PHOTOS: The $592 Million U.S. Embassy In Iraq

Posted on June 2, 2007 by kf1

Computer-generated images of the US embassy complex in Baghdad were posted on the architect's website. Photographer: AP

Computer-generated images of the US embassy complex in Baghdad were posted on the architect’s website. Photograph: AP Construction of the U.S. embassy in Iraq, set to open in September, is projected to cost $592 million, with a staff of 1,000 people and operating costs totaling $1.2 billion a year. It will be a 104-acre complex, which is the size of approximately 80 football fields. On May 10, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) criticized the ballooning size and cost of the embassy in a hearing with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

Now, having said over and over again that we don’t want to be seen as an occupying force in Iraq, we’re building the largest embassy that we have — probably the largest in the world — in Baghdad. And it just seems to grow and grow and grow. … We agree that we should focus our aid locally not in Baghdad, but we have 1,000 Americans at the embassy in Baghdad. You add the contractors and the local staff it comes to 4,000.

The architectural firm designing the embassy, Berger Define Yaeger, has posted the designs for the colossus on its website. Some previews of the compound’s planned swimming pool and tennis courts:

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The complex “will include two office buildings, one of them designed for future use as a school, six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants.”

The U.S. embassy is likely to create even greater Iraqi resentment toward the U.S. occupation. While Americans will be living in posh quarters, the citizens of Baghdad are forced to survive with just 5.6 hours of electricity a day. Baghdad was also recently rated the world’s worst city in which to live.

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UPDATE: The residence of the U.S. ambassador to Iraq will be 16,000 square feet. The deputy chief of mission in Iraq will have a “cozy cottage” measuring 9,500 square feet. Source

And from Al Jazeera….

Detailed plans for the new US embassy being built in Baghdad, America’s largest diplomatic mission abroad, have appeared online in a major breach of the project’s security.

Images of the soon-to-be completed compound were posted on the website of Berger Devine Yaeger Inc, the American architectural firm contracted to design the facility.

The company removed the plans on Thursday, shortly after being contacted by the US state department.

“We work very hard to ensure the safety and security of our employees overseas,” Gozalo Gallegos, a state department spokesman, said.

The 10 images posted on the website included a scheme of the overall layout of the compound, plus depictions of individual buildings, including the embassy itself, office annexes, the Marine Corps security post, swimming pool, recreation centre, ambassador’s and deputy ambassador’s residences.

No comment

“In terms of commenting whether they’re accurate, obviously we wouldn’t be commenting on that because we don’t want people to know whether they’re accurate or not for security reasons,” Dan Sreebny, a spokesman for the embassy in Baghdad, said.

One senior official said: “People are eventually going to figure out where all these places are, but you don’t have to draw them a map.”

Identified as the “Baghdad US Embassy Compound Master Plan”, the images show palm-lined paths and green grass gardens, volleyball and basketball courts outside the marine post, as well as the swimming pool, all with a view of the river.

According to the website: “In total, the 104-acre compound will include over twenty buildings, including one classified secure structure and housing for over 380 families.”

Many Iraqis are enraged by the massive new building when they are unable get electricity or running water.

The project, which has been dubbed “George W’s Palace” by Iraqis, is valued at $592m.

The current US embassy is housed in Saddam Hussein’s former Republican Palace, also in the Green Zone. Washington wants to return the buildings, and many other palaces occupied by US forces after the 2003 US-led invasion, to Iraqi authorities.

Source

US embassy plans appear online – The Guardian – 01 June. 07

Forced Labor and Worker Abuse – How the Baghdad Embassy Was Built By DAVID PHINNEY

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The myth of AL QAEDA is now almost totally exposed – Damian Lataan

Posted on May 29, 2007 by kf1

The label ‘Al Qaeda’ has been used, or rather abused, ever since 11 September 2001 when the finger of blame for that terrifying day was pointed at bin Laden and his ‘al Qaeda’ organisation. Indeed, according to George Tenet in his book, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA, bin Laden was blamed for the attacks by at least three-thirty in the afternoon of 11 September 2001. [1]

Ever since 11 September 2001 bin Laden and/or al Qaeda have been used as an excuse for nigh on every attack that the US and the Israelis have made on Islamic peoples and their nations. An alleged relationship between Saddam Hussein and ‘al Qaeda’ was used as the casus belli for the US and its allies to invade Iraq. Dick Cheney even asserted that Saddam Hussein, with al Qaeda, was responsible for the events of 11 September 2001. But it turned out that there was no such connection at all.

As the insurgency against the occupiers in Iraq gained momentum and US and allied casualties began to mount, so the blame for the increased resistance was placed on ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ and all those that resisted the occupation were labelled ‘terrorists’. The hate figure devised by the allies to perpetuate the propaganda myth of ‘al Qaeda in Iraq’ was ‘Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’. He gave something that young and gullible US and allied troops could go after. And when he was supposedly ‘killed’ in June 2006 there was much propaganda fanfare and mileage gained from his ‘death’ which was hailed as a ‘great victory’ against al Qaeda.

The ‘great victory’ was short-lived however, and a new hate figure, Abu Ayyub al-Masri, previously Zarqawi’s number two in Iraq, was quickly promoted before people started to believe that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death may actually have signalled the end of the ‘war against terrorism’. It had been reported that he too had also been killed, not by allied forces but by Sunni insurgents in factional fighting, though this has not been confirmed by the US authorities in Iraq.

For some time Mossad, the Israeli intelligence organisation, have tried to plant stooges in the Gaza and West Bank among Palestinians who have tried to pass themselves off as ‘al Qaeda’. The Israelis have failed miserably in their attempts at this. For one thing, the Gaza resistance community is a very tight knit one where everyone just about knows everyone and strangers are very quickly pointed out. The same applies in the west Bank. Of late, however, the Israelis and the US have taken a new tack playing on the friction that has evolved between Hamas and Fatah. Despite the fact that Hamas was popularly elected to govern the Palestinian peoples the Israelis have constantly thwarted Hamas’ ability to so do and have attempted, almost successfully, to polarise the two groups and Palestinians. The US has been active in playing off one against the other by supplying arms to Hamas’ opposition, Fatah.

Meanwhile, in Lebanon, the same US officials responsible for working with the Israelis to undermine Hamas have also been arming and supplying a Sunni Palestinian refugee group in an effort to wedge the influence of the Shia Hizbollah predominate in southern Lebanon. The problem here is that the arrangements have backfired on the US. The group, known Fatah al-Islam, has taken on an aggressive role against the Lebanese government. The western propaganda machine is trying to say that the Fatah al-Islam group are an ‘al Qaeda inspired’ group. In fact they are more like an ‘Elliot Abrams inspired’ group. The US is now desperately flying in big weapons to deal with this tiny group – which brings us to the next anomaly in this saga.

The group are said to be only five hundred strong at most, probably nearer three hundred, yet the US are going to a huge amount of effort to airlift a lot of weapons for the Lebanese government army. This is more than just a hammer to crack a nut. It’s more like a 300 tonne hydraulic press to squash a pea; unless, of course, the US knows something that the Lebanese don’t.

In raising the ante in Iraq, Lebanon, the West Bank and the Gaza by again raising the empty spectre of ‘al Qaeda’ in order to get at Iran, Syria and Hizbollah, the US and the Israelis have exposed their hand about the myth of ‘al Qaeda terrorism’ in the Middle East.

ENDNOTES
[1] George Tenet, At the center of the storm: My years at the CIA. (New York: Harper-Collins, 2007.) p. 169.

Source: Damian Lataan

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Who’s Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon?

Posted on May 25, 2007 by kf1

Inside Narh al-Bared and Bedawi Refugee Camps

Who’s Behind the Fighting in North Lebanon?

By FRANKLIN LAMB

Tripoli, Lebanon.

Wearing a beat-up ratty UNCHR tee-shirt left over from Bint Jbeil and the Israeli-Hezbollah July probably helped. As did, I suspect, the Red Cross jersey, my black and white checkered kaffieyh and the Palestinian flag taped to my lapel as I joined a group of Palestinian aid workers and slipped into Nahr el-Bared trying not to look conspicuous.

Our mission was to facilitate the delivery of food, blankets and mattresses, but I was also curious about the political situation. Who was behind the events that erupted so quickly and violently following a claimed ‘bank robbery’? A heist that depending on who you talked to, netted the masked bandits $ 150,000, $ 1,500 or $ 150!

It seems that every Beirut media outlet has a different source of ‘inside information’ based on which Confession owns it and ‘knows’ the real culprits pulling the strings. But then, even we who are particularly obtuse have realized, as the late Rafic Hariri often counseled: “In Lebanon, believe nothing of what you are told and only half of what you see!”

My friends made we swear out loud that I would claim to be Canadian instead of American if Al Qaeda types stopped us inside the Camp. My impression was that they were not so worried about my safety but for their own if they got caught with me. It would not be the first time that I relied on my northern neighbors to get me out of a potential US nationality jam in the Middle East, so I ditched my American ID.

We were advised as we approached the Fatah al Islam stronghold that we would be in the cross-hairs of Lebanese army snipers from outside of Nahr el-Bared Camp as well as Fatah al-Islam snipers from the inside, and that any false move or bad luck could prove fatal.

After three days of shelling and more than 100 dead and with no electricity or water, Nahr el-Baled reeks of burned and rotting flesh, charred houses with smoldering contents, raw sewage and the acrid smell of exploded mortars and tank rounds.

Press figures of 30,000-32,000 are not accurate. 45,000 live in Bared! Contrary to some reports food and water still not being allowed in.15 to 70 percent of some areas destroyed. Some light shooting this morning and afternoon. Army shelling at rate of 10-18 shells per minute from 4:30 am to 10 am on Tuesday. Army will not allow Palestinian Red Crescent to move out civilians because they don’t trust them. Only the Lebanese Red Cross is allowed. It is possible to enter Bared from the back (east side). The Army taking cameras of journalists they catch. The Lebanese government is controlling the information and don’t want extent of damage known yet. Still unrecovered bodies. 40 per cent of the camp population have been evacuated. The rest don’t want to leave out of fear of being shot or that they are losing their homes for the 5th time or more for some.

No electricity and cell phone batteries are dying. Relatives who fled are telling families to stay because there are not enough mattresses at Bedawi Camp. Bared evacuees are living up to 25 in one room in Badawi schools etc. 3,000 evacuees in one school in Bedawi. UN aid is starting to arrive at Badawi but workers not able so far to deliver it to Bared due to attack on relief convoy on Tuesday.

I met Abdul Rahman Hallab famous for Lebanese candy factory in Tripoli. Helped him unload 5,000 meals to evacuees from Bared staying in Badawi. He is Lebanese not Palestinian.

The camp population all say that Fatah Al-Islam came in September-October 2006 and have no relatives in the camp. They are from Saudi, Pakistan, Algeria, Iraq, and Tunisia and elsewhere. No Palestinians among them except some hanger ons. Most say they are paid by the Hariri group.

Reports that Fateh al-Islam helps people in Bared are denied. ” All they do is pray, one woman told me..and do military training.. They are much more religious than the Shia” she said.

Population of Badawi camp was 15,000 and as of of this morning it is 28,000. Four bodies arrived this morning at Safad, the only Palestinian Red Crescent Hospitals in north Lebanon.

I was told the army will have to destroy every house in Bared to remove Fateh al Islam.

I expect to stay in Bared tonight with aid workers. Some say FAI with die fighting others than a settlement could be negotiated. I may try the latter with NGO from Norway here. Not sure if anyone in government is interested. One minute ago a member of Fateh at_Islam walked into the medical office I am using at Safed Hospital and said they want a permanent ceasefire and do not want more people killed or injured.

They claim to have no problem with the army

Now some background about Nahr el-Bared. Like the other Palestinian camps in Lebanon, it is inhabited by Palestinians who were forced from their homes, land, and personal property in 1947-48, in order to make room for Jews from Europe and elsewhere prior to the May 15, 1948 founding of Israel.

Of the original 16 Refugee camps, set up to settle the more than 100,000 refugees crossing the border into Lebanon from Palestine during the Nakba, 12 official ones remain. The camp at Tal El-Za`tar was ethnically cleansed by Christian Phalange forces at the beginning of the 1975-1990, Lebanese Civil War and the Nabatieh, Dikwaneh and Jisr el-Basha camps were destroyed by Israeli attacks and Lebanese militia and not rebuilt. Those remaining include the following which currently house more than half of Lebanon’s 433,276 Palestinian refugees:

Al-Badawi, Burj El-Barajna, Jal El-Bahr, Sabra and Shatilla, Ain El-Helwa, Nahr El-Bared, Rashidieh, Burj El Shemali, El-Buss, Wavel, Mieh Mieh and Mar Elias.

Nahr el-Bared is 7 miles north of Tripoli near the stunning Mediterranean coast and is home to more than 32,000 refuges many of whom were expelled from the Lake Huleh area of Palestine, including Safed. Like all the official Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, plus several ‘unofficial’ ones, Nahr el-Bared suffers from serious problems including no proper infrastructure, overcrowding, poverty and unemployment.

Tabulated at more than 25%, Nahr el-Bared has the highest percentage of Palestinian refugees anywhere who are living in abject poverty and who are officially registered with the UN as “special hardship” cases.

Its residents, like all Palestinians in Lebanon are blatantly discriminated against and not even officially counted. They are denied citizenship and banned from working in the top 70 trades and professions (that includes McDonald’s and KFC in downtown Beirut) and cannot own real estate. Palestinians in Lebanon have essentially no social or civil rights and only limited access to government educational facilities. They have no access to public social services. Consequently most rely entirely on the UNRWA as the sole provider for their families needs.

It is not surprising that al-Qaeda sympathies, if not formal affiliations, are found in the 12 official camps as well as 7 unofficial ones. Groups with names such as Fateh al-Islam, Jund al-Shams (Soldier of Damascus) , Ibns al-Shaheed” (sons of the martyrs) Issbat al-Anssar which morphed into Issbat al-Noor – “The Community of Illumination” and many others.

Given Bush administration debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan and its encouragement for Israel to continue its destruction of Lebanon this past summer, the situation in Lebanon mirrors, in some respects, the early 1980’s when groups sprung up to resist the US green lighted Israeli invasion and occupation. But rather than being Shia and pro-Hezbollah, today’s groups are largely Sunni and anti-Hezbollah. Hence they qualify for US aid, funneled by Sunni financial backers in league with the Bush administration which is committed to funding Islamist Sunni groups to weaken Hezbollah.

This project has become the White House obsession following Israel’s July 2006 defeat.

To understand what is going on with Fatah al-Islam at Nahr el-Bared one would want a brief introduction to Lebanon’s amazing, but shadowy ‘Welch Club’.

The Club is named for its godfather, David Welch, assistant to Secretary of State Rice who is the point man for the Bush administration and is guided by Eliot Abrams.

Key Lebanese members of the Welch Club (aka: the ‘Club’) include:

The Lebanese civil war veteran, warlord, feudalist and mercurial Walid Jumblatt of the Druze party( the Progressive Socialist Party or PSP)

Another civil war veteran, warlord, terrorist (Served 11 years in prison for massacres committed against fellow Christians among others) Samir Geagea. Leader of the extremist Phalange party and its Lebanese Forces (LF) the group that conducted the Israel organized massacre at Sabra-Shatilla (although led by Elie Hobeika, once Geagea’s mentor, Geagea did not take part in the Sept. 1982 slaughter of 1,700 Palestinian and Lebanese).

The billionaire, Saudi Sheikh and Club president Saad Hariri leader of the Sunni Future Movement (FM).

Over a year ago Hariri’s Future Movement started setting up Sunni Islamist terrorist cells (the PSP and LF already had their own militia since the civil war and despite the Taif Accords requiring militia to disarm they are now rearmed and itching for action and trying hard to provoke Hezbollah).

The FM created Sunni Islamist ‘terrorist’ cells were to serve as a cover for (anti-Hezbollah) Welch Club projects. The plan was that actions of these cells, of which Fatah el-Islam is one, could be blamed on al Qaeda or Syria or anyone but the Club.

To staff the new militias, FM rounded up remnants of previous extremists in the Palestinian Refugee camps that had been subdued, marginalized and diminished during the Syrian occupation of Lebanon. Each fighter got $700 per month, not bad in today’s Lebanon.

The first Welch Club funded militia, set up by FM, is known locally as Jund-al-Sham (Soldiers of Sham, where “Sham” in Arabic denotes Syria, Lebanon, Palestine & Jordan) created in Ain-el-Hilwa Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon. This group is also referred to in the Camps as Jund-el-Sitt (Soldiers of the Sitt, where “Sitt” in Sidon, Ain-el-Hilwa and the outskirts pertain to Bahia Hariri, the sister of Rafiq Hariri, aunt of Saad, and Member of Parliament).

The second was Fateh-al-Islam (The name cleverly put together, joining Fateh as in Palestinian and the word Islam as in Qaeda). FM set this Club cell up in Nahr-al-Bared refugee camp north of Tripoli for geographical balance.

Fatah el-Islam had about 400 well paid fighters until three days ago. Today they may have more or fewer plus volunteers. The leaders were provided with ocean view luxury apartments in Tripoli where they stored arms and chilled when not in Nahr-al-Bared. Guess who owns the apartments?

According to members of both Fatah el-Islam and Jund-al-Sham their groups acted on the directive of the Club president, Saad Hariri.

So what went wrong? “Why the bank robbery” and the slaughter at Nahr el-Baled?

According to operatives of Fatah el-Islam, the Bush administration got cold feet with people like Seymour Hirsh snooping around and with the White House post-Iraq discipline in free fall. Moreover, Hezbollah intelligence knew all about the Clubs activities and was in a position to flip the two groups who were supposed to ignite a Sunni Shia civil war which Hezbollah vows to prevent.

Things started to go very wrong quickly for the Club last week.

FM “stopped” the payroll of Fateh el-Islam’s account at the Hariri family owned back.

Fateh-al-Islam, tried to negotiate at least ‘severance pay’ with no luck and they felt betrayed. (Remember many of their fighters are easily frustrated teenagers and their pay supports their families). Militia members knocked off the bank which issued their worthless checks. They were doubly angry when they learned FM is claiming in the media a loss much greater than they actually snatched and that the Club is going to stiff the insurance company and actually make a huge profit.

Lebanon’s Internal Security Forces (newly recruited to serve the bidding of the Club and the Future Movement) assaulted the apartments of Fatah-al-Islam Tripoli. They didn’t have much luck and were forced to call in the Lebanese army.

Within the hour, Fatah-al-Islam retaliated against Lebanese Army posts, checkpoints and unarmed, off-duty Lebanese soldiers in civilian clothing and committed outrageous killings including severing at four heads.

Up to this point Fatah-al-Islam did not retaliate against the Internal Security forces in Tripoli because the ISF is pro-Hariri and some are friends and Fatah al-Islam still hoped to get paid by Hariri. Instead Fatah al Islam went after the Army.

The Seniora cabinet convenes and asks the Lebanese Army to enter the refugee camp and silence (in more ways than one) Fatah-al-Islam. Since entrance into the Camps is forbidden by the 1969 Arab league agreement, the Army refuses after realizing the extent of the conspiracy against it by the Welch Club. The army knows that entering a refugee camp in force will open a front against the Army in all twelve Palestinian refugee camps and tear the army apart along sectarian cracks.

The army feels set up by the Club’s Internal Security Forces which did not coordinate with the Lebanese Army, as required by Lebanese law and did not even make them aware of the “inter family operation” the ISF carried out against Fatah-al-Islam safe houses in Tripoli.

Today, tensions are high between the Lebanese army and the Welch Club. Some mention the phrase ‘army coup’.

The Club is trying to run Parliament and is prepared to go all the way not to ‘lose’ Lebanon. It still holds 70 seats in the house of parliament while the Hezbollah led opposition holds 58 seats. It has a dutiful PM in Fouad Siniora.

The club tried to seize control of the presidency and when it failed it marginalized it. Last year it tried to control of the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee, which audits the government’s policies, laws and watch dogs their actions. When the Club failed to control it they simply abolished the Constitutional Committee. This key committee no longer exists in Lebanon’s government.

The Welch Club’s major error was when it attempted to influence the Lebanese Army into disarming the Lebanese Resistance led by Hezbollah. When the Army wisely refused, the Club coordinated with the Bush Administration to pressure Israel to dramatically intensify its retaliation to the capture of the two soldiers by Hezbollah and ‘break the rules’ regarding the historically more limited response and try to destroy Hezbollah during the July 2006 war.

The Welch Club now considers the Lebanese Army a serious problem. The Bush administration is trying to undermine and marginalize it to eliminate one of the last two obstacles to implementing Israel’s agenda in Lebanon.

If the army is weakened, it can not protect _over 70% of the Christians in Lebanon who support General Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement. The F.P.M. is mainly constituted of well educated, middle class and unarmed Lebanese civilians. The only protection they have is the Lebanese Army which aids in maintaining their presence in the political scene. The other type of Christians in Lebanon is the minority, about 15% of Christians associated with Geagea’s Lebanese Forces who are purely militia. If the Club can weaken the Army even more than it is, then this Phalange minority will be the only relatively strong force on the Christian scene and become the “army” of the Club.

Another reason the Club wants to weaken the Lebanese Army is that the Army is nationalistic and is a safety valve for Lebanon to ensure the Palestinian right of return to Palestine, Lebanese nationhood and the resistance culture led by Hezbollah, with which is has excellent relations.

For their part, the Welch Club wants to keep some Palestinians in Lebanon for cheap labor, ship others to countries willing to take them (and be paid handsomely to do so by American taxpayers) and allow at most a few thousand to return to Palestine to settle the ‘right of return’ issue while at the same time signing a May 17th 1983 type treaty with Israel with enriches the Club members and gives Israel Lebanon’s water and much of Lebanon’s sovereignty.

Long story short, Fatah el-Islam must be silenced at all costs. Their tale, if told, is poison for the Club and its sponsors. We will likely see their attempted destruction in the coming days.

Hezbollah is watching and supporting the Lebanese army.

Franklin Lamb’s recent book, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s use of American Weapon’s against Lebanon (1978-2006) is available at Amazon.com.uk. Hezbollah: A Brief Guide for Beginners is expected in early summer.

Dr. Lamb can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

Al Jazeera Exclusive interview with Fatah al-Islam leader – 23 May 2007

More

The U.S. has been covertly backing Fatah al-Islam to counter Iran & Hezbollah, but this policy backfired, says Seymour Hersh. – Al Jazeerah

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The Secret US Plot to Kill Sadr By PATRICK COCKBURN

Posted on May 24, 2007 by kf1

The Trap That Backfired

The Secret US Plot to Kill Sadr

By PATRICK COCKBURN

Baghdad.

The US Army tried to kill or capture Muqtada al-Sadr, the widely revered Shia cleric, after luring him to peace negotiations at a house in the holy city of Najaf, which it then attacked, according to a senior Iraqi government official.

The revelation of this extraordinary plot, which would probably have provoked an uprising by outraged Shia if it had succeeded, has left a legacy of bitter distrust in the mind of Mr Sadr for which the US and its allies in Iraq may still be paying. “I believe that particular incident made Muqtada lose any confidence or trust in the [US-led] coalition and made him really wild,” the Iraqi National Security Adviser Dr Mowaffaq Rubai’e told me in an interview. It is not known who gave the orders for the attempt on Mr Sadr but it is one of a series of ill-considered and politically explosive US actions in Iraq since the invasion. In January this year a US helicopter assault team tried to kidnap two senior Iranian security officials on an official visit to the Iraqi President. Earlier examples of highly provocative actions carried out by the US with little thought for the consequences include the dissolution of the Iraqi army and the Baath party.

The attempted assassination or abduction took place two-and-a-half years ago in August 2004 when Mr Sadr and his Mehdi Army militiamen were besieged by US Marines in Najaf, south of Baghdad.

Dr Rubai’e believes that his mediation efforts–about which he had given the US embassy, the American military command and the Iraqi government in Baghdad full details–were used as an elaborate set-up to entice the Shia leader to a place where he could be trapped.

Mr Sadr emerged as the leader of the Sadrist movement in Baghdad at the time of the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. It had been founded by his father, also a cleric, who had confronted Saddam’s regime in the 1990s and had been murdered by his agents in 1999. Its blend of nationalism, religion and populism proved highly attractive to Iraqi Shia, particularly to the very poor.

Although Mr Sadr escaped with his life at the last moment, the incident helps explain why he disappeared from view in Iraq when President George Bush stepped up confrontation with him and his Mehdi Army militia in January.

Dr Rubai’e said: “I know him very well and I think his suspicion and distrust of the coalition and any foreigner is really deep-rooted,” and dates from what happened in Najaf. He notes that after it had happened Mr Sadr occupied the shrine of Imam Ali in Najaf as a place of refuge. Dr Rubai’e had gone to Najaf in August 2004 to try to mediate an end to the fighting. He met Mr Sadr who agreed to a set of conditions to end the crisis. “He actually signed the agreement with his own handwriting,” said Dr Rubai’e. “He wanted the inner Najaf, the old city, around the shrine to be treated like the Vatican.”

Having returned to Baghdad to show the draft document to Iyad Allawi, who was prime minister at the time, Dr Rubai’e went back to Najaf to make a final agreement with Mr Sadr.

It was agreed that the last meeting would take place in the house in Najaf of Muqtada’s father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr who had been murdered by Saddam’s gunmen with two of his sons five years before. Dr Rubai’e and other mediators started for the house. As they did so they saw the US Marines open up an intense bombardment of the house and US Special Forces also heading for it. But the attack was a few minutes premature. Mr Sadr was not yet in the house and managed to escape.

Although Dr Rubai’e, as Iraqi National Security Adviser since 2004 and earlier a member of the Iraqi Governing Council, is closely associated with the American authorities in Baghdad, he has no doubt about what happened.

He sees the negotiations as part of a charade to lure Mr Sadr, who is normally very careful about his own security, to a house where he could be eliminated.

“When I came back to Baghdad I was really, really infuriated, I can tell you,” Dr Rubai’e said. “I went berserk with both [the US commander General George] Casey and the ambassador [John Negroponte].” They denied that knew of a trap and said they would look into what happened but he never received any explanation from them.

The US always felt deeply threatened by Mr Sadr because, unlike the other Shia parties, he opposed the occupation and demanded that it end.

There were two attempts to crush his movement in 2004, neither of which was successful. The first, at the end of March, began with the closure of his newspaper and the arrest of one of his close advisers. A warrant for Mr Sadr’s own arrest was issued. A US general said his only alternatives were to be killed or captured.

The US authorities appeared to have little understanding of the reverence with which the Sadr family was regarded by many Iraqi Shia.

The crackdown provoked a reaction for which the US was ill-prepared. The Mehdi Army, though poorly armed and untrained, took over part of Baghdad and many Shia cities and towns in southern Iraq. The US had to rush troops to embattled outposts.

A second crisis began in Najaf in August and this time the US and the recently appointed government of Iyad Allawi appear to have decided to smash Mr Sadr and his movement for ever. But they dared not assault the shrine of Imam Ali, one of the holiest Shia shrines.

Other Shia parties suspected that once Mr Sadr was dealt with they would be marginalised. The crisis was finally defused when Grand Ayatollah Ali al- Sistani, after undergoing medical treatment in London, returned to Najaf and negotiated an agreement with Mr Sadr under which he withdrew but did not disarm his forces.

The attempt to kill or imprison Mr Sadr was first revealed by Dr Rubai’e to Ali Allawi, the former Iraqi finance minister, who gives an account of what happened in his recent book The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the war, Losing the peace.

Dr Rubai’e said this weekend in Baghdad that he stands by his account given there. He does not think the Americans were planning to kill him along with Mr Sadr because he had a senior American officer with him almost all the time.

Muqtada al-Sadr is one of the most extraordinary figures to emerge during the war in Iraq, a pivotal figure leading a broad-based political movement with a powerful military wing.

The appeal of the 33-year-old Shia cleric is both religious and nationalist. He is regarded with devotion by millions. He is also a survivor and an astute politician who has often out-manoeuvred his opponents. The US and Britain have repeatedly underestimated the strength of his support.

The al-Sadrs are one of the great Shia religious families. His relative, Mohammed Baqir al-Sadr, was the founder of a politically active Shia movement and was executed by Saddam Hussein in 1980. Muqtada’s father Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr in effect founded the Sadrist movement in the 1990s. Finding he could not control him, Saddam Hussein had him murdered with two of his sons in Najaf in 1999, provoking widespread rioting.

To the surprise of all, the Sadrist movement re-emerged with Muqtada at its head during the fall of the old regime. In April 2003 it took over large parts of Shia Iraq. Its base was the vast Shia slum, renamed Sadr City, that contains a third of the population of Baghdad.

The US and its Iraqi allies regarded Muqtada as a highly threatening figure. Paul Bremer, the ill-fated US viceroy in Iraq after the invasion, detested and unwisely under-rated the Sadrists. When he moved against them in April 2004 he was astonished to see them take over much of southern Shia Iraq in a few days. Muqtada took refuge in Najaf.

There was a heavy fighting in August 2004 when the US made an all-out effort to eliminate Muqtada and his movement. Once again he survived, thanks to a compromise arranged by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.

His movement became less confrontational. It took part in the elections in 2005, winning 32 seats out of 275. The Mehdi Army was viewed by the Sunni as an organisation of sectarian death squads.

The US began increasingly to confront the Sadrists. But they were an essential support of the Iraqi government, making it difficult for the US to move against them. When the reinforced US forces in Baghdad did threaten the Mehdi Army, Muqtada simply sent his militiamen home, and disappeared from view.

Patrick Cockburn is the author of ‘The Occupation: War, resistance and daily life in Iraq’, a finalist for the National Book Critics’ Circle Award for best non-fiction book of 2006.

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Israeli Forest Named After Australian Prime Minister – SONJA KARKAR

Posted on May 23, 2007 by kf1

There is something worrying about a prime minister of a liberal, democratic country who imposes values on his country’s citizens and those who wish to become citizens, yet does not adhere to those values when he regards it politically expedient to ignore them. This is precisely what Prime Minister John Howard has done in accepting the “honour” of having a forest named after him in Israel’s Negev Desert and also the Jerusalem Prize for his support of Israel and its “values”. And John Howard is in good company: Sir Robert Menzies and Bob Hawke – both former Australian prime ministers – also have forests in Israel named after them, as well as a former governor-general, Sir Zelman Cowen.

The naming of the John Howard forest was arranged by a quasi-private land agency, the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which deliberately discriminates against non-Jews in its allocation of long-lease agreements. This arrangement services Israel’s apartheid policies aimed at bringing about the Judaisation of all of the land originally known as historic Palestine. The Israeli government relies on the JNF and international Zionist organizations to bring in Jews from abroad to settle on land forcibly taken from the non-Jewish inhabitants–a practice which is discriminatory and illegal. Already the JNF holds 13 per cent of the land and now is currently advertising its “Blueprint Negev” as “A Miracle in the Desert”. Only Jews will have access to the new development in keeping with the JNF’s charter, which is focused on looking after Jews globally.

The Negev Desert was and is the home of the indigenous Bedouin Arabs who are now citizens of present-day Israel. Some 80,000 have been living in 45 unrecognised villages in the southern Negev Desert and although they have a right to vote in Israel’s national elections and have a duty to pay taxes if they work, they have been calculatingly ignored when the Israeli government approves of planning projects for new Jewish communities. Their lands have been systematically confiscated and thousands of them have been forced to live in poor and densely populated shanty towns that is anathema to their traditional life on the land. These shanty towns are totally neglected by the Israeli government and the Bedouins have no access to even basic infrastructure like water, electricity and sewage. There are no roads or medical and welfare services and no municipal authority to administer services. The Bedouins, therefore, have no access to any authority that might issue permits for building and when out of necessity they do build, they live in constant fear of having their homes destroyed.

The similarity of conditions between the Bedouin Arabs and black South Africans during the Apartheid era is obvious. Like the white South Africans, Jewish Israelis seek to preserve their privileged position in Israel at all costs, tragically to the detriment of the non-Jewish citizens. All Israel’s policies, therefore, are geared to ensure the exclusivity and security of the Jewish state. Thus, mass expulsions followed by home demolitions and razing of villages is a familiar story in Israel just as forced removal was the modus operandi in South Africa. Under Israel’s former Prime Minister Sharon, a five-year plan was approved by the Israeli cabinet, to force the Bedouins living in the unrecognised villages to leave.

There was no consultation, just a gradual increase in house demolitions, the spraying of herbicide on crops to stop land cultivation and the filing of eviction suits. Places were renamed and Jewish towns, villages and cooperatives were built in place of the Bedouin villages. The Bedouins, who once owned 94 per cent of the total land, have had their land declared state property. They now own less than 3 per cent, and those who refuse to leave their unrecognised villages, are called “squatters”.

The JNF which has marketed itself in the last decade as a premier Zionist environmental organization – plans to settle half a million Israelis in the Negev in 25 low density housing communities over ten years. But, what the JNF calls the last great natural reserve of Israel, has been the subject of legal proceedings by Bedouin Arabs wanting to reclaim their land, and John Howard’s forest sits right in the middle of this disputed land. It would have been far more prudent for our prime minister to decline these honours than associate himself with a state that practices racial discrimination and human rights abuses against its own non-Jewish citizens. After all, Howard was at great pains to stop the Australian cricket team from playing in Zimbabwe as a protest against Robert Mugabe’s “grubby” regime. Equally and clearly, the JNF’s acts on behalf of Israel, do not measure up to our Australian values of a fair go, tolerance and inclusion. The prime minister ought to bring his values into line with the rest of Australia, instead of associating himself so unreservedly with Israel.

Reference: Global IDP Project, “Profile of Internal Displacement: Israel”, Compilation of the information available in the Global Database of the Norwegian Refugee Council, as of 2 June 2005

Sonja Karkar is the founder and president of Women for Palestine in Melbourne, Australia. See www.womenforpalestine.com

Source

Jewish National Fund’s Violation of International and Domestic Law

Palestinian Lands Society

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The Blood Of My Brother – Theatrical Trailer

Posted on May 22, 2007 by kf1

The Blood Of My Brother takes the viewer behind the scenes of the growing Shia insurgency with scenes of fighting and death on the streets of Sadr City and Najaf. The Blood of My Brother brings war-torn Iraq to life with intimate detail. This is the closest most will ever come to being there, kneeling in prayer amidst a thousand Muslim worshippers, the roar of low-flying Apaches, riding atop a sixty-ton tank, driving with masked resistance fighters to attack American positions, fleeing the threat of an overwhelming response, the blood in the street, a tank on fire, or the cold, distant stare of a dead Iraqi fighter.

More info at the official film site.

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The second coming of Saladin By Pepe Escobar

Posted on May 21, 2007 by kf1

The best lack all conviction While the worst are full of passionate intensity – W B Yeats, The Second Coming

DAMASCUS – The discreet green-and-white tomb of the greatest warrior of Islam, Saladin – by the splendid Ummayad Mosque in the former seat of the caliphate – may be the ideal place to meditate on if, where and when Islam may be shaken again by the advent of a new Saladin, nine centuries after the illustrious deeds of the great Muslim general.

Saddam Hussein, not least because he was also from Tikrit (although Saladin was a Kurd), fashioned himself as the genuine article – fighting (twice) the infidel Christian armies of the US. He is now no more than a martyr for a minority. Osama bin Laden carefully fashioned his iconography as a cross between Saladin, Che Guevara and the Prophet Mohammed. But as in the immortal line in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now, “his methods are unsound”; despite the marketing success in the expansion of the al-Qaeda brand, bin Laden will never be able to capture the collective conscious of the ummah.

The new Saladin might be the son of a Palestinian refugee victim of the Nakhba (“catastrophe”) 59 years ago. He might be a computer wizard too sophisticated to be tempted by al-Qaeda’s Salafi-jihadism. He might be an angry young man straight out of the “sanctions generation” in Iraq – deprived of everything while he was growing up, courtesy of the “international community”.

He won’t be a tourism developer in Dubai, self-styled “city of captivating contrasts” (between the Western/Arab business elites and the South Asian slaves, maybe?). He won’t be the pampered son of the Sunni business aristocracy in Damascus showing off his Porsche Cayenne. He won’t be a billionaire international playboy posing as politician a la Saad Hariri in Beirut. He won’t be a gas-dealing executive in gas nirvana Qatar.

Divide and rejoice

Conditions are more than ripe for the advent of a new Saladin – after the Nakhba, the 1967 lightning Israeli victory against the Arabs, the failures of pan-Arabism, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, the Israeli attack on Lebanon, the limited appeal of Salafi-jihadism, the non-stop stifling of nationalist movements by Western-backed brutal dictatorships/client monarchies.

When the future Saladin looks at the troubled and dejected Middle East, the first thing he sees is US Vice President Dick Cheney shopping for yet another war – skipping the “axis of evil” (Iran, unofficial member Syria) and ordering support from the “axis of fear” (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, the Emirates) in his relentless demonizing of Iran. After inflating sectarianism in Iraq, this time the imperial “divide and rule” weapon of choice is Arabs vs Persians.

The administration of US President George W Bush may have taken a leaf from former colonial power France – which invented Greater Lebanon as a confessional state, thus prone to perennial turbulence – to apply it in Iraq. But plunging Iraq into civil war to control better it is not enough (and there’s still the matter of securing the oilfields).

Forcing a practically de facto partition of Iraq into three warring crypto-states – a Kurdistan, a southern “Shi’iteistan” and a small central, oil-deprived Sunnistan – mired in a sea of blood in the heart of the Middle East is not enough. For Cheney, the industrial-military complex and assorted Ziocon (Zionist/neo-conservative) warriors, the big prize is the subjugation of Iran. Because Iran, apart from its natural wealth, is the only power capable – at least potentially – of challenging regional US hegemony.

Yet the trademark Cheney threats – with the standard high-tech aircraft-carrier background – are not cutting much ice. Al-Jazeera has been rhetorically bombarded by everybody and his neighbor – from retired Egyptian generals to Emirati political analysts – stressing that the Middle East will not support another US war. Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, in a swift move, has just been to the United Arab Emirates – the first visit by any Iranian leader since the Emirates became independent in 1971, and all the more crucial because of a still-running dispute over a bunch of Persian Gulf islands.

The House of Saud – for which the only thing that matters is its own survival – desperately wants a solution as soon as possible for the Palestinian tragedy, before they may be buried six feet under by the terrible sandstorms blowing from Mesopotamia (think of hordes of battle-hardened Salafi-jihadis coming home after fighting the US in Iraq).

King Abdullah is not bent on antagonizing Iran. On the contrary: the most important guest at the recent Riyadh conference was Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki. Saudis and Iranians want to prevent US-provoked sectarianism in Iraq from spreading regionally. And King Abdullah wants a better deal for Sunni Arab Iraqis (hence his identification of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as an Iranian puppet).

While Cheney wants to pit Saudi Arabia against Iran, a discreet, behind-the-scenes Saudi-Iranian pact of no aggression may be all but inevitable, diplomats tell Asia Times Online. Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said as much on the record: “Stop any attempt aimed at spreading sectarian strife in the region.”

Iran of course can be very persuasive, holding some tasty cards up its sleeve – such as hard-earned intelligence directly implicating the Saudis in training the Sunni Arab muqawama (resistance) in Iraq on explosive form penetrators (EFPs), which the Pentagon foolishly insists come from Iran. Everyone in Iraq knows it is operatives from “axis of fear” allies Saudi Arabia and Egypt – and also Pakistan – who have provided the Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq with technology and training on improvised explosive devices and EFPs.

Thus we have another Bush administration foreign-policy special: Cheney coddling guerrilla-arming Sunni Arabs – who are facilitating the killing of American soldiers in Iraq – to support an attack on Shi’ite Persians (allied with the Iraqi Shi’ites supported by the Americans …).

Anyway, Iraqi Shi’ites are more than winning the US surge game. The surging US soldiers are fighting various strands of the Sunni Arab resistance and al-Qaeda in Iraq. Meanwhile, the officially ensconced Badr Organization and its shady death-squad spinoffs are free to apply a lot of deadly pressure on the Sunni Arab civilian population. The Mehdi Army, on Muqtada al-Sadr’s orders, is just lying low – not taking the bait of fighting the Americans. Nothing will change the reality of this surge picture in the next few months.

About that clash

A possible Saudi-Iranian entente would be a classic case of local powers taking the destiny of the region in their own hands. In a parallel register, in southern Beirut – prime Hezbollah territory – there are plenty of banners in front of buildings destroyed by Israel last summer. They read: “The Zionist enemy destroys, the Islamic Republic of Iran builds.”

Unity in the Muslim world is not a chimera: crypto-scientific Western babble of the “Arabs are extinct” variety is plain silly, as are nonagenarian Bernard Lewis’ pontifications on the “clash of civilizations” – the “perhaps irrational but surely historic reaction of an ancient rival against our Judeo-Christian heritage”. The new Saladin would tell Lewis to get a grip on reality and admit that the unabated political repression, tremendous social inequality and prevailing economic disaster all over the Middle East are direct consequences of decades of “divide and rule” Western imperialism plus some extra decades of non-stop meddling coupled with rapacious, arrogant and ignorant local elites.

The new Saladin knows how the US and Britain initially supported the Muslim Brotherhood – and then the Brotherhood supported the birth of Hamas. He knows how the US and Britain initially supported Iranian clerics – especially the late ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini – against the shah. He knows how the US and Britain initially supported the Taliban. The aim was always to stifle any form of progressive, secular movement by socialists, communists or Arab nationalists.

A possible Saudi-Iran entente is still a dream. There is the parallel emergence of a coalition of top members of the “axis of fear” – Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan – with Turkey and, of all players, Israel. Common objective: the containment of Iran. And not only Iran, but also Hezbollah and Hamas. King Abdullah was persuaded of this strategy by notorious Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka “Bandar Bush”, former Saudi ambassador in the US for 22 years, a close friend of both Bush and Cheney, and now the head of the Saudi National Security Council.

The strategy was in fact masterminded by a pedestrian version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Cheney; Bandar; US deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams; and former US ambassador in Iraq and Afghan jack-of-all-trades Zalmay Khalilzad. What the popular masses in the Middle East think about this is of course irrelevant. In majority-Sunni Egypt, for instance, the most popular politicians are by far Hezbollah’s Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, Khalid Meshal from Hamas, and Ahmadinejad. Two Shi’ites and a Sunni amply supported by Shi’ites.

About that ‘war on terror’

The Bush administration is cunningly trying to spin the theme of “Sunni solidarity” to push the dagger of fitna (dissent) even further into the heart of Islam, always focusing on the same target: total, unchallenged domination of the Middle East.

Cheney could not but have also enlisted Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf (who facilitates US intelligence on countless covert ops inside southeastern Iran organized from Balochistan in Pakistan). Some players are getting itchy, though. Turkey had to announce on the record that it would not join any “anti-Shi’ite alliance”. Turkey cannot afford to antagonize Iran – not with the coming November referendum on the autonomy of Iraqi Kurdistan.

The new Saladin also sees that the “war on terror” is far from over – metastasized into more subtle forms of Islamophobia, and still directly related to the attempted oil grab in the “big prizes” of Iraq and Iran. The privileged strategy to conquer fabulous natural wealth in the lands of Islam has been predictable from the start; building a case against the “barbarian”, “uncivilized” and “pre-modern” Muslim world; vilifying Islam as a religion and Muslim culture and mores; promoting de facto discrimination and in may cases outright racism against Muslims in the wealthy north; equating Islam with terrorism.

The new Saladin knows it as much as virtually the whole 1.5-billion-strong ummah knows it.

And then there’s the Shi’ite world. As long as US so-called elites fail to understand the phenomenal power of Shi’ism, any brilliant armchair strategy they cook up is destined to fail miserably.

Shi’ites in Iraq will never be co-opted by any US agenda – no matter the Himalayas of wishful thinking involved. They will never sacrifice their collective consciousness – forged by oppression and exclusion – nor their profound sense of historic victimization to the benefit of a made-in-America “liberal” utopia. Shi’ites will continue to stress their tremendous hostility to Zionism; to their society being corrupted by Western – especially US – popular and trash culture; and most of all to imperial designs on Muslim lands and natural wealth. It’s in the DNA of Shi’ites to see themselves as the guardians of true Islam.

The hour of the wolf

So where will the new Saladin come from?

He could be Nasrallah – who forced the formerly mighty Israeli army to back off, and who will inevitably prevail in a majority government in Lebanon through democratic elections.

He could be a young Sadrist who has never entered the Green Zone, and who before that was a member of the “sanctions generation”, growing up in absolute marginalization. Now he goes to al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, he will get his diploma, and he will be better equipped to fight for the true liberation of Iraq. He could be Muqtada al-Sadr himself – the legitimate popular leader of a national-liberation movement.

He could be the son of a Palestinian refugee who grew up in Damascus or Beirut, got an education, emigrated to Canada to perfect his skills, learn from the best the West has to offer, and then one day come back and enter politics with a vengeance.

He could be a Muslim Brotherhood intellectual in Syria. He would fully back the Sunni Arab resistance in Iraq. He would fully back deposing the Hashemite monarchy in Jordan. He would fully back Hamas. As a Muslim Brotherhood Saladin, he would fight for a Sunni Arab Greater Syria capable of talking some sense into Israel.

He could be a Saudi-trained Sunni Arab sniper in Baghdad who posts his killing videos as manifestos on the Internet. Or he could even not be an Arab, but a Persian – a resistance hero in case of a tactical nuclear US strike.

The soul of Saladin may be impatient for an heir. So are hundreds of millions in the ummah. What rough warrior, its hour come out at last, slouches toward Jerusalem, Damascus or Baghdad to be born?

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007). He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com

Source

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Hallelujah Trail: Terror War “Regime Change” Comes to the Holy Land

Posted on May 21, 2007 by kf1

The Bush Administration has now embarked on its fourth “regime change” operation in its global “Terror War.” Following the more direct overthrows in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the aggression by paid-for proxies in Somalia, we now have the civil war in Palestine, with U.S. arms and money backing the armed overthrow of the democratically elected Hamas government. As in Somalia, where the American-trained army of the Ethiopian dictatorship joined up with Somali warlords in the pay of the CIA, the latest regime change is being carried out by a combination of foreign and native proxies: the Israeli government and the Palestinian Authority.

The civil war in Palestine is of course a long-held dream of the American and Israeli Right. Israel first secretly supported the sectarian Hamas in order to undermine the secular nationalists of Arafat’s PLO; now they openly take sides with Arafat’s successors in the Palestinian Authority against Hamas, which — as always happens — escaped the control of the puppet-masters who sought to exploit the group for their own ends. But the long-term aim has been achieved: a violently divided Palestinian society, broken down, killing each other off, leaving Israel free to continue its colonization of Palestinian land. As others have pointed out, it’s no wonder that the United States so staunchly supports this policy: after all, it’s what we did to the Native Americans.

The latter is actually an important point, if mostly overlooked. Critics of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians — especially those well-disposed toward Israel, who write more in sorrow than in anger — often hold out the idea that Israel will eventually come to its senses, that its leaders will finally have to acknowledge that they can’t simply brutalize their way to victory and vanquish the Palestinian cause by force, take over all the land they want and build their own society on these ill-gotten gains. But of course history is filled with examples of this very process; in the grand sweep of time, it has actually succeeded more often than not.

Now, it may be that in this particular historical instance, the Israelis will not be strong enough or numerous enough to overwhelm the Palestinians in the end. But they need only look to their chief mentors and benefactors, the United States, to see that it is indeed possible to destroy and dispossess a divided native people, take their land and build your own society on top of it. There’s nothing outrageous about such a long-term strategy — except from the moral point of view, of course. But states, like corporations, are not human, and thus have no morals. They do not — and cannot — act from the moral point of view. They can, on rare occasions, be swayed by morally engaged human beings from initiating or continuing some particular course of action. But it is the nature of inhuman power to expand until it is balked by some obstruction: a superior force, or institutional and legal checks and balances (if these are rigorously maintained), or some form of popular opposition that makes a certain policy too costly or inconvenient to pursue.

There is at present no superior force, no institutional or legal check (from a rightwing judiciary and a spineless Congress) or sufficient popular opposition to bring the moral obscenity of the Terror War to a halt, and redirect America’s energies toward more worthy — and more security-conducive — ends. And so the “regime change” operations will go on, spreading death, chaos and immense suffering in its wake, and seeding future conflicts, future blowback, endless horrors to come.

As for the Palestinian “regime change,” the Bush faction is scarcely bothering to hide its role in bringing about the armed conflict. Jonathan Schwarz is on the case here, with this sharp post, marked as usual with his dark wit:

If I Didn’t Know Better, I’d Think This Gigantic Grey Creature With The Tusks Here In The Room With Us Is An Elephant

Schwarz first points us to this important post by Tony Karon, on the “Palestinian Pinochet”: Mohammed Dahlan, nominally the “National Security Adviser” of the hapless sad sack now clinging to the office of the Palestinian presidency, Mahmoud Abbas. As Karon points out, Dahlan is actually a freebooting warlord foisted upon the Palestinian government by the Bush Administration — in much the same way that the Bush Administration planted longtime CIA asset Mohammed Shahwani as head of the American-created “Iraqi National Intelligence Service,” which is still funded by Washington, outside the control of the nominally sovereign Iraqi government. Dahlan instigated the latest fighting in a bid to thwart the unity government brokered by Saudi Arabia — against Bush’s wishes — earlier this year. Karon’s post, which provides a detailed background to the current crisis, should be read in full. [As’ad AbuKhalil has also been on the Dahlan case for a long time over at the indispensible Angry Arab.]

Meanwhile, Schwarz is still examining that strange grey creature, and we’ll give him the last word:

 

Few Americans are even aware of the Palestinian mini-civil war going on now in Gaza. Fewer still know this civil war is to a large degree the conscious creation of the Bush administration—and specifically of America’s old friend Elliot Abrams. Here’s an article with some details:

 

Deputy National Security Advisor, Elliott Abrams — who Newsweek recently described as “the last neocon standing” — has had it about for some months now that the U.S. is not only not interested in dealing with Hamas, it is working to ensure its failure. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas elections, last January, Abrams greeted a group of Palestinian businessmen in his White House office with talk of a “hard coup” against the newly-elected Hamas government — the violent overthrow of their leadership with arms supplied by the United States…

Over the last twelve months, the United States has supplied guns, ammunition and training to Palestinian Fatah activists to take on Hamas in the streets of Gaza and the West Bank.

 

Interesting.

You know, when prominent neoconservatives talk about “hard coups” to overturn Palestinian elections, or hint at their regret the military didn’t stage a coup in Turkey, it almost makes me think their purported concern for democracy is complete bullshit.

Fortunately, we know that’s not that case, because no one ever broaches this possibility in the US media.

Source

 Who’s behind the Palestinian ‘civil war’?

The familiar narrative used to explain the conflict among Palestinian factions is steeped in the racist ideology that Arab Muslims cannot help but kill one another. In reality, what we are witnessing is an age old strategy of divide and conquer.

The civil war in Palestine is of course a long-held dream of the American and Israeli Right. Israel first secretly supported the sectarian Hamas in order to undermine the secular nationalists of Arafat’s PLO; now they openly take sides with Arafat’s successors in the Palestinian Authority against Hamas, which — as always happens — escaped the control of the puppet-masters who sought to exploit the group for their own ends. But the long-term aim has been achieved: a violently divided Palestinian society, broken down, killing each other off, leaving Israel free to continue its colonization of Palestinian land. As others have pointed out, it’s no wonder that the United States so staunchly supports this policy: after all, it’s what we did to the Native Americans.

It does seems extremely convenient (for Israel) that having recently declared a unity government, Hamas and Fatah have returned to fighting. Why would Israel deal with a unity government and agree to return stolen land, when they can just as easily create inter factional fighting and continue stealing more land? After all, the release of US plans to sink Hamas is just a coincidence, right?

On April 30, the Jordanian weekly newspaper Al-Majd published a story about a 16-page secret document, an “Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency” that called for undermining and replacing the Palestinian national-unity government.

The document outlined steps that would strengthen Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, build up Palestinian security forces under his command, lead to the dissolution of the Palestinian Parliament, and strengthen US allies in Fatah in a lead-up to parliamentary elections that Abbas would call for early this autumn.

The Majd document is based on a Jordanian government translation of a reputed US intelligence document that was obtained by the newspaper from a Jordanian government official. The document, an official at the newspaper said, was drawn up by “Arab and American parties” and “presented to Palestinian President Abbas by the head of an Arab intelligence agency”. The document is explosive.

Should Abbas give his agreement to the plan – which is not yet certain – he would be complicit in a program to undermine his own government.

Understanding the implications of the document, Jordanian government officials ordered that the publisher’s printing house stop the presses while that edition’s plates were confiscated. “The Jordanian security services, which censor newspapers in advance, intervened during the night to stop our print-run,” confirmed Fahd Al Rimawi, an editor at Al-Majd.

On May 1, the Jordanian government explained its decision in a statement issued by the president of the Jordanian Press Association, Tareq al-Moumani. The statement claimed that Al-Majd had repeatedly published reports “based on information taken from intelligence sources and offends the country’s security and interests”.

The fact that the US has used this formula countless times is completely irrelevant to what is taking place in Gaza. Move along. Nothing to see here.

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27 Buildings on 104 Acres is NOT an Embassy; It’s an Occupation.(Welcome to U.S Embassy in Iraq)

Posted on May 18, 2007 by kf1

Keeping track of the lies of the establishment media and the Bush administration is like trying to keep track of sand and dirt particles during a tornado. But once in a while a huge chuck hits you right in the face! Even still…the establishment media pretend it’s not there.

We hear George W. Bush lie regularly about almost everything he says. But on the issue of Iraq we have heard many times how the Unites States will be leaving Iraq when the Iraqi’s are able to stand on their own. OK…fine…but how does that explain the 104 acre so called embassy consisting of 27 buildings? Leaving a 104 acre city in Iraq does not exactly meet the description of “leaving!”

Here we have a long time coming, in your face clear and obvious piece of proof that George W. Bush lies when he talks about plans for Iraq, and the establishment media will not inform the public about this. Not one word of this is ever mentioned on TV. 104 ACRES!!! Holy cow…give me a break! Did we steal the land from the Iraqis for this or did OUR tax dollars pay for it? Either way it is another smoking gun exposing the many lies of George W. Bush!

104 acres does not make an embassy. It makes a city, a base, occupied territory, but most of all in this case 104 acres serves as proof of another lie of George W. Bush and another lie to the American people by the media. We are not leaving Iraq, no way, no how, even though George W. Bush says otherwise.

Seven years on I am trying to find one thing that George W. Bush has not lied about and I am trying to find one lie that the establishment media accurately described as intentional and willing deception by George W. Bush. Then again I am still trying to figure out where the tooth fairy lives. How silly of me to try and find the answers to these obvious issues! Think about it! Source

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The General vs. the Judge – Tariq Ali

Posted on May 18, 2007 by kf1

General Strike Paralyzes Pakistan

The General vs. the Judge

By TARIQ ALI

Sixty years old this August, Pakistan has been under de facto military rule for exactly half of its life. Military leaders have usually been limited to a ten-year cycle: Ayub Khan (1958-69), Zia-ul-Haq (1977-89). The first was removed by a nation-wide insurrection lasting three months. The second was assassinated. According to this political calendar, Pervaiz Musharraf still has another year and a half to go, but events happen.

On 9 March this year the President suspended the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Unlike some of his colleagues, the Judge in question, Iftikhar Chowdhry, had not resigned at the time of the coup, but like previous Supreme Courts, had acquiesced to the bogus ‘doctrine of necessity’ that is always used to judicially justify a military take-over. He was not known for judicial activism and the charges against him are related to a ‘ corrupt misuse of his office’, but its hardly a secret that Chowdhry’s recent judgements against the Government on a number of key issues, including the rushed privatisation of the Karachi Steel Mills in Karachi, the demand that ‘disappeared’ political activists be produced in court and taking rape victims seriously, panicked Islamabad. Might this turbulent judge go so far and declare the military presidency unconstitutional? Paranoia set in.

TV stations engaged in objective reporting were raided by the police, thus destroying the regime’s proud boast (hitherto largely true) that it interfered less with the media than all its predecessors.

The decision triggered off a remarkable social movement. Initially confined to the country’s 80,000 lawyers and several dozen judges, it soon began to spread.This in itself came as a surprise to a country whose people have become increasingly alienated from elite rule whose roots are rotten. Also worth noting is that this civil society opposition to a crude decision had nothing to do with religion. It was a defence of judicial independence (however nominal) against the executive. The lawyers who marched on the streets did so to insist on a separation of constitutional powers. There is something delightfully outmoded and old-fashioned about this struggle. It involved neither money nor religion, but principle. As respect for the movement grew, bandwagon careerists from the Opposition (some of whom had organised their own thuggish assaults on the Supreme Court when in power) made the cause their own.

As often happens in a crisis, Musharraf and his advisers, instead of acknowledging that a mistake had been made and moving rapidly to correct it, decided on a test of strength. As Iftikhar Choudhry’s cavalcades through various became more and more popular, Islamabad plotted its counter-strike. The Judge was due to visit the country’s largest city, Karachi. Political power here rests in the hands of the MQM, an unsavoury outfit created during a previous dictatorship, addicted to violence and protection rackets and insensitive to moral and human realities. It consisted largely of poor muhajir families (Muslim refugees who fled to Pakistan at the time of Partition in 1947), who felt abandoned by the State. Musharraf too, hails from a middle-class refugee background. For this reason the MQM adopted him as one of their own (even though Musharraf’s mother was a Communist sympathiser and the family as whole was progressive).

On Islamabad’s instructions, the MQM leaders now decided to prevent the Judge from addressing any meeting in Karachi. That is what led to armed clashes and nearly fifty deaths in the city a few days ago. Footage of the killings, screened on Aaj (Today) TV led to the station being assaulted by armed MQM volunteers. All this provoked a successful general strike, isolating the regime. Were a Presidential election to be held today there is little doubt that the Judge would defeat the General.

Justice Choudhry’s popularity can only be understood in a context where traditional politicians had become thoroughly discredited. First Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan People’s Party appointed her husband Asif Zardari as the ‘Minister for Investment’ and the couple, together with their cronies, began to milk the country dry. The Bhutto/Zardari accounts in safe havens abroad are reputed to be in the region of a billion dollars. Bhutto’s failure to do anything substantial for the poor who had voted her into office resulted in mass disillusion. She was removed from office for corruption and in the subsequent elections her old rival Sharif (Pakistan Muslim League) won a large majority on the basis of a very low turn-out (under 30 percent). Bhutto’s disgusted supporters stayed at home.

Nawaz Sharif made his brother Shahbaz the Chief Minister of the Punjab. His late father became the unofficial President of Pakistan and was involved in negotiations with a disaffected Army. It was old man Sharif who advised his sons that Generals, not being angels from heaven, could also be bought and sold in the market-place. But not all of them. And not Musharraf. Nawaz Sharif’s comic-opera attempt to retire Musharraf backfired disastrously.

9/11 made the Pakistan President a key player in the region. For the native elite this was a godsend. Money began to pour in, nuclear-related sanctions were lifted, and the EU granted trade concessions worth over a billion Euros and simultaneously relaxed tariffs on Pakistani textile exports. As the US became more closely involved the Pakistani military and political elite fell into line. Everyone—-venal politicians, grovelling high officials, and harebrained society hostesses—- applauded Pakistan’s return to its old status as a frontline state. Not the Islamists, of course, since the new war was against them and their friends in Afghanistan. For a while the only opposition to the regime came from the Islamists, moderates and extremists alike, though the methods were different in each case.

The attempt to browbeat a Judge has released a new fissure in Pakistani society. The violence in Karachi makes compromise difficult for both sides. There is an easy solution. The General should discard his uniform, the Judge should forego his wig and the two men should battle it out on the electoral terrain without hindrance from the MQM or the numerous apparatuses of the State. It may seem like attempting to square a circle, but there are imminent dangers unless the Generals agree to compromise.

Tariq Ali’s new book, Pirates of the Caribbean: Axis of Hope, is published by Verso. He can be reached at: tariq.ali3@btinternet.com

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