to us?

America’s love affair with Guns

Adam Kokesh is a veteran of the war in Iraq who lives in the Washington, DC area. He’s one of the countless Americans who’s big on guns, guns that will be needed to protect Americans from their oppressive government, guns that will be needed for “the revolution”.

On July 4 the 31-year-old Kokesh had a video made of himself holding a shotgun and loading shells into it while speaking into the camera as he stood in Freedom Plaza, a federal plot of land in between the Washington Monument and the Capitol. This led to a police raid of his home and his being arrested on the 25th for carrying a firearm outside his home or office. The 23-second video can be seen on YouTube. 17

I sent Kokesh the following email:

    “Adam: All your weapons apparently didn’t help you at all when the police raided your house. But supposedly, people like you advocate an armed populace to protect the public from an oppressive government. I’ve never thought that that made much sense because of the huge imbalance between the military power of the public vs. that of the government. And it seems that I was correct.”

I received no reply, although his still being in jail may explain that.

Kokesh, incidentally, had a program on RT (Russia Today) for a short while last year.

Notes

1. The three preceding jokes are courtesy of my friend Viktor Dedaj of Paris

2. Reuters/Ipsos poll, August 26, 2013

3. Sunday Times (UK), YouGov poll, August 25

4. Le Parisien, August 30, 2012

5. Christian Science Monitor, August 29, 2013

6. Washington Post, August 29, 2013

7. The Wall Street Journal, August 30, 2013

8. Washington Post, August 31, 2013

9. UN Web TV, August 27, 2013 (starting at minute 12:00)

10. The Washington Post, August 31, 2013

11. Shane Harris and Matthew M. Aid, “CIA Files Prove America Helped Saddam as He Gassed Iran”, Foreign Policy, August 26, 2013

12. William Blum, “Anthrax for Export”, The Progressive (Madison, Wisconsin), April 1998

13. Washington Post, August 22, 2013

14. Washington Post, July 31, 2013

15. Associated Press, June 16, 2001

16. Time magazine, December 2007

17. Washington Post, August 13, 2013

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.

William Blum is the author of:

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, atwww.williamblum.org

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

A Saudi conspiracy?

Prem Shankar Jha, September 2, 2013, DHNs:

The US and France are about to unleash an attack upon Syria  that will open the way for 10,000 to 20,000 jihadis who form a ‘floating army of Islam’ to invade Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt. 

None of this seems to bother the Obama administration, because its purpose in destroying Syria, if we are to believe him and his Secretary of State, is to uphold a moral principle no matter what its political cost. This is not realpolitik, simply necessary punishment. But shouldn’t punishment follow conviction, and shouldn’t conviction be based on proof beyond reasonable doubt ? Even as the US readies for war two other far more plausible explanations have emerged for the alleged  gas attack. The first is what the Syrian government and many others are  asserting — that the rebels launched it to force Nato into the attack on Assad. The second is that it was an accident — a horrible consequence of a Machiavellian plan that went wrong.  

The 1,300 word US intelligence assessment that the White House on August 30 added little to what he had said on the August 26. Its main contribution was to flesh out Assad’s possible motive for such a heinous act. “The regime has failed to clear dozens of Damascus neighbourhoods of opposition elements, including neighbourhoods targeted on August 21, despite employing nearly all of its conventional weapons systems. We assess that the regime's frustration ….may have contributed to its decision. ”

On the surface this is not implausible. Dale Gavlak, an Amman-based correspondent of the Associated Press who speaks fluent Arabic, and is one of the very few western journalists to have visited the site of the atrocity, reported that the rebels told him they had built tunnels in which they hid from bombardments, stored their weapons and moved from one building to another, but would sleep in mosques and peoples’ house at night. So trying to penetrate the tunnels with gas would be a sound military, even though politically suicidal, strategy. 

The assessment also describes the attack in greater detail. It “began at 2:30 am local time and within the next four hours there were thousands of social media reports from at least 12 different locations in the Damascus area. Among “multiple streams of intelligence” it specifically noted “the detection of rocket launches from regime controlled territory early in the morning, approximately 90 minutes before the first report of a chemical attack appeared in social media”.

Anomalies revealed

The report does not explain what it means by ‘detection’, or how many launches but the rebels uploaded at least one video which, they claimed, captured the launch of the chemical rocket. Repeated viewings of this video, however,  reveal several anomalies:
uThis video was shot at around 1.00 am. That meant that there was someone on a balcony looking towards the launch site at this unearthly hour with his phone, or a camera in hand. Could this be mere coincidence ?

uThe video starts four seconds before the rocket launch. That suggests the man knew when it would happen and had started shooting at the appointed time.  

uThe video reveals that the man also knew the exact spot from which the rocket would rise, for when it rose, it was only slightly to the left of centre of his screen. By reflex, he corrected the camera angle to get it into the centre of the frame.

uThe time the sound took to follow the flash was between six and seven seconds. That placed the cameraman almost exactly a mile away from the launch site — an optimum safe distance for filming. 

u Contrary to the White House claim,  the rocket launch does not seem to have been a part of a salvo. The video is 34 seconds long and there is absolute silence the rest of the time. 

Foreknowledge, if confirmed, will be conclusive proof that it was the rebels who launched this particular rocket. But there is another possible explanation. In the same article (August 29) Dale Gavlak and a young Jordanian colleague Yahya Ababneh, reported “from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the gas attack.” 

“My son came to me two weeks ago asking what I thought the weapons were that he had been asked to carry,” said Abu Abdel-Moneim, the father of a rebel fighting to unseat Assad, who lives in Ghouta. Abdel-Moneim said his son and 12 other rebels were killed inside of a tunnel used to store weapons provided by a Saudi militant, known as Abu Ayesha, who was leading a fighting battalion”.

The conspiracy between the Saudi secret service, headed by Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and the CIA has already been thoroughly exposed by the Wall Street Journal (August 25). Gavlak’s story therefore opens up a third possibility:  that the intense Syrian bombardment of the area (which began on August 19) penetrated a tunnel that was being used by Saudi backed jihadis to store chemical weapons supplied by Prince Bandar’s men. This would explain the panic heard in a high Syrian army official’s voice in the allegedly intercepted phone call that is the most concrete evidence that US sources have (unofficially) revealed.

Saudi supply of chemical weapons is not as far-fetched as it sounds, because onDecember 29 the London Daily Mail had published the hacked emails of a British ‘security contracting’ firm, Britam defence, which revealed that Qatar had offered it an ‘enormous’ sum of money to obtain a chemical warhead from Russian stock, ‘similar to what Syria has’, to supply to the rebels. 

These disclosures show that there are at least two other explanations for the gas attack fatalities that are far more plausible than the one the Americans have chosen to believe. 

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/354924/a-saudi-conspiracy.html

Does Obama Know He’s Fighting On Al-Qa’ida’s Side?

By Robert Fisk

28 August, 2013

@ The Independent

If Barack Obama decides to attack the Syrian regime, he has ensured – for the very first time in history – that the United States will be on the same side as al-Qa’ida.

Quite an alliance! Was it not the Three Musketeers who shouted “All for one and one for all” each time they sought combat? This really should be the new battle cry if – or when – the statesmen of the Western world go to war against Bashar al-Assad.

The men who destroyed so many thousands on 9/11 will then be fighting alongside the very nation whose innocents they so cruelly murdered almost exactly 12 years ago. Quite an achievement for Obama, Cameron, Hollande and the rest of the miniature warlords.

This, of course, will not be trumpeted by the Pentagon or the White House – nor, I suppose, by al-Qa’ida – though they are both trying to destroy Bashar. So are the Nusra front, one of al-Qa’ida’s affiliates. But it does raise some interesting possibilities.

Maybe the Americans should ask al-Qa’ida for intelligence help – after all, this is the group with “boots on the ground”, something the Americans have no interest in doing. And maybe al-Qa’ida could offer some target information facilities to the country which usually claims that the supporters of al-Qa’ida, rather than the Syrians, are the most wanted men in the world.

There will be some ironies, of course. While the Americans drone al-Qa’ida to death in Yemen and Pakistan – along, of course, with the usual flock of civilians – they will be giving them, with the help of Messrs Cameron, Hollande and the other Little General-politicians, material assistance in Syria by hitting al-Qa’ida’s enemies. Indeed, you can bet your bottom dollar that the one target the Americans will not strike in Syria will be al-Qa’ida or the Nusra front.

And our own Prime Minister will applaud whatever the Americans do, thus allying himself with al-Qa’ida, whose London bombings may have slipped his mind. Perhaps – since there is no institutional memory left among modern governments – Cameron has forgotten how similar are the sentiments being uttered by Obama and himself to those uttered by Bush and Blair a decade ago, the same bland assurances, uttered with such self-confidence but without quite enough evidence to make it stick.

In Iraq, we went to war on the basis of lies originally uttered by fakers and conmen. Now it’s war by YouTube. This doesn’t mean that the terrible images of the gassed and dying Syrian civilians are false. It does mean that any evidence to the contrary is going to have to be suppressed. For example, no-one is going to be interested in persistent reports in Beirut that three Hezbollah members – fighting alongside government troops in Damascus – were apparently struck down by the same gas on the same day, supposedly in tunnels. They are now said to be undergoing treatment in a Beirut hospital. So if Syrian government forces used gas, how come Hezbollah men might have been stricken too? Blowback?

And while we’re talking about institutional memory, hands up which of our jolly statesmen know what happened last time the Americans took on the Syrian government army? I bet they can’t remember. Well it happened in Lebanon when the US Air Force decided to bomb Syrian missiles in the Bekaa Valley on 4 December 1983. I recall this very well because I was here in Lebanon. An American A-6 fighter bomber was hit by a Syrian Strela missile – Russian made, naturally – and crash-landed in the Bekaa; its pilot, Mark Lange, was killed, its co-pilot, Robert Goodman, taken prisoner and freighted off to jail in Damascus. Jesse Jackson had to travel to Syria to get him back after almost a month amid many clichés about “ending the cycle of violence”. Another American plane – this time an A-7 – was also hit by Syrian fire but the pilot managed to eject over the Mediterranean where he was plucked from the water by a Lebanese fishing boat. His plane was also destroyed.

Sure, we are told that it will be a short strike on Syria, in and out, a couple of days. That’s what Obama likes to think. But think Iran. Think Hezbollah. I rather suspect – if Obama does go ahead – that this one will run and run.

Robert Fisk is Middle East correspondent for The Independent newspaper. He is the author of many books on the region, including The Great War for Civilisation: The Conquest of the Middle East.

Najib's call for Unity - What Unity?

I fully support the Prime Minister Najib Tun Razak's call for unity recently. Everyone knows the outcome of disunity and enmity among humankind. It results in chaos and misery.

The "Islamic world" is known from almost time immemorial to be characterised by disunity and enmity. There are several reasons, among which are vested interest, sectarian differences, and intolerance of differing views.

The Middle East is a hotbed of conflicts, oppression of human and individual rights, dictatorial regimes and corruption. The Middle East is a living example that common language and religion alone cannot unite the people. A sense of humanitarian values and the willingness to adhere to basic universal values of Islam is equally necessary.

One cannot be faulted to say that the Middle East may be full of religion but largely lacking in spiritualism. So much form but little substance. Too much emphasis on form breeds hypocrisy and Allah condemns hypocrisy as a most evil trait. Let us come closer to our own home - Malaysia.

Malaysian Muslim political leaders often deliver speeches calling for unity of the ummah especially during so-called religious festivals. Any Muslim will welcome such calls. However, a call for unity which is not accompanied by consistent programs and deeds towards the call is useless. It portrays the leader as a man of form and not of substance. The leader becomes an insult to the people.

Even worse is when a leader calls for unity and yet he condones or does every act that further perpetuates disunity. This is hypocritical and despicable in the eyes of Allah.

I believe that calls for unity in Malaysia among the Muslims is not totally genuine. It is merely a political call. If it was genuine, Muslims will accept Muslim wholeheartedly in all spheres of their lives. Only recently, a christian Indian converted to Islam and the registration department found it completely important that his race column be written as "keturunan India" - is this necessary? Where is the implementation of the principle that Islam supersedes race? where is the implementation of article 160 of the Federal Constitution that this Indian Muslim is now a constitutional Malay? Why are civil servants allowed to override the clear provisions of the Constitution?

I have many experiences with converts (Chinese, Indian, Orang Asli) into Islam from other races. The convert still is treated as a non-Malay despite the constitutional guarantee that he is a Malay upon conversion and fulfillment of the article 160 of the Constitution. Further, over the years, I have come across cases where quite a number of Penang Malays who have their name changed from "bin" to "a/l" in their nric without their knowledge by the civil servants. Why is this done? Has "bin" become the domain of the Malay and where is this "ukuwaah Islamiah" that many political and religious leaders are so fond of talking about?

There are so many real life examples that I can show to prove that we are still far away from this "Islamic unity" in the country. Political leaders make speeches without serious follow ups and the ignorant civil servants do what they wish. Thereafter, everyone goes to the Friday prayers pretending that all are united.

Let us not play with God for His wrath is unimaginable.

Peace!

WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE ARAB UPRISING?

by Prof Dr Chandra Muzzzafar

The Arab Uprising is no longer what it was.  Its complexion is changing. 

One of the outstanding features of the first phase of the Uprising was its peaceful, non-violent character. The ouster of both the Tunisian dictator, Ben Ali, on 25 January 2011 and the Egyptian autocrat, Hosni Mubarak, on 11 February 2011 was largely peaceful. But the protesters in Libya resorted to arms within a day or two of their uprising in Benghazi on 15 February.

It is well known that one of the leading groups in what has evolved into a full-scale rebellion is a well-armed militia, the National Front for the Salvation of Libya (NFSL).The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) is another militant outfit, some of whose founders were veterans from the struggle against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, that is playing a critical role in the rebellion. 

It is reportedly linked to Al-Qaeda. In Syria too, right from the outset, militant organisations had infiltrated peaceful demonstrations and fired upon civilians and security forces alike, killing more than 80 senior military personnel.Some elements in the protest movement in Yemen which at the beginning was peaceful have also begun to resort to violence.

Interference

The other trend which has tarnished the Arab Uprising is the interference of regional actors in the revolts and rebellions that are occurring in individual states.  The most blatant was of course the entry of troops from Saudi Arabia at the head of a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) military force into Bahrain on 14 March 2011 to put down a popular uprising supported by the majority Shiite population against the Sunni Bahraini monarch, ShiekhHamad bin Isa Al-Khalifa. 

The brutal suppression of a peaceful movement for basic human rights and democracy --- 52 civilians were massacred ---- has been a severe setback for the Uprising as a whole.   But Saudi officials insist that it is Shiite Iran that is instigating the protest in Bahrain.Turning to another kingdom in the region, Qatar has been giving military and financial assistance to the rebels in Libya. It is alleged that Syrian protesters are being armed and funded by Bandar Sultan of Saudi Arabia and Saad Hariri in Lebanon. 

The motives behind interference and manipulation by individuals, groupsand states are not difficult to discern. The Saudi-GCC move into Bahrain was to preserve the status quo in Bahrain for fear that democratisation of the Sheikhdom would undermine the Saudi Ruler’s absolute power in his own kingdom especially since there is a restive Shiite minority in his  eastern province. Qatar’s role in the Libyan rebellion has nothing to do with democracy since Qatar is an absolute monarchy with the Emir exercising total suzerainty over the Emirate’s oil. By supporting the rebels,Qatar is actually acting at the behest of Western powers that are determined to affect a regime change in Libya. 

Qatar is after all a close US military ally whose air-base is used by the US for its operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Qatar also has commercial ties with Israel. It is partly because they are pursuing the agenda of Western powers and Israel vis-à-vis Syria that Sultan and Hariri are actively engaged in fomenting unrest in that country. For Hariri in particular it is also a question of hitting back at Syrian President, Bashar Assad, for allegedly manoeuvring him out of office in Beirut.

Western Powers

If manipulations and manoeuvres by regional players have impacted adversely upon the Arab Uprising it is largely because they are intertwined--- as we have seen--- with the interests of certain Western powers.This is the third negative trend that should concern us.It is alleged, for instance, that the NFSL is funded by the CIA and French Intelligence.  France, Britain, the US and other Western countries such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Canada have gone beyond imposing a ‘No Fly Zone’ upon Libya to attempting to eliminateGadaffi physically. 

His youngest son, Saif al-Arab, and three grandchildren, killed in a NATO air-strike on 30 April, have become the tragic victims of this diabolical assassination plan.  In Syria, evidence has surfaced to show that the US has been financing opposition groups, “including a satellite TV channel beaming anti-regime programmes into the country.”   

The London- based Barada TV channel which began broadcasting in April 2009 is linked to a London-based network of exiles, the Movement for Justice and Development, which has received as much as US 6 million dollars from the US State Department since 2006. In Yemen, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco and Algeria, where there is--- or there was --- unrest in some form or other, Western powers are involved, directly or obliquely, in ensuring that the eventual outcome would be in their favour. 

As a case in point, in Yemen, the US, it is alleged, is trying very hard to persuade the President, Ali Abdullah Saleh, an ally, to step down and hand over power to a leadership inclined towards the US. The GCC, a grouping that is closely aligned to the US and the West, is helping the US in this scheme. Even in Tunisia and Egypt, the US,working through individuals and groups in various institutions and segments of society, is determined to ensure that its interests and the interests of Israel will be preserved and perpetuated in the emerging democratic scenarios in the two countries.   

Interests

What are those interests that the US elite and other Western elites are determined to protect at all costs? They are not homogeneous though they revolve around some recurring themes. In the case of Libya, for Europe, more than the US, the desire to control the country’s huge oil and gas reserves is a factor. For the US, which has denied vehemently that it harbours any strategic designsvis-a-vis Libya, the latter’s critical role in facilitating China’s access to its own oil and gas and the energyresources of other African states is an important consideration. 

Since access to energy would be sine qua con for China’s ascendancy as a global power, the US which fears this new reality is going all out to control the flow of oil and gas in China’s direction. According to Paul Craig Roberts, a former senior US government official, “China has extensive energy investments and construction investments in Libya. They are looking to Africa as a future energy source.” 

Besides, Gadaffi has, in recent months, intensified his mobilisation of African states to form a sort of United States of Africa which will resist Western exploitation of the continent’s vast natural resources. This would run counter to the Pentagon’s idea of an African Command (Africom) launched in 2007. With Syria, US and other Western elites are unhappy that the Bashar Assad government remains a “resistance state” opposed to the unjust Israeli occupation of Arab lands. 

Because it has close ties to the Hezbollah in Lebanon which is now in the driver’s seat in Beirut, and is also an ally of the Iranian government ---both of which are in the crosshairs of Washington and Tel Aviv---- Syria has become a threat to the US and Israeli drive for hegemony over the region. Israel and the West would prefer a government in Damascus that would be more accommodative of their dominance. 

The US’s primary concern in Yemen is to ensure that the strategic port of Edenis under the watchful eye of a reliable ally while it would like to see Bahrain remain in the grip of the Khalifa family mainly because the island is the home of the US fifth fleet. Saudi Arabia is of critical importance to the US and Israel not only because of its mammoth oil reserves but also because it is a huge importer of US weapons. This is why the US is determined to keep the King on his throne. Some of the same considerations--- albeit on a lower scale---apply to Qatar and Kuwait. Egypt and Jordan are crucial because both have signed peace treaties with Israel. 

Oil, Israel, China, geostrategic interests, and weapons are the five reasons why the US and its western allies are hell-bent on shaping the Arab Uprising to fulfil their agenda. This is why there is so much meddling and interference on their part. It explains their military intervention in Libya. Some analysts would argue that the West is staging a “counter –revolution” to the Arab Uprising, with the connivance and collusion of their Arab allies and clients.  

Suggestions

How should we respond this challenge?  More and more governments and civil society organisations should speak up and make it lucidly clear to the US and its NATO allies, the Gaddafi government and all the opposition groups that there is no military solution in Libya. A ceasefire should be declared at once. It should be observed by everyone under the supervision of international observers. 

The African Union and Turkish peace plans which have many similarities should be revived with some modifications, and merged. Apart from opening a humanitarian corridor in the country through which aid will be transported to all those in dire need, the emphasis should be upon building institutions for a viable, sustainable democracy. 

At the same time, the merged peace plan should contain provisions for the departure of Gaddafi and his family. Given the terrible atrocities the dictator has committed against his own people and others over decades--- atrocities which now outweigh the good that he has done--- there is no other option. One hopes that after the exit of the Gaddafi family and its cronies, a free and fair election in Libya will produce a leadership that is not only honest and accountable but also one that will defend and protect the nation’s sovereignty and independence. It should not be subservient to Western powers or other powers for that matter.

In the case of Syria too, the citizens of the world have a role to play.  They should demand, in unequivocal language, that the US, Britain, France, Israel, Lebanon and Saudi Arabia stop immediately their machinations and manipulations. It is the people of Syria who will determine the destiny of their nation. The Bashar Assad government for its part should hasten the meaningful reforms it has promised the people in recent weeks. Many of these reforms have not been translated into action. Other laws that are in the offing related to local administration elections, the formation of political parties, and the freedom of the media, should be expedited. 

Indeed, Bashar should go beyond these reforms and announce publicly that there will be a democratic Presidential Election before the end of this year and he is prepared to defend his presidency in an open contest. At the same time, he should realise that while he has the right as Syria’s legitimate President to act firmly against murderous militias, his security forces should exercise maximum restraint when faced with peaceful, unarmed protesters. The killing of such protesters is totally unacceptable to the human conscience. It is this that provides fodder to Western governments that are so eager to intervene in Syria in pursuit of their own nefarious agenda.

These humble suggestions on how we can respond to the challenge posed by a “counter-revolution” engineered by certain Western powers and their Arab allies, especially in the context of Libya and Syria, are being made in the hope that the Arab Uprising can still be saved. If the Arab Uprising can be returned to its pristine ideals, it will emerge once again, as a genuine struggle by a people determined to re-affirm their dignity and their humanity.

3 May 2011

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) and Professor of Global Studies at UniversitiSains Malaysia.