February 2015
Vol 15, No.02
7 SHOCKING FACTS ABOUT SAUDI ARABIA UNDER ‘MODERNIZING’ REIGN OF KING ABDULLAH By RT news Taken aback by the fulsome praise the recently deceased King Abdullah has garnered from world leaders, RT has decided to assess whether his record stands up to scrutiny. The majority of eulogies went beyond the requirements of diplomatic etiquette, while some epithets used by Western politicians made people believe they had stepped through the looking glass. UK Prime Minister David Cameron said the monarch, who died at 90, “strengthened understanding between faiths,” while IMF chief Christine Lagarde called him “a strong advocate of women,” albeit a “discreet” one. And almost all political grandees seemed to agree that the scion of the House of Saud, was – in the words of Tony Blair – “a skillful modernizer,” who “led his country into the future.” One is invited to do a reality check and examine how far the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques really brought his country
into the 21st century. 1. No elections, no parties, no parliament, no dissent Continuing its consistent decades-long record, Saudi Arabia received the lowest possible marks for civil and political freedoms in the annual Freedom House rankings in 2014. The countries placed alongside it were North Korea, Turkmenistan, and smattering of the most brutal African dictatorships. The regime’s disregard for any accountability to its people is brazen. There are no national elections, no parties, and no parliament – only a symbolic advisory chamber, known as Majlis al-Shura. Criticism is strictly forbidden: only last year, prominent opposition activist Abd al-Kareem alKhoder joined hundreds of the country’s political prisoners, when he was sentenced to eight years for demanding the changeover to a constitutional
monarchy. Just days before King Abdullah’s death, blogger Raif Badawi was given the first 50 of his 1,000 lashes – for calling for free speech on his blog. King Abdullah introduced municipal elections upon his official ascension to the throne – as a largely symbolic valve mechanism. At the same time, high-profile petitions demanding greater reform a decade ago landed their authors in prison. The country’s sizable and restive Shia minority in the east - which led a series of public protests from 2011 onwards - is also systematically starved of political representation, somewhat inevitably, in a country led by a single Sunni family. 2. Equality: Jobs for the Saud boys – all 7,000 of them Turn to next page
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KISSINGER AGREE: AVOID THE HISTORIC TRAGEDY OF UKRAINE BY KEVIN ZEESE...............................................P 3 AND
. THERE ARE MORE FRENCH MUSLIM’S WORKING FOR FRENCH SECURITY THAN FOR AL-QAEDA BY OLIVIER ROY.................................................P 5 .PEOPLE’S HISTORIC VICTORY IN GREECE
BY FAROOQUE CHOWDHURY.............................P 7
. TUNISIA’S
STILL-ROCKY TRANSITION BY AFRO-MIDDLE EAST CENTRE (AMEC)....P 9
. UKRAINIAN SOLDIER CONFIRMS: UKRAINE’S MILITARY SHOT DOWN MALAYSIAN MH17 PLANE BY ERIC ZUESSE................................................P 10 . WHO SHOULD BE BLAMED FOR MUSLIM TERRORISM?
BY ANDRE VLTCHEK........................................P 10 . A GLOBAL STATE OF NATURE? PLEADING
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COVENANT BY FRED DALLMAYR.........................................P 14 RENEWED
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The grip of the House of Saud on the country’s levers of power and purse strings would be the envy of any medieval court. More than 7,000 princes bearing that family name are alive – with some experts speculating that the real number of titled family members approaches 30,000. Every single one has to be allocated a job commensurate with his lineage – creating hundreds of sinecures – while conversely, all talented candidates are shut out from key jobs if they do not bear the correct surname. 3. Power transfer: Half Brezhnev-era USSR, half Game of Thrones Ironically, with such a large pool of descendants to choose from, the House of Saud is crippled by particularly outdated succession laws. Instead of primogeniture – where the title is inherited by the first-born son of the ruler – Saudi Arabia uses agnatic seniority, or the passing of power across to one’s brothers. This means that the 90-yearold Abdullah has been succeeded by 79year-old half-brother Salman, while Crown Prince Muqrin turns 70 this year. Underneath the geriatric cadre of leaders, there exists a viper’s nest of intrigue, as the exponentially bigger younger generation plans to stake its claim on the throne, with factions aplenty split among the different branches of the sprawling family. It is not obvious how such a system guarantees the increasing prosperity and stability of a 21st-century state, and King Abdullah did little to reform its basic tenets. 4. Law: Scimitars and whips It may have become almost an online cliché to compare the legal systems of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic State, but the links between the two are fundamental. Both use the same ultraconservative Hanbali school of jurisprudence, and many of the IS “judges” are Saudis, due to their
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familiarity with this concept of justice. Among the punishments distributed is anything from hands and feet being chopped off for theft, lashes for adultery and other “social” misdemeanors, to beheading, which can be handed down for crimes as varied as sedition, carjacking, sorcery and drug smuggling. Eighty-seven people are thought to have been beheaded in 2014, which is in line with the national average over the past five years, despite ever-growing external pressure on Saudi Arabia. Only this month, a video emerged online, showing
L E A D A R T I C L E torture. In practice, the information obtained this way is even less reliable than that received from inmates at Guantanamo, as instead of trying to extract provable data, the torturers are merely demanding admissions of guilt – by all means available. King Abdullah attempted to rationalize the system, by creating more appeal courts, and introducing a stricter selection of judges. However, he did not question the value of the legal system as a whole, and all judges that have been appointed in the past two decades have been personally approved by him. 6. Women’s rights: Female (non)drivers Over the past decade, the battle lines have been drawn on the symbolic issue of women drivers in Saudi Arabia. The Gulf monarchy is the last country in the world, where women are still not allowed to drive.
an executioner repeatedly hacking away at the neck of a screaming condemned woman, as people looked on openmouthed. Unlike solving some of Saudi Arabia’s deep-seated problems, the curtailing of such “justice” would have just required one firm intervention from King Abdullah. It is clear, this was not a priority for him. 5. Human rights: Torture and gavel There is no legal code in Saudi Arabia, leaving it to individual judges to set the punishment for a crime in accordance with their interpretation of Islamic scriptures. This gives them unlimited power, creating arguably one of the most inconsistent justice systems in the world, in which crimes and punishments are simply made up, leaving the convicts no obvious way to appeal. In addition, much of the legal process hinges on a “confession” from the defendant, which in turn encourages
The issue is not near resolution, and women caught behind the wheel – whether during a symbolic protest, or an ordinary drive – can still end up sentenced to lashings. In fairness, King Abdullah did intervene in at least one case in 2011, to commute a punishment. But of course, for the majority of Saudi women, driving is the least of their problems. Many would prefer to be able to leave the house, make a purchase, sign any legal document – in fact perform almost any official action, from agreeing to surgery, to signing up to a class – without the consent of a guardian, either the husband or the father. Yet, even these suffocating measures give only scant impression of the status of Saudi women in a continued next page
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society where even their court testimony is worth half of that of a man. King Abdullah encouraged more women to go into education, and allocated them a fifth of the seats in his advisory chamber, also allowing them to vote and run in the 2015 municipal elections. As with other reform areas, these are topdown symbolic gestures that have done little to affect most Saudi women, who outside of warzones - remain some of the most disadvantaged anywhere in the world. Still, Abdullah’s admirers can hope that his first steps will lay the foundation to profound change, not patronizing
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did nothing to rein in his family members.
7. Terrorism fight: Friend or foe? A voluntary $100 million donation to the UN’s counter-terrorism center last year was a show of generosity from Riyadh, but what the Saudis give with one hand, they seem to take away with the other.
In fact, one could be tempted to feel that the House of Saud is only against the “wrong” kind of terrorist – mostly Shia, but also splinter Sunni groups that threaten its hegemony over the region. When the “right” kinds of terrorist – Russia’s Chechen militants, or anti-Assad rebels – appear, then those in Riyadh palaces not only support them with funds, but see them as a legitimate tool for spreading influence and the favored Wahhabi ideology.
According to the diplomatic cables published by Wikileaks in 2010, the US regards Saudi Arabia as the biggest source of Sunni terrorism funding in the world, and a “crucial” piggy-bank for Al-Qaeda and other radical groups. While much of its funding comes from private individuals, their identity is unlikely to have been a secret to King Abdullah, who
27 January 2015 Source: RT News
ARTICLES CHOMSKY AND KISSINGER AGREE: AVOID THE HISTORIC TRAGEDY UKRAINE
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By Kevin Zeese The New York Times reported Tuesday that the Obama administration is considering sending more weapons to Ukraine — $3 billion worth. The Times reports: “Secretary of State John Kerry, who plans to visit Kiev on Thursday [Feb. 5], is open to new discussions about providing lethal assistance, as is Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, officials said.” This follows Defense News reporting that this spring the United States will be sending troops to train the Ukrainian National Guard and commence the shipping of U.S.-funded armored vehicles. The funding for this is coming from the congressionally-authorized Global Security Contingency Fund, which was requested by the Obama administration in the fiscal year 2015 budget to help train and equip the armed forces of allies around the globe. Meanwhile, January footage from
Ukrainian television shows U.S. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of the U.S. Army in Europe, handing out medals to wounded Ukrainian soldiers. The slippery slope of U.S. involvement in what is developing into a civil war is based on a great deal of propagandistic statements and inaccurate corporate media coverage, and it calls to mind so many wars started for false reasons.
recently protested before the Senate Finance Committee.) Yet when it comes to Ukraine, Chomsky and Kissinger essentially agree with each other. They disagree with the more hawkish Obama administration and the even more extreme Sen. John McCain — who are both escalating the conflict in their own ways. “A threatening situation”
The views of Henry Kissinger and Noam Chomsky on this conflict are quite similar, though it’s difficult to find two more polar opposites regarding U.S. foreign policy. Indeed, Chomsky has been a long-time critic of Kissinger for the bombings in Southeast Asia and the various coups against democratic leaders that occurred during his tenure. Chomsky has said that in a just world, Kissinger certainly would have been prosecuted for these actions. (These were the war crimes that CODEPINK
Chomsky has described Ukraine as a “crisis [that] is serious and threatening,” further noting that some people compare it to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. In discussing Russia and Crimea he reminds readers that, “Crimea is historically Russian; it has Russia’s only warm-water port, the home of Russia’s fleet; and has enormous strategic significance.” Kissinger agrees. In an interview with continued next page
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Spiegel, published in November, Kissinger says, “Ukraine has always had a special significance for Russia. It was a mistake not to realize that.” He continues: “Crimea is a special case. Ukraine was part of Russia for a long time. You can’t accept the principle that any country can just change the borders and take a province of another country. But if the West is honest with itself, it has to admit that there were mistakes on its side. The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest. It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia.”
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policy with the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research, when asked about Ukraine, Chomsky says: “It is an extremely dangerous development, which has been brewing ever since Washington violated its verbal promises to Gorbachev and began expanding NATO to the East, right to Russia’s borders, and threatening to incorporate Ukraine, which is of great strategic significance to Russia and of course has close historical and cultural links. There is a sensible analysis of the situation in the leading establishment journal, Foreign Affairs, by international relations specialist John Mearsheimer, entitled “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the
When Kissinger says that Crimea is not akin to Hitler and a desire for global conquest by Russia, he is going to the heart of the arguments made by those seeking escalation. Asked whether he believes the West has “at least a kind of responsibility for” the escalation in Ukraine, Kissinger says: “Europe and America did not understand the impact of these events, starting with the negotiations about Ukraine’s economic relations with the European Union and culminating in the demonstrations in Kiev. All these, and their impact, should have been the subject of a dialogue with Russia.” In other words, Kissinger blames the U.S. and Europe for the current catastrophe in Ukraine. Kissinger does not begin at the point where there is military conflict. He recognizes that the problems in Ukraine began with Europe and the U.S. seeking to lure Ukraine into an alliance with Western powers with promises of economic aid. This led to the demonstrations in Kiev. And, as we learned from Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, the U.S. spent $5 billion in building opposition to the government in Ukraine. In an October interview on U.S. foreign
S T A T E M E N T S of World War III and nuclear war, saying the world has “come ominously close several times in the past, dramatically close.” He then describes the current situation in Ukraine: “And now, especially in the crisis over Ukraine, and so-called missile-defense systems near the borders of Russia, it’s a threatening situation.” Kissinger is also critical of the economic sanctions against Russia. He takes issue with targeting individuals because he does not see how that ends. Indeed, the criticism of the sanctions also applies to U.S. military involvement in Ukraine. Kissinger tells Spiegel: “I think one should always, when one starts something, think what one wants to achieve and how it should end. How does it end?” The virtual takeover of Ukrainian government
West’s Fault.” The Russian autocracy is far from blameless, but we are now back to earlier comments: we have come perilously close to disaster before, and are toying with catastrophe again. It is not that possible peaceful solutions are lacking. Kissinger, too, warns of Ukraine as a dangerous situation, describing the potential of a new Cold War and urging the countries involved to do all they can to avoid “a historic tragedy.” He tells Spiegel: “There clearly is this danger, and we must not ignore it. I think a resumption of the Cold War would be a historic tragedy. If a conflict is avoidable, on a basis reflecting morality and security, one should try to avoid it.” Chomsky agrees that the Ukraine conflict is high risk but goes further. Speaking to Russia Today (RT), he mentions a risk
The U.S. has loaded the Ukraine government and key businesses with Americans or U.S. allies. Nuland was caught on a telephone conversation with Geoffrey Pyatt, the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, picking the next leader of Ukraine. The call is more famous for her closing line — “Fuck the EU” — but in the call she also says that the next leader of Ukraine should be the former banker Arseniy Yatseniuk, who she calls by a nickname “Yats.” Indeed, he has since become the prime minister of the postcoup Ukrainian government. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is identified in State Department documents as an informant for the U.S. since 2006. The documents describe him as “[o]ur Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko.” The State Department documents also report that Poroshenko is “tainted by credible corruption allegations.” The most recent top official to join the Ukrainian government is Natalia A. Jaresko, a long-time State Department official, who went to Ukraine after the continued next page
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continued from page 4 U.S.-sponsored Orange Revolution. Jaresko was made a Ukrainian citizen by the president on the same day he appointed her finance minister. William Boardman reports further on Jaresko:
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to Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and co-chaired his National Finance Committee. He also serves as a trustee of the Heinz Family Office, which manages the family business.
“Natalie Jaresko, is an American citizen who managed a Ukrainian-based, U.S.created hedge fund that was charged with illegal insider trading. She also managed a CIA fund that supported ‘prodemocracy’ movements and laundered much of the $5 billion the U.S. spent supporting the Maidan protests that led to the Kiev coup in February 2014. Jaresko is a big fan of austerity for people in troubled economies.”
This virtual takeover of the Ukrainian government is the opposite of what Kissinger would have liked to have seen. He wrote last March, “If Ukraine is to survive and thrive, it must not be either side’s outpost against the other — it should function as a bridge between them.” Unfortunately, it looks like it has been taken over by the U.S., creating conflict rather than a bridge between Russia and the U.S.
Then, there is also one of the most important business sectors in Ukraine: the energy industry. After the U.S.supported coup, Vice President Joe Biden‘s son, Hunter Biden, and a close friend of Secretary of State John Kerry, Devon Archer, the college roommate of the secretary of state’s stepson, have joined the board of Ukrainian gas producer Burisma Holdings, Ukraine’s largest independent gas producer by volume. Archer also served as an adviser
The man who was involved in multiple coups of democratically-elected governments now says the U.S. cannot impose its views on other nations: “SPIEGEL: In your book, you write that international order “must be cultivated, not imposed.” What do you mean by that? “Kissinger: What it means is we that we Americans will be a major factor by virtue of our strengths and values. You
A R T I C L E S become a superpower by being strong but also by being wise and by being farsighted. But no state is strong or wise enough to create a world order alone.” Chomsky has often described how superpowers seek to organize the world according to their interests through military and economic power. Throughout his career he has been an advocate for national self-determination, not domination by super-powers. Though Kissinger and Chomsky might be offended at being associated with the political views of the other, as the U.S. rushes headlong into a military conflict between the coup government in Kiev and the Eastern Ukrainian governments seeking their own self-determination, it is notable that both agree this rush to war is a mistake — and one of potentially historic proportions. 06 February 2015 Kevin Zeese is co-director of Popular Resistance and active with the antiwar group, Come Home America. Source: Countercurrents.org
THERE ARE MORE FRENCH MUSLIM’S WORKING FOR FRENCH SECURITY THAN FOR AL QAEDA By Olivier Roy FLORENCE — The attack against the Paris satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo has re-launched an ongoing debate in France about the compatibility between Islam and the West. The issue is more fraught in Western Europe than in the United States because of the huge number of Muslims who are not only settled there, but who also have citizenship. By a strange coincidence, on the same day of the deadly attack on Charlie Hebdo, we saw the long awaited release of the most recent novel by the
bestselling French author Michel Houellebecq, titled “Submission.” The book imagines the victory of a moderate Muslim party in the 2022 French presidential and parliamentary elections. The issue of the compatibility between Islam and French or Western political culture is no longer confined to the usual suspects: the populist right, conservative Christians or staunch secularists from the left. The issue has become emotional and now pervades the entire political spectrum. The Muslim population —
which does not identify with the terrorists — now fears an anti-Muslim backlash. Roughly speaking, two narratives are conflicting: the dominant one claims that Islam is the main issue, because it puts loyalty toward the faith community before loyalty to the nation, it does not accept criticism, does not compromise on norms and values and condones specific forms of violence like jihad. For the adherents of this narrative, the only solution is a theological reformation that continued next page
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continued from page 5 would generate a “good” Islam that is a liberal, feminist and gay-friendly religion. Journalists and politicians are always tracking the “good Muslims” and summoning them to show their credentials as “moderate.” On the other side, many Muslims, secular or believers, supported by a multiculturalist left, claim that radicalization does not come from Islam but from disenfranchised youth who are victims of racism and exclusion, and that the real issue is Islamophobia. They condemn terrorism while denouncing the backlash that could in turn radicalize more Muslim youth. The problem is that both narratives presuppose the existence of a French “Muslim community” of which the terrorists are a sort of “vanguard.” “Muslims are criticized for being a community, but then asked to react against terrorism as a community. This is called the double bind: be what I ask you not to be.” The juxtaposition of these two narratives has created a deadlock. To overcome this, it is necessary to first take into account a number of inescapable facts — facts which we do not want to acknowledge because they show us that the radicalized young people are in no way the vanguard or the spokesmen of the Muslim population, and in particular, that there is no “Muslim community” in France. Radicalized young people, who rely heavily on an imagined Muslim politics (the Ummah of earlier times) are deliberately at odds with the Islam of their parents, as well as Muslim culture overall. They invent an Islam which opposes itself to the West. They come from the periphery of the Muslim word. They are moved to action by the displays of
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violence in the media of Western culture. They embody a generational rupture (parents now call the police when their children leave for Syria), and they are not involved with the local religious community and the neighborhood mosques. These young people practice selfradicalization on the Internet, searching for a global jihad. They are not interested in the tangible concerns of the Muslim world, such as Palestine. In short, they are not seeking the Islamization of the society in which they live but the realization of their sick fantasy of heroism (“We have avenged the Prophet Muhammad,” claimed some of the killers at Charlie Hebdo). The great majority of the converted amongst radicals clearly shows that radicalization is taking place among a marginal fringe of the youth, and not at the heart of the Muslim population. BEYOND CLICHES Conversely, one might say, the facts show that French Muslims are more integrated than commonly thought. Each “Islamist” attack has involved at least one Muslim victim amongst the police force — for example Imad Ibn Ziaten, a French soldier killed by Mohamed Merah in Toulouse in 2012, or the officer Ahmed Merabet, killed when he tried to stop the killers at the Charlie Hebdo offices. Instead of being cited as examples, they are considered counter-examples. The “real” Muslim is said to be the terrorist and the others are the exceptions. But statistically, this is false: in France, there are more Muslims in the army, the police, and the gendarmes than in the Al Qaeda network, not to mention in government administration, the hospitals, law practices or the educational system. Another cliché is that Muslims do not condemn terrorism. But the Internet is
A R T I C L E S overflowing with condemnations and anti-terrorist fatwas (Just one example). If the facts contradict the thesis of the radicalization of the Muslim population, then why are they not recognized? Because one attributes to the Muslim population a far-reaching community for which they are, at the same time, criticized for not exhibiting. Muslims are criticized for being a community, but then asked to react against terrorism as a community. This is called the double bind: be what I ask you not to be. “In France, there is not a Muslim community, but a Muslim population.” If, at the local level, in the neighborhoods, there are certain forms of community, such a thing does not exist at the national level. The Muslims of France have never had the desire to put in place representative institutions or even, at the very least, a Muslim lobby. There are no signs pointing toward the beginning of the establishment of a Muslim political party. The candidates of the political sphere who are of Muslim origin are spread out across the French political spectrum (and include the extreme right). There is no “Muslim vote.” There is no network of denominational Muslim schools (less than 10 in France), no mobilization in the street (no demonstrations around a Muslim cause has attracted more than a few thousand people) and almost no grand mosques (which are almost always financed from outside funding). There are only a handful of small local mosques. If there is an effort at community, it comes from above, from the state, not the citizens. The purported organized continued next page
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representation of the French Council of the Muslim Faith at the Grand Mosque of Paris is held at arm’s length by the French government and by foreign governments alike. And it has no local legitimacy. In short, the Muslim “community” suffers from a very Gallic individualism and remains recalcitrant. That is the good news.
Yet, both the left and the right do not cease to speak of that famous Muslim community, either to denounce its refusal to integrate, or to paint it as the victim of Islamophobia. The two opposing narratives are based on the same fantasy of an imaginary Muslim community. In France, there is not a Muslim
A R T I C L E S community, but a Muslim population. To admit this simple truth would already be a good antidote against the current hysteria, and the hysteria to come. 9 January 2015 Olivier Roy is professor at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Source:huffingtonpost.com
PEOPLE’S HISTORIC VICTORY IN GREECE By Farooque Chowdhury A historic verdict has been announced in Greece. The people in Greece have achieved a historic victory. The just concluded election in Greece announces the victory. The cheering people’s smiling bright faces reflect the verdict: Death to Austerity, Assert People’s Sovereign Power. Europe is now waiting for an impact of the victory. It’s a victory against the bankers engaged with virtual criminal acts: stealing of people’s property with a constitutional coverage and instituting a regime change with a peaceful appearance. SYRIZA, the Radical Coalition of the Left, in Greece has shown the way people reject bankers’ crude cruelty. The coalition’s election result is the show of the people’s opinion. The coalition said: Hope has won. SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras told: SYRIZA’s win meant an end to austerity and humiliation. The country’s debt inspections were a thing of the past. “The sovereign Greek people today have given a clear, strong, indisputable mandate. Greece has turned a page. Greece is leaving behind the destructive austerity, fear and authoritarianism. It is leaving behind five years of humiliation and pain.” With the Great Financial Crisis bankers unmasked the modern myth of
bourgeois democracy in Greece. The political force the bankers deployed exposed the myth of capitalism in the country. Their single act – austerity – did the unmasking job. They taught the Greek people lessons of bourgeois democracy and capitalism. The lessons led the people to reject the programs imposed by the bankers, the speculators, the swindlers. The people of Greece experienced tricks of bourgeois economy, its forgery in accounting system, its socalled accountability and shamtransparency over the years. They experienced capitalism’s “innocent” business – speculation. Their experience got enriched with bubbles bankers created and busted. And, they experienced bankers’ political power. Over the years, capitalism in Greece created havoc. It brought speculation, and crises. These ultimately brought in capitalism-made disasters in the life of the people. Chain of incidents appeared as text book on capitalism, its real face, capacity and character. In the life of the people, that was a Greek tragedy. The people in Greece was “awarded” with the state’s mismanagement with accounts, faults in the state’s accounting system, which were
actually lies. Capitalists tried to make people believe that their state machine doesn’t know mathematics although the state was running all the shows of ruling over the people, counting debts and interests without error, finding out tricky ways to transfer all its loads of failure on the shoulder of the people, and feeding bankers’ hunger. The same state machine calculated the number of employees to be retrenched and the public institutions and establishments to be sold out to feed the “starving” bankers. The “efficient” acts virtually dismantled the people’s normal life. Their economic life was shattered as they found sick public health services, rickety educational institutions, crumbling public works. Unemployed, hungry citizens turned facts of daily life in Greece. Groups of people went back to rural areas simply for survival, simply for having three meals-a-day; mothers were failing to feed children; middle class homes took appearance of Third World poor ’s shelters; company executives, members of middle class, were standing in food lines. Suicide rates increased in the society. The austerity program turned out, as Alexis said, “a vicious cycle”. Starving Greeks found bankers began continued next page
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dictating Greece. Orders were issued from bankers’ financial and political centers. It was not a Greek government, but a bankers’ troika – the European Union (EU), International Monetary Fund (IMF) and European Central Bank (ECB) – began ruling the life of the people. There were bankers’ dictations: put this public institution on the auction market, retrench this number of employees, cut down pension, and let the people starve, and let the people enjoy punishment for the misdeeds we’ve wrought.
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people in Greece were “assisted” to work out their “destinies” in bankers’ way! The Great Financial Crisis helped find out the fact. A far-right force with masked Nazi face – the Golden Dawn – was gaining ground in Greece as usually happens during periods of crisis. It was spewing flames of hatred with the idea “I’m the best”, a complete Nazi philosophy, an anti-people idea. Labor from other countries were being threatened and assaulted.
A R T I C L E S will continue to receive assistance provided that the agreements made are upheld. There are no considerations for a debt haircut. In Germany, the ruling CDU party has already insisted: Greece should stick to the austerity program. Rating agency the Standard & Poor’s in a statement warned: It may downgrade rating of European countries where Eurosceptic parties may assume power. The S&P considers SYRIZA as one of the most “credit negative” parties. SYRIZA has to face those.
This perspective – financial/banking/ The people found a regime change in the country as the bankers demanded. The people experienced capitalism, its crushing power, bourgeois democracy, its ultimate accountability to the dominating interests. And, they experienced loss of dignity and honor as their fate was being debated in the parliament of another country, a Third World experience. There were frustration and protests. There were marches and demonstrations. And, there were police batons, use of people-control equipment, and police barricades obstructing people’s march. The people were not allowed to reach parliament. The parliament was responsive to the troika, the international banking bosses, to Brussels and Berlin. Greece stood as one of the burning examples of debacles in bourgeois democracy. It was a shameless show. In 1947, Truman declared measures concerning Greece and Turkey that got an identity: Truman Doctrine. One of the sentences in the doctrine said: “[W]e must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.” It was a sentence formed shrewdly. History laughed. The
credit crises, dictation, humiliation, austerity, hardship, poverty, unemployment, starvation, and people’s aspiration for a better, dignified and honorable life – brought SYRIZA to the forefront. Planned, consistent, organized political work instead of only slogan-mongering and only festoon-waving mobilized the people, and people have expressed their aspiration reflected in the just concluded poll result. But crossings of politics are there. Arithmetic of bourgeois democracy is there. And, there are games, plans and tricks of and pressure from bankers. A few of the tricks are in Athens and a few are in other capital cities. Warnings have already been issued. Carrots have also been shown. Jens Weidmann, the Governor of the German Central Bank, said: Greece
Once again, scientific theories on capital, finance, bank, class power, state, and people’s organization, awareness and mobilization will be put on test in Greece. It will be an opportunity to learn. Not only will the people of Greece learn from the lesson. People of other countries, especially the countries in Europe will also learn from the experience. A failure or success of SYRIZA will lead to many questions, and possible answers. Compromises and adjustments are to be made as the left coalition lacks functional majority. The left coalition leadership has to find out variations in compromises. Adventurist slogans will not help. Whatever the parliament in Athens witnesses in the coming weeks the poll result in Greece stands as people’s rejection of bankers’ economy and politics. The people have utilized an opportunity they have found in the arena of politics. The opportunity has been made by people power, not anarchism, adventurism and antipeople violence. 26 January, 2015 Farooque Chowdhury is Dhakabased freelancer. Source: Countercurrents.org
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TUNISIA’S STILL-ROCKY TRANSITION By Afro-Middle East Centre (AMEC) In the past two months, Tunisia organised three successful electoral polls – a parliamentary then a presidential election that was followed by a runoff vote. The results of all three indicate a weakening of the Islamist Ennahda party, and a tolerance for remnants of the Ben Ali regime re-entering politics. The largely peaceful elections and the willingness of defeated candidates to accept the results augurs well for democratic consolidation in Tunisia. However, the country’s authoritarian past, the willingness of its civil society to choose authoritarianism over Islamism, and the re-emergence of Ben Ali remnants suggests the temptation to reverse the gains of the 2011 uprising will remain strong.
secret that most members backed Moncef Marzouki, a secular politician and former president of the Tunisian Human Rights League who was president in the previous Nahda-led governing coalition.) Economic stagnation, increased insecurity caused by a growing extremist Salafi trend, and spillover of the Libyan and Syrian conflicts had made voters question Ennahda’s ability to rule. This was worsened by the party’s lack of grassroots’ institutions – a direct result of it being persecuted and banned under
Challenges
Electoral outcomes The three polls saw the rise of Nidaa Tounes (Call for Tunisia), which won thirty-eight per cent of the parliamentary vote, with its candidate, Beji Caid Essebsi, winning the presidential runoff election with fifty-six per cent of the vote. Nidaa is comprised of a motley of trade unionists, independent politicians, secularists, and former Ben Ali supporters, whose main rallying point has been a disdain for Ennahda’s Islamism. Besides this unifying factor, the party lacks a clear economic programme and has not yet convened its founding congress, because of fears that former Constitutional Democratic Rally members will gain prominence. Ennahda suffered the most losses in the polls, with its vote share dropping from thirty-seven per cent in 2011 to twentyeight per cent, and its preferred presidential candidate being defeated by a substantial twelve per cent margin. (Officially, Ennahda did not support any candidate for president, but it is a known
is a coalition between Nidaa and the Popular Front (with fifteen seats) and/ or Afek Tounes. The Popular Front’s economic policy is radically different from Nidaa’s, but it has previously worked with Nidaa Tounes. The Free Patriotic Union (with sixteen seats) is also a possible coalition partner, especially as its economic platform is similar to Nidaa’s. However, the friction caused by the presidential campaigns of the leaders of the two parties will first need to be addressed.
Ben Ali. Tunisia’s new constitution, however, grants a great deal of power to the legislature, which will ensure the Islamic party significant prominence in policy formation. Coalition Building Nidaa’s eighty-six seats falls short of the 109 required to form a government, meaning that coalitions will have to be built. Although the country’s myriad challenges can best be tackled through a coalition between Nidaa and Ennahda – with their similar economic platforms and ability to mobilise large sectors of society, and despite Ennahda’s willingness to join a Nidaa coalition, this is unlikely, since Nidaa was formed on an explicitly anti-Islamist platform, and includes many who had striven, under Ben Ali, to eradicate Ennahda. More likely
Clearly, the elections will not erase the country’s structural and systemic challenges, plagued as it is by economic stagnation. Essebsi’s recognition of the disparities in development between different parts of the country is encouraging, but his assertion that instability was caused by the Ennahda-led government and that ‘hard steps’ are needed to reverse this will likely exacerbate the problem and increase polarisation. Recent reports of tensions within Nidaa will also constrain his ability to act, especially if the party splinters and refuses to sanction the soon to be formed cabinet. Many within Nidaa oppose his decision to appoint Habib Essid (a relative independent) to head the cabinet, and his decision to appoint his sons Hafiz Caid Essebsi, Mohamed Ennaseur and Mohamed Imran to the legislature. Perhaps positive is that the Tunisian General Labour Union (UGTT) and other civil society organisations will watch Essebsi’s performance carefully, and will not hesitate to oppose what they regard as bad policies. 16 January 2015
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UKRAINIAN SOLDIER CONFIRMS: UKRAINE’S MILITARY SHOT DOWN MALAYSIAN MH17 By Eric Zuesse A Ukrainian soldier who was part of the crew that operated the supposed missilebattery that the Ukrainian Government claims shot down the Malaysian MH17 airliner on July 17th has testified publicly for the first time, saying that the missilebattery was operated by the Ukrainian military, not by the rebels as asserted, and that he and his former crew-mates who operated it laughed when they heard their Government say that this missilebattery was operated by rebels and had shot the airliner down. An English-translated transcript of the December 15th Russian-language interview with this soldier was posted at UkraineWar.Info on December 17th by Michael Collins, an investigative journalist with UkraineWar.Info who has been following very closely the multiple investigations that are proceeding into the cause of the downing. This testimony confirms the accumulating prior, already overwhelming and even-moreconvincing evidence, which is linked to in my latest article on the topic, here, all of which evidence indicates that either one or else two Ukrainian fighter-jets intentionally shot this airliner down —
that it was not an error by rebels who had mis-identified this airliner as being a bomber from the Ukrainian Government, such as the Ukrainian Government and its sponsor the U.S. Government claim. Regarding the reason why the Ukrainian Government did this, it, too, is clear: U.S. President Obama needed a startling incident in order to obtain from the EU and other U.S.-allied nations their participation in heavily increased economic sanctions to weaken Russia. As soon as this plane was downed, both the Ukrainian Government and the Obama Administration claimed that they possessed convincing proof that it had been downed by pro-Russian rebels in Ukraine’s former southeast. All U.S. allies got on board with that and agreed to hiked sanctions against Russia. This “false flag” event (as such government fakeries are called in the intelligence communities) succeeded, just as did Hitler’s burning down the Reichstag and blaming it on leftists, which was the event that enabled him to seize total power in Germany. THIS JUST IN (3:21PM Eastern time in U.S.) from Michael Collins: “George
[Eliason, a third member of our team at UkraineWar.Info, and a resident inside the conflict-zone] says that due to the pub from the article, the ukraine govt took down their ‘damning’ pic of BUK 312 today and that the reporter who did the interview is underground and fleeing the country.” So, the reason why Ukrainians are reluctant to go public about their lying Government is obvious. And, all of the ‘news’ media there are owned by Ukrainian, or, in some cases, by American, oligarchs. (The American ones do it through ‘nonprofit’ foundations they create, which are co-funded by the American Government. The U.S. oligarch then gets tax-write-offs, plus co-funding by U.S. taxpayers, to save him still more money on his scheme.) 18 December, 2014 Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010. Source: Countercurrents.org
WHO SHOULD BE BLAMED FOR MUSLIM TERRORISM? By Andre Vltchek A hundred years ago, it would have been unimaginable to have a pair of Muslim men enter a cafe or a public transportation vehicle, and then blow themselves up, killing dozens. Or to massacre the staff of a satirical magazine in Paris! Things like that were simply not done.
Said, or talk to old men and women in East Jerusalem, it becomes clear that the great part of Palestinian society used to be absolutely secular and moderate. It cared about life, culture, and even fashion, more than about religious dogmas.
When you read the memoirs of Edward
The same could be said about many other
Muslim societies, including those of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Egypt and Indonesia. Old photos speak for themselves. That is why it is so important to study old images again and again, carefully. Islam is not only a religion; it is also an enormous culture, one of the greatest continued next page
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on Earth, which has enriched our humanity with some of the paramount scientific and architectural achievements, and with countless discoveries in the field of medicine. Muslims have written stunning poetry, and composed beautiful music. But above all, they developed some of the earliest social structures in the world, including enormous public hospitals and the first universities on earth, like The University of alQarawiyyin in Fez, Morocco.
radicals and anti-Communist cadres, and by those who couldn’t care less about the welfare of their people. Almost all radical movements in today’s Islam, anywhere in the world, are tied to Wahhabism, an ultra-conservative, reactionary sect of Islam, which is in control of the political life of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and other staunch allies of the West in the Gulf. To quote Dr. Abdullah Mohammad Sindi:
The idea of ‘social’ was natural to many Muslim politicians, and had the West not brutally interfered, by overthrowing leftwing governments and putting on the throne fascist allies of London, Washington and Paris; almost all Muslim countries, including Iran, Egypt and Indonesia, would now most likely be socialist, under a group of very moderate and mostly secular leaders. In the past, countless Muslim leaders stood up against the Western control of the world, and enormous figures like the Indonesian President, Ahmet Sukarno, were close to Communist Parties and ideologies. Sukarno even forged a global anti-imperialist movement, the Non-Allied movement, which was clearly defined during the Bandung Conference in Indonesia, in 1955. That was in striking contrast to the conservative, elites-oriented Christianity, which mostly felt at home with the fascist rulers and colonialists, with the kings, traders and big business oligarchs. For the Empire, the existence and popularity of progressive, Marxist, Muslim rulers governing the Middle East or resource-rich Indonesia, was something clearly unacceptable. If they were to use the natural wealth to improve the lives of their people, what was to be left for the Empire and its corporations? It had to be stopped by all means. Islam had to be divided, and infiltrated with
“It is very clear from the historical record that without British help neither Wahhabism nor the House of Saud would be in existence today. Wahhabism is a British-inspired fundamentalist movement in Islam. Through its defense of the House of Saud, the US also supports Wahhabism directly and indirectly regardless of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Wahhabism is violent, right wing, ultraconservative, rigid, extremist, reactionary, sexist, and intolerant…” The West gave full support to the Wahhabis in the 1980s. They were employed, financed and armed, after the Soviet Union was dragged into Afghanistan and into a bitter war that lasted from 1979 to 1989. As a result of this war, the Soviet Union collapsed, exhausted both economically and psychologically. The Mujahedeen, who were fighting the Soviets as well as the left-leaning government in Kabul, were encouraged and financed by the West and its allies. They came from all corners of the Muslim world, to fight a ‘Holy War’ against Communist infidels. According to the US Department of State archives: “Contingents of so-called Afghan Arabs and foreign fighters who wished to wage
jihad against the atheist communists. Notable among them was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, whose Arab group eventually evolved into al-Qaeda.” Muslim radical groups created and injected into various Muslim countries by the West included al-Qaeda, but also, more recently, ISIS (also known as ISIL). ISIS is an extremist army that was born in the ‘refugee camps’ on the Syrian/Turkish and Syrian/Jordanian borders, and which was financed by NATO and the West to fight the Syrian (secular) government of Bashar al-Assad. Such radical implants have been serving several purposes. The West uses them as proxies in the wars it is fighting against its enemies – the countries that are still standing in the way to the Empire’s complete domination of the world. Then, somewhere down the road, after these extremist armies ‘get totally out of control’ (and they always will), they could serve as scarecrows and as justification for the ‘The War On Terror’, or, like after ISIS took Mosul, as an excuse for the re-engagement of Western troops in Iraq. Stories about the radical Muslim groups have constantly been paraded on the front pages of newspapers and magazines, or shown on television monitors, reminding readers ‘how dangerous the world really is’, ‘how important Western engagement in it is’, and consequently, how important surveillance is, how indispensable security measures are, as well as tremendous ‘defense’ budgets and wars against countless rogue states. From a peaceful and creative civilization, that used to lean towards socialism, the Muslim nations and Islam itself, found itself to be suddenly derailed, tricked, outmaneuvered, infiltrated by foreign religious and ideological implants, and transformed by the Western ideologues continued next page
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and propagandists into one ‘tremendous threat’; into the pinnacle and symbol of terrorism and intolerance. The situation has been thoroughly grotesque, but nobody is really laughing – too many people have died as a result; too much has been destroyed! Indonesia is one of the most striking historical examples of how such mechanisms of the destruction of progressive Muslim values, really functions: In the 1950s and early 1960s, the US, Australia and the West in general, were increasingly ‘concerned’ about the progressive anti-imperialist and internationalist stand of President Sukarno, and about the increasing popularity of the Communist Party of Indonesia (PKI). But they were even more anxious about the enlightened, socialist and moderate Indonesian brand of Islam, which was clearly allying itself with Communist ideals. Christian anti-Communist ideologues and ‘planners’, including the notorious Jesuit Joop Beek, infiltrated Indonesia. They set up clandestine organizations there, from ideological to paramilitary ones, helping the West to plan the coup that in and after 1965 took between 1 and 3 million human lives. Shaped in the West, the extremely effective anti-Communist and antiintellectual propaganda spread by Joop Beek and his cohorts also helped to brainwash many members of large Muslim organizations, propelling them into joining the killing of Leftists, immediately after the coup. Little did they know that Islam, not only Communism, was chosen as the main target of the proWestern, Christian ‘fifth column’ inside Indonesia, or more precisely, the target was the left-leaning, liberal Islam.
After the 1965 coup, the Westernsponsored fascist dictator, General Suharto, used Joop Beek as his main advisor. He also relied on Beek’s ‘students’, ideologically. Economically, the regime related itself with mainly Christian business tycoons, including Liem Bian Kie. In the most populous Muslim nation on earth, Indonesia, Muslims were sidelined, their ‘unreliable’ political parties banned
A R T I C L E S progressive Muslim cleric, Abdurrahman Wahid (forced out of office by the elites), once told me: “I know who blew up the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. It was not an attack by the Islamists; it was done by the Indonesian secret services, in order to justify their existence and budget, and to please the West.” “I would argue that western imperialism has not so much forged an alliance with radical factions, as created them”, I was told, in London, by my friend, and leading progressive Muslim intellectual, Ziauddin Sardar. And Mr. Sardar continued:
during the dictatorship, and both the politics (covertly) and economy (overtly) fell under the strict control of Christian, pro-Western minority. To this day, this minority has its complex and venomous net of anti-Communist warriors, closelyknit business cartels and mafias, media and ‘educational outlets’ including private religious schools, as well as corrupt religious preachers (many played a role in the 1965 massacres), and other collaborators with both the local and global regime. Indonesian Islam has been reduced to a silent majority, mostly poor and without any significant influence. It only makes international headlines when its frustrated white-robed militants go trashing bars, or when its extremists, many related to the Mujahedeen and the Soviet-Afghan War, go blowing up nightclubs, hotels or restaurants in Bali and Jakarta.
“We need to realize that colonialism did much more than simply damage Muslim nations and cultures. It played a major part in the suppression and eventual disappearance of knowledge and learning, thought and creativity, from Muslim cultures. Colonial encounter began by appropriating the knowledge and learning of Islam, which became the basis of the ‘European Renaissance’ and ‘the Enlightenment’ and ended by eradicating this knowledge and learning from both Muslim societies and from history itself. It did that both by physical elimination – destroying and closing down institutions of learning, banning certain types of indigenous knowledge, killing off local thinkers and scholars – and by rewriting History as the history of western civilization into which all minor histories of other civilization are subsumed.” From the hopes of those post-WWII years, to the total gloom of the present days – what a long and terrible journey is has been! The Muslim world is now injured, humiliated and confused, almost always on the defensive.
Or do they even do that, really? Former President of Indonesia and
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frequently forced to rely on Western and Christian views of the world. What used to make the culture of Islam so attractive – tolerance, learning, concern for the wellbeing of the people – has been amputated from the Muslim realm, destroyed from abroad. What was left was only religion. Now most of the Muslim countries are ruled by despots, by the military or corrupt cliques. All of them closely linked with the West and its global regime and interests. As they did in several great nations and Empires of South and Central America, as well as Africa, Western invaders and colonizers managed to totally annihilate great Muslim cultures. What forcefully replaced them were greed, corruption and brutality. It appears that everything that is based on different, non-Christian foundations is being reduced to dust by the Empire. Only the biggest and toughest cultures are still surviving. Anytime a Muslim country tries to go back to its essence, to march its own, socialist or socially-oriented way – be it Iran, Egypt, Indonesia, or much more recently Iraq, Libya or Syria – it gets savagely tortured and destroyed. The will of its people is unceremoniously broken, and democratically expressed choices overthrown. For decades, Palestine has been denied freedom, as well as its basic human rights. Both Israel and the Empire spit at its right to self-determination. Palestinian people are locked in a ghetto, humiliated, and murdered. Religion is all that some of them have left. The ‘Arab Spring’ was derailed and
terminated almost everywhere, from Egypt to Bahrain, and the old regimes and military are back in power. Like African people, Muslims are paying terrible price for being born in countries rich in natural resources. But they are also brutalized for having, together with China, the greatest civilization in history, one that outshone all the cultures of the West. Christianity looted and brutalized the world. Islam, with its great Sultans such as Saladin, stood against invaders, defending the great cities of Aleppo and Damascus, Cairo and Jerusalem. But overall, it was more interested in building a great civilization, than in pillaging and wars. Now hardly anyone in the West knows about Saladin or about the great scientific, artistic or social achievements of the Muslim world. But everybody is ‘well informed’ about ISIS. Of course they know ISIS only as an ‘Islamic extremist group’, not as one of the main Western tools used to destabilize the Middle East. As ‘France is mourning’ the deaths of the journalists at the offices of the satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo (undeniably a terrible crime!), all over Europe it is again Islam which is being depicted as brutal and militant, not the West with its post-Crusade, Christian fundamentalist doctrines that keeps overthrowing and slaughtering all moderate, secular and progressive governments and systems in the Muslim world, leaving Muslim people at the mercy of deranged fanatics. In the last five decades, around 10 million Muslims have been murdered because their countries did not serve the Empire, or did not serve it fullheartedly, or just were in the way. The victims were Indonesians, Iraqis,
Algerians, Afghanis, Pakistanis, Iranians, Yemenis, Syrians, Lebanese, Egyptians, and the citizens of Mali, Somalia, Bahrain and many other countries. The West identified the most horrible monsters, threw billions of dollars at them, armed them, gave them advanced military training, and then let them loose. The countries that are breeding terrorism, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, are some of the closest allies of the West, and have never been punished for exporting horror all over the Muslim world. Great social Muslim movements like Hezbollah, which is presently engaged in mortal combat against the ISIS, but which also used to galvanize Lebanon during its fight against the Israeli invasion, are on the “terrorist lists” compiled by the West. It explains a lot, if anybody is willing to pay attention. Seen from the Middle East, it appears that the West, just as during the crusades, is aiming at the absolute destruction of Muslim countries and the Muslim culture. As for the Muslim religion, the Empire only accepts the sheepish brands – those that accept extreme capitalism and the dominant global position of the West. The only other tolerable type of Islam is that which is manufactured by the West itself, and by its allies in the Gulf – designated to fight against progress and social justice; the one that is devouring its own people. 09 January 2015 Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. Source: Counterpunch.org
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A GLOBAL STATE OF NATURE? PLEADING FOR A RENEWED COVENANT By Fred Dallmayr Our time illustrates a state of increasing brutalization.
viable global civil society. As it happens, neither of these factors is presently in place.
Tzvetan Todorov These days, whenever one reads a paper or watches the news on television, one is faced with an avalanche of atrocities and mayhems. For example, on January 27, 2015, these were the main news items: U.S. drone kills 12 year old Yemeni boy; Shiite militias accused of executing 70 unarmed civilians; eight die in attack on Libyan hotel; nine Ukrainian soldiers die; thousands protest in Mexico over disappearance of students. These are just the headlines on one day. Other, equally grim stories were reported on the previous days. And we know: the flow of horror stories will not stop during the following days. So, what is happening in our world? Is world history really the relentless slaughter bench—as Hegel once surmised?
Regarding the role of state, it is true that many of the older nation-states have been reduced to the role of satellites or (quasi-colonial) client states. Their military capabilities are restricted to performance in so-called “proxy wars.” However, the shrinking of older states to subsidiary status does not eliminate the role of state sovereignty. On the contrary, what has happened is the rise of super-states, of hegemonic super-Leviathans endowed with sheer limitless war-making capacities. To this extent, Westphalia has given rise to a new superWestphalian order. The so-called “clash of civilizations” is to a large extent a clash of super-Leviathans clustering around themselves an aura or penumbra of client civilizations.
This verdict does not concur with mere hopeful scenarios depicted by some students of international politics. According to the latter, the world today is at the cusp of a momentous “paradigm shift”: from inter-state relations to a genuine “global politics.” Whereas traditional inter-state politics— inaugurated by the Peace of Westphalia— was marked by the constant rivalries among sovereign states, the new paradigm of global politics would usher in a more peaceful era released from the war-mongering ambitions of the past. While Hegel’s verdict may have applied to the state-centered Westphalian system, it would no longer hold true for the emerging global scenario. But how plausible is this assumption? The expectation clearly is predicated on two factors: first, the retreat of powerful state actors; and secondly, the upsurge of a
What is still more disturbing is the fact that the practically unlimited warpowers of super-Leviathans is accompanied by the absence or decay of civil society, especially of what is sometimes called “global civil society.” This decay is due to the erosion of ethical civic bonds and the growing “atomization” of society—an atomization which has been spearheaded by Western countries but is now being globalized around the world. What is happening as a result is not the upsurge of a robust global civil society—functioning as a possible antidote to super-Leviathans—but the decay of social life into a Hobbesian “state of nature”—now a globalized state of nature. According to Thomas Hobbes, the state of nature was (and is) characterized by the lack of binding ethical rules and the claim by every
member to an unlimited right to do as he/she pleases for the sake of security. Hobbes called this right or freedom the “right to everything” (ius ad omnia), the right to do anything perceived as required for security, including the unlimited right to kill opponents. The exercise of this absolute right by everybody inevitably leads to an absolute condition of terror or fear of death, a condition which renders life “nasty, brutish, and short.” It is this condition of universal terror which increasingly is gripping both domestic and global civil society. On the global level, this condition of terror is illustrated by the pretense of a global right to kill anybody anywhere— and this quite outside the bounds of traditional warfare. This pretended right to kill is evident in the use of drones anywhere in the world, resulting often in mayhem among civilians. It is also evident in the use of para-military mercenary forces in many parts of the world, forces which—though wielding lethal power—are not accountable to any legal authority. 1 The most obvious example, however, of a universal killing license—in a global state of nature—is the American employment of “Special Operations” forces (SOF) on a global scale. According to a report by Nick Turse, writing for Information Clearing House, such special forces operate now in 105 countries. As he points out, since September 2001, these forces have grown “in every conceivable way,” including numbers, budget, and clout in Washington; their personnel has more than doubled from about 33,000 in 2001 to nearly 70,000 today. During the fiscal year ending in September 2014, SOF deployed to 133 countries—roughly 70% of the nations of the world. This continued next page
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capped a three-year span in which “the country’s most elite forces” were active in more than 150 different countries around the world, “ranging from kill/ capture night raids to training exercises.” And in just the first weeks of 2015, the troops had already set foot in 105 nations. Nick Turse speaks of a “secret global war across much of the planet.”2 This war obviously has its heroes; in a new Hollywood movie, the new super-hero of Western civilization is called “American Sniper.” The prevalence of a global state of nature is demonstrated not only by military or para-military operations, but also by violent or harmful conduct stopping just short of physical killing. The demeaning and slandering of opponents in the global arena testifies to a total lack of global civility and elementary standards of conduct. Too often, “freedom of expression” is used not to criticize the powers that be but to abuse the powerless and the stranger. Basically, anybody who claims an “absolute” right or freedom outside any social bonds thereby commits an act of violence (what Gandhi called himsa). Any assertion of a Hobbesian “ius ad omnia” inevitably constitutes the mainspring and basic source of terror and fear. But for Hobbes there was also a possible exit from terror—namely, through a social covenant where people relinquish absolute freedom in favor of relational civility. As Henry Giroux rightly observes: “As the bonds of sociality and social obligations dissolve,” the state of nature lurks. “Older discourses that provided a vision” have been cast aside; and “as Hannah Arendt once argued, the very nature of the political in the modern period has been dethroned” (or else been replaced by a brutal friend-enemy formula).3 What has to happen in the global arena, to prevent the worst from happening, is the globalization of the Hobbesian exit route: that is, the replacement of
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the prevailing global state of nature by a global social covenant serving as the gateway to a vibrant global civil society. This transit is difficult and arduous. It requires not only the adoption of new procedures and mechanisms (although some of this may be helpful). Most of all, it requires a human transformation, a willingness to abandon the “ius ad omnia,” and to embark on the task of dialogue and mutual learning. In pursuing this path, it is crucial that learning is mutual and not unilaterally imposed. To give some examples: Many Muslim women modestly cover their heads; instead of being irritated, at least some of us might take this as an inducement
to behave more modestly ourselves. Muslims pray (or are expected to pray) five times each day; again, rather than taking offense, at least some of us might rein in our conceit and pray more in turn. Of course, Muslims also can learn much from the West: about democracy, individual agency and other matters. Again, Gandhi can serve as a guide. Although himself a practicing Hindu, he aimed at (what he called) a “heart-unity” with Muslims—far removed from insults, slander or intimidation.4 In his conduct, Gandhi exemplified what it means to cultivate a social covenant through non-harming (ahimsa) and justice-seeking (satyagraha). Inspired by his example, the World Public Forum”Dialogue of Civilizations” is committed to the cultivation and steady renewal of the global social covenant. In the face of the ongoing global mayhem, this commitment is an urgent and categorical demand.
A R T I C L E S NOTES 1. See Medea Benjamin, Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control (New York: Verso Books, 2012); John Kaag and Sara Kreps, Drone Warfare: War and Conflict in the Modern World (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2014); Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army (New York: Nation Books, 2013), and Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield (New York: Perseus Books, 2013). 2. Nick Turse, “The Golden Age of Black Ops: US Special Ops Missions Already in 105 Countries in 2015,” Information Clearing House, January 23, 2015. http:/ /www.informationclearinghouse.info/ article40759.htm 3. Henry A. Giroux, “Death-Dealing Politics in the Age of Extreme Violence,” Truthout/News Analysis, January 26, 2015. http://www.truthout.org/news/item/28721-deathdealing-politics Giroux also traces the state of nature in the form of “deathdealing politics” in the American domestic scene, stating: “The war on terror has been morphed into a form of domestic terrorism aimed not only at whistleblowers, but all of those populations, from poor people of color to immigrants, who are now considered disposable.” 4. See Fred Dallmayr, “Gandhi and Islam: A Heart-and-Mind Unity?” in Peace Talk-Who Will Listen? (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004), pp. 132-151. 08 February 2015 Fred R. Dallmayr is a Professor in the departments of philosophy and political science at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a member of JUST’s International Advisory Panel (IAP).
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