DEMOCRACY NOW! AND “PROGRESSIVE ALTERNATIVE MEDIA”: CHEERLEADERS FOR IMERIALISM AND WAR

Posted on July 12, 2012 

Syria 360°

Finian Cunningham

The major Western mainstream media outlets have been running a “shock and awe” propaganda offensive against the Syrian government of President Bashar Al Assad for nearly 16 months. The misinformation has been unrelenting, monolithic, unverified, one-sided and, frankly, increasingly preposterous.

With the suppression of mounting facts that Western governments are waging a covert war of aggression in Syria, the Western public is right to treat the conventional media sources with skepticism and outright contempt. Such media are seen as “politicized” and “unreliable”, serving a naked imperialist agenda for Western regime change. In a word, they are damaged goods.

This is where a segment of the so-called alternative media can play a valuable propaganda function for Western powers. Because such media are supposed to be independent, critical, non-corporate, the public tends to consider their reports as objective and unbiased.  One such “alternative” news service is “Democracy Now” hosted by Amy Goodman. Goodman is seen as something of a campaigning critical journalist shedding the light of truth on the depredations of the US government, corporations and the Pentagon. But a closer look at what Goodman’s “Democracy Now” is reporting on Syria shows that the purported critical broadcaster has become a purveyor of Western government propaganda. While the mainstream media’s propaganda function is obvious to the informed public, Goodman’s Democracy plays a more subtle role. Camouflaged with the trappings of critical, independent journalism, “Democracy Now” serves to sow powerful seeds of misinformation in a way that the “compromised” mainstream media cannot.

This misinformation from “Democracy Now” is valuable to the ruling elite because to many of its readers it is not seen as misinformation.

Rather, the “news” on “Democracy Now” is viewed as reliable and representing the views of the anti-war, anti-imperialist constituency. In this way, Goodman is a valuable asset to Washington and Wall Street because her broadcasts can serve to disorient and undermine a constituency that is normally opposed to Western warmongering and imperialism. Many of the subscribers to “Democracy Now” may see through the misinformation. Many, though, may not, and therefore will become embedded with the imperialist agenda. The fact that Democracy Now ratings appear to be holding up would indicate that a lot of its followers are oblivious to the insidious effect of such misinformation. As such, Democracy Now is more valuable to the powers-that-be than, say, the New York Times or the Financial Times. “Democracy Now” ensures that the agenda of the powerful becomes infiltrated in a constituency that would otherwise be opposed to that agenda.

First, let’s recap on the mainstream propaganda offensive against Syria.

Since mid-March 2011, when violence was initially reported in that country, the Western mainstream television, radio and press studiously ignored the evidence of covert foreign-backed subversion and terrorism. Instead these outlets have sought to portray the protests as part of the pro-democracy Arab Spring popular movements that were seen in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen and Bahrain. The mainstream media have run saturation coverage to demonise the government in Damascus as a “brutal, authoritarian regime” that is cracking down mercilessly on its civilian population demanding democratic reforms. The narrative is monolithic in the major media outlets on both sides of the Atlantic. Whether the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, or the Financial Times, Guardian, Independent, Le Monde, BBC, ITN, the Irish national broadcaster RTE or the Middle East’s much-vaunted Al Jazeera – the “story” on Syria is uncannily uniform. A noble, civilian mass-based movement is being savagely crushed by a tin-eared dictator, so the story goes.

Every possible smear campaign against the Assad government has been indulged in and indeed fabricated. From the alleged killing of innocent civilians by the national armed forces, to the perpetration of massacres by pro-government militias, to self-inflicted car bombs in urban centres by Assad secret services, to the feckless shopping habits of the president’s wife. Russia Today, Press TV, Der Spiegel and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Vatican News Service (Agenzia Fides), to name a few, have been honorable exceptions in mainstream media journalism for conveying a more accurate picture of what is really happening inside Syria – showing that “protesters” are far from peaceful civilians, and much of the violence is actually stemming from Western, Turkish and Arab-backed mercenaries that have infiltrated the country. As the facts of US and NATO-backed violence in Syria become more transparent and harder to conceal owing to the sheer volume of covert involvement, the Western public has rightly become more skeptical about what the mainstream media outlets are telling them. Indeed, the blatant misinformation and lies that are being sold as journalism is increasingly seen as contemptible.

The Houla massacre on the 24 May is a case in point. The BBC and other mainstream media outlets have been shown to be outrageously wrong in their initial rush to blame the atrocity on Syrian government forces when the evidence has slowly emerged that it was most likely the grisly work of Western-backed mercenaries.

It is all the more disquieting when a supposedly informed, alternative news service, Democracy Now, peddles such blatant misinformation – more than six weeks after the massacre occurred and after evidence has been reported that points convincingly to Western-backed perpetrators. On 9 July, Goodman broadcast an interview with Rafif Jouejati, a spokesperson for a Syrian opposition group called the Syrian Local Coordination Committees, based in Washington DC. Despite the mounting evidence of Western, Turkish and Saudi/Qatari covert operations, Goodman gave her guest a free rein to regurgitate the litany of mainstream media calumnies on Syria. Without a hint of scepticism from Goodman, her guest said:

“The bottom line is that the majority of the country is engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, for democracy, for dignity… We have mountains of evidence indicating that [Assad’s] armed forces have been engaged in systematic torture, rampant detentions, massacres across the country.” 

Really? The majority of the country engaged in a popular revolution for freedom, democracy and dignity? That sounds more like the fanciful imagination of someone safely based in Washington DC. By contrast, sources in Syria have confirmed that people are terrified by Western-armed gangs running amok in their communities, kidnapping, murdering, evicting families from their homes and burning down business premises. According to the leaked Arab League Observer Mission Report, which had initially been commissioned by the Arab League at Washington’s request:

“In Homs, Idlib and Hama, the Observer Mission witnessed acts of violence being committed against Government forces and civilians that resulted in several deaths and injuries. Examples of those acts include the bombing of a civilian bus, killing eight persons and injuring others, including women and children, and the bombing of a train carrying diesel oil. In another incident in Homs, a police bus was blown up, killing two police officers. A fuel pipeline and some small bridges were also bombed. “

“Such incidents include the bombing of buildings, trains carrying fuel, vehicles carrying diesel oil and explosions targeting the police, members of the media and fuel pipelines. Some of those attacks have been carried out by the Free Syrian Army and some by other armed opposition groups.” (League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria, Report of the Head of the League of Arab States Observer Mission to Syria for the period from 24 December 2011 to 18 January 2012, 

Ironically, these fact-finding observations of the AL Observer Mission , went against the interests of its Western sponsors. It was barely reported by the mainstream media)

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ):

“Those killed were almost exclusively from families belonging to Houla’s Alawi and Shia minorities. Over 90% of Houla’s population are Sunnis. Several dozen members of a family were slaughtered, which had converted from Sunni to Shia Islam. Members of the Shomaliya, an Alawi family, were also killed, as was the family of a Sunni member of the Syrian parliament who is regarded as a collaborator. Immediately following the massacre, the perpetrators are supposed to have filmed their victims and then presented them as Sunni victims in videos posted on the internet.”

(Neue Erkenntnisse zu Getöteten von Hula.Abermals Massaker in Syrien, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, June 7, 2012 translated from the German,
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/neue-erkenntnisse-zu-getoeteten-von-hula-abermals-massaker-in-syrien-11776496.html)

The FAZ report quoted above echoes eyewitness accounts collected from refugees from the Houla region by members of the Monastery of St. James in Qara, Syria. According to monastery sources cited by the Dutch Middle East expert Martin Janssen, armed rebels murdered “entire Alawi families” in the village of Taldo in the Houla region.

Also of significance is the report of Der Spiegel (March 29, 2012) entitled “An Executioner for Syria’s Rebels Tells His Story”. A system of “burial brigades” for those executed confirms an organized process of mass-murder and extra-judicial killings. This single “burial brigade”, according  to the executioner’s testimony, was responsible for the arbitrary execution of 350-400 people including “prisoners” and “traitors”.  The “traitors” are Sunni civilians within the occupied urban and rural areas, who express their opposition to the rule of terror of the Free Syrian Army (FSA):

“Since last summer, we have executed slightly fewer than 150 men, which represents about 20 percent of our prisoners,” says Abu Rami. … But the executioners of Homs have been busier with traitors within their own ranks than with prisoners of war. “If we catch a Sunni spying, or if a citizen betrays the revolution, we make it quick,” says the fighter. According to Abu Rami, Hussein’s burial brigade has put between 200 and 250 traitors to death since the beginning of the uprising.” (Der Spiegel, March 29, 2012)

The Vatican News Service Agenzia Fides largely confirms that the Western backed  “opposition forces” rather than the Al Assad government were responsible for countless atrocities:
“In Homs, called the “martyred city”, “opposition forces have occupied two areas, Diwan Al Bustan and Hamidieh, where there are all the churches and bishoprics,” the Archimandrite told Fides. “The picture for us – he continues – is utter desolation: the church of Mar Elian is half destroyed and that of Our Lady of Peace is still occupied by the rebels. Christian homes are severely damaged due to the fighting and completely emptied of their inhabitants, who fled without taking anything. The area of Hamidieh is still shelter to armed groups independent of each other, heavily armed and bankrolled by Qatar and Saudi Arabia. All Christians (138,000) have fled to Damascus and Lebanon, while others took refuge in the surrounding countryside.

The Syrian soldiers in fact, continue to face foreign fighters, mercenaries Libyans, Lebanese militants from the Gulf, Afghans, Turks. “The Sunni Salafist militants – says the Bishop – continue to commit crimes against civilians, or to recruit fighters with force. The fanatical Sunni extremists are fighting a holy war proudly, especially against the Alawites. When terrorists seek to control the religious identity of a suspect, they ask him to cite the genealogies dating back to Moses. And they ask to recite a prayer that the Alawites removed. The Alawites have no chance to get out alive.” (Agenzia Fides, Vatican News Service, 4 June 2012)

Overblown Casualty Figures, Blamed on the Government
Goodman indulged in the overblown casualty figures from dubious Syrian opposition sources as if they were verifiable accurate data. She even sounded like Hillary Clinton in talking up the “defection” of the hapless former Syrian Brigadier General Manaf Tlass as “significant” when informed sources discount that news as a minor irrelevance.

In the interview between Goodman and her guest (whom sources describe as belonging to a family formerly aligned with the Syrian government), Bashar Al Assad was portrayed as an unhinged leader who is in denial over massacres – massacres, as we have noted, that have most likely been carried out by Western-backed death squads as confirmed by numerous reports.

Preposterously, Assad was described as guilty of much worse crimes than former Egyptian and Libyan rulers Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi. Then the “alternative” Democracy Now broadcast this statement from the supposed opposition spokesperson as if it were normal discourse:

“I would like to think that we will proceed with full prosecution in the International Criminal Court. I think the longer this issue goes on and the more violence he [Assad] commits, the more likely he will wish to have a fate such as Gaddafi’s.” 

Recall that the Libyan leader was lynched on a roadside by a NATO-directed mob, and sodomised with a knife before being shot dead. It may also be recalled that “Democracy Now” gave prominent broadcasts supporting NATO’s intervention in Libya and justifying the criminal subversion of that country. Going by the latest coverage on Syria, Democracy Now is acting once again under a “progressive” cloak as a propaganda tool for US-led imperialist intervention. Given the misplaced respect among many of the public seeking independent, alternative, accurate news and analysis, this insidious role of Democracy Now is reprehensible. May it be suggested, in the name of media transparency, that the programme be aptly renamed “Imperialism Now”.

I.F. Stone, court scribes and pseudo-journalism

Posted on March 13, 2012
by Matt Carr

I’m currently reading a collection of pieces by the outstanding radical journalist I.F. Stone (1907-1989), which rather amazingly, you can download for free here. Stone was a socialist and a fiercely independent journalist who was most famous for I.F. Stone’s Weekly, a newsletter which he wrote, produced and edited himself for 17 years.

Based in Washington, Stone had a close-up view of the U.S. political establishment, and he was a harsh and unrelenting critic of governmental lies, deceptions and abuses of power, and a lucid observer of the political pathologies resulting from America’s transformation into a ‘national security state’ during the Cold War.

The Best of I.F. Stone is well worth reading in full or dipping into, not only because Stone an elegant, erudite and witty writer, but also because he was a journalist, whose independence of mind put many of his fellow-professionals to shame, and whose observations about his profession are also highly relevant to the court scribes of our own era.

In an essay written in 1963 entitled About Myself, Stone once summed up his philosophy behind the Weekly in the following terms:

I felt that if one were able enough and had sufficient vision one could distill meaning, truth and even beauty from the swiftly flowing debris of the week’s news. I sought in political reporting what Galsworthy in another context called ‘the insignificant trifle’ – the bit of dialogue, the overlooked fact, the buried conversation which illuminated the reality of the situation.

Stone frequently broke investigative scoops that other journalists missed – or preferred not to touch – despite the fact that his sources were generally in the public domain. He prided himself on his independence and believed that it gave him a very different vantage-point to the more co-opted journalists who were also based in Washington, regardless of the fact that

I made no claim to inside stuff – obviously a radical reporter in those days had few pipelines into the government. I tried to give information which could be documented so the reader could check it for himself. I tried to dig the truth out of hearings, official transcripts and government documents, and to be as accurate as possible.

Stone compared his role as ‘a guerilla warrior, swooping down in surprise attack on a stuffy bureaucracy’ to journalists who worked for privately owned agencies and papers, in terms that are not exactly unfamiliar to our own times:

The reporter assigned to specific beats like the State Department of the Pentagon for a wire service of a big daily newspaper soon finds himself a captive. State and Pentagon have large press relations forces whose job it is to herd the press and shape the news. There are many ways to punish a reporter who gets out of line; if a big story breaks at 3 a.m, the press office may neglect to notify him while his rivals get the story. There are as many ways to flatter and take a reporter into camp – private-off-the-record dinners with high officials, entertainment at the service clubs.

Stone would undoubtedly have appreciated the Internet and the new powers it has given to ‘citizen-journalists’ who are not beholden to their corporate owners or employers. But he would probably not have been surprised by elite government insiders like Nick Robinson or Andrew Marr; by the likes of Alastair Campbell or Andy Coulson; by ‘hackgate’ or the Leveson Inquiry’s revelations about police ‘terror briefings’ to News International.

Stone would undoubtedly have recognized – and been appalled by – the Pentagon’s attempt to manipulate and control public opinion through ‘information operations’ on the Internet, through embedded war reporting and the granting of privileged access to on-message correspondents, or by planting sock-puppet military analysts in the mainstream media.

But if Stone was an astute observer of the ways in which governments manipulate and seek to manage the flow of information, he was also extremely critical of the reporters and editors who ‘let themselves be managed,‘ and whose attitude towards their government were often strikingly conformist as a consequence.

In this sense he would also find that very little has changed since the days when mainstream American newspapers – unlike Stone himself – failed to challenge McCarthyism. Today, too many journalists are little more than stenographers for power, and too many uncritically echo official lines and transmit messages delivered from on high or frame their reporting in accordance with the requirements of governments.

The result is a nominally ‘free’ media that – despite its global reach – is often as strikingly obedient and susceptible to manipulation as the newspapers and wire agencies of Stone’s era.

And in these conformist times, Stone is an inspirational example of that rare phenomenon: a real journalist who acted according to his principles rather than his career prospects and refused to allow himself to be managed.

____________________________

See also:
I. F. Stone: ‘All Governments Are Run by Liars’
from TakeApart
America’s first blogger has been dead since 1989.
We need more like him.


Go to a sports bar, a boomer dinner party, an Occupy Wall Street campout, a meeting of the Young Republicans of Palo Alto, lunch at Barney’s, a hipster hair salon, or to the quad of almost any journalism school in the United States of America or elsewhere. Drop the name I. F. Stone in conversation. The response will be about the same in every place: I. F. Who?

The question is something like an outrage. When I. F. Stone was alive, making history by challenging the narratives of his era’s entrenched history-makers, he was among the most controversial public figures of the time. Stone’s struggles and victories against complacency and deception deserve to be remembered, and emulated. In fact, in this day of cozy media corporate synergy and news as infotainment, it’s a borderline crime that a major motion picture is not rolling out for Oscar contention, immortalizing the exploits of a lone man who held entire governments to account for their actions.

"Stone’s gimlet eye for despots, bigots and hypocrites, big and small, was just as pointed back home in the United States of America."

At the risk of outlasting the attention spans of your interlocutors, you clarify: Born Isador Feinstein Stone in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December 24, 1907; muckraking journalist for The Philadelphia Inquirer, Camden Courier-Post and New York Post. In the early 1930s, I. F. “Izzy” Stone was one of the first public voices raised in America against the influence of an obscure and obstreperous failed German landscape painter—Adolf Hitler.

Stone’s gimlet eye for despots, bigots and hypocrites, big and small, was just as pointed back home in the United States of America. He left the New York Post in 1939 and wrote for a series of left-leaning political publications, which folded one after another. In 1953, tired of having his employers die out from under him, Stone founded his own paper.


I. F. Stone’s Weekly was, basically, a newsletter published from Stone’s kitchen table. The paper ran until ill health forced the self-described “radical journalist and scholar” to put it to bed in 1971. Although Stone’s DIY newssheet never had a circulation above 70,000, it ranked 16th in a 1999 New York University poll to determine the Top 100 Works of Journalism in the United States in the 20th Century, honored with the best of Edward R. Murrow, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, H. L. Mencken, Seymour Hersh, Norman Mailer, Truman Capote and the entire New York Times.

A passion for truth, a profound distrust of authority (“All governments are run by liars” is an oft-repeated and oft-applicable quote), a fearless contempt for bullies, and indefatigable research and verification distinguished I. F. Stone’s reporting. Unfazed at being blacklisted, he led the attack on McCarthyism and racial discrimination in the U.S., and he was the first journalist to debunk the official version of the Gulf of Tonkin incident (a misrepresented altercation that escalated into the Vietnam War).

Because of his complete editorial independence as a one-man operation, I. F. Stone has been called America’s first political blogger—despite the fact that the Internet wasn’t invented until long after Izzy had retired. (Explore I. F.’s full legacy at the Official Website of I. F. Stone, a thorough tribute run by his son, Jeremy J. Stone.)

Dear Western journalist,

Sharmine Narwani:
An associate of St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University,
from her blog

Please cease using the argument that the reason you are writing crap about Syria is because “media is not allowed there.” The Arab League report lists 147 media outlets – Arab and foreign – working in Syria in January, 2012. I and a few others who were there at the time were not even on the list. Ahead of me in line at the border was the CBC crew, who was on that list. Perhaps the reason you have such a hard time getting in is because you need to wait – like CBC Suzy – for visas for 47 staff and support staff members, including people to hold your over-sized coffee cup as you interview an opposition gunman in that special breathless way you do it. Of course you need a translator for that too, because otherwise you wouldn’t have a fucking clue if you were in Idlib or Homs now, would you?

You are delighted to air shaky cell phone footage from a person you have never met at the top of the news hour, but balk when there are 50,000 cell phone witnesses at a pro-regime rally. “Media is not allowed in” you explain condescendingly. Tell us then, what explains your inability to ask the most elementary of questions when you do write your Syria stories every day, anyway, from outside? You know, questions that go something like this: “How do you know how many people died today? How do you know their names? Who verified this? Where did the explosion take place? How do you know who was responsible for the explosion? Why do you support Bashar al Assad? Why do you not support the militarization of the conflict? Why do you not support the internationalization of the conflict? Why do you not support sanctions against Syria? Who kidnapped your father? Who shot your uncle? Who killed your child? Who was the sniper?”

None of us have ever heard a major western journalist ask any of those questions. They are questions that 1) ask for evidence, 2) are addressed to a pro-regime Syrian and 3) are asked of domestic opposition figures. Oh yes – we need you to be in Syria to “verify” things for us precisely because you publish “unverified” stories every day and seek to inject “balance” into the Syrian story…in much the same way you do the Palestinian-Israeli story and the Israeli-vs-Iranian nukes one, and the Saudi Arabians-are-moderate-Arabs one – and that one really poignant story about how Muslims are “collateral damage” who become “terrorists” when they shoot back.

The idea that Joe Journo needs to be in Syria to tell the world (and Syrians) what is going on, is YOU on colonial crack.

Take your time,

Syria

Syria and the western media: peddling mythologies in the garden of good and evil

Western journalists have learnt nothing from 10 years of spinning the '9/11' wars and have collectively abandoned their analytical and critical faculties when it comes to Syria.
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By Matt Carr
Infernal Machine
15 March 2012

Armed rebels in Homs

Objective analysis of the brutal conflict in Syria has been generally conspicuous by its absence over the last 12 months, where the mainstream media has generally followed the narratives propagated by their governments with all the independence and perspicacity of trained seals.

One of the few exceptions is the political analyst and blogger Sharmine Narwani. An associate of St. Anthony’s College at Oxford University, Narwani has been a remorseless and forensic critic of the inadequacies in western media coverage of Syria, and she has penned a typically stinging indictment on her blog, entitled ‘Dear Western journalist‘, which laments the failure of so many reporters to do their job properly. In it Narwani asks her colleagues:

What explains your inability to ask the most elementary of questions when you do write your Syria stories every day, anyway, from outside? You know, questions that go something like this: “How do you know how many people died today? How do you know their names? Who verified this? Where did the explosion take place? How do you know who was responsible for the explosion? Why do you support Bashar al Assad? Why do you not support the militarization of the conflict? Why do you not support the internationalization of the conflict? Why do you not support sanctions against Syria? Who kidnapped your father? Who shot your uncle? Who killed your child? Who was the sniper?”

She goes on to point out that:

None of us have ever heard a major western journalist ask any of those questions. They are questions that 1) ask for evidence, 2) are addressed to a pro-regime Syrian and 3) are asked of domestic opposition figures.

Narwani’s outrage is entirely justified. Despite the abundant evidence of media manipulation, spinning, distortion and deception during the ’9/11 wars’ of the last decade, western journalists appear to have collectively abandoned their analytical or critical faculties when it comes to Syria, to a degree that is really quite staggering.

The BBC has been particularly bad: its coverage consists almost entirely of the kind of Fergal Keanian heart-tugging/atrocity stories that I heard the other day from…Fergal Keane, without any attempt to weigh up the sources of these reports or whether they might be true .

I am not an apologist for the Assad regime and I am not trying to argue that these atrocities were all invented (though some of them certainly have been), but given that many of them come via opposition sources such as the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, there should be room for a degree of scepticism and fact-checking at the very least.

Obviously, it is not possible to verify all sources in the midst of an armed conflict, but Narwani has done some fact-checking of her own, and shown what can be done when the will is present. But for the most part this willingness has not been present. Most journalists simply take it for granted that the regime is always lying and the opposition is always telling the truth. Nor is there any reference to the fact that the opposition in Syria – or at least some sections of it – is an armed opposition, which has also carried out killings, kidnappings, and bombings of its own.

At times the refusal to admit this is quite incredible. In all the coverage of the siege of Homs, for example, I cannot recall a single reference to the fact that there were armed fighters in the city. Even reporters who were actually there presented a scenario in which the Syrian armed forces appeared to be killing civilians for the sake of it.

Paul Conroy, the wounded photographer who was evacuated from the city, described the siege as a ‘systematic slaughter‘ and insisted that ‘ this is not a war, it’s a massacre’. This begs the question of why the Syrian army would need to besiege and bombard a city for three weeks if there were not armed fighters inside the city who were actively resisting them.

Once again, I am not trying to justify the brutality of the regime’s response. But the fact that Conroy and his colleagues (at least the ones that I saw and heard), chose not to mention the armed opposition in the city or the weapons and tactics it was using is really astounding.

But then again, it isn’t. Because, as Narwani eloquently points out, western reporters, like their governments, appear to have taken sides in Syria without even knowing what side they are on.

They have, for the most part, accepted a fairytale version of the Syrian conflict in which a) an utterly evil dictator is slaughtering a peaceful and unarmed opposition that represents the ‘Syrian people’ in its entirety, b) crimes and atrocities are only committed by one side and c) the interests of the ‘international community’ in Syria are entirely driven by a humanitarian desire to ‘stop the violence.’

To say that this narrative does not fully encapsulate the complexities of the conflict would be an understatement. It isn’t surprising that governments whose essential goal in Syria is regime change should be peddling this version of the conflict. But the fact that so many journalists and media outlets are uncritically and unquestioningly peddling the same mythologies, is a depressing reminder that press freedom and the absence of censorship is not always synonymous with independent thought or even basic journalist standards.

The Snake Behind the Arab Spring

By Elias Akleh
Media With Concience
14 November 2011


Due to its important geopolitical location (linking Asian, African and European continents) and to its diversified rich natural resources the indigenous inhabitants of the Middle Eastern region had been subjected to multi-forms of colonial campaigns since the beginning of ancient times. These inhabitants were subjected to ruthless military occupations, genocides, persecutions, oppressions, enslavements, and ethnic cleansing. Yet the people never surrendered nor gave up. They struggled for their freedom and independence and fought all colonial powers one after the other. Since the beginning of 2011 we are witnessing their latest regionally-sweeping fight against local ruling regimes that are subservient to foreign powers. This has become known as the Arab Spring. Unfortunately, like all their previous struggles, there is a poisonous snake in the background, which covertly is directing and orchestrating this Arab Spring to reap its fruits for itself.

Their most previous sweeping struggle, similar to the present Arab Spring, was the famous Arab Revolt of June 1916 kicking the colonial Ottoman Empire, known as the “Sick Man”, out of the whole Middle East. The poisonous snake then was the United Kingdom, who pledged to recognize Arab independence throughout the whole Middle East if they join the British in their fight against the Ottoman Empire; an ally to Germany during WWI. This pledge was officiated through what is known as McMahon/Hussein Correspondence (1915 through 1916). Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Arthur McMahon was the British High Commissioner in Egypt from 1915 to 1917 and Hussein bin Ali was the Sharif of Mecca. The British confirmed their pledge, again, through the January 1918 letter by Sir Mark Sykes carried by British Commander David Hogarth to Hussein. British weapons were shipped to Arab fighters through T.E. Lawrence (known as Lawrence of Arabia), who also coordinated the war efforts between the two parties. After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire the British broke their pledge to Sharif Hussein. According to their May 16th 1917 secret Sykes-Picot Agreement they divided the Middle East into French and British colonies, and according to their Balfour Declaration, November 2nd 1917, they promised Palestine to the Zionists. Sharif Hussein was ousted from Mecca to exile by the British supported Abdul-Aziz bin Saud, who established the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The military struggle continued within each separate Arab state until independence was achieved. Before quitting and leaving their Arab colonies, France and Great Britain raised some of their local cronies to become heads of states in order to keep the country dependent on the occupier economically, politically and even culturally. Some of the Arab countries, especially in Northern Africa, still use the occupier’s language next to Arabic as a main daily language.

There exists in the world a very wealthy and very influential group of people; the wealthiest 1%; a Power Elite, who exerts tremendous influence on world events. This Power Elite value themselves above all other nations. They had developed a kind of political theology that exalts them as the elite of all elites, the divinely chosen group, the architects of this world, the crafters of all religious, political and social ideologies, and the destroyers and builders of nations. It gives them the right and the duty to move nations and lead them into reshaping their political regimes through revolutions and wars to make these nations subservient to their own agenda. They spend their days drawing global projects and dedicate all their resources for their execution. They were responsible for all major wars around the world, for revolutions in many countries, for economical crises and for most major events in the history of this world. Through their wealth they control heads of states, all media outlets, military and intelligence organizations, and the world economy. Looking at the present global financial crises affecting many countries, one could not help but ask: who is this debtor, wealthy enough to hold many countries and their whole economies in his debt?

This is not any longer the farfetched conspiracy theory they are trying to ridicule those who try to expose it. It is a fact. After all a conspiracy is defined as “evil, unlawful, treacherous, or surreptitious plan formulated in secret by two or more people”.

For those who doubt that nations could be blindly and irrationally driven to acts against their own national interests and welfare, I would like to remind them of the drastic opposing effects of the famous speeches given by Brutus Albinus and Mark Antony to the Roman citizens after the assassination of Julius Caesar. The Romans, won by Brutus’ speech, were immediately converted against him within few minutes by Mark Antony’s speech. The famous proverb states that “people are just like a ball kicked from one corner of the field to the other by politicians.” Thus the political term “the ball is in one politician’s court.”

Iraq, Syria and Iran were the main obstacles to the Power Elite’s primary colonial Zionist Project of establishing Greater Israel to control the Middle Eastern region. The Power Elite came up with the “New Middle East” and “fighting global terrorism” projects to augment their Zionist Project. Intending to move southward they started with the occupation and destruction of Iraq. Although the Iraqi occupation was carried out under the banner of weapons of mass destruction and spreading the American democracy, it was faced with huge global political opposition not to mention the large financial expenses.

After failing to manipulate the IAEA and UN to isolate and to break the Iran/Syria ally, who supports Lebanese Hezbollah and Palestinian Hamas in their resistance against Israeli occupation and expansion, the Power Elite came up with the perfect scheme of “New Order through Chaos” erroneously dubbed, later on, as the Arab Spring. It involves revolution from within to topple the ruling regime and to incite conflict and struggle between the different religious and ethnic groups to divide and to weaken the country in order to make it easier for them to interfere, under the pretence of protecting minorities and/or of economic aid, to virtually control and re-organize the country. This way the Power Elite would present itself as an ally rather than an occupier, would gain the approval of the international community, would sidetrack all global political opposition and criticism, and would avoid the huge expenses incurred by the revolution. Their first attempt during 2009 Iranian election failed to topple the regime due to the relatively small size of demonstrators. A proven precedent with a strong credibility was needed to convince larger masses into revolting. The Power Elite was ready for a “controlled sacrifice” in order to win the ultimate prize, similar to a chess player, who is ready to sacrifice his queen in order to check-mate his opponent’s king. The goal is a controlled election in an American style democracy in some of the “non-friendly” Middle Eastern countries.

Tunisian Zine El Abidine Ben Ali was the first sacrifice. Tunisia was a French colony from 1883 to 1956 when Habib Bourguiba established the Republic of Tunisia. Bourguiba made the fatal mistake of nationalizing foreign land holdings and Christian religious institutions. This infuriated the Italians, who brokered what is known as the “medical coup d’état” deposing Bourguiba and installing the head of security forces, Ben Ali, in his place. This was declared to a 1999 Parliamentary Committee by Fulvio Martini, former head of Italian military secret service (SISMI). Ben Ali was perfect local foreign puppet. He has French and American military and intelligence training. He had close working relationship with Bush’s (Junior) administration and was a partner in fighting the so called global terrorism through the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Initiative.

Contrary to the claimed cause for the 2010/11 Tunisian Revolt its economy was considered the best in the African continent and was projected to even improve in the coming years. The 2010-2011 Global Competitive Report (Davos World Economic Forum) ranked Tunisia as first in Africa and 32nd out of 132 globally. In an attempt to fight potential terrorism through economic assistance Ben Ali established a National Solidarity Fund that slashed Tunisia’s poverty from 7.4% in 1990 to 3.8% in 2005. The Oxford Business Group stated that Tunisia’s economy was likely to grow starting with 2008 due to its diversified industries.

Tunisia was chosen for its vulnerability to the West. Its security intelligence was penetrated through its cooperation in NATO’s Operation Active Endeavor, and its military and economy were compromised through the American military and economic assistance programs. Although the Power Elite supports its local puppet rulers they also support, to a lesser extent, opposition groups just in case the ruler gets out of line they would use the opposition groups to get rid of him.

The revolution started with Wikileaks exposing the large extent of Ben Ali’s corruption. When Mohammed Bouazizi lit himself aflame the opposition groups were already primed for mass demonstrations. As the head of state, and through bribery, Ben Ali could have sent the army and thugs to crush the demonstrators, as we have seen in Libya, Yemen, Bahrain, and Syria. The country’s army chief withdrew his support to Ben Ali after his consultation with the Obama’s administration as was rumored. Ben Ali flew out to Saudi Arabia that has become known as the refuge for all deposed dictators of the region.

The many political parties formed before the Tunisian election is an indicative of the prevalent division and confusion among the people. The inexperienced Ennahda Islamist Party, who won the October 23rd election, could become a very easy prey to foreign long experienced political interference and to economical manipulation.

Egypt was the litmus test that would propel the rest of the Arab nations, particularly Syrians, into revolting against their ruling regimes. Hosni Mubarak was chosen for he was the most hated, although very influential, Arab leader of the most important Arab country. He was hated by his people for his tyranny, his oppression, his corruption, and his cheap privatization of Egyptian natural resources to foreign investors among many others. He was hated by the majority of Arab nations for his pro-American/Israeli foreign policies, for supporting the American invasion of Iraq, for his opposition to the democratically elected Palestinian Hamas, for his sabotage to all inter-Palestinian reconciliation efforts, for his partnership with Israeli Gaza siege, for his opposition to Hezbollah’s and Hamas’ armed resistance against Israeli occupation, and for his support to Israel’s 2006 war against Hezbollah and Israel’s 2009 war against Gaza. He was the queen to be sacrificed in the chess game.

“US groups helped nurture Arab Uprisings” was the title of an article in New York Times, which exposed that young Egyptian activists had received technical training on the use of social networking and mobile technology, and were financed by American groups such as International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute and Freedom House, National Endowment for Democracy and Project on Middle East Democracy.

It is inconceivable that Mubarak, the wealthy ruthless head of state for thirty years and with long history in military service, did not have any loyal subjects in the army, who would help him crush the demonstrators. For the last thirty years the Egyptian army had been virtually armed, trained, and financed by the US. The army did not crush the protesters because there were strict orders not to do so. Comparatively the same army had crushed protesters and even opened live fire at them after the revolution (Maspero Massacre of 9th October, here and here). The Supreme Counsel of the Armed Forces, who seized power after the revolution, had re-instated the emergency laws and is slapping in military courts prison sentences to young activists, who started the revolution. This Counsel stood watching thugs attacking and destroying many government buildings. The latest attack this month was on the Supreme Court while judges were in a meeting. Egypt now is divided with religious conflicts (Christian Copts vs Muslims) and non-functioning government.

The American chosen next president is already primed and ready for the proper time to grab presidency. As for Mubarak, he had served the American/Israeli interest well for the last thirty years and would not be let off empty handed. According to Egyptian weekly “Alanbaa Aldawlia” the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) organization, with 14 million members and specializes in the monitoring of money laundering schemes, had reported to the FBI that for 10% commission President Obama and 17 other American officials, including both former presidents Bush (father & son), Hillary Clinton, James Baker and others, with the cooperation of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a high manager of Deutche Bank in France, had been involved in the money laundering of Mubarak’s $700 Billion from Deutche Bank, Barclays Bank and HSBC Bank, to Israel’s Bank Leumi and other banks in China and Taiwan. According to Anat Levin, the branch manager of Israeli Bank Haboalim-Swiss branch, she was authorized by the Israeli government to transfer $20 Billion from Mubarak’s account to Saudi King Abdulla Abd El-Aziz’s account and to UAE president Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan’s account. The weekly also reported that Christine Legarde, while still French Minister of Economic Affairs, had submitted a report to the Interpol requesting thorough investigation into the management of Deutche Bank in France.

Libyan revolution was actually a civil war brokered by Western powers (US, UK, and France) and some Arab Gulf countries (Egypt, UAE, and Qatar). After paying reparations for Lockerbie bombing, abandoning his nuclear program, and giving Western energy companies (Royal Dutch Shell and BP) access to Libyan oil fields in 2004, Gaddafi had ended enmity with the West. Although he had a type of grandeur illusions Gaddafi attempted in the past to unite Arab countries, and upon failing he recently attempted to create an African Union which threatened the re-colonization plan of Africa by AFRICOM. The decision to get rid of Gaddafi, once and for all, came when he vowed to expel Western energy companies from the country and replace them with oil firms from China, India and Russia. Gaddafi’s second fatal mistake was his plan to convince African and Muslim counties to create a new currency, the gold dinar, to rival the American Dollar and the European Euro, in oil trade.

Libyan revolution was totally militarized. It was revealed that Egypt and Qatar were the main arms suppliers to the Libyan rebels. Under American pressure Arab League urged UN to impose a no-fly zone over Libya, and Qatar offered to cover all expenses of NATO forces to bomb alleged Gaddafi’s forces. Libyan rebels were civilians without any military training and were no match for Gaddafi’s well-trained and well-equipped army. It was revealed by Walter Fauntroy, member of US House of Representatives, that while in a self-sanctioned peace mission to Libya, he witnessed French and Danish troops coordinating NATO bombings and raiding Libyan villages, and giving the credit to Libyan rebels. At the end Gaddafi was ordered murdered rather than captured for fear of exposing all his shady dealings with the West.

Two unplanned products of the Arab Spring were the Yemeni and Bahraini revolutions. These are genuine popular peaceful revolutions against Yemeni Saleh’s 33 years oppressive rule, and against Al Khalifa family virtual 191 years rule. The two countries have strategic locations in the region and are of important interest to the American Administration. Yemen is located on the southern entrance of the Red Sea, through which all east/west marine traffic passes. Citing the October 2000 USS Cole bombing, the 2008 attacks on US embassy, and the October 2010 bomb packages incidents, allegedly linked to Anwar al-Awlaki, as proof of Al Qaeda in Yemen, Obama’s administration and Saudi Arabia justified sending money, arms and troops to help Saleh fight terrorists, and to crush the 10 months old demonstrations

The US has possibly the largest marine/air force base in Bahrain, where the Fifth Fleet provides support to all war ships of the US Naval Forces Central Command (USNACENT) to patrol the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. To keep the status quo in Bahrain Obama’s administration encouraged Gulf States to send the Peninsula Shield Force to Bahrain to crush the demonstrators. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE were happy to oblige and send their troops to Bahrain.

Syria is the main target; the prize; the king to be checked-mate. With American money and with the cooperation of some Arab officials, paid operatives incited some Syrian citizens, motivated by ethnic and religious background, to demonstrate in the streets demanding reform and regime change. These demonstrations took place in the easy accessible small towns on the borders of Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey. Yet these demonstrations were dwarfed by millions of other Syrian citizens who demonstrated in major cities in support of the regime. To intensify the conflict these operatives, dressed in Syrian army outfits, started killing some citizens and accusing the Syrian police and army, and at the same time attack police and army personnel to force them into the defensive.

Compared to Tunisian, Egyptian, Yemeni and Bahraini peaceful demonstrations, Syrian demonstrations are totally armed with heavy weapons; machine guns, propelled missiles, anti-tank RPG, mines and heavy explosives, and are directed and orchestrated by military experts from other neighboring Arab countries as exposed by Al-Alam and Syrian TVs.

Heavy weapons and military experts were smuggled in through Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, as reported by the Lebanese Arabic Assafir. Turkey had also played a major role in pressuring Syria and had harbored and encouraged armed Syrian rebels called Free Syrian Army. In successive televised interviews the former Lebanese MP Nasser Kandil had exposed in details including names, dates, and places, the conspiracy of destroying Syria as a country not just a regime change. The Saudi Bandar Ben Sultan (dubbed Bandar Bush by the Bush family) was named as a major conspirator with the Americans against Syria. It was reported that He was arrested in Syria while under cover smuggling money and weapons to Syrian operatives. It was also exposed that the American Ambassador Robert Ford and French Ambassador Eric Chevallier (in Arabic) to Syria had smuggled sophisticated satellite communication and surveillance equipment to the Syrian rebels some of which were seized by Syrian police.

Media outlets had also been manipulated to pressure Syrian government and to inflame the demonstrators. After gaining credibility in reporting Tunisian, Egyptian, and Libyan revolutions Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabia TV channels had almost totally ignored the 99% popular Bahraini peaceful demonstrations and concentrated on Syrian demonstrators, less than 40% of the population, in a biased unconfirmed and more hostile reporting against the Syrian government. Every Thursday one could notice heightened reports about civilian casualties and ruthless attacks of the Syrian army in an attempt to incite more people to join Friday demonstrators. Syrian news would top every news broadcast even though there might be more important news in the region. Al-Jazeera repeated broadcasting phone video clips of the same demonstrations from different angles, and of alleged civilian victims, some of these clips proved to be of old Iraqi troops abusing citizens. The victims were always reported as civilians while there was no mention of Syrian soldiers being killed. Unlike Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan, and Yemeni army defectors shown on TV declaring support to the people, the media failed to show one Syrian army defector while they keep announcing wide defection. Al-Jazeera had established a special war room planning anti-Syrian propaganda as reported by some Al-Jazeera’s prime reporters and directors such as Ghassan Ben Jeddo and Luna Al-Shibl among many others (Arabnews in Arabic), who submitted their resignation in protest of such unprofessional politically biased reporting.

The US and France, particularly, had pushed for many harsh sanctions against Syria through the UN. Fortunately they could not obtain a military interference under the excuse of protecting Syrian citizens, as was done in Libya, because of the Russian and Chinese veto threat. So the Arab League, a Western tool, was pushed to play pressuring active role in Syria. It seems that many Arab leaders, especially Gulf leaders, who cynically call for democratic regime in Syria, have forgotten that they, themselves, employ family autocratic dictatorships in their own countries. Despite this fact the Syrian government had accepted the Arab League plan. The oppositional Syrian National Council rejected the plan and intensified its violence against the Syrian army inviting harsh retaliation. So the Arab League suspended Syria’s membership and threatened economic and political sanctions. Such are illegal actions contradicting the constitution of the Arab League that had never made a decision benefiting any Arab state, but legalized the many Western military interference in the Middle East such as in Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Libya. We should mention here that the Arab League had refused to receive a petition from the slaughtered Bahraini people requesting protection. Thousands of people within different Arab states demonstrated against the decision of Arab League in front of Qatar’s and Saudi Arabia’s embassies.

It has become obvious that the Syrian oppositional groups are divided and have different aspirations some of them are conflicting and confusing. This division and confusion are due to the background of each oppositional group. The Western paid groups are armed seeking violent regime change and call for foreign interference the same as in Libya. The genuine oppositional groups reject any foreign interference fearing the same fate of Libya, and seek drastic reform through dialogue.

To obtain peace, real democracy and prosperity in the Arab World, ALL the present Arab leaders and regimes need to be abolished, starting east with the Gulf States all the way west to the Pacific Ocean through the northern Arab states of Africa. This would give a chance for an Arab Union to develop under one real democratic regime with one united economy. Such a strong Arab Union would rebalance global power and put an end to Western re-colonization schemes of the Middle East.

We should remember that permanent changes happen through the evolution of human consciousness not through violent destructive revolutions.

The Insidious Role of the Western media in Syria

From

SYRIA: NATO's Next "Humanitarian" War?

by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

The role of the US-NATO-Israel military alliance in triggering an armed insurrection is not addressed by the Western media. Moreover, several "progressive voices" have accepted the "NATO consensus" at face value. The role of CIA-MI6 covert intelligence operations in support of armed groups is simply not mentioned. Salafist paramilitary groups involved in terrorist acts, are, according to reports, supported covertly by Israeli intelligence (Mossad). The Muslim Brotherhood has been supported by Turkey, as well as by MI6, Britain's Secret Service (SIS) since the 1950s

More generally, the Western media has misled public opinion on the nature of the Arab protest movement by failing to address the support provided by the US State Department as well as US foundations (including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)) to selected pro-US opposition groups.

Known and documented, the U.S. State Department "has been been funding opponents of Syrian President Bashar Assad, since 2006. (U.S. admits funding Syrian opposition - World - CBC News April 18, 2011).

The protest movement in Syria was upheld by the media as part of the "Arab Spring", presented to public opinion as a pro-democracy protest movement which spread spontaneously from Egypt and the Maghreb to the Mashriq. There is reason to believe, however, that events in Syria, however, were planned well in advance in coordination with the process of regime change in other Arab countries including Egypt and Tunisia.

The outbreak of the protest movement in the southern border city of Daraa was carefully timed to follow the events in Tunisia and Egypt.

In chorus they have described recent events in Syria as a "peaceful protest movement" directed against the government of Bashar Al Assad, when the evidence amply confirms that Islamic paramilitary groups are involved in terrorist acts. These same Islamic groups have infiltrated the protest rallies.

Western media distortions abound. Large "pro-government" rallies (including photographs) are casually presented as "evidence" of a mass anti-government protest movement. The reports on casualties are based on unconfirmed "eye-witness reports" or on Syrian opposition sources in exile. The London based Syria Observatory for Human Rights are profusely quoted by the Western media as a "reliable source" with the usual disclaimers. Israeli news sources, while avoiding the issue of an armed insurgency, tacitly acknowledge that Syrian forces are being confronted by an organized professional paramilitary.

The absence of verifiable data, has not prevented the Western media from putting forth "authoritative figures" on the number of casualties. What are the sources of this data? Who is responsible for the casualties?

Media curtain blinds Americans from imperial war against Middle East

By Hansook Oh and Katherine ONeill
February 7th, 2012
Daily Sundial


A truly democratic nation must rely on journalism to provide accurate information to its citizens so they can make decisions and analysis based on fact, not on sensational hype or rumor. In the globalized world we live in today, where technology allows the spread of information to have more transnational impact, an accurate and fair media is crucial to the stabilization and progress of the human race.

In the case of the “Arab Spring,” a succession of violent uprisings in the Middle East (with the exception of the primarily peaceful regime change in Tunisia), mainstream media outlets from both the West and the Middle East failed to provide the Arab people and the rest of the world with truly accurate, un-biased reporting. This undermines peaceful efforts for change and distracts the world from human rights violations in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Israel. Whether purposeful or not, the media have played the role of propagandists for NATO, Israel, and some Arab governments who do not care about the plight of people, but are engaging in an imperial war for power and gain.

Honey Al-Sayed, host of Al-Madina radio in Syria and a Middle Eastern media ambassador to the U.S., was present in Damascus since the violence began in other parts of the country and left to Kuwait after the violence reached the Syrian capitol.

Al-Sayed is not a hard news journalist and her show, rated number one is Syria, is mostly centered on entertainment, popular culture and lifestyle. However, she expects news media to follow a strict ethical integrity, especially when reporting in a time of crisis, but feels that media have done a poor job in giving Syrians and the world the truth.

“You’re not supposed to be biased,” Al-Sayed said. “You’re supposed to be telling the truth, not falsifying the truth.”

Al-Sayed said that some foreign and Arab media have been actively agitating the Syrian people to violently revolt.

“What they did is they caused more bloodshed,” Al-Sayed said. “When you repeatedly bring out shots of a lot of bloody events… and you add to it a little bit of drama and exaggeration, you push more people to want to take revenge. It’s as if they [media] are saying, ‘go in the streets, look what your government is doing to you’ instead of simply stating the truth.”

Covering only opposition efforts against the Syrian government’s tanks oversimplifies the Syrian conflict to that of one between an evil regime and innocent protestors fighting for democracy. In reality, the opposition is fragmented between peaceful protestors, armed gangs, the Muslim Brotherhood, and various religious sects with no cohesion for a new vision for the country.
Lynn El-Boukhari, 24, who lives in Damascus and has no connection to the media, said she does not trust the local Arab or international media because they have not presented the reality of Syria.

“They’re all broadcasting the situation in Syria according to their own opinions, no matter what the truth is,” Boukhari said through Facebook. “Only God knows the truth, but what I’m sure about is that there are terrorists in Syria and there is killing by the Syrian army… but no one knows who they’re killing and under what conditions.”
Boukhari’s personal knowledge as a citizen undermines the foreign media’s demonization of president Bashar Al-Assad as a detached, ruthless dictator who has an evil agenda to destroy his own country.

“I know that there’s an order by the president to only shoot armed people, but not a fatal shot,” said Boukhari. “I know many guys who have been arrested during demonstrations and some more than once, stayed in custody for a week or two and then were released and unharmed. And later, some have met the president Bashar Assad and again, no one hurt them. The president knew they were out on demonstrations against him.”

Why both Arab and Western media have been playing the devil’s advocate in the Middle East is a complicated question and almost no one is willing to answer it. What is happening in Syria is similar to what happened in Libya, where NATO forces and NATO-backed rebels were able to invade and destroy an entire country with the help of the media’s false reporting and omission of facts.

Lizzie Phelan, an independent journalist from the United Kingdom, spoke at the United Nations last August about what she saw in Libya when Tripoli fell to rebels. In a Youtube video documenting her speech in August, Phelan explained how the media never showed the fight of the Libyans to protect their country from NATO and their allegiance to their leader, Moammar Gaddafi.

“This has been an incredible media war leading to the criminalization of the Libyan government and Gaddafi,” Phelan said. “The media said there were thousands of people waiting to be killed in Benghazi, but they never showed us any evidence. They said that 6,000 people were killed by the government—human rights organizations have confirmed that approximately 250 have died from both sides. They said that the Libyan government were attacking the people from the air and Russian satellite intelligence has shown us that this was impossible.

“Instead we saw videos of Black Libyans and other Black Africans being lynched in public squares by NATO’s ground troops, the rebels, with scores of people filming on their mobile phones and western special forces looking on.”

Perhaps the most disturbing betrayal of journalistic ethics has been committed by Al Jazeera, the most popular Middle Eastern news Web site and broadcast channel in the Arab and Western world. Phelan criticized Al Jazeera’s coverage of the conquering of Libya and the coverage of Syria as ridiculously unethical.

“The spectacular U-turn from Al Jazeera, being a somewhat critical voice of imperialism’s wars of aggression in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine, to being an open facilitator against Libya, Syria and even now the progressive nations of Latin America was perhaps the greatest propaganda trick I have seen in my lifetime,” Phelan said.

This turnabout from Al Jazeera may be because Qatar, a small but powerful Arab League country, owns the news network. According to a New York Times story published yesterday, “Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, became the first Arab leader to propose military intervention to halt the killing in Syria.” Qatar’s government also sent aircraft and special forces to Libya, aiding in the demise of the Gaddafi government.

Phelan recently spent time in Syria working on a documentary. In a video interview with the New York Times, Phelan explained that a similar NATO war is also taking place there, hidden under the illusion of “revolution” put out by the media. Phelan wrote out her full answers to the NY Times’ questions on Black Star News’ website.

“This documentary will actually expose how if it was not for such media, the crisis in Syria would have been over before it started and the people of Syria would be living in peace now,” Phelan wrote. “The difference with journalists from mainstream media in NATO and GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] countries is that they come with an agenda, and that agenda is to cover what they call is a “revolution” happening inside Syria and to give substance to the false claims that the Syrian government is a threat to the Syrian people.”

The mainstream media has hijacked the story of the Arab people and has put innocent lives in danger. Mainstream media have sensationalized and romanticized the conflicts in Libya, Egypt and Syria, distracting international attention from the brutal massacres which continue to take place in Bahrain, Yemen and Palestine.

“No one cares anymore if the president stays or steps down,” Boukhari said. “It’s a matter of who wins the argument and who gets the cake.”

Africom and the 21st Century colonial war regime

2011 April 18
Richard Brenneman

In the old days, the militaries of Europe and the United States [remember Cuba and the Philippines?] were dispatched to foreign lands to overthrow regimes and popular movements intent of maintaining real national sovereignty.

Invariably, corporations followed.

Perhaps the bloodiest of colonial rulers was Leopold II, the Belgian monarch who took the Congo as his personal fiefdom in 1885, ruthlessly exploiting its inhabitants to run his rubber plantations.

Before his death in 1908, Leopold was responsible of upwards of five million deaths, with some estimates running as high as 21.5 million, all of them sacrificed for the profits of corporations in which the monarch personally owned the majority interest.

While it’s still available [until 29 April], we recommend you watch this 2003 Belgian documentary, White King, Red Rubber, Black Death for an account of one of the darkest and least known holocausts of modern times, one which may have dwarfed the murderous records of Hitler and Stalin.

And the war was about one simple thing: Exploitation of natural resources.

It was a later European leader, Adolf Hitler, who summed up the colonialist imperative: “To-day war is nothing but a struggle for the riches of nature. By virtue of an inherent law, these riches belong to him who conquers them.”

Today, the colonial imperative is thriving, as should be abundantly clear from even a cursory perusal of the WikiLeaks cables, which reveal the State Departments of both Republican and Democratic administrations are equally intent on forcing other lands to open up their borders to American corporations.

Africom is America’s newest imperial tool, created under the impetus of Air Force Gen. Chuck Wald, the same four star who directed the air war against Afghanistan in the opening round of the Bush/Obama endless wars.

Wald was also the driving force behind the Pentagon’s agrofuel program, which aims to create vast amounts of crop-derived fuels to keep America’s war machine, well, booming.

The Iraq war, after all was all about oil. Even John McCain, Dubya’s senatorial stalwart, acknowledged back during his presidential campaign in 2008:

“My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will — that will then prevent us — that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.”

And as Alan Greenspan famously confirmed, “I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

So let’s stop pretending that what we’re seeing play out in Africa these days has anything to do with “freedom” and “humanitarian needs.” It’s significant to note that targets of Western “intervention” tend to control critical resources.

Libya boasts the world’s finest light, sweet crude oil. Afghanistan holds trillions in natural resources as well as the geography needed for critical pipelines. And of course there was Iraq.

Now back to Africom, this from The East African back in January [via Ayyaantuu Oromiyaa]:

The incoming head of the US Africa Command has promised to consider African countries as part of a review of where Africom’s headquarters should be situated.

“I think we ought to consider locations on the continent of Africa,” Gen Carter Ham told a US Senate panel that was assessing his appointment in November.

Gen Ham was chosen by President Barack Obama to succeed Africom’s first commander, Gen William Ward, who recently visited Tanzania and Rwanda on a “farewell tour.”

Gen Ward is credited with having partly soothed the suspicions with which many African leaders have viewed Africom since its inception four years ago.

Liberia is the only African nation that has publicly offered to host Africom.

Misgivings among Africans about the command’s purposes caused the Pentagon to scrap initial plans to locate Africom’s headquarters on the continent. It has been based in Stuttgart, Germany, for the past three years.

“Some Africans worry that the move represents a neo-colonial effort to dominate the region militarily,” the US Congress’ research arm said in a recent report reviewing Africom’s creation and current status.

“Reports of US air strikes in Somalia in recent years and US support for Ethiopia’s military intervention there have added to those concerns,” the report noted. “Many view US counter-terrorism efforts in Africa with skepticism, and there appears to be a widespread belief that the new command’s primary goals will be to hunt terrorists and to secure US access to African oil.”

Read the rest.

And remember: The Congressional report was written well before the eruptions in North Africa and Mideast, which haven’t done much to reassure Africans about America’s real intentions.

Now consider this from Horace Campbell, writing 15 March n the independent African Pambazuka News:

The Western bombardment of Gaddafi’s forces in Libya has become an opportunistic public relations ploy for the United States Africa Command (Africom) and a new inroad for US military stronghold on the continent. This involvement of Africom in the bombardment is now serving to expose the contradictions and deceit that have surrounded the formation of this combatant command, which is a front for military humanitarian assistance to Africa in coordination with the US Department of State and the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Attempts by the US to re-militarize its engagement with Africa is extremely dangerous, given the fact that the US does not have any positive or credible tradition of genuine assistance to freedom fighters and liberation movements in Africa.

The US was complicit in the planning of the murder of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, after which they propped up the monstrous dictator Mobutu Sese Seko who raped and pillaged the country and established a recursive process of war, rape, plunder, corruption, and brutality which the Congo still suffers from till today. Jonas Savimbi was sponsored by the US to cause destabilization and terror in Angola. The US gave military, material and moral support to the apartheid regime in South Africa while anti-apartheid freedom fighters, including Nelson Mandela, were designated as terrorists. It was only in 2008 that the US Congress passed a bill to remove Mandela’s name from the terrorist watch list). The US has yet to tell the truth about how Charles Taylor escaped from its prison custody in Massachusetts to go destabilize Liberia. Young people who are recruited for the US military and deployed to Africom may not know much about the notorious history of US military involvement in Africa. The military top brass take advantage of this ignorance among the young folks.

Just as the US military carried out psychological warfare against US senators, one of the tasks of Africom is to rain down psychological warfare on Africans. Built in this subtle psychological warfare is the concept of the hierarchy of human beings and the superiority of the capitalist mode of production and ideas of Christian fundamentalism. It is on this front that we find a section of the US military known as the “Crusaders.”

Read the rest.

And consider this from another African source, Dr. Kwame Osei writing at Modern Ghana News:

With the ongoing civil war in Ivory Coast seemingly close to an end it is appropriate to tell the REAL untold story of the crisis in Ivory Coast and inform our readers of the REAL issue(s) behind the situation in the country.

I have heard many commentators on this subject and the bulk of them rant about the fact that the situation in the Ivory Coast is about elections that were supposedly won by Alassane Ouattara and that he is “the internationally recognized president of Ivory Coast” and that Laurent Gbagbo refuses to stand down because he thinks he won the elections – this in itself is flawed because according to a report from a US senate committee that went to Ivory Coast to monitor the elections complained of voter irregularities in areas that were pro-Ouattara

However the deception about the elections is the line that the western media is peddling and experience informs us that when it comes to the western media and Afrika we must be very circumspect of the agenda of the western media who have nothing but disdain for Afrikan people.

That said it is very simplistic to say that the situation in Ivory Coast is solely as a result of undisputed elections and is giving the public a much skewed view of the actual situation.

The REAL issue behind the current impasse in the Ivory Coast is a battle relating to French imperialism and control of the Ivory Coast. What this actually means in reality is that on one hand you have Gbagbo who is against French imperialism in Ivory Coast and championing the cause of Pan-Afrikanism and on the other hand you have Ouattara who one could say is very accommodating to safeguarding French interests in Ivory Coast.

Read the rest.

And consider this from James Petras, Bartle Professor [Emeritus] of Sociology at Binghamton University, New York:

According to a US Congressional Research Service Study published in November 2010, Washington has dispatched anywhere between hundreds and several thousand combat troops, dozens of fighter planes and warships to buttress client dictatorships or to unseat adversarial regimes in dozens of countries, almost on a yearly bases. The record shows the US armed forces intervened 46 times prior to the current Libyan wars. The countries suffering one or more US military intervention include the Congo, Zaine, Libya, Chad, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Ruanda, Liberia, Central African Republic, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea. The only progressive intervention was in Egypt under Eisenhower who forced the Israeli-French-English forces to withdraw from the Suez in 1956. Between the mid 1950’s to the end of the 1970’s, only 4 overt military operations were recorded, though large scale proxy and clandestine military operations were pervasive. Under Reagan-Bush Sr. (1980-1991) military intervention accelerated, rising to 8, not counting the large scale clandestine ‘special forces’ and proxy wars in Southern Africa. Under the Clinton regime, US militarized imperialism in Africa took off. Between 1992 and 2000, 17 armed incursions took place, including a large scale invasion of Somalia and military backing for the Ruanda genocidal regime. Clinton intervened in Liberia, Gabon, Congo and Sierra Leone to prop up a long standing stooge regime. He bombed the Sudan and dispatched military personnel to Kenya and Ethiopia to back proxy clients assaulting Somalia. Under Bush Jr. 15 US military interventions took place, mainly in Central and East Africa. The Obama regime’s invasion and bombing of Libya is a continuation of a longstanding imperial practice designed to enhance US power via the installation of client regimes, the establishment of military bases and the training and indoctrination of African mercenary forces dubbed “collaborative partners”. There is no question that there is a rising tide of imperial militarism in the US over the past several decades.

Read the rest.

But all we hear in our media, endlessly repeated, is that we’re bombing to bring freedom.

Finally, one last take on Libya, again from Pambazuka News [14 April], this time by Jean-Paul Pougala:

For most Africans, Gaddafi is a generous man, a humanist, known for his unselfish support for the struggle against the racist regime in South Africa. If he had been an egotist, he wouldn’t have risked the wrath of the West to help the ANC both militarily and financially in the fight against apartheid. This was why Mandela, soon after his release from 27 years in jail, decided to break the UN embargo and travel to Libya on 23 October 1997. For five long years, no plane could touch down in Libya because of the embargo. One needed to take a plane to the Tunisian city of Jerba and continue by road for five hours to reach Ben Gardane, cross the border and continue on a desert road for three hours before reaching Tripoli. The other solution was to go through Malta, and take a night ferry on ill-maintained boats to the Libyan coast. A hellish journey for a whole people, simply to punish one man.

Mandela didn’t mince his words when the former US president Bill Clinton said the visit was an ‘unwelcome’ one – ‘No country can claim to be the policeman of the world and no state can dictate to another what it should do’. He added – ‘Those that yesterday were friends of our enemies have the gall today to tell me not to visit my brother Gaddafi, they are advising us to be ungrateful and forget our friends of the past.’

Indeed, the West still considered the South African racists to be their brothers who needed to be protected. That’s why the members of the ANC, including Nelson Mandela, were considered to be dangerous terrorists. It was only on 2 July 2008, that the US Congress finally voted a law to remove the name of Nelson Mandela and his ANC comrades from their black list, not because they realised how stupid that list was but because they wanted to mark Mandela’s 90th birthday. If the West was truly sorry for its past support for Mandela’s enemies and really sincere when they name streets and places after him, how can they continue to wage war against someone who helped Mandela and his people to be victorious, Gaddafi?

Read the rest.

AFRICOM: The U.S. Militarization of Africa

By Olayiwola Abegunrin
CAS
December 2007


President George W. Bush approved a Pentagon plan in January 2007 to set up Africa Command Center, to be known as AFRICOM. According to the plan, the Command Center is set to complete and go into service by the end of September 2008. The United States Defense Secretary Robert Gates revealed the new plans as he addressed the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee on the defense spending President Bush proposed in his 2008 budget submitted to the Congress that, “The main purposes of the Africa Command Center would be to fight the war on terror, cooperation, provide humanitarian aid, building partnership capability, oversee security, defense support to non-military missions, and if directed, military training operations designed to help local governments.”

The U.S. had initially reportedly intended to build AFRICOM in Algeria but it was turned down, thus, it had to relocate it to Stuttgart, Germany for the time being. African countries hold that U.S. has harbored with ulterior motives. Mohamed Bedjaoui, the Algerian Minister of State and Foreign Affairs, “questioned that why no one had ever proposed for any anti-terror cooperation with Algeria in the 1990s when terrorist violence went on rampant and wrought great havoc?” Africans are suspicious of the U.S. intentions. Majority of Africans believe that the aim of the U.S. for the Africa Command Center is to protect its potential oil interests in Africa. Second reason is that U.S. is worried about current rapid increased economic and diplomatic competition from China in Africa.

AFRICOM is an example of U.S. military expansion in the name of the war on terrorism, when it is in fact designed to secure Africa’s resources and ensure American interests on the continent. AFRICOM represents a policy of U.S. military-driven expansionism that will only enhance political instability, conflict, and the deterioration of state security in Africa. This is a project that most African countries have rejected to be located on their soil. African leaders are opposed to U.S. permanent military command bases/installations on African soil. Early (September 2007) this year the Southern African Development Community (SADC) member states defense ministers have decided that no member states would host AFRICOM. Nigeria, Ghana, Libya and Morocco have joined in opposing AFRICOM in Africa. However, Liberian Government has accepted to host AFRICOM on her soil. Of course we should not be surprised that President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf of Liberia has accepted to host AFRICOM, after all Liberia is the American stepchild in Africa. AFRICOM is a deadly project to accept for any African country that wants peace and stability. Accepting this project would be a recipe to intensify anti-Americanism and for Al-Qaeda to make that African country a target of terrorist attack. AFRICOM would destabilize an already fragile continent, which would be forced to engage with U.S. interests on military terms.

Militarization of Africa with the U.S. designed so-called AFRICOM is not the solution to Africa’s problem. What African countries need is development of their own institutions for security, political and economic independence; massive infusion of foreign direct investment, fair equitable trade, access to U.S. markets, and for U.S. to decrease/or total removal of agricultural subsidies, debt relief and improved Official Development Assistance tailored towards the development aspirations of (recipient countries) African countries and not AFRICOM that will only lead to militarizing the continent.

What has President Bush’s current policy in Somalia achieved but chaos and more disasters for the Somali people? AFRICOM is another U.S. strategy of recolonization of Africa through the so-called military assistance to the continent. The age of gun-boat diplomacy is over. Africans do not need this in this twenty-first century.

About the Author

Olayiwola Abegunrin is a lecturer in Political Science at Howard University.

AFRICOM: Wrong for Liberia, Disastrous for Africa

By Ezekiel Pajibo and Emira Woods. Edited by John Feffer,

July 26, 2007, FPIF

Just two months after U.S. aerial bombardments began in Somalia, the Bush administration solidified its militaristic engagement with Africa. In February 2007, the Department of Defense announced the creation of a new U.S. Africa Command infrastructure, code name AFRICOM, to “coordinate all U.S. military and security interests throughout the continent.”

“This new command will strengthen our security cooperation with Africa,” President Bush said in a White House statement, “and create new opportunities to bolster the capabilities of our partners in Africa.” Ordering that AFRICOM be created by September 30, 2008, Bush said “Africa Command will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa.”

The general assumption of this policy is that prioritizing security through a unilateral framework will somehow bring health, education, and development to Africa. In this way, the Department of Defense presents itself as the best architect and arbiter of U.S. Africa policy. According to Navy Rear Admiral Robert Moeller, director of the AFRICOM transition team, “By creating AFRICOM, the Defense Department will be able to coordinate better its own activities in Africa as well as help coordinate the work of other U.S. government agencies, particularly the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.”

Competition for Resources

This military-driven U.S. engagement with Africa reflects the desperation of the Bush administration to control the increasingly strategic natural resources on the African continent, especially oil, gas, and uranium. With increased competition from China, among other countries, for those resources, the United States wants above all else to strengthen its foothold in resource-rich regions of Africa.

Nigeria is the fifth largest exporter of oil to the United States. The West Africa region currently provides nearly 20% of the U.S. supply of hydrocarbons, up from 15% just five years ago and well on the way to a 25 share forecast for 2015. While the Bush administration endlessly beats the drums for its “global war on terror,” the rise of AFRICOM underscores that the real interests of neoconservatives has less to do with al-Qaeda than with more access and control of extractive industries, particularly oil.

Responsibility for operations on the African continent is currently divided among three distinct Commands: U.S. European Command, which has responsibility for nearly 43 African countries; U.S. Central Command, which has responsibility for Egypt, Sudan, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Djibouti, Somalia, and Kenya; and U.S. Pacific Command, which has responsibility for Madagascar, the Seychelles, and the countries off the coast of the Indian Ocean. Until December 2006 when the United States began to assist Ethiopia in its invasion of Somalia, all three existing Commands have maintained a relatively low-key presence, often using elite special operations forces to train, equip, and work alongside national militaries.

A new Africa Command, based potentially in or near oil-rich West Africa would consolidate these existing operations while also bringing international engagement, from development to diplomacy, even more in line with U.S. military objectives.

AFRICOM in Liberia?

AFRICOM’s first public links with the West African country of Liberia was through a Washington Post op-ed written by the African- American businessman Robert L. Johnson, "Liberia's Moment of Opportunity." Forcefully endorsing AFRICOM, Johnson urged that it be based in Liberia. Then came an unprecedented allAfrica.com guest column from Liberia’s president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, “AFRICOM Can Help Governments Willing To Help Themselves,” touting AFRICOM’s potential to “help” Africa “develop a stable environment in which civil society can flourish and the quality of life for Africans can be improved.”

Despite these high-profile endorsements, the consolidation and expansion of U.S. military power on the African continent is misguided and could lead to disastrous outcomes.

Liberia's 26-year descent into chaos started when the Reagan administration prioritized military engagement and funneled military hardware, training, and financing to the regime of the ruthless dictator Samuel K. Doe. This military "aid," seen as “soft power” at that time, built the machinery of repression that led to the deaths of an estimated 250,000 Liberians.

Basing AFRICOM in Liberia will put Liberians at risk now and into the future. Liberia’s national threat level will dramatically increase as the country becomes a target of those interested in attacking U.S. assets. This will severely jeopardize Liberia’s national security interests while creating new problems for the country’s fragile peace and its nascent democracy.

Liberia has already given the Bush administration the exclusive role of restructuring its armed forces. The private U.S. military contractor DYNCORP has been carrying out this function. After more than two years in Liberia and an estimated $800,000 budget allocated, DYNCORP has not only failed to train the 2,000 men it was contracted to train, it has also not engaged Liberia’s Legislature or its civil society in defining the nature, content, or character of the new army. DYNCORP allotted itself the prerogative to determine the number of men/women to be trained and the kind of training it would conduct, exclusively infantry training, even though Liberia had not elaborated a national security plan or developed a comprehensive military doctrine. In fact, the creation of Liberia’s new army has been the responsibility of another sovereign state, the United States, in total disregard to Liberia’s constitution, which empowers the legislature to raise the national army.

This pattern of abuse and incompetence with the U.S. military and its surrogate contractors suggests that if AFRICOM is based in Liberia, the Bush administration will have an unacceptable amount of power to dictate Liberia’s security interests and orchestrate how the country manages those interests. By placing a military base in Liberia, the United States could systematically interfere in Liberian politics in order to ensure that those who succeed in obtaining power are subservient to U.S. national security and other interests. If this is not neo-colonialism, then what is?

Perhaps the South Africans will be the loudest voices on the continent in opposition to AFRICOM. Recent media reports spotlight growing tensions in U.S.-South Africa relations over AFRICOM. The U.S. ambassador to South Africa, Eric Bost, complained that South Africa’s defense minister Mosiuoa Lekota, was not responding to embassy requests to meet General Kip Ward, the recently nominated first commander of AFRICOM.

Opposing AFRICOM

The Bush administration’s new obsession with AFRICOM and its militaristic approach has many malign consequences. It increases U.S. interference in the affairs of Africa. It brings more military hardware to a continent that already has too much. By helping to build machineries of repression, these policies reinforce undemocratic practices and reward leaders responsive not to the interests or needs of their people but to the demands and dictates of U.S. military agents. Making military force a higher priority than development and diplomacy creates an imbalance that can encourage irresponsible regimes to use U.S. sourced military might to oppress their own people, now or potentially in the future. These fatally flawed policies create instability, foment tensions, and lead to a less secure world.

What Africa needs least is U.S. military expansion on the continent (and elsewhere in the world). What Africa needs most is its own mechanism to respond to peacemaking priorities. Fifty years ago, Kwame Nkrumah sounded the clarion call for a “United States of Africa.” One central feature of his call was for an Africa Military High Command. Today, as the African Union deliberates continental governance, there couldn’t be a better time to reject U.S. military expansion and push forward African responses to Africa’s priorities.

Long suffering the effects of militaristic "assistance" from the United States, Liberia would be the worst possible base for AFRICOM. But there are no good locations for such a poorly conceived project. Africa does not need AFRICOM.