COMMENT - Who is the Syrian opposition? Meet Mr. Rockefeller & company: Mr. Brzezinksi, Mr. Woolsey, the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), Goldman Sachs, Chatham House. There is no such thing as a 'pro western' opposition that has not also had the thumbs up from the banking cartel's leadership.
The Syrian opposition: who's doing the talking?The media have been too passive when it comes to Syrian opposition sources, without scrutinising their backgrounds and their political connections. Time for a closer look …
o Charlie Skelton
o guardian.co.uk, Thursday 12 July 2012 15.48 BST
o Jump to comments (…)
A nightmare is unfolding across Syria, in the homes of al-Heffa and the streets of Houla. And we all know how the story ends: with thousands of soldiers and civilians killed, towns and families destroyed, and President Assad beaten to death in a ditch.
This is the story of the Syrian war, but there is another story to be told. A tale less bloody, but nevertheless important. This is a story about the storytellers: the spokespeople, the "experts on Syria", the "democracy activists". The statement makers. The people who "urge" and "warn" and "call for action".
It's a tale about some of the most quoted members of the Syrian opposition and their connection to the Anglo-American opposition creation business. The mainstream news media have, in the main, been remarkably passive when it comes to Syrian sources: billing them simply as "official spokesmen" or "pro-democracy campaigners" without, for the most part, scrutinising their statements, their backgrounds or their political connections.
It's important to stress: to investigate the background of a Syrian spokesperson is not to doubt the sincerity of his or her opposition to Assad. But a passionate hatred of the Assad regime is no guarantee of independence. Indeed, a number of key figures in the Syrian opposition movement are long-term exiles who were receiving US government funding to undermine the Assad government long before the Arab spring broke out.
Though it is not yet stated US government policy to oust Assad by force, these spokespeople are vocal advocates of foreign military intervention in Syria and thus natural allies of well-known US neoconservatives who supported Bush's invasion of Iraq and are now pressuring the Obama administration to intervene. As we will see, several of these spokespeople have found support, and in some cases developed long and lucrative relationships with advocates of military intervention on both sides of the Atlantic.
"The sand is running out of the hour glass," said Hillary Clinton on Sunday. So, as the fighting in Syria intensifies, and Russian warships set sail for Tartus, it's high time to take a closer look at those who are speaking out on behalf of the Syrian people.
The Syrian National Council
The most quoted of the opposition spokespeople are the official representatives of the Syrian National Council. The SNC is not the only Syrian opposition group – but it is generally recognised as "the main opposition coalition" (BBC). The Washington Times describes it as "an umbrella group of rival factions based outside Syria". Certainly the SNC is the opposition group that's had the closest dealings with western powers – and has called for foreign intervention from the early stages of the uprising. In February of this year, at the opening of the Friends of Syria summit in Tunisia, William Hague declared:
"I will meet leaders of the Syrian National Council in a few minutes' time … We, in common with other nations, will now treat them and recognise them as a legitimate representative of the Syrian people."
The most senior of the SNC's official spokespeople is the Paris-based Syrian academic Bassma Kodmani.
Bassma Kodmani
Bassma Kodmani at Bilderberg Bassma Kodmani of the Syrian National Council. Photograph: Carter Osmar
Here is Bassma Kodmani, seen leaving this year's Bilderberg conference in Chantilly, Virginia.
Kodmani is a member of the executive bureau and head of foreign affairs, Syrian National Council. Kodmani is close to the centre of the SNC power structure, and one of the council's most vocal spokespeople.
"No dialogue with the ruling regime is possible. We can only discuss how to move on to a different political system," she declared this week. And here she is, quoted by the newswire AFP: "The next step needs to be a resolution under Chapter VII, which allows for the use of all legitimate means, coercive means, embargo on arms, as well as the use of force to oblige the regime to comply."
This statement translates into the headline "Syrians call for armed peacekeepers" (Australia's Herald Sun). When large-scale international military action is being called for, it seems only reasonable to ask: who exactly is calling for it? We can say, simply, "an official SNC spokesperson," or we can look a little closer.
This year was Kodmani's second Bilderberg. At the 2008 conference, Kodmani was listed as French; by 2012, her Frenchness had fallen away and she was listed simply as "international" – her homeland had become the world of international relations.
Back a few years, in 2005, Kodmani was working for the Ford Foundation in Cairo, where she was director of their governance and international co-operation programme. The Ford Foundation is a vast organisation, headquartered in New York, and Kodmani was already fairly senior. But she was about to jump up a league.
Around this time, in February 2005, US-Syrian relations collapsed, and President Bush recalled his ambassador from Damascus. A lot of opposition projects date from this period. "The US money for Syrian opposition figures began flowing under President George W Bush after he effectively froze political ties with Damascus in 2005," says the Washington Post.
In September 2005, Kodmani was made the executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative (ARI) – a research programme initiated by the powerful US lobby group, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
The CFR is an elite US foreign policy thinktank, and the Arab Reform Initiative is described on its website as a "CFR Project" . More specifically, the ARI was initiated by a group within the CFR called the "US/Middle East Project" – a body of senior diplomats, intelligence officers and financiers, the stated aim of which is to undertake regional "policy analysis" in order "to prevent conflict and promote stability". The US/Middle East Project pursues these goals under the guidance of an international board chaired by General (Ret.) Brent Scowcroft.
Peter Sutherland
Peter Sutherland pictured at the Bilderberg conference. Photograph: Hannah Borno
Brent Scowcroft (chairman emeritus) is a former national security adviser to the US president – he took over the role from Henry Kissinger. Sitting alongside Scowcroft of the international board is his fellow geo-strategist, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who succeeded him as the national security adviser, and Peter Sutherland, the chairman of Goldman Sachs International. So, as early as 2005, we've got a senior wing of the western intelligence/banking establishment selecting Kodmani to run a Middle East research project. In September of that year, Kodmani was made full-time director of the programme. Earlier in 2005, the CFR assigned "financial oversight" of the project to the Centre for European Reform (CER). In come the British.
The CER is overseen by Lord Kerr, the deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell. Kerr is a former head of the diplomatic service and is a senior adviser at Chatham House (a thinktank showcasing the best brains of the British diplomatic establishment).
In charge of the CER on a day-to-day basis is Charles Grant, former defence editor of the Economist, and these days a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a "pan-European thinktank" packed with diplomats, industrialists, professors and prime ministers. On its list of members you'll find the name: "Bassma Kodmani (France/Syria) – Executive Director, Arab Reform Initiative".
Another name on the list: George Soros – the financier whose non-profit "Open Society Foundations" is a primary funding source of the ECFR.
At this level, the worlds of banking, diplomacy, industry, intelligence and the various policy institutes and foundations all mesh together, and there, in the middle of it all, is Kodmani.
The point is, Kodmani is not some random "pro-democracy activist" who happens to have found herself in front of a microphone. She has impeccable international diplomacy credentials: she holds the position of research director at the Académie Diplomatique Internationale – "an independent and neutral institution dedicated to promoting modern diplomacy". The Académie is headed by Jean-Claude Cousseran, a former head of the DGSE – the French foreign intelligence service.
A picture is emerging of Kodmani as a trusted lieutenant of the Anglo-American democracy-promotion industry. Her "province of origin" (according to the SNC website) is Damascus, but she has close and long-standing professional relationships with precisely those powers she's calling upon to intervene in Syria.
And many of her spokesmen colleagues are equally well-connected.
Radwan Ziadeh
Another often quoted SNC representative is Radwan Ziadeh – director of foreign relations at the Syrian National Council. Ziadeh has an impressive CV: he's a senior fellow at the federally funded Washington thinktank, the US Institute of Peace (the USIP Board of Directors is packed with alumni of the defence department and the national security council; its president is Richard Solomon, former adviser to Kissinger at the NSC).
In February this year, Ziadeh joined an elite bunch of Washington hawks to sign a letter calling upon Obama to intervene in Syria: his fellow signatories include James Woolsey (former CIA chief), Karl Rove (Bush Jr's handler), Clifford May (Committee on the Present Danger) and Elizabeth Cheney, former head of the Pentagon's Iran-Syria Operations Group.
Ziadeh is a relentless organiser, a blue-chip Washington insider with links to some of the most powerful establishment thinktanks. Ziadeh's connections extend all the way to London. In 2009 he became a visiting fellow at Chatham House, and in June of last year he featured on the panel at one of their events – "Envisioning Syria's Political Future" – sharing a platform with fellow SNC spokesman Ausama Monajed (more on Monajed below) and SNC member Najib Ghadbian.
[The Zambian opposition's lawyer Robert Amsterdam's lawfirm Amsterdam & Peroff is a corporate member of Chatham House. - MrK]
Ghadbian was identified by the Wall Street Journal as an early intermediary between the US government and the Syrian opposition in exile: "An initial contact between the White House and NSF [National Salvation Front] was forged by Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political scientist." This was back in 2005. The watershed year.
These days, Ghadbian is a member of the general secretariat of the SNC, and is on the advisory board of a Washington-based policy body called the Syrian Center for Political and Strategic Studies (SCPSS) – an organisation co-founded by Ziadeh.
Ziadeh has been making connections like this for years. Back in 2008, Ziadeh took part in a meeting of opposition figures in a Washington government building: a mini-conference called "Syria In-Transition". The meeting was co-sponsored by a US-based body called the Democracy Council and a UK-based organisation called the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD). It was a big day for the MJD – their chairman, Anas Al-Abdah, had travelled to Washington from Britain for the event, along with their director of public relations. Here, from the MJD's website, is a description of the day: "The conference saw an exceptional turn out as the allocated hall was packed with guests from the House of Representatives and the Senate, representatives of studies centres, journalists and Syrian expatriats [sic] in the USA."
The day opened with a keynote speech by James Prince, head of the Democracy Council. Ziadeh was on a panel chaired by Joshua Muravchik (the ultra-interventionist author of the 2006 op-ed "Bomb Iran"). The topic of the discussion was "The Emergence of Organized Opposition". Sitting beside Ziadeh on the panel was the public relations director of the MJD – a man who would later become his fellow SNC spokesperson – Ausama Monajed.
Ausama Monajed
Along with Kodmani and Ziadeh, Ausama (or sometimes Osama) Monajed is one of the most important SNC spokespeople. There are others, of course – the SNC is a big beast and includes the Muslim Brotherhood. The opposition to Assad is wide-ranging, but these are some of the key voices. There are other official spokespeople with long political careers, like George Sabra of the Syrian Democratic People's party – Sabra has suffered arrest and lengthy imprisonment in his fight against the "repressive and totalitarian regime in Syria". And there are other opposition voices outside the SNC, such as the writer Michel Kilo, who speaks eloquently of the violence tearing apart his country: "Syria is being destroyed – street after street, city after city, village after village. What kind of solution is that? In order for a small group of people to remain in power, the whole country is being destroyed."
Ausuma Monajed
But there's no doubt that the primary opposition body is the SNC, and Kodmani, Ziadeh and Monajed are often to be found representing it. Monajed frequently crops up as a commentator on TV news channels. Here he is on the BBC, speaking from their Washington bureau. Monajed doesn't sugar-coat his message: "We are watching civilians being slaughtered and kids being slaughtered and killed and women being raped on the TV screens every day."
Meanwhile, over on Al Jazeera, Monajed talks about "what's really happening, in reality, on the ground" – about "the militiamen of Assad" who "come and rape their women, slaughter their children, and kill their elderly".
Monajed turned up, just a few days ago, as a blogger on Huffington Post UK, where he explained, at length: "Why the World Must Intervene in Syria" – calling for "direct military assistance" and "foreign military aid". So, again, a fair question might be: who is this spokesman calling for military intervention?
Monajed is a member of the SNC, adviser to its president, and according to his SNC biography, "the Founder and Director of Barada Television", a pro-opposition satellite channel based in Vauxhall, south London. In 2008, a few months after attending Syria In-Transition conference, Monajed was back in Washington, invited to lunch with George W Bush, along with a handful of other favoured dissidents (you can see Monajed in the souvenir photo, third from the right, in the red tie, near Condoleezza Rice – up the other end from Garry Kasparov).
At this time, in 2008, the US state department knew Monajed as "director of public relations for the Movement for Justice and Development (MJD), which leads the struggle for peaceful and democratic change in Syria".
Let's look closer at the MJD. Last year, the Washington Post picked up a story from WikiLeaks, which had published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables. These cables appear to show a remarkable flow of money from the US state department to the British-based Movement for Justice and Development. According to the Washington Post's report: "Barada TV is closely affiliated with the Movement for Justice and Development, a London-based network of Syrian exiles. Classified US diplomatic cables show that the state department has funnelled as much as $6m to the group since 2006 to operate the satellite channel and finance other activities inside Syria."
A state department spokesman responded to this story by saying: "Trying to promote a transformation to a more democratic process in this society is not undermining necessarily the existing government." And they're right, it's not "necessarily" that.
When asked about the state department money, Monajed himself said that he "could not confirm" US state department funding for Barada TV, but said: "I didn't receive a penny myself." Malik al -Abdeh, until very recently Barada TV's editor-in-chief insisted: "we have had no direct dealings with the US state department". The meaning of the sentence turns on that word "direct". It is worth noting that Malik al Abdeh also happens to be one of the founders of the Movement for Justice and Development (the recipient of the state department $6m, according to the leaked cable). And he's the brother of the chairman, Anas Al-Abdah. He's also the co-holder of the MJD trademark: What Malik al Abdeh does admit is that Barada TV gets a large chunk of its funding from an American non-profit organisation: the Democracy Council. One of the co-sponsors (with the MJD) of Syria In-Transition mini-conference. So what we see, in 2008, at the same meeting, are the leaders of precisely those organisations identified in the Wiki:eaks cables as the conduit (the Democracy Council) and recipient (the MJD) of large amounts of state department money.
The Democracy Council (a US-based grant distributor) lists the state department as one of its sources of funding. How it works is this: the Democracy Council serves as a grant-administering intermediary between the state department's "Middle East Partnership Initiative" and "local partners" (such as Barada TV). As the Washington Post reports:
"Several US diplomatic cables from the embassy in Damascus reveal that the Syrian exiles received money from a State Department program called the Middle East Partnership Initiative. According to the cables, the State Department funnelled money to the exile group via the Democracy Council, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit."
The same report highlights a 2009 cable from the US Embassy in Syria that says that the Democracy Council received $6.3m from the state department to run a Syria-related programme, the "Civil Society Strengthening Initiative". The cable describes this as "a discrete collaborative effort between the Democracy Council and local partners" aimed at producing, amongst other things, "various broadcast concepts." According to the Washington Post: "Other cables make clear that one of those concepts was Barada TV."
Until a few months ago, the state department's Middle East Partnership Initiative was overseen by Tamara Cofman Wittes (she's now at the Brookings Institution – an influential Washington thinktank). Of MEPI, she said that it "created a positive 'brand' for US democracy promotion efforts". While working there she declared: "There are a lot of organizations in Syria and other countries that are seeking changes from their government … That's an agenda that we believe in and we're going to support." And by support, she means bankroll.
The money
This is nothing new. Go back a while to early 2006, and you have the state department announcing a new "funding opportunity" called the "Syria Democracy Program". On offer, grants worth "$5m in Federal Fiscal Year 2006". The aim of the grants? "To accelerate the work of reformers in Syria."
These days, the cash is flowing in faster than ever. At the beginning of June 2012, the Syrian Business Forum was launched in Doha by opposition leaders including Wael Merza (SNC secretary general). "This fund has been established to support all components of the revolution in Syria," said Merza. The size of the fund? Some $300m. It's by no means clear where the money has come from, although Merza "hinted at strong financial support from Gulf Arab states for the new fund" (Al Jazeera). At the launch, Merza said that about $150m had already been spent, in part on the Free Syrian Army.
Merza's group of Syrian businessmen made an appearance at a World Economic Forum conference titled the "Platform for International Co-operation" held in Istanbul in November 2011. All part of the process whereby the SNC has grown in reputation, to become, in the words of William Hague, "a legitimate representative of the Syrian people" – and able, openly, to handle this much funding.
Building legitimacy – of opposition, of representation, of intervention – is the essential propaganda battle.
In a USA Today op-ed written in February this year, Ambassador Dennis Ross declared: "It is time to raise the status of the Syrian National Council". What he wanted, urgently, is "to create an aura of inevitability about the SNC as the alternative to Assad." The aura of inevitability. Winning the battle in advance.
A key combatant in this battle for hearts and minds is the American journalist and Daily Telegraph blogger, Michael Weiss.
Michael Weiss
One of the most widely quoted western experts on Syria – and an enthusiast for western intervention – Michael Weiss echoes Ambassador Ross when he says: "Military intervention in Syria isn't so much a matter of preference as an inevitability."
Some of Weiss's interventionist writings can be found on a Beirut-based, Washington-friendly website called "NOW Lebanon" – whose "NOW Syria" section is an important source of Syrian updates. NOW Lebanon was set up in 2007 by Saatchi & Saatchi executive Eli Khoury. Khoury has been described by the advertising industry as a "strategic communications specialist, specialising in corporate and government image and brand development".
Weiss told NOW Lebanon, back in May, that thanks to the influx of weapons to Syrian rebels "we've already begun to see some results." He showed a similar approval of military developments a few months earlier, in a piece for the New Republic: "In the past several weeks, the Free Syrian Army and other independent rebel brigades have made great strides" – whereupon, as any blogger might, he laid out his "Blueprint for a Military Intervention in Syria".
But Weiss is not only a blogger. He's also the director of communications and public relations at the Henry Jackson Society, an ultra-ultra-hawkish foreign policy thinktank.
The Henry Jackson Society's international patrons include: James "ex-CIA boss" Woolsey, Michael "homeland security" Chertoff, William "PNAC" Kristol, Robert "PNAC" Kagan', Joshua "Bomb Iran" Muravchick, and Richard "Prince of Darkness" Perle. The Society is run by Alan Mendoza, chief adviser to the all-party parliamentary group on transatlantic and international security.
The Henry Jackson Society is uncompromising in its "forward strategy" towards democracy. And Weiss is in charge of the message. The Henry Jackson Society is proud of its PR chief's far-reaching influence: "He is the author of the influential report "Intervention in Syria? An Assessment of Legality, Logistics and Hazards", which was repurposed and endorsed by the Syrian National Council."
Weiss's original report was re-named "Safe Area for Syria" – and ended up on the official syriancouncil.org website, as part of their military bureau's strategic literature. The repurposing of the HJS report was undertaken by the founder and executive director of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC) – one Ausama Monajed.
So, the founder of Barada TV, Ausama Monajed, edited Weiss's report, published it through his own organisation (the SRCC) and passed it on to the Syrian National Council, with the support of the Henry Jackson Society.
The relationship couldn't be closer. Monajed even ends up handling inquiries for "press interviews with Michael Weiss". Weiss is not the only strategist to have sketched out the roadmap to this war (many thinktanks have thought it out, many hawks have talked it up), but some of the sharpest detailing is his.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
The justification for the "inevitable" military intervention is the savagery of President Assad's regime: the atrocities, the shelling, the human rights abuses. Information is crucial here, and one source above all has been providing us with data about Syria. It is quoted at every turn: "The head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told VOA [Voice of America] that fighting and shelling killed at least 12 people in Homs province."
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights is commonly used as a standalone source for news and statistics. Just this week, news agency AFP carried this story: "Syrian forces pounded Aleppo and Deir Ezzor provinces as at least 35 people were killed on Sunday across the country, among them 17 civilians, a watchdog reported." Various atrocities and casualty numbers are listed, all from a single source: "Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by phone."
Statistic after horrific statistic pours from "the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" (AP). It's hard to find a news report about Syria that doesn't cite them. But who are they? "They" are Rami Abdulrahman (or Rami Abdel Rahman), who lives in Coventry.
According to a Reuters report in December of last year: "When he isn't fielding calls from international media, Abdulrahman is a few minutes down the road at his clothes shop, which he runs with his wife."
When the Guardian's Middle East live blog cited "Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights" it also linked to a sceptical article in the Modern Tokyo Times – an article which suggested news outlets could be a bit "more objective about their sources" when quoting "this so-called entity", the SOHR.
That name, the "Syrian Observatory of Human Rights", sound so grand, so unimpeachable, so objective. And yet when Abdulrahman and his "Britain-based NGO" (AFP/NOW Lebanon) are the sole source for so many news stories about such an important subject, it would seem reasonable to submit this body to a little more scrutiny than it's had to date.
The Observatory is by no means the only Syrian news source to be quoted freely with little or no scrutiny …
Hamza Fakher
The relationship between Ausama Monajed, the SNC, the Henry Jackson hawks and an unquestioning media can be seen in the case of Hamza Fakher. On 1 January, Nick Cohen wrote in the Observer: "To grasp the scale of the barbarism, listen to Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, who is one of the most reliable sources on the crimes the regime's news blackout hides."
He goes on to recount Fakher's horrific tales of torture and mass murder. Fakher tells Cohen of a new hot-plate torture technique that he's heard about: "imagine all the melting flesh reaching the bone before the detainee falls on the plate". The following day, Shamik Das, writing on "evidence-based" progressive blog Left Foot Forward, quotes the same source: "Hamza Fakher, a pro-democracy activist, describes the sickening reality …" – and the account of atrocities given to Cohen is repeated.
So, who exactly is this "pro-democracy activist", Hamza Fakher?
Fakher, it turns out, is the co-author of Revolution in Danger , a "Henry Jackson Society Strategic Briefing", published in February of this year. He co-wrote this briefing paper with the Henry Jackson Society's communications director, Michael Weiss. And when he's not co-writing Henry Jackson Society strategic briefings, Fakher is the communication manager of the London-based Strategic Research and Communication Centre (SRCC). According to their website, "He joined the centre in 2011 and has been in charge of the centre's communication strategy and products."
As you may recall, the SRCC is run by one Ausama Monajed: "Mr Monajed founded the centre in 2010. He is widely quoted and interviewed in international press and media outlets. He previously worked as communication consultant in Europe and the US and formerly served as the director of Barada Television …".
Monajed is Fakher's boss.
If this wasn't enough, for a final Washington twist, on the board of the Strategic Research and Communication Centre sits Murhaf Jouejati, a professor at the National Defence University in DC – "the premier center for Joint Professional Military Education (JPME)" which is "under the direction of the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff."
If you happen to be planning a trip to Monajed's "Strategic Research and Communication Centre", you'll find it here: Strategic Research & Communication Centre, Office 36, 88-90 Hatton Garden, Holborn, London EC1N 8PN.
Office 36 at 88-90 Hatton Garden is also where you'll find the London headquarters of The Fake Tan Company, Supercar 4 U Limited, Moola loans (a "trusted loans company"), Ultimate Screeding (for all your screeding needs), and The London School of Attraction – "a London-based training company which helps men develop the skills and confidence to meet and attract women." And about a hundred other businesses besides. It's a virtual office. There's something oddly appropriate about this. A "communication centre" that doesn't even have a centre – a grand name but no physical substance.
That's the reality of Hamza Fakher. On 27 May, Shamik Das of Left Foot Forward quotes again from Fakher's account of atrocities, which he now describes as an "eyewitness account" (which Cohen never said it was) and which by now has hardened into "the record of the Assad regime".
So, a report of atrocities given by a Henry Jackson Society strategist, who is the communications manager of Mosafed's PR department, has acquired the gravitas of a historical "record".
This is not to suggest that the account of atrocities must be untrue, but how many of those who give it currency are scrutinising its origins?
And let's not forget, whatever destabilisation has been done in the realm of news and public opinion is being carried out twofold on the ground. We already know that (at the very least) "the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department … are helping the opposition Free Syrian Army develop logistical routes for moving supplies into Syria and providing communications training."
The bombs doors are open. The plans have been drawn up.
This has been brewing for a time. The sheer energy and meticulous planning that's gone into this change of regime – it's breathtaking. The soft power and political reach of the big foundations and policy bodies is vast, but scrutiny is no respecter of fancy titles and fellowships and "strategy briefings". Executive director of what, it asks. Having "democracy" or "human rights" in your job title doesn't give you a free pass.
And if you're a "communications director" it means your words should be weighed extra carefully. Weiss and Fakher, both communications directors – PR professionals. At the Chatham House event in June 2011, Monajed is listed as: "Ausama Monajed, director of communications, National Initiative for Change" and he was head of PR for the MJD. The creator of the news website NOW Lebanon, Eli Khoury, is a Saatchi advertising executive. These communications directors are working hard to create what Tamara Wittes called a "positive brand".
They're selling the idea of military intervention and regime change, and the mainstream news is hungry to buy. Many of the "activists" and spokespeople representing the Syrian opposition are closely (and in many cases financially) interlinked with the US and London – the very people who would be doing the intervening. Which means information and statistics from these sources isn't necessarily pure news – it's a sales pitch, a PR campaign.
But it's never too late to ask questions, to scrutinise sources. Asking questions doesn't make you a cheerleader for Assad – that's a false argument. It just makes you less susceptible to spin. The good news is, there's a sceptic born every minute.
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Labels: COLOUR REVOLUTIONS, HILLARY CLINTON, NEOCOLONIALISM
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US "Intelligence Assets" leading the Syrian "Opposition", the Role of the Bilderberg and the CFR
by Chris Marsden
Global Research, July 18, 2012
World Socialist Web Site - 2012-07-17
In a July 12 article for the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section, Charlie Skelton poses the fundamental question the world’s media does not want asked.
“The Syrian opposition: who’s doing the talking?” is a devastating exposé of the intimate connections between the Syrian opposition and the US, British and French intelligence services, along with top US neo-cons. It
traces the formation of the Syrian National Council and the appointment of its leading personnel to
long-standing and well-funded plans for regime change in Syria and more generally in the Middle East. These plans date back to at least 2005, and have been funded by Washington in an effort to secure political control of the oil-rich region.
Skelton does not attempt to be comprehensive. He focuses on a few of the most prominent members of the SNC and identifies some of the most vociferous proponents of military intervention as being paid representatives of the Western powers.
Among those routinely cited as “official spokesmen” or “pro-democracy campaigner” is the Paris-based Syrian academic Bassma Kodmani, a member of the executive bureau and head of the SNC’s foreign affairs.
Kodmani is a repeated visitor to the Bilderberg group conference, an organisation of top political figures dedicated to strengthening the links between US and European imperialism and securing their collective global interests under the banner of promoting “Atlanticism.”
In 2005, she worked for the Ford Foundation in Cairo. That year saw a marked deterioration in US-Syria relations, with President George W. Bush contemplating military intervention against Damascus alongside Israel.
In September, Kodmani was made the executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, funded by the US Council on Foreign Relations and its US/Middle East project—chaired by former national security adviser General Brent Scowcroft.
“Financial oversight” of the project was given to the Centre for European Reform (CER), a British think-tank headed by Lord Kerr, deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell.
Kodmani is also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, functioning as the executive director of its Arab Reform Initiative.
Radwan Ziadeh, the SNC’s director of foreign relations, is a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace and a signatory to a letter calling for US military intervention alongside former head of the CIA James Woolsey, Karl Rove and other prominent neo-cons. He has acted as an intermediary between the White House and the Syrian opposition since 2005.
Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political scientist, is a member of the general secretariat of the SNC and is on the advisory board of a Washington-based Syrian Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, along with Ziadeh.
Ausama Monajed of the SNC is the founder of Barada Television, a pro-opposition satellite broadcaster and the former “director of public relations for the London-based Movement for Justice and Development” (MJD). Both are heavily funded by the US State Department, according to WikiLeaks.
Skelton cites some of the many hundreds of millions of dollars channelled into the Syrian opposition from the US and the Gulf States.
Among Monajed’s services to Washington was his publishing an official policy statement of the SNC, a document drafted by Michael Weiss of the Henry Jackson Society calling for intervention in Syria. The society is backed by top neo-cons such as William Kristol and Richard Perle.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose inflated figures on casualties are constantly cited by the media, turns out to be one man, Rami Abdul Rahman, based in Coventry and a clothes retailer.
Another Henry Jackson Society luminary is Hamza Fakher, described by Nick Cohen of the Observer as “one of the most reliable sources on the crimes the regime’s news blackout hides.”
The stories he has initiated have been routinely cited as eye-witness reports.
Fakher is the communication manager of Monajed’s London-based Strategic Research and Communications Centre and an employee of Barada TV.
Skelton deserves credit for writing so honestly on the network of connections between the Syrian opposition and the US/European military security apparatus. But the fact is that what he exposes will be well known to the research departments of the Guardian, the New York Times, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, et al.
None of them are being hoodwinked by anyone. They are willing conduits for imperialist war propaganda who ask no questions of the sources they cite because they do not want to undercut the drumbeat for war.
It is this that accounts for the scathing denunciation of Skelton in the next day’s edition of the Guardian by diplomatic editor Julian Borger
“US manipulation of news from Syria is a red herring,” the headline declares, “The big picture is clear.”
Accusing Skelton of “innuendo,” a heavy use of quotation marks to denote skepticism, “banal prose” and other literary crimes, Borger defends the various intelligence assets identified by Skelton as “people who have devoted a substantial share of their working life studying Syrian society and politics.”
This is a definition so value-free that could be applied to any number of imperialist strategists and spies.
The clear importance of Bassma Kodmani in the SNC hierarchy is simply dismissed, while Skelton is even derided for describing the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as “a powerful US lobby group,” for being “needlessly sinister”. It is “America’s most prestigious foreign policy talking shop and research centre”, Borger insists.
Borger in fact argues against his own faux-naïf pose. No other foreign policy think tank is more influential than the CFR, and Kodmani is there as a trusted representative of US imperialist interests in the Middle East.
It must be added that Britain’s Socialist Workers Party and its global co-thinkers, the Pabloite United Secretariat, and other pseudo-left outfits demonstrate a similar politically motivated blindness to the true character of the Syrian opposition and its aims.
In June, Khalil Habash complained in the United Secretariat’s International Viewpoint, “The Syrian revolutionary process has since the beginning been met by circumspection by some on the left…accusing it of being a conspiracy of Western imperialist and reactionary regional countries such as Saudi Arabia. This trend has unfortunately continued….”
The SWP’s Simon Assaf was blunter still at the annual Marxism 2012 event. He said that he did not want to dwell on those alleging “conspiracy” due to the involvement of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the US because “it would take me too long to calm down”.
It is not simply that these groups refuse to take a critical stance towards the opposition movement and the diverse social forces it represents—as would be necessary for anyone seeking to lay the basis for the development of an independent working class oppositional movement in Syria. Like the Guardian and other mainstream media, they very deliberately conceal the bourgeois, Sunni-sectarian and pro-imperialist character of the movement’s current leadership to conceal great-power imperialist intrigues, the end result of which will be more disastrous than even NATO’s war against Libya.
Chris Marsden is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Chris Marsden
Labels: NATO
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COMMENT - Glencore International PLC has a 51/49 joint venture with the South Sudanese state oil company Nilepet. (Glencore officially owns 49% of the Joint Venture.)
Sudan: Protests and the Politics of Regime Change
by Eric Draitser
Global Research, July 19, 2012
ericdraitser.podbean.com - 2012-07-18
The protests that have broken out in Sudan are, on the surface, the manifestation of legitimate grievances. Portrayed in the Western media as a direct response to austerity measures implemented by Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir, these protests indicate a strong current of dissatisfaction among the people of the country.
However, seen from a broader, more critical perspective, the demonstrations are the tangible fruits of a carefully constructed destabilization campaign incorporating opposition political parties, civil society groups, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), Hollywood celebrities and
Western financiers. These powerful forces have aligned against the government in Khartoum in order to
execute the geopolitical agenda of the imperialist ruling class in the West.
The Development of the Protests
The immediate impetus for the protests, which broke out in recent weeks in and around the capital of Khartoum, was the announcement of the removal of fuel subsidies. This troubling development, coupled with other austerity measures such as the reduction of government jobs and the devaluation of the currency, were designed to mitigate the effects of soaring inflation in Sudan. However, because of the integral role of fuel prices in the Sudanese economy, the move seemed to spark mass indignation. In a country already dogged by high unemployment and rampant poverty, these difficult decisions inflamed already high tensions throughout the country.
Reports from inside Sudan suggest that a small group of female demonstrators gathered outside dormitories at the University of Khartoum and began protesting the fuel subsidy cuts, among other issues. This was the first in what became a series of daily demonstrations against a whole host of grievances. Central among these was the feeling, widespread among particularly young people, that the government in Khartoum was punishing the people while continuing to spend “lavishly” on defense. Many groups directly involved in the protest movement, groups such as Sudan Change Now and the popularized twitter moniker #SudanRevolts, have used the demonstrations as a springboard for a much broader and, it could be argued, more opportunistic agenda, one that is directly in line with the geopolitical interests of the United States and the Western imperialist ruling class: regime change.
This is, of course, not to diminish the genuine grievances of many of the demonstrators. Instead, it is important to maintain a critical understanding of the way in which these sort of movements are hijacked or otherwise cynically manipulated through a variety of means by those in the West for whom power and hegemony are the goals above all else.
The Wizards Behind the Curtain
In order to understand the way in which the protests in Sudan, and movements like them all over the world, are manipulated, influenced, or otherwise controlled by Western powers, we must first examine the major players and the often deliberately obscured connections between them, western intelligence networks, and international financiers.
In Sudan, we’ve seen an extraordinary proliferation of western-financed NGOs that have entrenched themselves in the civil society of the country, particularly in an urban center such as Khartoum. Organizations such as Sudan Now and the Enough Project (the latter of which is directly connected to George Clooney, the US State Department and George Soros) indicate the degree to which humanitarian concerns and NGOs are utilized by the US imperialists as cover for their geopolitical agenda.
[Or as Thom Hartmann likes to say - "We have to do something about Bashir." - MrK]
In fact, in the case of Clooney and the Enough Project, we see the presence of John Prendergast, head of the organization and former Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council. His participation, not to mention his close relationship to UN Ambassador Susan Rice, Samantha Power, and the International Crisis Group, should illustrate the degree to which this and other organizations working inside Sudan are either directly or tangentially part of the US intelligence establishment.
The Enough Project is also significant because of its ability to sell a Western-constructed narrative of Sudan to an unsuspecting and generally ill-informed public. George Clooney who, along with Council on Foreign Relations member Angelina Jolie, has cultivated an image as a politically progressive humanitarian, is able to construct a particular discourse in the American public’s imagination: Bashir is a monster and the United States must act decisively including possibly using force, to remove him from power. Such a dominant narrative, once entrenched in the public discourse, becomes difficult, if not impossible, to deconstruct.
The Enough Project and other humanitarian organizations alone are not the whole story, however. Important players inside the country are also playing an integral role in the attempt at regime change in Sudan. One such important individual is Dr. Hassan al-Turabi, head of the opposition Popular Congress Party (PCP), one of the leading factions within the often-fragmented political opposition. Turabi, a longtime “progressive Islamist”, is not merely a major player in Sudanese politics. In fact, he’s one of the leading “experts” on Sudan with long-standing connections to the US State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED). In fact, as recently as 2008, Turabi was one of the keynote speakers at the NED in Washington DC where he presented on, among other things, how to bring about regime change in Sudan. Though the usual covers of “democracy promotion”, “transparency”, and other such high-minded abstractions are utilized by Turabi and the NED, these are merely the rhetorical devices used to obscure the obvious goal of such a conference.
Turabi’s association with the NED and the US intelligence community is not only significant in demonstrating the role that those institutions are playing in destabilizing Sudan. It also demonstrates the way in which the US imperialists have long-standing ties with so-called “Islamists”, a conclusion made ever more apparent by the ascension of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and the deployment of Al Qaeda and other religious militants in Libya, Syria, and elsewhere. In this way, a clearer understanding develops of just how the Western imperialists are able to utilize a variety of means, many of which are “Islamist” in nature, to destabilize regimes they deem to be unfriendly.
International Subversion
Aside from having to deal with powerful forces engaged in the internal struggles in Sudan, Bashir’s government has also been faced with extraordinary international pressure. Not only has Bashir himself been accused by the ICC (itself an arm of US-NATO power projection) of being a war criminal for his purported role in the conflict in Darfur, he has also watched as the United States and other Western powers fomented a brutal civil war, only to then partition the country, carving out South Sudan, and create the conditions for the current situation. Essentially, Bashir has had to try to maintain his grip on the country in the face of a multi-pronged effort to destroy his regime and the Sudanese state.
The conflict with South Sudan has taken a heavy toll on the Sudanese economy. Because of the loss of an estimated 75% of total oil reserves located in the South, inflation has dramatically increased and Khartoum’s revenue from trade with China and other major oil importers has decreased sharply. Additionally, the skirmishes and other armed conflicts between North and South have focused Bashir’s attention to the Abyei Province and other border areas and, consequently, away from other pressing concerns inside the country. This was precisely what the Western powers intended when they began pushing for the partition of the country a few years ago.
The imperialist aggression against Libya was an indication to many keen observers that the imperialist ruling class had every intention of completely consolidating control over all of North Africa by removing any vestiges of nationalism and any leaders who might pose a challenge to AFRICOM and the neo-colonial agenda. Gaddafi met his barbaric end at the hands of a vicious lynch-mob or, as they’re called in the West, “freedom fighters”. They and their NTC masters such as Mahmoud Jibril, now the head of the so-called Libyan government, were merely puppets of the West, supported for purposes of economic exploitation of natural resources and to create a safe haven for terrorists to then menace the rest of the region. Likewise, Bashir is on the target list and, without taking precautions, could meet the same fate.
What Do They Want?
The United States and its western partners have a number of goals in seeking regime change in Sudan. As is the case in so many other conflicts around the world, the main objective is to block Chinese economic development. The Chinese have, for years, been the biggest importer of Sudanese oil and, other than Angola, Sudan was its main supplier on the continent. Aside from oil however, Sudan had become one of the main markets for Chinese economic investment. In fact, by 2002, Sudan was China’s fifth biggest source of revenue and had become a major player in the power generation and other markets. For these reasons, China began to pose a threat to US hegemony in East Africa and, from the perspective of the imperialists, had to be checked.
Aside from China, the United States has other geopolitical and economic reasons for destabilizing Sudan. Washington seeks to consolidate control over East and Central Africa and, in order to do so, must eliminate one of their biggest obstacles, Sudan. The US has gone to painstaking lengths to maintain compliant puppet governments in Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and elsewhere. In so doing, the US is able to keep Central and East Africa under their thumb, at least to some degree. By destroying the Bashir regime, these imperialists believe they will be able to project US hegemony forward for the foreseeable future and, as a result, secure unfettered access to the wealth of raw materials in the region.
There is also an element of opportunism to this plan. The West looks to capitalize on the still viable discursive construct of the Arab Spring as a means to their end. So long as this idea can inspire masses of disaffected youth to take to the streets, the United States and its partners can continue to impose their will in the region. However, as the conflict in Syria has unequivocally shown, without such mythological pretexts, it becomes impossible for the imperialists to achieve their goals.
In examining the situation in Sudan, it is important to keep in mind that a critical, anti-imperialist perspective does not mean that one absolves Bashir of any wrongdoing. In fact, it should illustrate the ways in which Bashir and his government have contributed to creating the climate that breeds such protests. However, by analyzing this uprising and investigating simultaneously the positive and insidious forces at work within it, we can begin to apply a broad understanding to the issue and, in so doing, work to prevent the Western imperialist ruling class from destroying yet another sovereign state.
Eric Draitser is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Eric Draitser
Labels: INTERNATIONAL CRISIS REPORT GROUP, SUDAN
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On the Verge of An All Out War? Massive Military Build-Up in the Persian Gulf
by Ben Schreiner
Global Research, July 16, 2012
The familiar menace of U.S. war drums have resumed at a fevered pitch, as Iran finds itself once again firmly within the Pentagon’s cross hairs.
According to multiple reports, the U.S. is currently in the midst of a massive military build-up in the Persian Gulf on a scale not seen in the region since prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq. The military surge reportedly includes an influx of air and naval forces, ground troops, and even sea drones. Lest one forgets, the U.S. already has two aircraft carriers and their accompanying striker groups in the region.
A growing sense of Iran war fever can also be seen mounting in Washington. For instance, in an effort to foil ongoing nuclear negotiations between Iran and the so-called P5+1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany), a bipartisan group of 44 U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to President Obama urging the administration to “focus on significantly increasing the pressure on the Iranian government through sanctions and making clear that a credible military option exists.”
Such hawkish posturing occurs despite the fact that the U.S. intelligence community (as well as the Israeli intelligence community, for that matter) finds no evidence that Iran has decided to pursue a nuclear weapon--the ostensible reason behind Western sanctions and threats of attack. Moreover, as an April Pentagon report states, Iran’s military doctrine remains one of self-defense, committed to “slow an invasion” and “force a diplomatic solution to hostilities.” (Compare this to the U.S. military doctrine rife with notions of global “power projection” and one sees where the credible threat lies.)
The nuclear issue, though, is but a pretext used to veil U.S. imperial designs in the region. As a senior U.S. Defense Department official recently let slip to the New York Times: “This is not only about Iranian nuclear ambitions, but about Iran’s regional hegemonic ambitions.” In other words, it is about removing one of the last irritants to U.S. power projection in the resource-rich Middle East.
Of course, Iran already finds itself under siege from a lethal trifecta comprised of U.S.-led cyber attacks, Israeli-led assassinations, and oppressive Western economic sanctions. The latter of which has left ordinary Iranians to confront a toxic mix of ballooning inflation and rampant unemployment. In short, as Conn Hallinan writes at CounterPunch, the West is “already at war with Iran.”
The question, then, is just how far this "war by other means" shall ultimately escalate?
Towards a Dangerous Escalation
Although punitive economic sanctions are frequently sold as an alternative to war, history is replete with evidence to the contrary. In the end, sanctions are often but a prelude to military hostilities. (One only needs to cross over to Iraq and look at the history of Western sanctions and eventual U.S. invasion.)
In fact, a recent report in the New York Times warned of much the same. The current round of Western economic penalties imposed on Iran, the paper wrote, “represent one of the boldest uses of oil sanctions as a tool of coercion since the United States cut off oil exports to Japan in 1940. That experiment did not end well: The Japanese decided to strike before they were weakened.”
But much like the attempted torpedoing of Japan’s economy prior to the Second World War, the current attempt to bring Iran to its knees via economic sanctions may very well be designed to draw an attack from Iran--thus creating a justification for a full-fledged U.S. military campaign to impose "regime change."
And much the same as in the 1940s, a global crisis of capitalism greases our current path to war. After all, war enables the forcible opening of new markets, along with bounties galore to be wrought via “creative destruction”; both of which are desperately needed for the sustenance of an imperiled economic system predicated on limitless growth and expansion. Indeed, this enduring allure of war has already reared its ugly head amidst the current crisis.
The colonial smash-and-grab that was the 2011 N.A.T.O. intervention into Libya, as Alexander Cockburn has deemed it, was our first evidence that Western elites have settled on war as a means to resolve the current intractable capitalist crisis. But the spoils from Libya have proven to be insufficient to revive growth stymied since the onset of the 2008 financial crisis.
A heavily sanctioned Iran, on the other hand, boasts a G.D.P. over five times larger than pre-“liberated” Libya, while also sitting atop the world’s third largest oil reserves and the second largest natural gas reserves. A defeated and placated Iran able to be enveloped more fully into the U.S.-dominated capitalist system thus holds great potential for global capitalism’s needed regeneration. Of course, in seizing control over Iran’s energy resources, the U.S. and its allies would also come to possess a monopoly over the Middle East’s energy resources--a strategic key in any future conflict with rivals Russia and China.
And so it is that under the imperative of renewing global capitalism that the U.S. swiftly amasses its military hardware to the Persian Gulf under to cloak of combating nuclear proliferation. The accompanying talk of military hostilities and of using “all options” against Tehran by elites in Washington thus ought not to be taken as idle threats.
Clearly, we stand at the very precipice of outright war.
Ben Schreiner is a freelance writer based in Oregon. He may be reached at bnschreiner@gmail.com or via his website.
Labels: IRAN, NATO
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COMMENT - Newmont Mining is one of the original financiers of Anglo-American Corporation.
As Mining Conglomerates Target Haiti, Latin America Rises Against Them
by Roger Annis and Kim Ives
Global Research, July 19, 2012
Haïti Liberté - 2012-07-18
People and governments across Latin America are rising up against foreign mining companies in a wave of revolt that is generating alarm among investors and their political operatives in the imperialist governments.
In Haiti, U.S. and Canadian gold mining companies are rubbing their hands over the riches that they believe await them. A recent study by Haiti Grassroots Watchestimates up to $20 billion, at gold’s current price of $1,600 an ounce, lies in the ground.
So it’s no coincidence that Washington has used its proxy, the Organization of American States (OAS), to illegally install a compliant regime – that of President Michel Martelly – whose operative watchword is: “Haiti is open for business.” Washington and Ottawa, which represent most of the international mining firms in the Americas, are adopting an increasingly interventionist response throughout the continent.
Nationalizations grow
“From expropriations in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Argentina to violent opposition in traditionally mining-friendly jurisdictions such as Peru and Chile, the rising political tensions pose a risk to a decade-long bonanza mining companies have enjoyed,” reports the Canadian national daily Globe and Mail on Jul. 11.
The previous day, Bolivian President Evo Morales announced his government would expropriate the Vancouver-based South American Silver Corp. According to the company, its claim in Bolivia’s Mallku Khota region contains one of the world's largest undeveloped silver, indium, and gallium deposits.
...
In May, Bolivia nationalized a Spanish-owned electrical generation company. That followed by several weeks a highly-publicized nationalization of a Spanish oil company’s operations in Argentina, the largest oil company in the country. Then in June, the Morales government nationalized the Colquiri tin and zinc mine owned by the Swiss global mining giant Glencore International PLC.
The mine nationalizations were prompted by inter-Bolivian conflicts that the Bolvian government accuses the companies of stoking. Tensions have arisen at mining sites between employees of the operations of large companies, artisanal miners who have a long tradition of working through cooperatives, and local Indigenous residents. The stakes are further fueled by sky-rocketing prices for minerals in international markets.
As well, nationalization of resource industries has been a key demand on the government by social movements in Bolivia, though this demand had apparently not been a large factor in Mallku Khota.
"Unfortunately, the so-called transnational companies…pit brothers, in-laws, cousins, neighbors, brothers from the same ayllu (community) against one another,” said President Evo Morales about the decision to nationalize South American Silver.
Some Latin American populations are standing up to the mining transnationals without their government’s backing. That’s increasingly the case in Peru. Five people were killed by police during the first week of July at protests against the multi-billion dollar Conga gold and copper project, which would be the largest mine in Peru’s history if it goes ahead. The project’s owner is the U.S.-based Newmont Mining Group.
Area residents do not want the Conga mine, saying it will damage local water supplies. A string of protests against mining projects have occurred in Peru in recent years.
In Chile, similar concerns over water supply and quality as well as the effects of mining on electrical supply are driving protests. The Council of Canadians released a detailed report in March 2012 looking at recent developments and concerns in Chile’s Patagonia region.
“If social movements in opposition to mining are now part of the landscape, and if mining is creating increasing intense competition for water and energy, the real question now is how, institutionally, politically, and legally Chile will accommodate the citizen voice in mineral development,” wrote the U.S.-based Sustainable Development Strategies Group in a 2010 study on mining in the country.
Interventionist responses
According to the Vancouver Sun, Canadian Trade Minister Ed Fast wrote to his Bolivian counterpart on Jul. 11 expressing "deep concern" with reports that Bolivia was preparing to nationalize South American Silver. Fast's spokesman Rudy Husny said the minister has instructed officials to "intensify their engagement with the Bolivian government to order to protect and defend Canadian interests and seek a productive resolution of this matter."
The paper reported that Canadian officials were expected to meet with the Bolivian government and with Bolivia's ambassador to Canada.
President and Chief Executive Officer of the South American Silver Corporation, Greg Johnson, appeared on the Canadian Broadcasting Company (CBC) Radio One’s The Current on July 12 and argued that his company has been wronged. He reported, with satisfaction, that the Canadian government is pressuring the Bolivian government to reverse its decision.
The CBC host of the program sounded like a public relations spokesperson for the company. In an accompanying interview, he hectored Bolivia’s ambassador to the U.S., asking if South American Silver would be compensated. He also took offense at Evo Morales’ statements accusing foreign mining companies of “looting” Latin America’s wealth for generations.
Evidently, the radio host has not read The Open Veins of Latin America, Eduardo Galeano’s classic history of the continent. Galeano describes how Latin America became “a huge mine.” The book details the unbelievable human toll and suffering and the environmental destruction perpetrated over the centuries starting with Spanish conquistadors until today’s European and North American mining companies.
"The metals taken from the new colonial dominions not only stimulated Europe's economic development; one may say that they made it possible," Galeano writes. The book is appropriately sub-titled, "Five centuries of the pillage of a continent."
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada estimates there are 20 Canadian mining companies operating in Bolivia.
A recent series of articles translated into French and published by the Belgium-based Committee for the Abolition of Third World Debt (CADTM) examines the role of the British-Australia aluminum mining giant Rio-Tinto in the parliamentary coup d’etat against Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo on Jun. 22.
The company had been lobbying heavily for a long-term agreement for cheap electricity prices as an incentive for it to establish aluminum smelting operations. Paraguay shares several very large hydro-electric dams with Brazil and Argentina. It has substantial installed electrical generation capacity, approximately equal to 5% of all of Canada’s. In 2007, Rio Tinto acquired the Canadian-owned Alcan and its large aluminum operations in Quebec and British Columbia.
The coup has returned to power Paraguay’s traditional economic elite, who, not coincidentally, are amenable to making a long-term deal with Rio Tinto. Among the few countries to recognize Paraguay’s coup government is Canada, which, with the U.S., was also quick to recognize the Honduras coup d’etat in June 2009.
In the weeks ahead, Washington and Ottawa will inevitably heighten sharpen their rhetoric against the Morales government as they contemplate how to further intervene in Bolivia.
Haiti’s situation
In February 2004, Washington and Ottawa worked with Paris to carry out a coup d’etat against the elected and socially progressive government of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. As Wikileaked diplomatic cables released last year by Haïti Liberté showed, those three governments worked hard to keep Aristide in exile in South Africa for seven long years.
During his triumphant return to Haiti on Mar. 18, 2011, Aristide gave a speech to the nation at the airport. “To honor [Haiti’s founding father] Jean-Jacques Dessalines, we come to bring you our little bit of help,” Aristide said in his metaphor-laden Kreyòl. “With the little ball of education centered in the court of dignity, we will kick exclusion off the field and this way, the new generation will begin to benefit from the wealth that slumbers deep within Haiti: gold, copper, uranium, bauxite, silver...
“The calcium carbonate to be found in Miragoâne is valued at more than U.S. $23 billion. The petroleum reserves are no doubt larger than estimated.”
This thinly-veiled nationalist message is precisely why U.S. and Canadian governments backed Aristide’s ouster and maintain the ensuing UN military occupation of Haiti to this day. In his place, Washington and Ottawa have placed Martelly’s “Open for business” regime.
Newmont Mining is partnered with the Canadian Eurasian Minerals in seeking to open gold mining operations in Haiti’s three northern departments. The Haiti Grassroots Watch study, “Gold rush in Haiti: Who will get rich?,” published in May, examines how Haitian law has already been circumvented by the gold-mining companies as they forge ahead with exploration. HGW Co-Director Jane Regan spoke to Democracy Now on June 1 about the study. Among its findings are:
? Haiti’s former Minister of the Economy and Finances is now a paid consultant for Newmont.
? Two Haitian ministers recently signed a “Memorandum of Understanding” with Newmont and Eurasian that says – in violation of Haitian law – the companies can begin drilling at one of their exploration sites. Haitian legislation states no drilling can occur without a mining convention.
? Nobody appears to be telling the communities in Haiti’s north what is going on, and what deals have been made behind closed doors.
? Haiti has the lowest mining royalties (production taxes) in the hemisphere.
The UN military occupation of Haiti is what the imperialists hope will ensure that Haiti’s mineral wealth can again be plundered like in the days of the conquistadors.
Eduardo Galeano spoke last September at an event at Uruguay’s National Library discussing Haiti’s current plight and its place in Latin America. “The military occupation of Haiti is costing the UN more than $800 million yearly,” he said. “If the United Nations dedicated those funds to technical cooperation and social solidarity, Haiti could receive a good boost to its creative energy. Then they would be saved from their armed saviors who have a certain tendency to violate, kill, and deliver fatal illnesses.”
“Haiti doesn't need anyone to come and multiply its misfortunes,” Galeano concluded. “But Haiti does need solidarity, doctors, schools, hospitals, and a true collaboration that makes possible the rebirth of its alimentary sovereignty, killed by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and other philanthropic societies.”
If the transnational mining companies get their way in Haiti, that will surely “multiply its misfortunes.”
Roger Annis is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Roger Annis
Global Research Articles by Kim Ives
Labels: HAITI, NATIONALISATION, NEOCOLONIALISM
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US "Intelligence Assets" leading the Syrian "Opposition", the Role of the Bilderberg and the CFR
by Chris Marsden
Global Research, July 18, 2012
World Socialist Web Site - 2012-07-17
In a July 12 article for the Guardian’s “Comment is Free” section, Charlie Skelton poses the fundamental question the world’s media does not want asked.
“The Syrian opposition: who’s doing the talking?” is a devastating exposé of the intimate connections between the Syrian opposition and the US, British and French intelligence services, along with top US neo-cons. It traces the formation of the Syrian National Council and the appointment of its leading personnel to long-standing and well-funded plans for regime change in Syria and more generally in the Middle East. These plans date back to at least 2005, and have been funded by Washington in an effort to secure political control of the oil-rich region.
Skelton does not attempt to be comprehensive. He focuses on a few of the most prominent members of the SNC and identifies some of the most vociferous proponents of military intervention as being paid representatives of the Western powers.
Among those routinely cited as “official spokesmen” or “pro-democracy campaigner” is the Paris-based Syrian academic Bassma Kodmani, a member of the executive bureau and head of the SNC’s foreign affairs.
Kodmani is a repeated visitor to the Bilderberg group conference, an organisation of top political figures dedicated to strengthening the links between US and European imperialism and securing their collective global interests under the banner of promoting “Atlanticism.”
In 2005, she worked for the Ford Foundation in Cairo. That year saw a marked deterioration in US-Syria relations, with President George W. Bush contemplating military intervention against Damascus alongside Israel.
In September, Kodmani was made the executive director of the Arab Reform Initiative, funded by the US Council on Foreign Relations and its US/Middle East project—chaired by former national security adviser General Brent Scowcroft.
“Financial oversight” of the project was given to the Centre for European Reform (CER), a British think-tank headed by Lord Kerr, deputy chairman of Royal Dutch Shell.
Kodmani is also a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, functioning as the executive director of its Arab Reform Initiative.
Radwan Ziadeh, the SNC’s director of foreign relations, is a senior fellow at the US Institute of Peace and a signatory to a letter calling for US military intervention alongside former head of the CIA James Woolsey, Karl Rove and other prominent neo-cons. He has acted as an intermediary between the White House and the Syrian opposition since 2005.
Najib Ghadbian, a University of Arkansas political scientist, is a member of the general secretariat of the SNC and is on the advisory board of a Washington-based Syrian Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, along with Ziadeh.
Ausama Monajed of the SNC is the founder of Barada Television, a pro-opposition satellite broadcaster and the former “director of public relations for the London-based Movement for Justice and Development” (MJD). Both are heavily funded by the US State Department, according to WikiLeaks.
Skelton cites some of the many hundreds of millions of dollars channelled into the Syrian opposition from the US and the Gulf States.
Among Monajed’s services to Washington was his publishing an official policy statement of the SNC, a document drafted by Michael Weiss of the Henry Jackson Society calling for intervention in Syria. The society is backed by top neo-cons such as William Kristol and Richard Perle.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose inflated figures on casualties are constantly cited by the media, turns out to be one man, Rami Abdul Rahman, based in Coventry and a clothes retailer.
Another Henry Jackson Society luminary is Hamza Fakher, described by Nick Cohen of the Observer as “one of the most reliable sources on the crimes the regime’s news blackout hides.”
The stories he has initiated have been routinely cited as eye-witness reports.
Fakher is the communication manager of Monajed’s London-based Strategic Research and Communications Centre and an employee of Barada TV.
Skelton deserves credit for writing so honestly on the network of connections between the Syrian opposition and the US/European military security apparatus. But the fact is that what he exposes will be well known to the research departments of the Guardian, the New York Times, BBC, NBC, CBS, ABC, et al.
None of them are being hoodwinked by anyone. They are willing conduits for imperialist war propaganda who ask no questions of the sources they cite because they do not want to undercut the drumbeat for war.
It is this that accounts for the scathing denunciation of Skelton in the next day’s edition of the Guardian by diplomatic editor Julian Borger
“US manipulation of news from Syria is a red herring,” the headline declares, “The big picture is clear.”
Accusing Skelton of “innuendo,” a heavy use of quotation marks to denote skepticism, “banal prose” and other literary crimes, Borger defends the various intelligence assets identified by Skelton as “people who have devoted a substantial share of their working life studying Syrian society and politics.”
This is a definition so value-free that could be applied to any number of imperialist strategists and spies.
The clear importance of Bassma Kodmani in the SNC hierarchy is simply dismissed, while Skelton is even derided for describing the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) as “a powerful US lobby group,” for being “needlessly sinister”. It is “America’s most prestigious foreign policy talking shop and research centre”, Borger insists.
Borger in fact argues against his own faux-naïf pose. No other foreign policy think tank is more influential than the CFR, and Kodmani is there as a trusted representative of US imperialist interests in the Middle East.
It must be added that Britain’s Socialist Workers Party and its global co-thinkers, the Pabloite United Secretariat, and other pseudo-left outfits demonstrate a similar politically motivated blindness to the true character of the Syrian opposition and its aims.
In June, Khalil Habash complained in the United Secretariat’s International Viewpoint, “The Syrian revolutionary process has since the beginning been met by circumspection by some on the left…accusing it of being a conspiracy of Western imperialist and reactionary regional countries such as Saudi Arabia. This trend has unfortunately continued….”
The SWP’s Simon Assaf was blunter still at the annual Marxism 2012 event. He said that he did not want to dwell on those alleging “conspiracy” due to the involvement of Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia or the US because “it would take me too long to calm down”.
It is not simply that these groups refuse to take a critical stance towards the opposition movement and the diverse social forces it represents—as would be necessary for anyone seeking to lay the basis for the development of an independent working class oppositional movement in Syria. Like the Guardian and other mainstream media, they very deliberately conceal the bourgeois, Sunni-sectarian and pro-imperialist character of the movement’s current leadership to conceal great-power imperialist intrigues, the end result of which will be more disastrous than even NATO’s war against Libya.
Chris Marsden is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Chris Marsden
Labels: TERRORISM, WAR CRIMES
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Nguni on farmers
Tuesday, 17 July 2012 10:09
Herald Reporter
FARMERS have been urged to use land fully by producing to the maximum to shame the country’s imperialists. Addressing hundreds of farmers during the Mhondoro South annual agricultural show last week, Mhondoro-Mubaira legislator Cde Sylvester Nguni said farmers should play their role in defeating the country’s detractors by being productive.
The show was held in preparation of the Harare Agricultural Show next month where provincial winners will showcase their products. Said Cde Nguni:
“The country is under siege from Western forces and they want to ensure the country comes to a halt at all costs and everyone has to be ready to play a defensive role.
“It is only through massive production in our farms and fields that we can shame imperialists. We have to prove that we are one of the best farmers in the world by engaging in extensive farming.”
Cde Nguni, who is also Minister of State in Vice President Joice Mujuru’s office, said no one should be allowed to reverse the black empowerment drive.
“Its time we become masters of our own destiny. There might be disturbances from our enemies but lets remain resolute until we achieve our goal.
“Sanctions are affecting every sector but with hard work they will be a thing of the past. Let us not give anyone a chance to block our empowerement initiatives,” he said.
Labels: HARARE AGRICULTURAL SHOW, LAND REFORM, SYLVESTER NGUNI
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Kalusha Bwalya didn’t play alone in the Zambian team, but he always made the difference and that is why he is the legend
Friday, 13 July 2012 21:36
While we haven’t been blessed with a magician like Messi, we still should thank the football gods that we have been given our own Musona and I’m pretty sure the South Afric-ans, if players were traded across national teams, would have used all their money in their Reserve Bank to buy Knowledge.
Nathaniel Manheru, my political cousin when it comes to blogs in this Saturday edition of The Herald, once made an interesting observation about how wars in today’s world are both fought in and shaped by, the media.
It also rings true about the boardroom battles that are fought endlessly in sport.
The media is a very powerful tool and, in the week that the BBC World Service moved from Bush House, after more than half-a-century of broadcasting from that London location, it’s clear its global influence remains as strong as it was when the first broadcast was made from those offices 70 years ago.
On Wednesday, a year-long battle fronted by the BBC to force Fifa to make public, documents from defunct marketing firm ISL, which they claimed showed improper conduct by senior Fifa officials, was won when the Swiss Supreme Court ordered the release of the material. ISL, a Swiss-based firm that used to be given lucrative marketing rights for the Fifa World Cup finals, collapsed under a huge mountain of debt of around US$300 million.
We now know that former Fifa president, Joao Havelange, who ruled the organisation for 24 years before handing the baton to his trusted lieutenant, Sepp Blatter, was paid huge sums in bribes by ISL. We now know that Havelange received about US$1.53 million and his counterpart, Ricardo Teixeira, who used to be his son-in-law and ran the Brazilian Football Federation for ages and was a Fifa executive committee member, received about US$13 million in kick-backs.
In November 2010, the BBC’s Panorama programme made the sensational claims that Havelange, Teixeira and Caf boss, Issa Hayatou, took bribes from ISL in the 1990s. No wonder the BBC were feeling triumphant this week as they celebrated the Swiss court’s decision to publicise details of the ISL transactions.
Apparently Havelange and Teixeira had paid back £3.6m as part of a deal to end the prosecution office’s investigation on condition their identities remained a secret. Interestingly, Jennings is banned from Fifa media conferences and official functions, since publishing an article in England’s Daily Mail newspaper on March 18, 2003, claiming that Blatter paid himself a US$4 million tax-free annual bonus from Fifa. Jennings claims Fifa meets all the definitions of a Mafia organisation, with an all-powerful don at the top, surrounded “by greedy crooks”, provision of “protection” and a code of “omerta” that silences any whistleblowers through exile.
German journalist, Jens Winreich, is also banned from Fifa media conferences and official functions because of his investigative work and claims that a single vote, during the bidding process for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup finals, was being traded for US$20 million.
Jennings is winning his war with Fifa and the latest documentary dispatch from a Swiss court will be another huge setback in the organisation’s battle to try and portray itself as one that has moved away from a culture where dirty secret deals are the order of the day and accountability is an alien process that should be resisted at all costs. The British investigative journalist’s victory also brings refreshment to all the football writers in the trenches, who have been declared enemies of the game by their domestic football associations, simply because they chose to be critical and asked a lot of questions. If an organisation as huge and rich as Fifa can be battled, for the right for good to be separated from evil and beaten by the efforts of a journalist, as was the case in Switzerland this week, surely an organisation like Zifa can also be challenged if it veers off the path.
Of course, it comes at a cost, you don’t get invited to official Zifa functions, media conferences and, as my colleague Hope Chizuzu found out in Gaborone last year when he was working for Cosafa, they can also try to throw you out of a foreign country. But, as seen from the events in Switzerland this week, the little Davids of journalism can sometimes force the mighty and rich organisations running our football into submission and Jennings must be throwing a party somewhere in London right now.
The Monsters Within Us
What can’t be disputed is that in the past 28 months, the time this Zifa leadership has been in office, we have become deeply divided as a football family, split right in between and those who fear we could disintegrate even further are not dreaming.
Our football landscape has turned into one war zone, with endless battles fought just about every day, some big ones that shake the game and some small ones that disappear without a trace and the frightening thing is that there are no signs that it could all end soon. Militias have sprung into life, landmines have been planted just about everywhere, the language has become inflammatory, the atmosphere has turned hostile to such an extent that you can’t even trust someone, who used to be your friend, to hold your drink while you go to relieve yourself in a toilet.
IT’S NOW THEM OR US AND WE ARE ALL TO BLAME FOR THIS MADNESS.
IT’S NOT ZIFA’S FAULT ALONE, EVERYONE WHO HAS A PART TO PLAY IN OUR FOOTBALL IS AT FAULT AND BY THAT I ALSO INCLUDE MYSELF.
SUDDENLY, WE HAVE ALL BECOME MONSTERS, ALL THAT WE SEE IS THE NEED TO FIGHT EVEN WHEN THE CAUSE ISN’T KNOWN, ALL THAT WE SEE IS THE NEED TO OPPOSE EVEN WHEN THE OTHER PARTY IS RIGHT, ALL THAT WE SEE IS TO THE NEED TO CONDEMN EVEN IF THEY ARE MAKING SENSE AND ALL THAT WE SEE IS THE NEED TO ATTACK EVEN WHEN THEY ARE DOWN.
We somehow now see enemies where we used to see friends, we see monsters where we used to see models, we now see alien and hostile creatures where we used to see familiar and friendly faces, we now see an ocean of hopelessness were we used to see a river of hope.
We now see villains where we used to see brave hearts, we now see cowards where we used to see heroes, we now see destroyers where we used to see builders and we now see destruction where all that stood were structures that showed we were moving in a certain direction. We are all to blame and no one can say this side is more culpable because, as a football community, we have all played a part in taking our game to the tip of the cliff, where all that remains is a slight push to plunge us into the darkness where the chances of recovery would be somewhere between zero and zero point zero. We have all made this culture of hatred, culture of suspicion, culture of fights, culture of them and us, fashionable even when it has been clear, from the word go, that it wasn’t taking us anywhere and it drove a dagger into the heart of our 2012 Nations Cup campaign.
Knowledge Musona, our talismanic forward, walked away from the mess last week telling us that he was done with working in a poisoned environment where there were frightening possibilities his name and crucially his game, could suffer considerable damage if he kept dancing with the wolves.
Somehow, we can’t read the signs, as ominous as they are and we have been treating Musona’s announcement that he was walking away from international football, something unprecedented in the history of our game, as a non-event.
Surely, can we sit down with our little boys, who are in primary school today and are the future of this game and have a clear conscience, 20 years from now, to tell them that we decided silence was the best way to react when Musona walked away?
Can we tell each other, in all honesty, that Musona can go to hell and, because there are thousands of other forwards in this country, including Quarter Chicken, Terrence Mandaza, you name them, we can always find a way to score goals in our next assignments?
Can we sit down, with a clear mind and declare that Musona’s absence will certainly not be felt by the Warriors in the next few weeks and months and we base our argument on the fact he wasn’t there, when they began their journey in international football in 1980 and he won’t be there, when and where it all comes to an end?
Football, admittedly, is a game played by a team and there are 11 players who all play a part, with the defensive shield as important as the offensive part of the game, but it’s a game where individuals like Musona can make a huge difference.
With them in the side, it gives the team a certain edge, without them in the team, everything looks ordinary and that we didn’t score, in the two 2014 World Cup qualifiers that Musona failed to hit the target, isn’t a coincidence. That we qualified for the final qualifier of the 2013 Nations Cup finals, on the back of the two goals that Musona scored to give us the draw that won us the duel against Burundi on the away goals rule, isn’t also a coincidence.
That all the three goals we have scored away from home in competitive games in the 2012 and 2013 Nations Cup qualifiers, against Liberia, Cape Verde and Burundi, have all been scored by one man, Knowledge Musona, isn’t also a coincidence.
That’s quality and while we haven’t been blessed with a magician like Messi, we still should thank the football gods that we have been given our own Musona and I’m pretty sure the South Africans, if players were traded for national teams, would have used all their money in their Reserve Bank to buy Knowledge. Argentina will struggle without Messi, Portugal won’t be the same without Ronaldo, once Mario Gomez’s goals dried up, Germany’s promising 2012 Euro campaign fell flat and, if he keeps his focus, Mario Balotelli will be making a huge impact for Italy. Kalusha Bwalya didn’t play alone in the Zambian team, but he always made the difference and that is why he is the legend that the whole world remembers. Peter Ndlovu didn’t play alone in the Dream Team, but he was the talisman, the man who made the difference and when the going got tough, we all looked up to him, in hushed silence at the National Sports Stadium, hoping for one final explosion. And, usually, he delivered.
Musona hasn’t reached that level, but he is only 22 and is slowly working his way there because, before we quickly forget, Peter was 30, in 2003, when he finally led to the Warriors to their maiden appearance at the Nations Cup finals.
ZIMBABWE FOOTBALL IS CRYING OUT LOUDLY FOR PEACE, FOR UNITY, FOR LOVE, FOR CAMARADERIE, FOR WARMTH, FOR LEADERS WHO FORGIVE, FOR FANS WHO RESPECT THEIR LEADERS, FOR THE CREATION OF AN ENVIRONMENT THAT WILL REMOVE THE MONSTERS THAT HAVE REPLACED THE HUMANS THAT WE WERE A FEW MONTHS BACK.
Everyone should play their part because it’s the whole landscape that has been poisoned.
Sadly, it’s the game that suffers and the fans, who have been there for it all their life and will still be there when we have long left these leadership positions, who also bear the brunt.
Football And Controversy Are Siamese Twins
One of the things that you are guaranteed to have in football is controversy and if there are people out there who believe that it’s possible to have a controversy-free environment in this game, then they are leaving in dreamland and I can only offer them good luck.
Zifa loves sending documents and complaints to Fifa, in their battle to have a controversy-free football environment that they believe they can shape and tonnes of material have moved between Harare and Zurich in the past two years. But, interestingly, the same Fifa is always on the back foot, fighting endless battles in the boardrooms and courts, amid accusations of corruption within the very corridors of football’s world governing body.
It’s a classic case of investing all your trust, in a deaf guy, to give you a proper assessment of how much, the audio quality of a scratched Leonard Dembo CD, which was exposed to the sun, has been affected. Or, to put it mildly, asking Lovemore Matombo to be the arbitrator in a labour dispute centred on a leadership wrangle when he has failed to sort out similar challenges, on a personal level, for himself at the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions.
Only on Thursday, Blatter addressed the world, via the official Fifa website, telling us that he knew of the bribes that were paid to Havelange and Teixeira in the ‘90s by the disgraced marketing firm, ISL and, crucially, Fifa even paid US$2.77 million to a Swiss court as a condition to have criminal proceedings dropped. Blatter’s role, in the payment of that money to ensure a criminal probe into possible embezzlement by Havelange and Teixeira were dropped, could be key in terms of establishing whether he was part of a conspiracy and, for now, that hasn’t been addressed by either the court records or the Fifa boss.
That Blatter was Havelange’s right-hand man, for the 17 years that he worked as Fifa secretary-general while the Brazilian was the head of the organisation, certainly puts the Swiss in a very compromising position with regards this scandal.
Blatter has already conceded he was the senior Fifa figure, identified in the dossier as “P1”, who “would also have known” that a one-million Swiss francs payment from ISL to Havelange was mistakenly transferred into a Fifa account. Why, for all these controversies, does Blatter still remain Fifa president, why hasn’t he been asked or forced to step down, how does he continue to hang around and why will he, as it now appears, again weather this storm? These are BIG questions we should be asking ourselves in our football family.
If Blatter, for all the allegations he has faced, was one of us and a member of the Zifa board, what chances did he have to keep hanging around and, if the head of world football can be given the benefit of doubt, until proven guilty, why are the rules so different and drastic for our own people?
The Tribal Challenges We Face
One of the sickening things that have come out of our poisoned football environment is the emergence of tribal gangs and tribal warfare and nowhere is this cancer more pronounced than on the social media sites that have been converted into war zones.
Reading some of the material that is posted on those sites and some of the horrible arguments advanced by those who contribute to the debate, you are left wondering where really are we going as a nation. Surely, what has happened to the unity that made all of us embrace the Dream Team as our golden side, where its players were Zimbabweans first and Bosso or Saints or DeMbare next, where its skipper was our leader irrespective of which team he played for?
What has happened to the way the whole nation embraced Peter Ndlovu, as the greatest footballer of his generation in this country and a leader everyone was proud of, without really looking at his surname or where he came from? Why have our current football leaders given impetus to arguments that there are tribal wars that are being fought in the game, on a national level and they haven’t even taken an initiative to address this cancer or prove those who are peddling this myth wrong?
Why is it that when they dissolve the Zimbabwe Under-23 team technical department, as they did recently, the only member they leave in that coaching staff is Peter Nkomo, leaving themselves exposed to criticism from those who argue that this has turned into a tribal showdown? Why is it that despite the gravity of comments, which Rahman Gumbo is claimed to have made at a night club in Harare, reported on the Real Soccer website and discussed extensively on Facebook, Twitter and the NewZimbabwe.com forums, no one from Zifa has dared to address this disturbing issue? We haven’t heard anything from the association’s spin doctors, for all the brilliance of their wizardry, despite the sensitivity of this case and the aggravation that comes from the fact that it’s something reported to have been uttered not by an ordinary man, but the national coach of this country.
They could have done this by dismissing it with the contempt it deserves, if it’s all a heap of rubbish or a product of a reporter’s imagination so fertile he could even write that Caf have just ranked the Warriors as favourites to win the 2013 Nations Cup finals, even when their qualification for that showcase hasn’t yet been finalised. Or they could have clarified certain aspects of those quotes, if they were made in the first place and put a spin to them so that they don’t come out to mean the tribal nonsense that comes out of what Real Soccer reported and what is being discussed on the social media sites and on such news websites like New Zimbabwe.com.
Or better still, Rahman could have come out, given that this storm doesn’t seem to die down and continues to form the basis on which some people now judge what he does and what he doesn’t and addressed a media conference to put the record straight if the guys at Real Soccer misquoted him.
Given that the Real Soccer Editor, Shepherd Mandizvidza, is a man who is known, maybe Rahman could have launched a lawsuit, to buttress his claims, if he doesn’t agree with the story, that what they reported was hogwash and make them pay a price for defaming his good name by using those tribal innuendoes.
By keeping quiet both Rahman and Zifa are giving credibility to the claims.
John Terry needed the court to clear him that he wasn’t a racist and he didn’t make any racial insults, directed to Anton Ferdinand, as had been claimed. But the police were convinced that JT made those claims and that was why they charged him and the prosecution authority in England was also convinced there was a case against Terry and that was why they let the case go through the court proceedings.
The English FA was so convinced that Terry had skipped the line, in this racism row, they stripped him of the captaincy of the national team leading to the fallout that resulted in coach Fabio Capello leaving his job.
If Terry had kept quiet, and pretended as if nothing had happened and if the authorities in England had not taken action, it’s very likely that this racism thing would have stalked the Chelsea skipper for a long time.
But, thanks to the beauty of the wheels of justice, we now know that John Terry is not a racist or, even if he is, we now know that he didn’t racially abuse Anton Ferdinand.
Who knows, if Luis Suarez’s case against Patrice Evra had gone the entire justice process, maybe the little Uruguayan, who served a lengthy sentence outside football for that, would not have been so crucified and we would be looking at him in a different light right now.
Little Letter Of The Week
Hi Rob,
I feel there is need for the media to extensively cover the issue of tribalism, which seems unresolved in our football.
Is it really there? Is the delay to appoint a substantive coach for the Warriors being derailed by tribal elements? Is Norman Mapeza a victim of tribalism? Was (Nelson) Mazivisa expelled from FC Platinum on tribal grounds? Was partnering Yogi with Gumbo results centered or a classic tribal balance act? I could go on and on but the point remains there is more than what meets the eye – and certainly more than just simple football administration.
Nigel Nyamutumbu (Kabila)
Information Officer, Zimbabwe Union of Journalists
To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitooooooooooooooooooooooooo!
l The only people mad at you for saying the truth are those living a lie. Keep saying it.
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Labels: FOOTBALL
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