NATO is prepared for everything

16.5.2012 von Mato.

NATOs 25th Summit will be staged in Chicago on May 20 and 21 and will focus on three main themes; 1. The commitment to Afghanistan through transition and beyond: 2. Ensuring the Alliance has the capabilities it needs to defend it´s territory and to deal with the challenges of the 21st century; 3. Strengthening NATOs network of partners (Partnership for Peace).

At present the most serious obstacle to NATO strategies is the global economic crisis which has forced European governments to reduce their military spending. Germany plans to reduce spending by a quarter over the next four years and Britain’s military budget will be reduced by 7.5 percent until 2015. The budgets of smaller European nations have seen even larger declines.

Military spending in Europe has declined by 20 percent in the last two decades (Greece being a lone exemption) and NATOs war against Libya demonstrated the effects of these reductions. While the European members of NATO contributed more to the campaign than they did in the Yugoslav war in the 90s, many missions needed significant US assistance. Without US cruise missiles, drones, attack helicopters, and electronic warfare aircrafts the Libya intervention could not have succeeded. The USA provided 75 percent of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance data as well as 75 percent of the refueling planes used in the bombing campaign.

As a result of spending constrains NATO has to keep costs in future wars as low as possible and the alliance will therefore prioritize unconventional warfare (a strategy outlined in the US Special Forces Training Circular TC 18-01). In other words, NATO will strongly emphasize the cooperation with terrorist groups and mercenary forces, as seen in Libya (Abdelhakim Belhaj’s LIFG) and in the ongoing subversion in Syria.

NATO has ample opportunity to connect with participants in (or protagonist of) unconventional warfare during major military exercise in Jordan which started just now. 12,000 NATO soldiers from 19 nations are gathering in several areas and also near the Syrian boarder in one of the largest military exercises the region has ever experienced. The operation, called “Eager Lion,“ will see US Marines train their amphibious landing and warfare skills and also will include a number of elite US Special Operations troops, training with Jordanian units in counterterrorism and assault operations.

A major portion of the exercise will be devoted on dealing with refugee flows. There are several camps with Syrian refugees on the northern boarder in Mafraq, Ramtha,, Erbed, and Zarqaa. Already in December US special forces were moved from Iraq to the Jordanian Air Force base (base-Hussein) near Mafraq, located at a distance of only 10 kilometers from Syria.

There are several reports that some of the refugee camps are in fact training centers for the FSA (Free Syrian Army), that between 10,000 and 20,000 islamic mercenaries (mainly from Libya) are being trained in these closed-off camps, and that a constant stream of these fighters is infiltrating into Syria.

A fact finding mission of Conflict Watch managed to enter one of these refugee camps and was confronted with a scene of men in combat gear, various weapons and military vehicles. The two members of the fact-finding mission were instantly evicted from the camp by Jordanian officers after being forced to delete all photographs.

NATO is also present inside Syria. Not only via military instructors aiding the FSA and covert special operations, but also via the UN observer mission.

Since the UN bureaucracy and NATO secretly signed a cooperation agreement in 2008 (without even consulting most UN member states) and since the adoption of UN Resolution 63/308 (Responsibility to Protect), NATO provides most military services for the UN and the two organizations are closely interconnected at all levels.

Major General Robert Mood from Norway, the head of the UN observer mission in Syria, holds a master’s degree in Military Studies from the US Marine Corps University and also attended NATOs Defense College in Rome.

After a slow start the number of UN observers has now reached 263, with 71 civilian staff, bringing the total number of UN personnel to 307. The observers are deployed in Homs, Hama, Idlib, Deraa, Aleppo, Deir el Zour, Rif Dimashq, and several other places.

The military observers and the civilian staff come from 53 countries, most of them are probably not sympathetic to islamic terrorists, which may explain, why despite the closeness between UN and NATO the observers were already attacked several times.

The attacks started when a UN convoy was being pelted with stones while heading to the suburb of Dumair, northeast of Damascus. One of the UN vehicles was slightly damaged with smashed window.

A few days later a roadside bomb hit a UN convoy in the southern city of Dera’a, injuring eight accompanying Syrian soldiers. Another convoy of UN observes came under fire while touring the al-Qusair area near Homs.

The latest incident happened in Khan Sheikhoun near Hama, where a convoy of four UN cars was attacked by a grenade thrown under the first car.

A video on YouTube shows that the grenade was seemingly wounding or killing some civilians standing in front of the first car. When the observers speed away to save themselves they seem to drive over some of those wounded or dead.

The UN reported, that the group of observers was meeting with FSA members and their convoy of four vehicles was struck by an IED (improvised explosive device) which damaged three cars but did non injure the observers.

The Western media outlets had their own take on this incident and reported, that the Syrian army opened fire on a funeral procession and killed 20 people in front of the UN observers. The headlines were inventive as always:

Syrian forces strike UN observer mission’s cars

Rebels protect UN monitors

Syrian regime fires on funeral in presence of UN observers

The author of this blog normally tries to refrain from emotional expressions but facing such unashamed and outrageous lying there is only one concluding comment possible:

The deviousness and crookedness of mainstream media is nearly as appalling and sickening as the deviousness and crookedness of their imperial masters from the USA and NATO!

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Homs Opposition: Al Farouq Battalion is Killing Us

15.5.2012 von Mato.

Sharmine Narwani The Sandbox

Note: This article on Syria has been censored by AOL-Huffington Post

It is extremely rare to have a direct peephole into events on the ground in Syria. The hard-fought battle over narratives often leaves truth in the dust. But among the cache of recently leaked emails (exclusive to Al Akhbar) from Syrian National Council (SNC) President Burhan Ghalioun’s inbox, comes this gem — important information that further highlights the glaring loophole in UN Envoy Kofi Annan’s demilitarization plans for Syria: rogue fighters.

The email sent to Ghalioun on March 25 summarizes a meeting held by members of various armed opposition groups operating in Homs — chiefly to address the pressing problem of the rogue al-Farouq Battalion.

The email’s author “Abu Majd” claims that 24 different armed groups in Homs started to work together in part because of the behavior of the Farouq Battalion, some of whose members are shown in this video from a few days ago. The problem with al-Farouq, says the email, is:

“Its monopoly over decision-making in its areas, its attempts to subjugate whoever is outside its command by force, and adopting what they call a “big stick policy” in dealing with other fighters.”

Confirming occasional Arab media accounts of fighters turning on each other inside opposition-dominated neighborhoods, Abu Majd accuses the Farouq Battalion of:

Unjustified violence against their adversaries and other anti-regime groups that are not subsumed under the rubric of al-Farouq Battalion resulting in a heavy human toll. For example, al-Farouq’s mild punishment/warning to fighters in Bab al-Sibaa led to the death of five martyrs.

One wonders how these deaths were characterized in the daily “casualty counts” disseminated by Homs activists and reported widely by foreign media.

Painting a picture of a Homs opposition fraught with disputes that have “plagued the revolutionary movement there,” the email illustrates some fundamental differences in the armed groups. On one hand, you have the participants of the meeting recapped in this email, who clearly view themselves as sharing a distinct outlook, and who insist that:

Certain groups within the Syrian opposition and external/regional forces have pushed fighters in Homs to this divided state of affairs…they are aware of the difference between civilian regime loyalists and armed killers…they condemn the few armed men in Homs who have committed violence against civilians in neighborhoods loyal to the regime.

Instead, they pin these crimes on “younger men making decisions on their own in line with the language of violence popularized by al-Farouq Battalion and made possible through generous external financial support.”

On the other hand, the email acknowledges another kind of armed opposition on the ground in Homs, which it accuses of fomenting violence against civilians and other fighters, provoking the Syrian regular army, and marching to the tune of foreign donors. On regime provocations, it references the Homs neighborhood of al-Khaldiyieh — scene of some of the worst violence seen in Syria to date:

Al-Farouq’s monopoly over decision-making in Al-Khalidiyeh, which resulted in the neighborhood being targeted with strong artillery strikes due to what some saw as recklessness in attacking Al-Matahen checkpoint (which has continued for days along with shelling Al-Khalidiyeh).

This has resulted in the shelling of Al-Khalidiyeh and the displacement of hundreds of its residents because certain people, exercising exclusive control over decision-making, made an irresponsible decision.

Al-Farouq appears to have taken offensive positions against the Syrian Army well in advance of the March 25 email. This video allegedly shows the militant group claiming responsibility for destroying an army tank in Baba Amr on December 22, 2011.

Baba Amr, of course, was the Homs neighborhood that came under severe government shelling in February, lasting for several weeks and drawing global censure for the alleged massacre of civilians. While the dominant narrative in the international media assumed an unprovoked army attack on a civilian population, there remains little evidence to back this scenario, particularly after information emerged that the neighborhood was an armed opposition stronghold, most of the population had vacated the neighborhood in advance, and reports of activists exaggerating violence trickled out.

The email’s accusation that al-Farouq’s “recklessness in attacking Al-Matahen checkpoint” was responsible for the Syrian Army’s shelling of al-Khalidiyeh, is reminiscent of events leading to the shelling of Baba Amr. According to American journalist Nir Rosen, similar armed opposition provocations preceded the destructive artillery attacks on Baba Amr. On February 4, Rosen wrote:

“Yesterday opposition fighters defeated the regime checkpoint at the Qahira roundabout and they seized a tank or armored personnel carrier. This followed similar successes against the Bab Dreib checkpoint and the Bustan al Diwan checkpoint. In response to this last provocation yesterday the regime started shelling with mortars from the Qalaa on the high ground and the State Security headquarters in Ghota.”

Narratives about these battles in Syria almost always assume that armed groups are taking defensive positions, chiefly to protect civilian populations. So why then, these repeated provocations of the Syrian regular army, other fighters, and civilian populations?

The March 25 email suggests that the Farouq Battalion’s behaviors are led by its financial backers — specifically, the Saudis:

The basis of the crisis in the city today is groups receiving uneven amounts of money from direct sources in Saudi Arabia some of whom are urging the targeting of loyalist neighborhoods and sectarian escalation while others are inciting against the SNC.

They are not national, unifying sources of support. On the contrary, mature field leaders have noted that receiving aid from them [Saudi Arabia] entails implicit conditions like working in ways other than the desired direction.

While the email provides valuable first-hand accounts of events on the ground inside one of Syria’s most embattled cities, it raises the important question of how to tackle armed groups — increasingly of the Islamic militant variety — who operate outside local or national opposition frameworks.

For one, these groups and individuals make the task of achieving compliance on any demilitarization plan difficult, if not impossible. If these groups continue violent attacks against security forces and civilians, it is unlikely that the Syrian government would pull back its troops from these areas.

For the Annan Plan to move forward and the UN observers to achieve demilitarization, two things must happen: 1) there must be specific, agreed-upon, detailed provisions for the Syrian army to deal with provocations from groups outside of the UN’s reach, and 2) the UN Protocol must hold external groups and nations who fund these rogue militants responsible for their material support of violence inside Syria.

It is worth mentioning that the Saudis have refused to meet Annan, and along with Qatar, have continued to offer financial assistance to armed Syrian opposition groups — officially, in the form of salaries. Ironically, both nations have been among the quickest to accuse the Syrian government of violating its commitment to the Annan Plan.

Little is known about the Farouq Battalion, but one of the few journalists — who must remain unnamed — to have dealt with them directly tells me that they are the largest armed opposition group operating inside Homs today with around 4,000 to 5,000 militia men. The group’s roots are militantly Islamist — the moniker Al Farouq is a reference to the Caliph Umar bin al-Khattab, the second successor to the Prophet Muhammad. Some reports claim that the group plans to declare an Islamic Caliphate in Syria, but holds off on any rhetoric that will strengthen the Syrian government’s hand.

Al-Farouq’s stronghold today is in the Khalidiyeh neighborhood of Homs, but its center is in al-Qusayr from which its leader Abu Ali Hardi, a former Syrian intelligence officer in Homs, hails. The militia’s public frontman is Abdul Razak Tlass, a symbolic figure because his uncle is a general in the Syrian Army. From their base in Homs near the Lebanese border, al-Farouq is well positioned to receive heavy weapons from al Qaa and Irsal via Salafist centers in the north of Lebanon. The group is currently trying to organize their fast-growing ranks into a central command structure — to date, fighters under the al-Farouq banner have mostly been running themselves independently in Homs’ various neighborhoods.

While the March 25 email sheds much-needed light on one small part of the Syrian armed opposition, it also illustrates just how egregiously misleading existing narratives are on the situation inside the country.

I reference, by example, possibly the only report on opposition group violence assembled by a major international human rights organization. A Human Rights Watch (HRW) press release from March 20 – five days before the email was sent to Burhan Ghalioun — details opposition “abuses” inside Syria, including kidnappings, torture and executions.

Not only does HRW repeat many of the dominant narratives that have falsely defined the Syrian crisis from its inception, but it does so quoting liberally from — wait for it — the Farouq Battalion. The “media coordinator” from al-Farouq tells HRW:

We are not kidnapping soldiers. During an armed confrontation, soldiers surrounded by the FSA are surrendering themselves to the Al-Farouq battalion so we are capturing and not kidnapping the soldiers. After capturing the soldiers, the FSA calls the government to negotiate the terms of their release, but they refuse to negotiate simply because they don’t care about the captured soldiers. The captives are placed in a room, not a prison. The room has one door with a lock but no windows. Al-Farouq battalion is treating them very well.

We know better now.

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Report from Bahrain

14.5.2012 von Mato.

The following report was posted on http://nsnbc.wordpress.com. Fellow blogger Christof Lehmann travelled to Bahrain and made the following observations there:

 

This article should have contained an interview with the Head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights (BCHR) Nabeel Rajab, who was arrested on May 7th, three days before our planned meeting in Manama, Bahrain. Due to the fact that I have been traveling Asia without access to Internet I arrived in Bahrain late on May 9th, not yet aware of the fact that Nabeel Rajab had been arrested.The meeting with Nabeel Rajab should have dealt with three issues. An interview about the Human Rights Situation in Bahrain; eventual Consultations regarding media strategies for the BCHR, since the human rights situation in Bahrain is critically under reported in Western Main Stream Media; and finally, consultations about functioning as “honest broker” between Human Rights Activists in Bahrain and the Government of Bahrain, for the benefit of all citizens of Bahrain. Due to his arrest this meeting could not take place.

I am hereby calling for the immediate release of Nabeel Rajab. Nabeel Rajab is the Head of the Bahrain Center for Human Rights and the Director of the Gulf Centre for Human Rights. I am also calling for the withdrawal of all charges that are brought against Nabeel Rajab, who was arrested as he returned from Lebanon on May 5th for an initial period of 1 week.

On May 10th, the day of our planned meeting, Nabeel Rajab was brought before the Manama court. He was charged of “participating in an illegal meeting and urging others to take part in it”. In other words, Nabeel Rajab was charged for taking part in a meeting regarding Human Rights and urging others to take part in the meeting about Human Rights too.

Besides that, the prosecutors also interrogated Nabeel Rajab about a “Tweet” in which he “allegedly” had “insulted government officials”.

Already one year ago charges had been brought against Rajab for “criticizing the authorities of Bahrain”. At this occasion Nabeel Rajab was subject to physical violence and abuse. Rajab has reportedly also been subject to violence in 2005. There is good reason for worrying about Nabeel Rajab´s physical health during his incarceration.

It is likely that Nabeel Rajab was “targeted” or “set up” for the arrest, which would constitute entrapment in a country that has laws against entrapment. The authorities of Bahrain had used, what Reporters Without Borders call ” a spurious pretext to abruptly withdraw its permission for a visit by a delegation of free speech NGOs,” including Reporters without Borders, that had been scheduled to take place between May 5 and 10.

The arrest of Rajab and the charges brought against him are but one more link in a chain of dubious arrests and charges of human rights activists and others, who are demanding much needed political, legal, and social reforms in Bahrain.

If there ever was a “Genuine Arab Spring” the protests and demands for political, legal, and social reforms in Bahrain qualify as such much rather than the CIA, MI6, Al-Qaeda, and NATO organized pseudo-revolutions and insurgencies in Libya and Syria. Contrary to these violent, foreign backed insurgencies, the unrests in Bahrain are based in peaceful, legitimate popular demands for reform in a country that is literally governed by a Monarch and the Al Khalifa family.

Arriving in Bahrain, on the way to the hotel on the Old Palace Road, the most prominent sign read “Down Iranian Conspiracy”. Though one can be understanding of the critical geopolitical situation of Bahrain, which is a front line state between an aggressively expansionist NATO hegemony, and Iran, which asserts it´s legitimate position as regional power, and which is a front line state for Russian and Chinese regional interests, it can seem somewhat narcissistic by the authorities of Bahrain to describe the legitimate popular demands for political, legal and social change as “Iranian Conspiracy”. Further more, it is absolutely counter-productive with respect to the long term stability and security of Bahrain.

If anything, the harsh and violent crack downs, the arrests of human rights activists, medical doctors, and anyone who dares to speak out publicly in contempt of the political, legal and social situation in Bahrain, the governments behavior will contribute to radicalizing the popular unrest. The spirit has come out of the bottle and the people of Bahrain are demanding that which is taken for granted in those countries that constitute Bahrain´s geopolitical backbone. The right to establish political parties, labor organizations, and the right to vote for a government, human rights that at a minimum guaranty those universal rights to which Bahrain has bound itself via the United Nations.

Even though Western Main Stream Media are doing their best to denigrate the popular uprisings and demands for human rights, for political, legal and social reforms in Bahrain, while selling the NATO backed insurgency in Syria as “popular uprising”, it is unlikely that this lack of international focus on Bahrain can facilitate an end to the popular uprising and the popular demands.

Since I was unable to meet Nabeel Rajab, I took the liberty to move away from the glamorous facades of the Diplomatic District and into the small alleys and backyards of Manama. The real Bahrain, with dirty backyards, small houses with even smaller apartments for big families. The Manama where people wonder about that a Westerner dares to enter. The streets and backyards where the “people” of Bahrain live, and where the coffee shops smell of good tobacco.

People there are suspicious. Much more suspicious than what is healthy for a government. When spoken to about the situation and the unrests people repeat the “Iranian Conspiracy Narrative” — that is, until they realize that they can talk safely, that I am not a government agent and that nobody they don´t trust can listen in on our conversation.

The general consensus of those I had the privilege to talk to in confidence is, that people want political reforms, to take part in the political life of Bahrain. They want a more fair distribution of the enormous wealth that is generated in the country. And who can blame them for it. The tower of Anglo American and International Finance Capital of Manama are difficult to ignore, even from the smallest of alleys, houses and overcrowded flats. They want a legal system that does not treat them as subjects but as citizens, and in fact, most of those I have spoken to wanted reforms that would give Bahrain a Political System, Human Rights, Civil Liberties and Laws like those that they believe are most common in Europe or the USA. Not a word about Iran and Sharia. That is, until I have a chance to tell them a few words about the Patriot Act, the National Defense Authorization Act, European Anti Terror Laws, and a couple of other  outrages that effectively have undermined any remainder of democracy, civil liberties and human rights in Europe and the USA. After a crash course in European and US tyranny, some said, that maybe Iran is better anyway after all.

The arrest of Nabeel Rajab, the arrests of medical doctors who treat wounded protesters, the violent crack downs on protesters are more mistakes by a government of Bahrain that is doing a bad job at making positive use of the dynamics of the “Real Arab Spring”. Rather than making positive use of these dynamics, a continuation of the authoritarian, repressive and violent response to legitimate demands will invariably radicalize the protesters and worsen the situation and in my opinion, the protesters have reached the critical mass that will make it impossible to force the Jin back into the bottle. The best advice for the government of Bahrain to consider is, to make the best of this dynamic. For the benefit of the people of Bahrain, for the country, and for the Al Khalifa family.

source

Further reading:

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/NE12Ak03.html

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Eye witness report from Hama

13.5.2012 von Mato.

This is a translated and (for the sake of clearness) edited eye witness report of a Syrian citizen from Hama. The author of this report has to remain anonymous for security reasons.

I am from Hama and I experienced the 1982 event, as well as the 1964 and 1971 events. Hama is a picture book example of manipulation by various politicians and it has being exploited lately by parts of the Syrian opposition on the grounds of these previous events, it has been exploited and pushed to repeat what happened for the aim of specific interests — regardless of the results.

I have participated in many demonstrations and was engaged in dialogues with many young people. Some of them realized the motives and objectives behind the instigation and the push for escalation, and they insisted that the movement remains peaceful, but some of the political or religious organizations are pushing in another direction.

The cry of freedom that the city Hama uttered and declared, was a just cry caused by a state of anger as a result of corruption, but it became a deformed cry of freedom when religious organizations joined the movement, coming out of mosques, and when the instigators and fabricators relied on a lot of those drug users and criminals which for rewarding fees started demonstrations.

Uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt were the “bait” that many of the eager youths completely embraced as a result of a considerable media hype which concentrated on the phrase “youth people are capable of change”. Many political parties and fronts effectively participated in this hype, but the most important of them and the most able to influence the masses of youth is the Muslim Brotherhood, which placed its new allies — intellectuals and leading members of various political groups — in the front of the opposition in a way that they are unable now to distance themselves from the violent escalation. And the fact, according to many impartial observers and commentators, is that the Muslim Brotherhood is trying to repeat their attempts in the last century (mentioned at the beginning of the text) in order to seize control of the authority in Syria.

==============

Without going into many details about what happened until now it has to be stated clearly, that the incitement and escalation in Hama never stopped, and a large amount of instigation and fabrication and lying about shelling houses and random shooting by the army is still going on now, even though it has been proven wrong many times.

The most important thing that’s being focused on is the slander of the name and reputation of the Syrian  army, mainly by accusations that its members will destroy, steal, kill, and rape, thereby renewing the memories of the 1982 events and amplifying them in a highly incorrect way. This causes problems for some realists who are used to act and talk with reason and logic.

Despite all rational and calm attempts by the law enforcement forces, which are complying with the instructions and directions that were announced more than once during last year after the state of emergency ended, despite the issuing of the law which guarantees the right to demonstrate and the law about parties and local administrations, despite the withdrawal of security forces from the city center to prevent the police from clashing with protesters, instigation and mobilization operations have escalated and increasingly became sectarian as many police and security members were slaughtered for just being members of a different sect.

We cannot ignore the fact that the longtime mechanisms of suppression and the resulting arrogant attitude of some of the security forces and the law enforcement affected the way of dealing with protestors at the start of the crisis. The complexity of the interests of the groups participating in the opposition together with the presence of individuals carrying weapons and shooting at law enforcement personnel escalated the resentment, and the attempts to arrest weapons bearers caused many cases of unjust harshness in dealing with ordinary protesters, which escalated the tensions on both sides and led to acts of mutual violence.

It is worth noting that the ”Muslim Brotherhood” and other extremist religious organizations used the scheme of placing ordinary young men into the front rows and pushing them to indulge in the protests so that its members could move and act in an unexposed way, hidden from the security forces.

It is further worth noting that, unexpected by the rationalists, many of the opposing intellectuals and leaders of political groups have radicalized their positions and announced their rejection of all issued laws. Some of them altered parts of president Assad’s speeches to cast him in a bad light and they refuse any participation in elections until the overthrown of the regime.

==============

Before Ramadan 2011, the city of Hama was completely under control of armed rebels who formed “revolutionary courts,” slaughtering and killing actions escalated, and the city witnessed the establishment of check points by the armed rebels whom the people of Hama named the “Revolution Shabiha”. The law enforcement personnel interfered from many axis in order to reopen the roads, which resulted in heavy clashes and led to many casualties of law enforcement personal and civilians. The Revolution Shabiha then started burning tires and prevented citizens from leaving the city, and weapons were distributed widely in conjunction with many rumors about what the army will do to the city. Despite all that the government continued distributing flour and fuel to the bakeries and gas stations, continued distributing medicine and first aid materials to the hospitals, and prevented many cases of kidnapping, killing and stealing.

What surprised the citizens and many impelled young people, is the Syrian Army’s noble and committed behavior in dealing with all the citizens in general and presenting martyrs to protect the citizens. I have witnessed personally how three army soldiers put themselves in danger by protection a woman and her daughter when an armed group shot at them. One of the soldiers died and another was injured in this event.

At present there are no heavy military vehicles in the city and the law enforcement personnel at their posts are protecting themselves with sand bags due to their constant exposure to armed attacks.

Citizens are being killed on a daily basis just for the reason that they are cooperating with the security forces and armed attacks against law enforcement services never have stopped, resulting in many killed and injured officers. Other attacks target cars and government buses, resulting in deaths and injuries, not to forget the kidnapping and the threatening of government supporters with killing and slaughter, facilitated by Facebook pages of the so called “Coordination Committees” who named individuals to be attacked by the revolution Shabiha — though they stopped this now as it is not benefiting them in the media.

The people of Hama are currently living in a state of caution and distress because of the masked armed men who appear regularely and suddenly in the streets, shooting randomly to terrorize people and to close schools and markets. People notice non-Syrian armed men among those who call themselves “Rebels”.

Yesterday morning, a colonel and his commissioned officer were assassinated, and when police pursued the perpetrators, it turned out that the rebels had set an ambush and tried to drag the officers into one of the residential areas, forcing the Syrian Arab army to interfere for rescue and for handling the situation. Within a short period of time many masked armed men with machine guns and RPGs showed up in the city’s neighborhoods and markets, firing and forcing people to close their stores. They burned tires and caused a great deal of chaos and panic, then some of them headed to the posts of the law enforcement personnel and attacked them. It turned out that it was meant to prove news reports, that the Syrian army in Hama is shooting randomly and is shelling some areas.

One final word, most of the people of Hama do not accept what’s happening, reject any foreign military intervention, refuse any attempts of outside political pressure or economic sanctions, and are proud about the fact that many politicians and patriots hail from Hama, such as “Saeed A’as”, “Adib Shishakly” who are the symbols of their city as well as “Sheik Mohammad Al-Hamed” and “Bishop Harikeh”.

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Cindy Sheehan’s Mother’s Day message

13.5.2012 von Mato.

This is from Cindy Sheehan’s Soap Box:

This weekend as we celebrate mothers, it’s important to remember that there are mothers all over the world who are in pain because of war and economic oppression. It’s also important to remember that Julia Ward suggested this holiday way back in 1870 for peace through her Mother’s Day Proclamation. 

For me, it’s distressing that “liberals” are gleeful over the fact that the president is personally in favor of same-sex marriage (although it doesn’t actually change a thing, except he received one million campaign dollars within an hour) while not protesting either in word or deed Obama’s drone program and war in Afghanistan.

I am hoping that the NATO protests (remember NATO is just an euphemism for US Imperialism) in Democrat Rahm Emanuels’ Chicago next week (I will be there) are large and non-partisan; but, in fact, the largest coalition to protest at the DNC has changed its name so as not to appear its protesting the Democrats so as not to offend anybody.

I have been blessed with three wonderful surviving children and now four grand babies and I can be secure that even though a drone overhead may be spying on me, it isn’t equipped with hellfire missiles. It’s safe to say that every mother in the U.S. will be safe from having their home raided at night by the US military and having their children slaughtered while they sleep.

I don’t know what to do anymore. Why aren’t we out in the streets in droves protesting the Drone Bomber and his wars? Why do we worship his words and not protest his deeds? Where are the large war protests during the Vietnam or even Bush eras? Even though Mother’s Day is not a happy day for me, I try to put myself in the sandals of a woman in Afghanistan, Gaza, Pakistan, or some other hot zone — and when I look across the miles at the US, I wonder why no one cares about me and my family.

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The growing fear of peace in Syria

8.5.2012 von Mato.

Dan Glazebrook   Al-Ahram Weekly.

Western attempts to destroy Syria have not been going to plan, revealing that what the West fears most is a peaceful resolution to the crisis.

The strategy was simple, clear, tried and tested. It had been used successfully not only against Libya, but also Kosovo (in 1999), and was rapidly underway in Syria. It was to run as follows: train proxies to launch armed provocations; label the state’s response to these provocations as genocide; intimidate the UN Security Council into agreeing that “something must be done”; incinerate the army and any other resistance with fragmentation bombs and Hellfire missiles; and finally install a weak, compliant government to sign off new contracts and alliances drawn up in London, Paris and Washington, whilst the country tore itself apart.

Result: the heart torn out of the “axis of resistance” between Iran, Syria and Hizbollah, leaving Iran isolated and the West with a free hand to attack Iran without fear of regional repercussions.

This was to be Syria’s fate, drawn up years ago in the high- level planning committees of US, British and French defense departments and intelligence services. But this time, unlike in Libya, it has not all gone according to plan.

First, there was Russia and China’s veto of the “regime change” resolution at the UN Security Council in October 2011, followed by a second veto in February of this year. This meant that any NATO attack on Syria would be denied the fig-leaf of UN approval, and seen instead as a unilateral act of aggression not just against Syria, but potentially also against China and Russia as well.

Vicious and reckless as they are, even Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama do not necessarily have the stomach for that kind of a fight. That left the burden of destroying the Syrian state to NATO’s proxy forces on the ground, the “Free Syrian Army” — a collection of domestic and (increasingly) foreign militias, mostly ultra-sectarian Salafi extremists, along with a smattering of defectors and Western special forces.

However, this army was not created actually to defeat the Syrian state; that was always supposed to be NATO’s job. As in Libya, the role of the militias was simply to provoke reprisals from the state in order to justify a NATO blitzkrieg. Left to their own devices, they have no chance of gaining power militarily, as many in the opposition realize.

“We don’t believe the Free Syrian Army is a project that can help the Syrian revolution,” said leader of the internal Syrian resistance movement Haitham Al-Manna, recently. “We don’t have an example of where an armed struggle against a dictatorial regime has won.” Of course, one could cite Cuba, South Vietnam, and many others, but what is certainly true is that internal armed struggle alone has never succeeded when the government is the only party in the struggle with any significant mass support, as is the case in Syria.

This reality was brutally driven home in early March in the decisive battle for the Baba Amr district of Homs. This was supposedly one of the Free Syrian Army’s strongholds, yet they were roundly defeated, leaving them facing the prospect of similar defeats in their last few remaining territories as well. The opposition groups are becoming increasingly aware that their best chance of meaningful change is not through a military fight that they will almost certainly lose, and which will get them killed in the process, along with losing public support and credibility, but through negotiations and participation in the reform process and the dialogue that the government has offered.

This prospect — of an end to the civil war and a negotiated peace that brings about a reform process without destabilizing the country — has led to desperation amongst the imperialist powers. Despite their claims to the contrary, a stable Syrian-led process is the last thing they want, as it leaves open the possibility of Syria remaining a strong, independent, anti-imperialist state — exactly the possibility they had sought to eliminate.

Hence, within days of Kofi Annan’s peace plan gaining a positive response from both sides in late March, the imperialist powers openly pledged, for the first time, millions of dollars to the Free Syrian Army: for military equipment, to provide salaries to its soldiers, and to bribe government forces to defect. In other words, terrified that the civil war in Syria is starting to die down, they are setting about institutionalizing it. If violent regime change is starting to look unlikely, the hope instead is to keep the country weak and on its knees by sucking its energy into an ongoing civil war.

At the risk of making the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) appear even more out of touch with ordinary Syrians than it does already, its Western backers have increased the pressure on it to fall into line with this strategy, leading to open calls from the SNC leadership for both the full-scale arming of the rebellion and for aerial bombardment from the West.

This has caused huge rifts in the organization, with three leading members defecting last month, because they did not want to be “accomplices in the massacre of the Syrian people through delaying, cheating, lies, one-upmanship and monopolization of decision-making.” The SNC, according to one of the three, Kamal Al-Labwani, is “linked to foreign agendas that aim to prolong the battle while waiting… for the country to be dragged into a civil war.”

This month, one of the few SNC leaders actually based in Syria, Riad Turk, called on the opposition to accept the Annan peace plan, “stop the bloodshed” and enter into dialogue with the government — a call not echoed by his fellow SNC colleagues abroad. Likewise, the main peaceful opposition grouping within Syria — the National Coordinating Committee — has fallen out with the SNC over the latter’s increasingly belligerent role as a mouthpiece of foreign powers.

NCC leader Al-Manna spoke out against the Free Syrian Army recently, saying “the militarization of the Syrian revolution signifies the death of the internal revolution…We know that the Turkish government is playing an important role in the political decisions of the Free Syrian Army. We don’t believe that an armed group can be on Turkish territory and remain independent of Turkish decisions.”

So, there is a growing perception, even amongst the Syrian opposition movement itself, that both the Free Syrian Army and the Syrian National Council are working in the interests of foreign powers to prolong a pointless civil war.

Western policy-makers are playing a dangerous game. Short of a NATO attack, their best option for the destabilization and emasculation of Syria is to ensure that the ceasefire fails and the fighting continues. To this end, they are encouraging their proxy militias to step up their provocations: the purpose of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppé’s statements about “other measures” still being on the table is to keep the idea of a NATO attack alive in the heads of the rebels so that they continue to fight.

Indeed, many more foreign fighters have been shipped into the country in recent weeks, according to The Washington Post, and these have been launching devastating bomb attacks in Damascus and Aleppo. US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford is a protégé of John Negroponte, who organized Contra death squads to destabilize Nicaragua in the 1980s; he will almost certainly have been organizing similar groups in Syria during his time there last year and for similar purposes.

Nevertheless, the destabilization agenda is not going according to plan. The internal opposition in Syria is becoming increasingly frustrated with the way things are progressing, and a clear split is emerging between those based outside the country, happy to see Syria consigned to oblivion in order to please their paymasters and further their careers, and those who actually have to live with the consequences.

The reckless attacks carried out by the armed militias are increasingly alienating even those who once had some sympathy for them, especially as their foreign membership and direction is being exposed ever more clearly. Having been proven unable to win and hold territory, these militias are turning to hit- and-run guerrilla tactics. But the guerrilla, as Mao put it, is like a fish that can only survive in a sea of popular support. And that sea is rapidly drying up.

Geschrieben in Politics | Keine Kommentare »

Testimony of a wise man

8.5.2012 von Mato.

Tom Engelhardt published a remarkable article on tomdispatch.com, which really stands out from the usual postings on this blog. The article was written by Ernest Callenbach in the weeks or month before he died of cancer on April 16th, and is clearly meant as a final manifest or testament. It is titled: Epistle to the Ecotopians, it is a masterpiece and it should be read by as many people as possible.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175538/tomgram%3A_ernest_callenbach,_last_words_to_an_america_in_decline/

The article appears or is linked to on many other websites, just to list a few:

http://www.allvoices.com/news/
http://sigalonnewsviewsalt.soup.io/
http://topics.treehugger.com/
http://mostlywater.org/
http://www.energybulletin.net/
http://warincontext.org/
http://carolynbaker.net/
http://blogs.worldwatch.org/
http://transitionus.org/
http://seculardiscourse.wordpress.com/

[I will have a closer look at these sites as soon as I have time.]

=======================

Ernest Callenbach writes nothing in Epistle to the Ecotopians than is not known already by most of us but it is reassuring, that he voices the same sentiments that we have and that his observations and analyses have led him to the same conclusion that we made. We have to thank him for summarizing his observations and conclusions in an easily understandable and perfectly constructed text.

His other texts and his books (especially his novel Ecotopia) are also worth reading, Some texts are on his website

http://ernestcallenbach.com/Home+contact.html

I for myself will read his text Epistle to the Ecotopians several times carefully and rewrite or expand some of my earlier blog post in his spirit. The posts Hope, Priority List, You want to save the world?, Essential questions are main candidates for a rework.

Following his appeal to organize, I also will try to increase my personal contacts face to face or via electronic communication and I will try to find discussion forums on blogs and social media where relevant issues are addressed.

Until now I made the experience that discussions on social networking sites or in comment threads are seldom fruitful because the prevailing web culture of boasting and showing off inevitably drowns the soft voices of reason. Forums that are public and accessible by anybody will more than often see “cock fights” or “flame wars” instead of a collective and cooperative development of ideas and visions.

Hence my personal appeal to the readers: Please let me know, if there is a place where I could fit in.

Geschrieben in Environment | Keine Kommentare »

Open-ended analysis

6.5.2012 von Mato.

Don’t rain on their parade (and don’t be presumptuous)

In the last days of April and on the first of May there was a flood of articles in US alternative media who referred to May Day and to planned protest actions in the USA.

The maydaynyc.org homepage stated:

On May 1st, we will celebrate a holiday for the 99 percent. We will come together across lines of race, class, gender, and religion and challenge the systems that create these divisions. New Yorkers will join with millions throughout the world — workers, students, immigrants, professionals, houseworkers. We will take to the streets to unite in a general strike against a system which does not work for us. With our collective power we will begin to build the world we want to see. Another world is possible!

Calling for a general strike on May Day, also called Labor Day and International Workers’ Day, will sound strange to many people around the world, because this is a public holiday in most countries and workers all over the world are officially allowed to take a day off. In the USA though this is not a public holiday despite the fact, that the history of May Day is closely connected with the history of the US labor movement.

The origins of May Day lay in the commemoration of the 1886 Haymarket Massacre in Chicago, when police shot and killed many protesters (and also several police officers by “friendly fire”), after a bomb had been thrown. The protests occurred during a general strike for the eight hour workday.

Subsequently the strike collapsed and the government cracked down hard on the labor movement, incarcerating labor activists and closing newspapers. Five labor leaders were sentenced to death.

The US labor movement did not recovered from this blow and it would take until 1938 to finally enshrine the eight-hour day into federal law.

Union density was never high in the USA but it fell from a peak in 1945, when one-third of employees were organized, steadily to about 11.7 percent now. Unions also face severe legal restrictions, 23 states have passed “right to work” laws to limit workers’ collective bargaining rights and there are numerous anti-strike laws. In addition to that the US Supreme Court upheld a variety of restrictions on strikes without ever confirming or denying the existence of a constitutional right to strike.

Considering the weakness of the US labor movement it is not surprising, that the stated aim of May Day organizers to bring business in New York and other cities to a standstill went unfulfilled. Strikes are no viable option in US labor conflicts, the last general strike that successfully shut down a US town took part in Oakland in 1946.

May Day 2012 didn’t bring a sea change and there was no general strike but the May Day actions nevertheless gave new life to the OWS movement.

In New York’s Union Square between 2000 and 3000 people attended a concert in a party-like atmosphere with Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, Das Racist, Dan Deacon, and Immortal Technique (Tom Morello told the audience, that he flew 3000 miles to play for them, which in other contexts would maybe raise questions of ecological diligence).

Later on there were clashes with police near Bryant Park, on the Williamsburg Bridge, and near Washington Square Park, resulting in about 40 arrests.

In Los Angeles the OWS movement, labor unions, and the immigrant community unfortunately had all organized their separate rallies with attendances from 200 to 2000 people.

In Oakland police fired tear gas and “flash-bang” grenades to disperse protesters, 39 people were arrested. Black-clad protesters in Seattle used sticks to smash downtown windows, 8 protesters were arrested. In San Francisco the Occupy movement was blamed for a night of violence with cars and small businesses being vandalized.

The May Day protests were ignored by mainstream media, while alternative media reported them as success. The NY Times had a piece about May Day protests in Europe but nothing about US protest actions (except the usual reports about traffic disruptions and arrests).

Although the call for a nation-wide general strike was not answered to the degree that organizers had hoped, between 2,000 and 3000 people gathered in New York, about the same in Los Angeles, 1,000 in Chicago. One could call this a success but compared to the several hundred thousand protesters in Europe it is not impressive. Compared to the 80,000 protesters in Wisconsin in February 2011 it is not impressive.

The Indianapolis 500 car race (a sad and despicable event from an ecological viewpoint) usually attracts an estimated crowd of 400,000. 1.8 million people attended President Obama’s inauguration despite frigid weather, long walks, and annoying security measures.

As stated at the start of this post, there were many articles in the alternative media who referred to May Day but three of them deserve special attention and shall be commented here:

Rebecca Solnit published a piece with the title: American Dystopia, Fiction or Reality? http://www.tomdispatch.com/archive/175536/

Solnit’s books are a pleasure to read and her articles are always inspiring and interesting. She has fully embraced the Occupy movement and this posting in TomDispatch was enthusiastic as always about the prospects and the effectiveness of OWS protest actions.

She writes: “Violence is not power, as Jonathan Schell makes strikingly clear in The Unconquerable World, it’s what the state uses when we are not otherwise under control.”

This is somewhat vague, if not mystic, and leaves the question open, what the terms violence and power mean, and how they relate to each other. One could argue, that power enables violence or that violence establishes the supremacy of a powerful actor over the rest of the players. Violence is further used to eliminate competitors, which consequently increases power.

Solnit writes also: “When we come together as civil society to exercise this power, regimes tremble and history is made. Not instantly and not exactly according to plan, but who ever expected that?”

Solnit cites as proof: Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict. This is a book that is not published yet, so there is no possibility to check this claim and by mentioning the source and linking to it she btw. makes advertising for Amazon.com, a business that is a prime example of corporate wickedness and ruthlessness.”

Solnit mentions further the success of the Move Your Money campaign, which targets Bank of America and other banks and she writes: “Quiet victories like this could begin to reshape our economic landscape.”

This assessment is correct and especially the last sentence is significant and really nails it, but the Move Your Money campaign is not a violent or nonviolent protest, is a coordinated economic action of enough individuals to have an economic impact.

Further down Solnit writes: “Meanwhile last week, both the Wells Fargo and General Electric shareholders’ meetings were under siege from Occupy activists. The Wells Fargo meeting and protests took place in San Francisco, and afterward an arrested friend of mine posted this on Facebook: “I forgot to mention that Max gave me the Hunger Games salute in jail today. It was awesome.”

Many people would regard the reported episode not as a proof of the effectiveness and power of nonviolent protest, but rather as a proof of helplessness and powerlessness.

Near to the end of her article, Solnit states: “Still alive and kicking, Occupy is chipping away in a thousand places at the status quo”, though she acknowledges: “The banking and oil companies, the 1 percent, and the prison and education rackets are more than capable of pushing back.”

Solnit’s closing sentence again is a rhetorical jewel: “Commit your deepest love and solidarity to the young whose lives are being gambled away, feed the hungry, take a long look at how beautiful our planet still is, find your way into solidarity and people power, and dream big about other futures. Resistance is one of your obligations, but it’s also a pleasure and a way of stealing back hope.”

This is wonderful formulated, this is poetic, it is inspiring and exactly what we need to hear, these are words that will energize us and enable us to continue with our resistance against an insane system. Solnit is a gifted writer and the best possible cheerleader for the green resistance movement, or occupy movement, or transition town movement, or whatever one would call it.

If she only would realize, that protest movements have their limits and protests, demonstrations, occupations, sit-ins, blockades alone will not change anything!

Chris Hedges published a piece with the title: Welcome to the Asylum http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/welcome_to_the_asylum_20120430/

This article is also wonderful written, thoughtful, touching, and far beyond the usual commentaries, analysis, or opinion pieces. This article is a piece of art, but it is not inspiring and cheerleading, it rather sounds desperate and depressed, like the “one final attempt of a wake up call.”

Hedges writes for example: “ The World Health Organization calculates that one in four people in the United States suffers from chronic anxiety, a mood disorder or depression — which seems to me to be a normal reaction to our march toward collective suicide.”

“When the most basic elements that sustain life are reduced to a cash product, life has no intrinsic value. The extinguishing of ‘primitive’ societies, those that were defined by animism and mysticism, those that celebrated ambiguity and mystery, those that respected the centrality of the human imagination, removed the only ideological counterweight to a self-devouring capitalist ideology.”

One could argue, that animism and mysticism as variants of religious superstition are not necessary helpful for solving the myriad of problems that humanity faces. Hedges states correctly that capitalism is an ideology, but ideologies, religions, superstitions, and certain philosophies (dualism, idealism) are all based on believes and not on scientific methodology, reasoning, and common sense.

Animism and mysticism can be for sure an ideological counterweight to capitalism, but one has to consider the possibility, that a non ideological counterweight would be even more helpful and desirable.

Hedges writes further: “Reason makes possible the calculations, science and technological advances of industrial civilization, but reason does not connect us with the forces of life. A society that loses the capacity for the sacred, that lacks the power of human imagination, that cannot practice empathy, ultimately ensures its own destruction.”

Hedges probably didn’t mean it that way, but this formulation could be misunderstood as an argument against reason, science, and technology. Much of our technology is indeed insane (nuclear technology, weapons, GE-crops, data mining) and the result of bad intent and lack of imagination.

Yet reason and scientific methodology have lifted us from the mire of the Dark Ages, which were a time of religious superstition, short lifespans, and little understanding of biological and physical processes that are important to humans. The discovery and partially understanding of microorganisms alone validates the scientific revolution.

When Hedges refers to “ambiguity and mystery”, “the sacred” and “human imagination”, he maybe draws from his religious background, but all these terms can be also easily incorporated into a rational, scientific, atheistic worldview simply by acknowledging, that this world, a nonlinear dynamical system with an infinite number of forces and interdependencies, is beyond our understanding via logic (which evolved from grammar and is limited) or via pattern recognition (used in intuition, imagination, creativity).

The wave–particle duality of quantum mechanics, the fourth dimension of string theory, most aspects of particle physics (higgs boson), and many other scientific issues are beyond everybody’s comprehension. These things can be indeed viewed as sacred, mysterious, ambiguous.

A holistic worldview may give additional insight, but is also based on the interpretation of incoming sensory signals and on pattern recognition and therefore limited. To sum it up: Things beyond the limits of our senses and of our intelligence may appear to be magical, mystical, sacred, yet they are no proof of metaphysical concepts.

Hedges writes: “As we race toward the collapse of the planet’s ecosystem we must restore this older vision of life if we are to survive.”

“The war on the Native Americans, like the wars waged by colonialists around the globe, was waged to eradicate not only a people but a competing ethic. The older form of human community was antithetical and hostile to capitalism, the primacy of the technological state and the demands of empire.”

Hedges then cites “The Ethnological Notebooks of Karl Marx” and refers to various aspects of Native American society, culminating in the statement, that:

“Rebuilding this older vision of community, one based on cooperation rather than exploitation, will be as important to our survival as changing our patterns of consumption, growing food locally and ending our dependence on fossil fuels.”

Hedges argumentation has its merits. Humans have disregarded or forgotten the wisdom of the ages, have lost their connection with nature, have created a synthetic environment and unnatural social structures.

Yet: human population has exploded, nature is polluted and partly destroyed, technology has advanced and we have to live (or die) with it. Some of Hedges recommendations deserve a close look and some aspects of earlier societies may be worth emulating. Others may not be applicable in this so profoundly changed modern world.

Hedges closing words are: “The final chapter of this sad experiment in human history will see us sacrificed as those on the outer reaches of empire were sacrificed. There is a kind of justice to this.”

“We profited as a nation from this demented vision, we remained passive and silent when we should have denounced the crimes committed in our name, and now that the game is up we all go down together.”

This sounds tired, disillusioned, hopeless. This is totally different from Solnit’s sentiment. Hedges doesn’t give hope, he doesn’t show a way out, he seems to disregard the possibility that despite the bleak outlook one never can be totally sure that the doomsday predictions are correct.

Maybe new technologies allow to disable weapons and pacify violent humans, maybe the imperium will crumble and fall, maybe increased clouds and other feedback processes will limit global warming, maybe microorganisms will cleanup toxic substances faster than expected, maybe pandemics will reduce human populations to sustainable levels, maybe nature is more resilient than we think and will recover and adapt to higher background radiation?

What about the attitude of indefatigably and pertinaciously struggling on, boycotting, obstructing, sabotaging the old system while at the same time trying new ways, organizing and building new decentralized structures? Hedges didn’t write that but he obviously meant it, otherwise he would not have even bothered to publish his hard hitting text!

The third piece is a blog post by a fellow blogger. Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez posted Which Side Are You On?

http://bethechange2012.wordpress.com/2012/04/30/which-side-are-you-on/

She writes: “The mainstream media is still doing its best to pretend that nothing out of the ordinary is going on.”

This is a correct observation, the mainstream media either ignores, belittles, ridicules, or slanders, scandalized, and defames the OWS movement.

Browdy de Hernandez continues: “But if you move over to Twitter and search #Occupy, #OccupyWallSt, or #MayDay, you get a whole different picture of what’s going on.”

“Instead of the nose-in-the-air ho-hum of the fat-cat NY Times, suddenly you’re plunged into a hum of activity, down on the ground with a million twittering mice running around energetically, purposefully and thoughtfully.”

Which raises the question, if this million twittering mice indeed resulted into a million protesters or a million activists working diligently and energetically on alternative projects in their local communities.

The reports from both mainstream and alternative media (which are all anecdotal evidence of course and therefore debatable) suggest, that the million twittering mice didn’t yield a proportional amount of real life activities.

Navid Hassanpour, a political science graduate student at Yale, used complex vector calculations to study the Tahrir Square movement in Egypt and concluded: “The disruption of cellphone coverage and Internet on the 28th exacerbated the unrest in at least three major ways,” … “It implicated many apolitical citizens unaware of or uninterested in the unrest; it forced more face-to-face communication, i.e., more physical presence in the streets; and it effectively decentralized the rebellion on the 28th through new hybrid communication tactics, producing a quagmire much harder to control and repress than one massive gathering in Tahrir.”

Todd Wolfson, an assistant professor of journalism and media studies at Rutgers and a community organizer in Philadelphia, says that there is indeed, “an accelerant role for social media,” but that it “cannot and does not create that kind of mass motion.”

Browdy de Hernandez writes in her blog post: “Thanks to the Occupy movement, the onus has shifted to the 1% to prove that what they’re doing is responsible and for the good of all, rather than motivated by naked greed and self-interest.”

“The rapacious vulture Capitalism that has dominated the U.S., and hence the world, since the end of World War II has been exposed, and there is no going back.”

The “rapacious vulture Capitalism” (I love this formulation) has been exposed many times and for a long time without any resulting change, but leaving this caveat aside one could interpret the two cited sentences as the description of a paradigm shift and fundamental change of the value system.

Pointing to a paradigm shift would be not completely wrong because a gradual shift in the public mood is undeniably happening, though until now it is not reflected in the mass media, the political culture, the political decisions, and most important of all, the personal (individual) decisions and the personal conduct. The life style of the broad public until now has not changed!

Browdy de Hernandez calls on her blog repeatedly to participate in May Day rallies but admits: “Me, I’ll be teaching my classes this May Day, but with a tip of my hat to what’s going on down at the barricades in New York and all across the country.”

Asked by a reader/commenter why she didn’t participate in the general strike she explains: “I thought about not going to school, but then decided I could be of more use to my students in the classroom rather than out in the street.”

“I have always had a phobia about crowds, and never willingly put myself into a crowd situation. I don’t even like to go to an agricultural fair, or a peaceful parade. In my Manhattan youth, crowds and violence often went together, or at least crowds and the fear of violence.”

“I am glad I decided to stay at work today.  At least with this one small group of students, I was able to foreground these historic May Day protests in their minds, and ask some questions that no one else probably would have asked them today.”

“Maybe as a result they will be paying attention to the news in a different way, and thinking more concretely about how the issues blazoned across all those posters and banners are relevant to their own particular lives.”

Both cited reasons are sound explanations for not attending May Day protests, but they apply not only to Browdy de Hernandez alone. Many people will be able to spend their time more productively with occupations like working in the garden, in the fields and forests, repairing, building, counseling, teaching, analyzing and writing, planning, organizing.

Quite a few people will also be uncomfortable with crowds. There is only a small step from mass excitement to mass hysteria, only a small step from mass outrage to riots, only a small step from mass violence to lynch mobs.

Mass rallies can be motivating and energizing, can be a life changing experience, can be an epiphany. They can be a social event where people reconnect with old friends and acquaintances, they can be reassuring, giving the feeling not to be alone, not to be an outsider.

On the other hand protest rallies can be time wasters, can be boring, disillusioning and frustrating. The speakers are preaching to the quire, they will not say anything what the audience didn’t know beforehand. They will not dare to say anything unexpected or reveal any new conclusions or dissenting views. They will not dare to spoil the party and will not risk to be booed and hassled.

The attending police officers will not listen to the speeches because they will be busy with noticing and cataloguing individual participants. If they would ever listen, the message would not reach them, they live in a different world and speak a different language (metaphorically). The rallies though will be reassuring for them too, their jobs are secured as long as such rallies happen, maybe they even can get overtime pay.

From an alternative media outlet:

“At the rally, speaker after speaker raised questions about the lavish spending on US military interventions abroad and drastic cuts in budget expenditures on health and education at home, and the failure to create jobs and alleviate poverty.”

That strikes a note of course and the audience will applaud and cheer and after listening to the speeches maybe go home or have a drink in a pub or smash some windows. But what is the functional difference between these speakers and mainstream TV brainwashing? Where is the interaction and thoughtful discussion?

Big crowd have their own psychology, Carl Gustav Jung, Jean-Gabriel De Tarde, Gustave Le Bon, Sigmund Freud, and more recently Edward Louis Bernays and Philip Zimbardo have discussed this matter in great detail.

Here is not the space to delve into details and furthermore, the internet and social networking have fundamentally changed the situation, many aspects of crowd psychology are now irrelevant, one could say that “crowd psychology” has been replaced by “cloud psychology.”

Anthropologist Robin Dunbar of Oxford University says, that 150 meaningful relationships seem to be the neurological limit the human brain can handle. In other words, 150 is the maximum number of friends. Dunbar also concludes that 50 is the largest possible number of trusted friends, 15 of good friends, and 5 of best friends.

One can discuss the mentioned numbers and labels, but the assertion of a neurological limit is backed by statistical evidence and psychological as well as neurological research.

The earnestness and dedication of the May Day protesters is beyond doubt and their grievances are real. Nobody should “rain on their parade” (a reference to “Don’t Rain On My Parade” from Funny Girl).

The final verdict about OWS and the usefulness of protest actions is still out and there is hope that OWS evolves from a protest movement to a social movement. OWS camps have attracted the down and out, the homeless and drug addicts, the ones which are abandoned and hidden away by society.

To bring their plight into the open is one of the big achievements of OWS!

As the regular readers of this blog will have noticed, I never shy away from voicing controversial and dissenting views, I don’t regurgitate clichés (or at least try not to regurgitate clichés), and despite being thankful about feedback and corrections in the end I make up my own mind.

The following text was written in October and I never published it because I considered it as too harsh, as biased, petulant, and unjust. It still is all this but I reveal the text now to give an alternative point of view and enrich the discussion:

Spoiling the Party

Some people like to spoil the party, some people are skeptical by nature and don’t tend to fall for a hype. Some people are immune against the infection with “irrational exuberance”.

Quite a few of this kind of people are skeptical about the OWS movement and its usefulness to change the existing power structures. Quit a few are skeptical and doubtful, that public protests are an appropriate way to fight against the plutocracy. They consider these protests a waste of time and energy.

The vented grievances are legitimate and it is necessary to bring the issues of social injustice and corruption to the attention of the broader public. Yet at present the strategy of the protesters gives the police all chances to hurt and humiliate them, to set a deterrent example, to test highly advanced tools of crowd control, and to show the public how weak and helpless the protesters are.

What about flash mobs organized via cellphones instead of OWS camps? Permanent OWS encampments may be left alone in some cities but will be broken up and be cleared in others (Oakland). Prominent participants will be arrested and treated correctly and comparatively well, not so prominent persons will be harassed and mistreated and heavily fined.

A violent and disproportional response of the police forces to public dissent will of course expose the true nature of the rulers. But we know their true nature since a long time: They are monsters! They were exposed as monsters long before 100,000 (and maybe even more) died in Iraq, long before at least 20,000 died in Afghanistan, long before about 40,000 died in Libya.

The rulers exposed themselves as monsters throughout the history of the empire, for instance when they installed military dictatorships in most of Latin America and trained the torturers and henchmen in the “School of the Americas.”

They exposed themselves as monsters as they were assassinating people around the world. Assassinations by drones are prominent and newsworthy now but the methodical killing by various (often ingenious and innovative) means goes on since decades.

How could the policy of MAD (mutual assured destruction) be characterized in any other way as being monstrous? How could the annihilation of two cities by nuclear bombs being described in any other way than being a monstrous crime?

Everyone who has not made up his or her mind, everyone who has not realized that the imperial nations are ruled by monsters must be so massively indoctrinated, brainwashed, and tranquilized by mainstream media that even the most bloody crackdown on a protest movement will not change his or her mind. “The protesters brought it upon themselves,” is about the only reaction to be expected from common mass media consumers.

The monsters have no mercy and facing them in an open confrontation is risky. They will ignore dissenters, when they are no threat, they will arrest and punish them when the movement gathers traction, they will crush the protests when they feel threatened.

“Operation Garden Plot” and FEMA internment camps are ready to be activated at any time.

The assessments and considerations in this text are not intended to label resistance as hopeless. They are not meant to advocation resignation and compliance. They are also not meant as a sweeping dismissal of OWS.

The assessments and considerations in this text only want to point out, that open protests are not necessarily a winning strategy in a struggle against a monstrous enemy. One doesn’t have to study “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu to realize, that facing a superior enemy head on will seldom work out.

The OWS protesters claim to be inspired by the Arab Spring. They should consider very carefully what the Arab Spring achieved until now: In Egypt the replacement of a military dictator by a military council (a group of military dictators), in Tunisia elections, which brought an islamist party into government but didn’t change the basic power structures, in Libya the demolition of the country, the death of at least 40,000 people, and the destruction of the most equal and moderate society in the Arab world.

An impressive resume indeed!

The OWS movement celebrated Gaddafis death with the twitter message: “Congrats Libya! Your struggles against the #Gadhafi regime is (sic) over. Let’s hope for a bright future #solidarity.” What can better highlight the naivety and ignorance of OWS spokespersons?

Could this criticism be unjustified, could this text be too harsh with the OWS protester? Could it be that they fulfill their useful part in drawing attention away from the more important activities? Could it be that they shield the really important actors from the scrutiny of the authorities?

Could it be that OWS in fact provides a helpful smokescreen for the teachers, librarians, and artists who plant the seeds of independent critical thinking? That OWS provides a cover for the psychologists and media experts who insert subliminal messages and change the public mind towards empathy and responsibility in a way the monsters and their minions are not able to comprehend?

Could it be that OWS shields the inventive and resourceful people who diligently work on building up small local initiatives and networks? That OWS protects the community organizers who develop and test ways to replace the old structures, the engineers who invent clever methods and tools to stop the machines of destruction, the chemists who discover new processes and compounds meant to obstruct and disable, the scientists who work quietly in their laboratories, taking DARPA money and nevertheless doing their own thing (not inventing new weapons but ways to disable weapons), the programmers who write powerful code, better than Stuxnet or Duqu and nearly undetectable?

This is a question which demands no answer — nobody who knows will talk about this openly. It is a question that everybody who has skills can answer herself/himself by starting one of the just mentioned activities and leaving the protesting to those who cannot contribute to the greater good in another way.

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Interview with Sukant Chandan

2.5.2012 von Mato.

Press TV has conducted an interview with British political analyst and filmmaker Sukant Chandan to discuss the issue of Syria. This is an edited transcript of the interview.

 

Press TV: Mr. Chandan, attacks are intensifying, they are even becoming more sophisticated despite the announced ceasefire. These protesters who have taken up arms, who are they?

Sukant Chandan: These are people who are being emboldened and most likely trained and backed by the Western white power structure or imperialism whatever you want to call it.

The fact is that even though there is no open and direct Western military intervention in Syria, imperialism is at war with Syria.  This perhaps is somehow a misunderstanding of the nature of imperialism including by the anti-war movement in England.

The West as an entity lives from a constant war against the people of the Global South including the people of Syria, Palestine, Iran, etc. for over five centuries.

So currently in Syria there is a war, it is an economic war through sanctions, it is a cultural and media war and in this regard I like to congratulate the Iranian authorities for having arrested the Reuters bureau chief in Tehran for the lies that she was responsible from purporting because these are not journalists, these are war propagandists.

Press TV: Mr. Saeb Shaath is saying that there is a scenario at work and it is being implemented now to instigate civil war in Syria and start a military intervention.

One point we are hearing constantly said by the United Nations right now as its observers are in Syria, is that the Syrian government has to stop fighting and at the same time the Syrian government is saying, “when I am being attacked by armed groups what option do I have? I have to defend myself.”

So what can prevent this from escalating into civil war?

Sukant Chandan: I am not sure what can prevent it but I think the Syrian state is absolutely right in trying to protect the security of its citizens.

I mean to be honest, what can stop this happening are the countries supporting Syria and enabling Syria to withstand and kind of defy and reject an imperialist intervention, primarily Russia and China.

And Russia and China need to basically go on the offensive really if they want to protect not only Syria but other countries of the Global South that are being targeted in a time when William Hague, the British foreign minister openly says that he is supporting the opposition by “nonlethal means.”

I mean what are nonlethal means? Nonlethal means can help the lethal means; they can be radio communication equipment, etc.

But frankly I am sure they are doing more than that and that’s only what he is admitting to, when Qatar is admitting to this, when Saudi Arabia is admitting to this and we will know other reactionary forces in the region are supporting the opposition.

The Syrian government and beyond that, the people of the Global South have an absolute right to defend themselves as much as possible.

So really Russia is the only safeguard to Syria and any other country of the Global South to be able to protect its independence, which is the most precious thing for any country of the Global South.

Press TV: Mr. Saeb Shaath is saying, that looking at the situation in Syria, it is not a good idea for president Assad to step down now, that it’s not a good idea to have a transitional government because Syria needs to defend itself at this point.

Mr. Chandan what is your view on this? Because if the Syrian president, President Assad, opponents would say, could have solved this by stepping down why hasn’t he been able to do that?

He has announced a new constitution, he has announced a presidential election, but still he has not been able to calm the situation.

What is preventing President Assad from doing that? Do you agree with his opponents who say that Assad himself is the problem?

Sukant Chandan: I am not saying that there is no internal contradiction in Syria that needs to be resolved and there needs to be a healthy opposition, a democratic opposition that engages with the regime.

That is all there but this is turning into something totally different, this is turning to a project of regime change as brother Saeb Shaath is saying, it is a rolling war machine that is going to target Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Palestinian resistance, Iran, and beyond that Russia and China.

So this is not a question of whether Assad steps down or not. This is a question whether the West can smash Syria as the last resistant Arab nation to Zionism-imperialism in the region.

I look at Libya, what has Libya turned into? And what was Libya all about, I would argue, from the first weeks of pro-NATO rebellion? It has turned into a launch pad for further regime change.

You have the audaciousness of imperialism and their allies in Syria organizing a 150-ton-load of weapons on a boat that was loaded in Benghazi in Libya, then went to Tripoli in Lebanon and luckily and thankfully the Lebanese army foiled that attempt to arm the opposition.

So this is what we are faced with, and Gaddafi said himself in the last summer that the resistance in Libya against NATO is defending Syria and Iran as well.

So really the whole third world, the whole Global South has to stop this war machine in Syria. The point of what imperialism is trying to do in Syria is regime change.

Intead of an attack on Iran, destabilizing Syria, softening it up is enough for them for their war preparations against Iran.

This is the great danger. Some people are perhaps thinking, well, now Russia and China are supporting Syrian independence and we have some breathing space. But this breathing space really has to be a moment where we up our vigilance, up our militancy and preparedness against the plans of empire in the region.

Press TV: Mr. Chandan, at the same time as there may be plans for a foreign military intervention in Syria, for instance we are hearing some officials in the United States saying that we can’t go into another war, this is going to be another military adventure that is too costly for America.

Will America get itself involved in a Libya-style solution in Syria, do you think?

Sukant Chandan: I think the key is what you called a Libya-style solution because the Western white power structure what it always prefers is that its regime change is done by collaborators among the NATO members themselves and that is exactly what happened in Libya, that is what they are trying to do in Syria, and that is what they tried to do before in using the green movement in Iran to effect some kind of regime change or at least some kind of fundamental political change that is to their benefits.

And I mean the nation of Turkey in providing safe bases along the border region with Syria for the armed opposition to prepare itself to go back into Syria and training Syrian rebels on Turkish soil. It is all there.

Don’t forget Saudi Arabia and Qatar for example, Qatar is now infamous for being a tiny little island created by the British that is doing the bidding of Zionism-imperialism throughout the region.

But the French foreign minister has said that military intervention is still on the cards despite that we have some semblances of a breathing space right now because Russia and China said no and put their veto in the Security Council in relation to Syria.

What we still find is that even president Obama is saying in terms of the negotiations with the Iranian government, that this is the last chance for any type of peaceful settlement with the Iranians.

So the rhetoric is still very aggressive and very much warlike.

Press TV: So would you say that right now Kofi Annan’s peace initiative in Syria has failed? Would you use that term and if so where does this leave the Syrian situation?

Sukant Chandan: I would not quite say that Kofi Annan’s peace initiative has failed because of the geopolitical situation. I think the peace plan was a de facto admission by the West that they could not conduct the type of regime change they wanted in the timeframe that they wanted.

So I think, I mean it is a double-edged sword, isn’t it? Because in terms of UN observers, I’m always haunted by the infamous UN observers in Iraq and we know where that led to, that absolutely devastating war against the Iraqi nation.

I do not think it has failed just as yet, but obviously there is a big chess game going within this Kofi Annan peace plan in terms of how the Syrian opposition can use it now.

Whose interest is it to let off these terrorist bombs in Syria? It is obviously not the Syrian government because they have a vested interest in actually a peaceful solution ASAP to the conflict.

The terror acts are in the interests of imperialism and its regional allies, al-Qaeda itself as you quoted journalist Lizzie Phelan in the introduction, al-Qaeda itself had admitted these attacks but really we have to think, we have to question whose role is al-Qaeda playing?

It is playing its destabilizing roles in whose interest? In Zionism-imperialism. Al-Qaeda was formed in 1996; it was supposed to be Islamic international front against the “crusaders and Jews, i.e. Zionism-imperialism.”

But since Libya clearly we are finding that al-Qaeda and those supporting al-Qaeda are completely in line and facilitating and helping, as in the case of Tripoli military commander for NATO Mr. Behladj who is actually leading the ground troops for NATO against our countries.

Press TV: And another question that is frequently asked is about the opposition in Syria, who they are? How split or divided they are? Which groups are being backed by the West and which groups are not?

For instance we have the SNC, the Syrian National Council; it is becoming a bit notorious over allegations that it is following the lead of the United States, the West and some regional countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar and there is one part of the opposition that is totally against foreign intervention whereas the SNC is not against that — they’re actually calling for intervention.

How is the split do you think in the opposition going to affect the future of the Syrian crisis?

Sukant Chandan: I think you are right in the assumption that the opposition is split, there are sections of opposition that are not into armed opposition to the Syrian regime.

There are legitimate grievances of the Syrian people like there are legitimate grievances of the people in every country in the world. It could be your favorite country but there would be still legitimate grievances of people there.

But this is a situation where you have the greater powers in the opposition allied to the interest of Zionism-imperialism and reactionary Arab states.

Even those sections of the opposition that I may have sympathy for, I mean the sensible and obvious rational option for them is to step away from opposing the Syrian regime, to close ranks actually with the Syrian government, however distasteful that may be to some sections of the opposition.

But you know, it is perhaps less distasteful to close ranks with the Syrian regime than is to end up having a situation like that perhaps in Iraq or definitely perhaps that in Libya today.

 

Sukant Chandan is a London-based political analyst and filmmaker and runs the SonsofMalcolm.com blog.

He can be contacted on sukant.chandan@gmail.com

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Is this too cynical?

28.4.2012 von Mato.

I’m proud to be regarded as a cynic. George Bernard Shaw once wrote: “The power of accurate observation is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.”

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Is it too cynical to assume that mass media (newspapers, Hollywood, TV), the internet jungle (YouTube), pop music (delivered as constant background music), video/computer games, celebrity culture (tabloids), and technical gadgets (iPods, iPhones, iPads) are used to distract, confuse, misinform, indoctrinate, brainwash, condition us, and prevent us from seeing the blatant corruption, injustice, and inequality?

Is it too cynical to view the terms religion, ideology, superstition as synonyms, practically meaning the same thing, and the terms common sense, logic, scientific methodology as their antonyms?

Is it too cynical to regard philosophical and political discussion as entertaining and sometimes amusing, but nevertheless futile and vapid word games?

Is it too hopeful to believe that a not distracted, not confused, not misinformed, not indoctrinated, not brainwashed, not conditioned population would realize the dishonesty, the deception, the hypocrisy, and the double standards of the ruling class, resulting in dissent, disobedience, unrest, and open rebellion?

Is it too cynical to suggest that the ruling elites would shut down the internet very fast or at least strictly censor all content if they would not have an interest to: 1. give the commoners a channel to let off steam, 2. be informed about the popular mood, 3. track and identify dissidents?

Is it too cynical to assume that education is privatized (with charter schools and corporate funding of colleges and universities) to prevent, that independent teachers are educating children to become critical, open minded, and informed citizens?

Is it too cynical to classify the privatization of basic commodities (land, water, food, minerals) or vital public services as theft, if not robbery, and the buyers as well as the politicians who cut the deals, as criminals?

Is it too cynical to view the stock market, hedge funds, investment funds, venture capital funds, equity firms as criminal rackets or as casinos for the super-rich?

Is it too cynical to consider institutions and businesses like banks, casinos, insurance companies, payday loan lenders, the Russian mafia, drug cartels, and other organized crime syndicates as belonging into the same category of economic entities?

Is it too cynical to regard philanthropy as a ploy to create dependencies and facilitate the scrapping of public services?

Is it too cynical to label student loans, mortgages, and any lending for profit as modern day slavery?

Is it too cynical to view the Western economies or any other economic systems that are based on permanent growth, as a pyramid scheme?

Is it too cynical to assume that the rich and powerful now grab as much as they can as fast as they can, because they know that it cannot go on like this for much longer and because they are “running for the exit” and preparing for a life after the big crash in one of the few unpolluted, fenced off, fortified retreats for the super rich?

Is it too cynical to assume, that the militarization of US police forces (paramilitary police units, SWAT teams, assault weapons, grenade launchers, armored personnel carriers, tanks, drones) the increased surveillance (eavesdropping, data mining of all communications, nationwide biometric databases, CCTV, X-Ray scanners and strip searches), and the curbing of civil liberties (Patriot Act, NDAA, CISPA, right-to-work laws and other anti-union laws) are preparations for an anticipated uprising of the impoverished US population against Wall Street and the political elite in Washington?

Is it too cynical to assume that the military leaders push for an automatization of warfare with drones and combat robots because soldiers may not be reliable is some situations and refuse to kill civilians or rebellious fellow citizens in their homeland?

Is it too cynical to suggest that the worlds leaders promote globalization and free trade to play off the workers all around the world against each other and cut their wages?

Is it unjust to defame the development aid of industrialized countries as measures to destroy traditional ways of live and local businesses and pave they way for big corporations to conquer and dominate the markets?

Is it too cynical to assume that most humanitarian aid efforts and NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) are used for reconnaissance and for organizing, coordinating, and supplying insurgents and saboteurs?

Is it too cynical to view international laws and treaties as meaningless and the ICC (International Criminal Court) and UN tribunals as disgusting hypocritical charades, because the powerful nations bend and change the rules at will and use international institutions only to discredit and prosecute their adversaries?

Is it too cynical to assume that the political elites promote costly, unreliable, and dangerous nuclear power plants because they want to keep the infrastructure for the production of nuclear warheads in tact and because they fear, that an abandoning of “peaceful nuclear energy” could influence the popular perception of nuclear technology and subsequently lead to a broad movement against the insanity of nuclear weapons arsenals?

Is it too cynical to suspect that the rich and powerful see the destruction of nature as another promising business opportunity to create an artificial habitat (with GM crops) and to sell all the goods of nature that formerly were free (drinking water, fruits and vegetables from gardens, crops from small subsistence farming) with big profits?

Is it too cynical to claim that the food industry and the pharmaceutical industry work hand in hand, because industrial produced food causes the sicknesses that guarantee high demand of medical drugs?

Is it too cynical to suggest that the worlds leaders ignore the issue of overpopulation and discourage contraception because they 1. want to have a big pool of young, unemployed men which they can send to war, 2. want to have a big pool of workers which they can employ for the lowest possible wages 3. want to have a big pool of young girls from which they can select the prettiest ones as their mistresses?

Is it too cynical to give the weapons industry and the chemical industry credit for working hard to solve the problem of human overpopulation?

Is it too cynical to say that the ruling elites have no interest in peaceful conflict resolution and no interest in preventing war because they see war as an attractive business opportunity?

Is it too cynical to assume, that the rich and powerful elites of the world don’t do anything against global warming because they take it for granted, that a regional nuclear war (between Pakistan and India for instance) with about 100 exploding nuclear bombs will cause a “nuclear winter” which will by far offset the warming effect of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses?

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I’m proud to be regarded as a cynic. From Wikipedia:

Cynicism in its original form refers to the beliefs of ancient Greek philosophers known as the Cynics. The Cynics believed that the purpose of life was to live in agreement with nature, to reject all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame, and to live a simple life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. The Cynics believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which permeated society.

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