This is a response to the #BLM controversy, before it was
removed from one of their activists, Imani Gandy's site:
This isn't about Hillary and that you are here angrily sputtering about Clinton, and George Soros, says a lot about your "progressive values." You care more about Black votes than Black lives. Well good like trying to get Sanders elected without Black voters.
Is that the deal, alienating Bernie Sanders from Black Voters?
As usual, you have your opinion ready made, and KNOW NOTHING about me. If you want to know about me, read my blog. http://maravi.blogspot.com/ And learn something about Africa, and the newstories behind the headlines. I have been blogging about Southern Africa, economics, for more than 8 years now. And you label me a 'white progressive' before you even know my name or have read anything I wrote?
Are you saying that this is how you blundered into the Bernie Sanders rally, knowing nothing about Bernie Sanders, his track record on Civil Rights, or his voting record? Please tell me that's not so.
You'd rather believe some absurd conspiracies about BLM being Clinton shills that believe that these Black women are sincere in their protesting the deaths of Black people in our community.
I'll leave the invention of the term 'Conspiracy Theory' by the CIA alone for now. It is not a 'conspiracy theory' to point out that the leadership of BLM is part of the leadership of the NDWA, and that the NDWA took part in the Clinton Global Initiative America 2015. And lo and behold, you don't go after Hillary Clinton. Hillary gets to meet behind closed doors, without any photo ops. What a coincidence. What exactly was discussed with the Clintons? (And no, that's not a 'conspiracy theory', that is a question.)
Now to call that 'a conspiracy theory', how about calling it 'a hint'? 'A clue'?
Black people are demanding respect for our humanity and all you can retort with his "Sanders is your best friend?"
As a good friend of mine pointed out, we're talking about life and death matters and all you can talk about is political rivalries as if that is all that matters.
Clearly, you have no clue, as to who Bernie Sanders IS.
Bernie Sanders is going to be the best President since FDR, in fact he is going to better than FDR, if he gets a Congress he can work with and does something about the Supreme Court.
He might even become as good as HUEY LONG, who I'm sure you have never heard of either.
http://www.ssa.gov/history/hlong1.html
It is because of Huey Long, that FDR only even considered many of the programs that eventually built the American middle class. The fact that African Americans were specifically excluded from those programs in the South doesn't change that. It is a disgrace that must never be repeated. However, I trust Bernie Sanders more than any politician not to make such a deal in the future.
Well it doesn't. Trickle-down justice will not work this time. And Sanders cannot win without us. Clinton cannot win without us.
Oh yes they can.
And you talk about Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton as if they are the same.
They are not. Clinton is a Republican in disguise. She was a Goldwater Republican in the 1960s. Bernie Sanders calls himself a Democratic Socialist. He marched with Martin Luther King. If you can't tell the difference, it is time to hit the books again (which is a good thing and a hint, not a putdown - I hit the books every day, I love knowledge and information and the information age).
You don't get to tell Black voters that Sanders is our best friend. That's just not how this works. But continue angrily spewing nonsense if it makes you feel better.
Here are some threads I wrote on the realpolitik of politics, 'trade', and America's empire in Africa, and the role of the Clintons in it.
Rape In The Eastern DRC
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2013/09/rape-eastern-drc
Bill Clinton was kept informed about what happened in Rwanda on a daily basis.
F*** The EU - Neocons And The Neonazi Ukrainian Coup
http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2014/02/f-eu-neocons-and-neonazi-ukrainian-coup
Hillary Clinton's subordinate Victoria Nuland's handiwork in the Ukraine. She put nazis (Svoboda) in government in Europe for the first time since WWII (of course Spain and Portugal remained fascist until the 1970s).
Labels: ACTIVISM, HILLARY CLINTON, NEOCOLONIALISM
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(STICKY) (NEWZIMBABWE) Vote flawed, sanctions to remain: US
19/08/2013 00:00:00
by Staff Reporter I Agencies
COMMENT - The Conversation We Need To Have
This is completely anti-democratic. The Zimbabwean people have spoken, and they don't want De Beers to steal their diamonds. If the US government can choose to ignore the outcome of democratic elections abroad, perhaps SADC should ignore the outcome of American elections.
In other words, the United States Government is full of sh*t. Either you abide by the expressed will of the Zimbabwean people, or you come out and openly say that you only accept an outcome that is in agreement with your Rothschild (Anglo-American De Beers, Rio Tinto, etc.) and Rockefeller (ExxonMobil, Chevron, JPMorgan Chase, Chiquita/United Fruit, etc.) paymasters.
It is extremely ironic, that one of the consequences of being placed under sanctions, is that you lose your right to bribe American politicians. I quote from (NEWZIMBABWE) US congressmen tied to illegal $3.4m Mugabe lobby: "It's not illegal for public officials to meet with sanctioned Zimbabweans, but individuals cannot provide lobbying services to those subjected to U.S. sanctions, prosecutors said."
This is not democracy, this is about exploitation of African resources by the old Rothschild (De Beers) owned corporations that stole African (and South American and Asian) resources under colonialism and Apartheid/UDI. - MrK
THE United States said Monday that
it believes the July 31 elections were flawed adding it does not plan to loosen sanctions against Zimbabwe until there are
signs of change in the country.
"The United States stands by our assessment that these elections, while relatively peaceful, did not represent a credible expression of the will of the Zimbabwean people due to serious flaws throughout the electoral process," said State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki.
So I guess the United States is the ultimate arbitrator of whether countries can have access to the IMF and World Bank and other banking functions. Why not just declare the American president presidetn of all countries in the world. Democracy, 'American style'. - MrK
"We have made clear to the government of Zimbabwe and the region that a change in U.S. sanctions policy will occur only in the context of credible, transparent and peaceful reforms that reflect the will of the Zimbabwean people."
Unlike violence free democratic elections. - MrK
The statement appeared to be a response to an appeal by regional leaders during a SADC summit in Lilongwe, Malawi, where they backed President Robert Mugabe’s re-election.
The veteran leader, who has ruled the country since independence in 1980, is set to be sworn in on Thursday, extending his 33-year rule by at least another term.
Opposition MDC-T leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, refused to concede defeat, dismissing the vote a huge farce. He has also dropped his court challenge saying he doubted he would get a fair hearing.
And taking their, cue from the out-going premier, Western nations, which maintain sanctions against the country, also said the election was not credible although observers from the African Union and the SADC region passed the vote as peaceful and free.
Speaking after the Lilongwe meeting, SADC chair and Malawi President Joyce Banda urged the West to drop the sanctions which Mugabe and his Zanu PF party blame for Zimbabwe’s economic problems.
"I believe Zimbabwe deserves better, Zimbabweans have suffered enough," said Banda.
But Psaki said for now the sanctions would remain although it was "feasible" that the U.S. could review them if conditions in the country improved.
The US imposed sanctions on Mugabe in 2003 alleging vote fraud and human rights failings. The sanctions, which ban more than 250 Zimbabwean individuals and companies from doing business with the United States, were extended in 2009.
However, soon after his nomination as Secretary of State, John Kerry wrote to Mugabe outlining the U.S. position on elections and the opportunities it provided for the country.
The U.S. had said it was willing to roll back sanctions and expand trade and investment if elections were conducted in a free and credible environment.
Labels: BARACK OBAMA, HILLARY CLINTON, NEOCOLONIALISM, RUSS FEINGOLD, SANCTIONS, ZDERA
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what's left
Will Damascus Survive Washington’s Latest Attempt to Impose a Puppet Government on Syria?
Posted in Syria by what's left on November 2, 2012
By Stephen Gowans
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton says Washington needs “an opposition that will be on record strongly resisting the efforts by extremists to hijack the Syrian revolution,” (1) but fails to add that it must also be open to the United States doing the same.
Uprisings aimed at overthrowing governments are often divided between militants who do the heavy lifting on the ground and politicians who lead the fight in the political sphere. Outside powers scheme to anoint an acceptable politician as a leader-in-waiting to step into the void if and when the current government is toppled. The leader must be both acceptable to his or her foreign backers and to the militants on the ground.
Washington has decided that the Syrian National Council, which it “initially charged” to “galvanize opposition” (2) to Syria’s Ba’thist government is unacceptable to Syrian rebels and therefore has no hope of leading a successor government. As an alternative to the failed council, it has handpicked the leaders of a new government-in-waiting, to be unveiled in Doha on November 7, and soon after receive the pre-arranged blessing of the Arab League and Friends of Syria. Make no mistake. What emerges from Doha will be a US creation, intended to represent US interests in Syria and the Middle East.
At a press conference following an October 30 meeting with the president of Croatia, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton revealed that the Syrian National Council, Washington’s initial pick to lead the opposition to the Asad government, no longer had Washington’s support. The SNC, in Washington’s view, had become irrelevant. The armed opposition to the Asad government is happening outside the leadership of the SNC, an organization of exiles with no legitimacy within Syria and internally divided by incessant squabbling between its Islamist and secularist factions. The SNC, commented one armed rebel, “has been over with for a long time now; fighters only talk about it sarcastically.” (3)
Equally problematic for Washington was the SNC’s narrow base of political support. “From the beginning, the council was seen as a prime vehicle for the long-exiled Muslim Brotherhood” (4) and therefore “failed to attract significant representation from minority groups,” (5) including Alawites, Christians and Kurds. Its failure to win support from fighters on the ground, and to expand beyond a narrow sectarian base, hardly recommended it as a viable government-in-waiting. Sounding the council’s death knell, Clinton decreed “that the SNC can no longer be viewed as the visible leader of the opposition.” (6)
For weeks now, Robert Ford, the former US ambassador to Syria, has been putting together a plan to anoint a new US-approved government-in-the-wings. The initiative is known as the “Riad Seif plan” (7) named after a wealthy Damascus businessman and former Syrian parliamentarian who has long played an active role in the opposition to the Asad government. Acceptable to Washington owing to his businessman politics (as against the Ba’athist’s ideological commitment to state domination of the economy, marginalization of the private sector, and controls on foreign investment (8)), Seif has been endorsed by Washington to lead a post-Ba’athist government. It is hoped that his opposition credentials—he was jailed by the Syrian government for his activities—will put him in good stead with the rebels on the ground.
The plan calls for the creation of a “proto-parliament” comprising 50 members, 20 from the internal opposition, 15 from the SNC (i.e., the exile opposition), and 15 from various other Syrian opposition organizations. An executive body made up of 8 to 10 members—who have been endorsed by the US State department (9) — will work directly with the United States and its allies. (10) Washington and its subordinates, the Arab League and misnamed Friends of Syria, both democracy-hating clubs of plutocracies and oil monarchies, will attempt to make the body acceptable to Syrians by recognizing it as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people.
There’s no guarantee the plan will work. One of its goals is to marginalize the influence of the Jihadists, many though not all of whom have spilled into Syria from other countries, bent on overturning a secular regime led by a president whose Alawi faith they revile as heretical. If the Jihadists can be sidelined, Washington may be able to funnel arms to “acceptable” militant groups, without fear of their being used later against US targets. But there’s a question mark hanging over Seif’s appeal to religiously-inspired militants, especially when the hands of the marionette-master, the US State Department, are so visible. The same goes for the new council’s appeal to the anti-imperialist secular opposition, who “are against any new political entity that becomes subject to the agendas of foreign countries.” (11) And there’s no mistaking that the new ‘Made-in-the-USA’ council will be subject to the political agenda of the United States.
We needn’t tarry long on debunking the naive belief that Washington’s intervention in Syrian affairs has the slightest connection to promoting democracy. If democracy promotion motivated US foreign policy, absolutist monarchies with execrable records of human rights abridgements and violent repression of popular uprisings against their dictatorial rule would not make up the bulk of the United States’ Arab allies. The last thing the wealthy investors, bankers and corporate heavyweights who make up the US ruling class want is democracy, either at home or aboard. They want its polar opposite—plutocracy, rule by people of wealth in the interests of piling up more wealth through the exploitation of the labor of other people and the land, resources and markets of other countries.
When Saudi Arabia sent tanks and troops into Bahrain on March 14, 2011 to crush a local eruption of the Arab Spring, the United States did nothing to disturb their democracy-abominating ally’s assault on the popular uprising, except issue a meaningless call for “political dialogue.” As the New York Times explained,
The reasons for Mr. Obama’s reticence were clear: Bahrain sits off the Saudi coast, and the Saudis were never going to allow a sudden flowering of democracy next door…In addition, the United States maintains a naval base in Bahrain…crucial for maintaining the flow of oil from the region. “We realized that the possibility of anything happening in Saudi Arabia was one that couldn’t become a reality,” said William M. Daley, President Obama’s chief of staff at the time. “For the global economy, this couldn’t happen.” (12)
Considering that William Daley is an investment banker from a politically well-connected family; that “maintaining the flow of oil” means “maintaining the flow of oil revenues to US oil giants”; and that “the global economy” means “investors’ returns,” it’s clear why the plutocracy condoned their ally’s repression of the Bahrain uprising. Under plutocratic rule, steps toward democracy—even baby ones—are not allowed to get in the way of profits.
Nor need we tarry on the naive belief that a government that has been handpicked by Washington—the US State Department has “recommended names and organizations that ….should be included in any leadership structure,” disclosed Clinton (13)—will represent Syrian interests against those of its sponsor. US interests in Syria have no intrinsic relationship to protecting Israel, which—with its formidable military, yearly $3 billion dollop of US military aid, and an arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons—hardly needs further assistance defending itself against Iran, Hezbollah or Hamas, none of which are significant threats to Israel anyway but are threatened by it. Weakening Iran, Syria’s ally, may be one of Washington’s objectives in trying to orchestrate Asad’s ouster, but not because Iran may acquire nuclear power status and therefore threaten Israel (which it could hardly do anyway considering that it’s severely outclassed militarily (14)), but because, like Syria, it zealously safeguards its economic territory from the US plutocracy’s designs, allowing the state to dominate its economy and protect its domestic enterprises, land and resources from outside domination. The real reason the US plutocracy wants to topple the Syrian and Iranian governments is because they’re bad for the plutocracy’s business interests. Democracy, existential threats to Israel, and nuclear non-proliferation, have nothing to do with it.
The Syrian government is no stranger to formidable challenges. It has waged a longstanding war with Islamists who have rejected the Ba’athist’s secular orientation from the start. Its war with the ethnic-cleansing settler regime in Tel Aviv oscillates between hot and cold. The United States has waged economic warfare against Syria for years, and has connived at overthrowing its government before. Still, Damascus is in a particularly bad spot now. The world’s strongest plutocracies have escalated their hostility. Jihadist terrorists from abroad—to say nothing of home-grown ones—are doing their best to upset Ba’athist rule. But the support of the Syrian military and a substantial part of the Syrian population, plus assistance from Russia and Iran, have allowed it to hang on.
In the face of imperialist and Islamist opposition, its future looks grim, but governments have faced bleaker prospects before and survived, some even going on to thrive. To be sure, there are profound differences between the Asad government and the early Bolshevik regime, but the Syrian government and its supporters may take heart knowing that at one point it seemed all but certain that Lenin’s fledgling government would fail. Famine had gripped the cities. An imperialist war had thrown Russia’s industry into chaos and all but ruined its transportation system. Civil war had broken out and predatory hostile states had launched military invasions to smother the infant government in its cradle. Yet, in the face of these tremendous challenges, the Bolsheviks survived and over the next seven decades went on to build a great industrial power that eliminated unemployment, overwork, economic insecurity, extremes of inequality, and economic crises, while almost singlehandedly eradicating the scourge of Nazism. And it did so without exploiting other countries but helping to build them economically and escape colonialism and imperialist domination, often at great expense to itself. Similarly the Syrian government may overcome its challenges, both internal and external, and carry on a course of independent, self-directed development, free from the backwardness of Islamic fundamentalism, sectarianism and domination by the world’s great plutocracies. Let’s hope so.
1. Neil MacFarquhar and Michael R. Gordon, “As fighting rages, Clinton seeks new Syrian opposition”, The New York Times, October 31, 2012
2. Jay Solomon and Nour Malas, “U.S. pulls support for key anti-Assad bloc”, The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 2012
3. MacFarquhar and Gordon
4. MacFarquhar and Gordon
5. MacFarquhar and Gordon
6. Hillary Clinton’s Remarks With Croatian President Ivo Josipovic After Their Meeting, October 31, 2012. http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2012/10/199931.htm
7. Josh Rogin, “Obama administration works to launch new Syrian opposition council”, Foreign Policy, October 30, 2012. http://thecable.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/10/30/obama_administration_works_to_launch_new_syrian_opposition_council
8. See the Syrian page of The Heritage Foundations’ Index of Economic Freedom, http://www.heritage.org/index/country/syria
9. Andrew Quin, “Hillary Clinton calls for overhaul of Syria opposition”, The Globe and Mail, October 31, 2012
10. Rogin
11. MacFarquhar and Gordon
12. Helene Cooper and Robert F. Worth, “In Arab Sprint, Obama finds a sharp test”, The New York Times, September 24, 2012
13. Quin
14. Stephen Gowans, “Wars for Profits: A No-Nonsense Guide to Why the United States Seeks to Make Iran an International Pariah”, what’s left, November 9, 2011. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/wars-for-profits-a-no-nonsense-guide-to-why-the-united-states-seeks-to-make-iran-an-international-pariah/
Labels: HILLARY CLINTON, SYRIA, TERRORISM
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Images and realities in politics
Thursday, 18 October 2012 04:56
Reality has a tendency of shaping public opinion in a completely independent and honest manner that many times does not favour power and to circumvent this annoying inconvenience those in power will always try to replace reality with images that they believe can hoodwink people into deceptive compliance.
If one takes, for example, the concept of democracy, it is apparent that what the United States calls democratisation is nothing more than a deceptive pretext meant to create a semblance of legality and humanitarianism around an otherwise sabre-rattling foreign policy whose naked brutality on civilians of weaker nations has become the trademark of the crumbling empire.
The naked lie that the 2003 invasion of Iraq was based on the need to stop Saddam Hussein from destroying the world through weapons of mass destruction was convincingly revealed for what it was — a blatant and ill-thought-out deliberate lie manufactured by George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
To keep its marauding military forces rampaging the Iraqis, the Western coalition immediately resorted to the creation of an image that they could not pull out of Iraq until the country got “fully democratised,” whatever that means. An estimated one million Iraqis were forcefully displaced from their country as a direct result of this illegal invasion by the US-led Western forces.
According to a British NGO Iraq Body Count (IBC), about 162000 people lost their lives directly as a result of the invasion, and 80 percent of these were civilians.
The 2001 invasion of Afghanistan was pretexted on American wrath after the downing of the Twin Towers on September 11 that year, a terrorist act that resulted in the deaths of 3000 people. As has become the norm, the American government internationalised their grief, and President W. Bush made a declaration: “You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.”
Hillary Clinton added on the 13 of September: “Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbour terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.”
This attitude of internationalising American grief was seen recently after the death of undercover agent ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens died at the hands of the Al-Qaeda group he helped so much to prop up as his country sought to avenge the diplomatic defeat Gaddafi inflicted on the Ronald Reagan regime more than two decades ago.
After the crude stoning of Stevens by the unruly Western-backed Al-Qaeda Libyan rebel operatives, president Barack Obama said: “Today, we must affirm that our future will be determined by people like Chris Stevens and not by his killers . . . Today, we must declare that this violence and intolerance has no place among our United Nations.”
The image of a brutally stoned Stevens mirrored almost identically that of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi after he was shot dead in cold blood in 2011. Immediately after Gaddafi’s death, a jubilant Hillary Clinton told a news reporter: “We came, we saw, and he died,” giggling like a hooker after the contents of a cash baron’s wallet. The reporter sadly giggled back.
A sitting head of state is hunted down like a rat by Western-backed lawless thugs and is killed in the most brutal of all manners and the image created by the US is that this is a plausible victory for the entire world and the US Secretary of State triumphantly dishes out scornful giggles to the whole world, celebrating blatantly the death of a man who undoubtedly created the best economy ever known in North Africa, if not across the entire Arab world, regardless of his alleged political shortcomings.
Chris Stevens was a known undercover agent who worked so tirelessly to mobilise rebels against Gaddafi — thievery rebels who fatally stoned him to death in a fallout over a provocative religious video with US origins. We are told by President Obama that the killing of Stevens “has no place among our United Nations,” and that must of course make perfect sense to any life-respecting person.
It is the belief of Hillary Clinton that the death of Gaddafi has a place in our United Nations that stinks to high heaven. It is her ludicrous laughing at this death that makes Hillary Clinton look like Lucifer’s wife and her attitude tempts many people to counter-celebrate the unfortunate death of Ambassador Stevens, if only it were not for the fact that the outer world is far more civilised than the heart of the empire that pretends to lead this world.
The United States wants to create an image of an innocent victim of lawless brutality on its slain ambassador even to the point of trying to internationalise the grief. Ordinarily when intelligence operatives suffer death, they are no cause for international solidarity, much as loss of life should never be a source of any form of celebration.
Heads of state like Gaddafi must ordinarily attract international solidarity when they are forcefully removed from office and they are brutally killed in the process. This is the kind of logic that has a place in our United Nations, if president Obama bothers a bit to read the UN Charter. The Charter is quite silent on state agents who die on foreign tours of duty — it being a matter of no concern to international affairs. It must, however, be noted that in Stevens’ death, perpetrators blatantly violated the Vienna Conventions, given his official position as the US ambassador to Libya.
The reality of the Charter did not augur well with the US opinion over the death of Gaddafi, and so a replacement image had to be created to relegate the death to a matter of victory and honour. The reality about the meddlesome conduct of Chris Stevens would attract in the least an appreciation of why he was killed, and at worst celebrations from those who disagree with the US sabre-rattling foreign policy.
To erase this possibility a replacement image had to be created by elevating the death of Stevens to a matter of international concern, even taking it to the UN General Assembly platform. President Obama was even audacious enough to declare that people like Chris Stevens must determine the future of all of us. We must adopt the US meddlesome political culture, and we must brag about our abilities to mobilise dissent and chaos in other countries the way Stevens did in Benghazi.
Now that Osama bin Laden is no more, the presence of US-led Western military forces in Afghanistan is pretexted on the propaganda line that the forces are there “at the invitation of the Afghan government,” of course meaning the Karzai government installed by the same Western forces.
The image created around the continued presence of Western forces in Afghanistan is centred on the two rhetorical licences of democratisation and security. We are told the forces are there to ensure the country does not return to the “undemocratic” days of the Taliban, and that the Western forces are, in fact, training Afghans to sustain themselves on matters of security. Of course the reality is that the US is pursuing its long-term interests in the Far East, especially the need to watch economic rival China.
In Zimbabwe, the need to keep an image of a democratic MDC-T has been the pre-occupation of Western powers. That image obtains against the background of an egregiously corrupt party led by a scandalous Morgan Tsvangirai who seems to see no irregularity with his shambolic sex life, and has an apparent legendary shallowness in policy.
Tsvangirai believes that the sins of others absolve him of responsibility over his own actions, and he has the temerity to make public proclamations of that ludicrous position. The pliant pro-MDC-T media does celebrate this logic too. And now Tsvangirai believes it is logical to fire his own officials over the mess in his own personal life.
Women, golf, policy, politics and sex are all mixed in one bag inasfar as the world of Tsvangirai runs. How else does one fire Government-appointed officials over personal sex scandals?
In the West any politician that is as scandalous as Morgan Tsvangirai can forget altogether about making it to political office. But these values can be thrown away, as matters of elevating the interests of Western powers take precedence.
The Western media have largely ignored the negative publicity that has been around the personality of Tsvangirai and those media units that have bothered to comment have tried vain spins of blaming Tsvangirai’s political opponents for the misfortunes of their favourite candidate for the type of democracy the West wants imposed on Zimbabwe.
We are told the State agents made Tsvangirai sleep around with a series of women across the Southern African region, making him to impregnate some and promise others all sorts of things, including marriage.
There is the literal approach to the studying of democracy and this approach says democracy is the rule of the people, by the people and for the people. This type of democracy supports the pro-people policies like Zimbabwe’s land reform programme, the economic indigenisation policies of transferring the country’s wealth into the hands of the majority of the people.
This kind of democracy is against the interests of Western powers, it is against the expansionism of Western capitalist interests and, as such, it is a reality that does not serve well the needs of those who own the means of democracy in this world.
An image has got to be created that will on one hand give us the pleasure of democracy, while ensuring on the other hand that we do not end up democratising our economies in the process. This is why it is important that a propagandistic approach is adopted where the image of democracy is created by propping up vacuous characters like Zimbabwe’s Morgan Tsvangirai.
No country needs an unthinking leader for its democracy, but thinking leaders cannot be puppets from a point of view of pure logic. So it becomes important that the mediocrity of people like Tsvangirai is elevated to levels of heroic brilliance, that way shaping favourable public opinion for a man who otherwise does not have any honour beyond his own zip.
When an unthinking puppet needs to be elevated to international heroism, it is possible for people like Julia Gillard to equate characters like Morgan Tsvangirai to Nelson Mandela. To the Westerners the name Nelson Mandela can be used to sugar coat any propaganda meant to further Western interests, much as that name symbolises to all others the undying fighting spirit of African revolutionarism.
It is incumbent upon Zimbabweans to ensure that when we go for elections in March 2013, we are not guided by the arbiter of an image of democracy. Rather we must be guided by the concept of real democracy as defined by the democratisation of our economy as well as our politics.
Zimbabwe we are one and together we will overcome. It is homeland or death!
* Reason Wafawarova is a political writer based in Sydney, Australia.
Labels: HILLARY CLINTON, LIBYA, MORGAN TSVANGIRAI, NEOCOLONIALISM
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COMMENT - This is not an American issue, or even a British issue. This is an oligarch issue. The irony that in fact it is possible for a Zambian politician with deep enough pockets (HH, are you listening), to 'sponsor' an American senator or representative, and get pro-Zambian policies passed in the American houses of Congress. (I'm being sarcastic, but that is the system that exists today.) As we speak major political commentators are in fact lobbyists for the countries of Honduras, Georgia, and of course China. Courtesy of Citizens United, which of course is a direct assault on the sovereignty and democratic content of the nation state it was passed in.
The trillionaire oligarchs are all about the destruction of national sovereignty - national identity, national monuments, national language, national solidarity, national borders, national religion, because strong nations make for strong states, and states are the only competition that is left to them, all that is left between them and world domination. And they fear the sheer numbers of the people, so they need to manage their minds and their psychology. Also read:
Zambia: King Cobra Disappoints and Confounds
President Sata's many promises in 2011 have so far amounted to little but disappointment.
Article | 16 July 2012 - 5:15pm | By Robert Rotberg
Subordination must disappear before democracy can exist
Sat 08 Sep. 2012, 10:20 CAT
No nation has the power to impose its will on other countries. It is said that the social furniture of modern society is so complicated and fragile that it cannot support the jackboot. And it is also said that we cannot run the process of modern society by attempting to impose our will on other nations. And those who have not learnt that are said to have learnt nothing.
We know that what President Michael Sata is saying about some foreign diplomats interfering in the domestic politics of Zambia is true. They are interfering. And they are doing so because we have allowed them the right to interfere in our politics for the last two decades.
And there is no Zambian president who has not complained, in one way or another, about foreign diplomats accredited to Zambia interfering in this country's domestic politics. Dr Kenneth Kaunda used to complain about such interference. Frederick Chiluba did the same. And even Rupiah Banda complained about foreign interference in the domestic politics of this country. Therefore, the threat to expel foreign diplomats accredited to this country if the government finds that they are interfering in Zambia's domestic politics is justifiable and not without basis.
We therefore urge those concerned to realise that if they are to live in the world and to be be regarded as decent nations, decent citizens in the world, they have to act up to different standards than the ones they have so far been following.
The democracy they talk about cannot be realised by any of our countries under the conditions they are imposing on us - conditions of subordination.
The subordination of one country to another must disappear before democracy can exist. How can a country that is subordinated to another country, politically and otherwise, be democratic? Under such conditions, the whole political system becomes nothing but a tool of imperialism for maintaining its domination.
Michael did not mention the countries involved in the interference he is complaining about. But we can mention those countries. It is the United States and British missions in Zambia.
Professor Robert Rotberg was brought here by the United States embassy in Lusaka to do what he did.
This is the article that got things going (also read the comments):
Zambia: King Cobra Disappoints and Confounds
President Sata's many promises in 2011 have so far amounted to little but disappointment.
Article | 16 July 2012 - 5:15pm | By Robert Rotberg
The professor has also written: China Into Africa - Trade, Aid, and Influence, by Robert I. Rotberg
From the description at Amazon.com:
" About the Author
Robert I. Rotberg directs the the Program on Intrastate Conflict and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and is president of the World Peace Foundation. He is the author or editor of numerous books including Worst of the Worst: Dealing with Repressive and Rogue Nations (Brookings, 2007), Building a New Afghanistan (Brookings, 2007), and Battling Terrorism in the Horn of Africa (Brookings, 2005). "
Executive Director of the World Peace Foundation is Alex de Waal.
And also from Think Africa magazine:
" Robert Rotberg
President Emeritus of the World Peace Foundation
Robert I. Rotberg is President emeritus of the World Peace Foundation. An American professor in governance and foreign affairs, he was director of the Program on Intrastate Conflict, Conflict Prevention, and Conflict Resolution at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government (1999-2010), and has served in administrative positions at Tufts University and Lafayette College. In 2003-2004, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Advisory Panel on Africa, and was a Presidential appointee to the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities."
Also, here he blames the effects of the World Bank's structural adjustment programmes on Africa's leadership. He doesn't mention that Asia moved ahead by steadfastly ignoring the three horsemen of the neoliberal economic apocalypse, deregulation, privatisation and free trade. In the Rockefellers' Council on Foreign Relations's (CFR) magazine Foreign Affairs, from back in 2000:
Africa's Mess, Mugabe's Mayhem, by Robert I. Rotberg
And from 2010, inferring that President Mugabe is Adolf Hitler:
(FOREIGN AFFAIRS, CFR) Mugabe Über Alles
The Tyranny of Unity in Zimbabwe
By Robert I. Rotberg
July/August 2010
Did he or Foreign Affairs complain about democracy and apartheid when their Anglo-American Corporation freely benefited from both colonialism and apartheid, systems put in place largely if not completely to execute on their business plans? But now, President Mugabe is 'a tyrant', a title they never applied to, say, the South African president under apartheid or any white minority regime in the 1970s or 1980s. They thought it was 'normal' exclude 90% of the population from national elections, when it came to Africa. Anyway...
From Keith Harmon Snow:
BLOOD DIAMOND
DOUBLETHINK & DECEPTION OVER THOSE WORTHLESS LITTLE ROCKS OF DESIRE
Rick Hines & keith harmon snow
PEACE IS WAR, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
In 2001, the World Peace Foundation Program on Intrastate Conflict at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government organized a conference on conflict diamonds that “involved stakeholders of diverse interests.” WPF program director Robert Rotberg chaired the meeting. Rotberg also directs the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Human Rights, whose directors are the core of the defense and intelligence establishment, men like John Deutch, former CIA director, and Richard Darmam, partner, Carlyle Group. The Harvard diamond conference actually normalized De Beers’ relations with the U.S. Government: De Beers reps received a special government amnesty to attend the conference after years of exile from the U.S. due to anti-trust law violations.
In 2002 the WPF produced a report Diamonds in Peace and War: Severing the Conflict-Diamond Connection. The report lauded the Kennedy School’s efforts based on a rush of activity that followed the conference at the end of November 2001.[31] The “rush of activity” included the U.S. government’s Clean Diamond Trade Act (H.R. 722), born in November 2001, passed in April 2003. All bluster and polish, the Act gave the U.S. President authority to institute “War on Terror” sanctions against any country that deals in dirty diamonds. The U.S. General Accounting Office noted in 2006 that the law is weak and deeply flawed. Since at least 1996, the campaigns of Russ Feingold (D-WI), who co-sponsored the Senate version, have been frequently funded by Leon Tempelsman & Son (1, 2). (Who also contributes to ZDERA co-sponsors Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton.)
Comment - Russ 'The Progressive' Feingold was one of the co-sponsors of ZDERA (along with Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Jesse Helms), which put the Zimbabwean government under a credit freeze through Section 4 C. The language in this section he tried to continue in his personally sponsored Zimbabwe sanctions law, the Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2010. And then he mysteriously lost his senate seat.
SEC. 4. SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRATIC TRANSITION AND ECONOMIC RECOVERY.
(d) Multilateral Financing Conditions- The Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States executive director to each international financial institution to oppose any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe unless...
{exemptions follow}
Maurice Tempelsman was heavily involved in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba, worked for Lazard Freres and De Beers, and as such is basically the Rothschild's representative. This would also explain the centrality of both the language about the DRC and diamonds in both the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 and the Zimbabwe Transition to Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2010. (Gossip: he was also a companion to Jackie O., also see here.)
Maurice Tempelsman is also close to the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 co-sponsor, Hillary Clinton, and her husband Bill. From the Washington Post, from 1997:
" A longtime companion to Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Tempelsman has been a guest at the Clinton White House nearly a dozen times, enjoying two private chats with Hillary Rodham Clinton. He flew to Moscow and back with President Clinton on Air Force One in 1995, and has accompanied the president and first lady sailing on Martha's Vinyard during their vacation trips. "
Source: (WASHINGTON POST) DNC Donor With an Eye On Diamonds
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, August 2, 1997; Page A01
NM Rothschild provided "funding for the creation of De Beers in 1887", which trades and mines 40% of the world's diamonds. Zimbabwe has 20% of the world's known diamond reserves in the Chiadzwa and Marange diamond fields.
- MrK
The British High Commission in Lusaka, together with DFID, are also involved in similar things. They have all sorts of activities that are aimed at giving them some say in the politics of this country. Even their programmes to help 'strengthen' our political parties are also aimed at that. They have been bringing in all sorts of 'researchers' for the same purpose.
We have no doubt that what they are trying to do in this country they would not allow anyone to do in their own countries. What the United States and British diplomats are doing here, our diplomats cannot do in their countries.
But let's not be naive and forget that all these foreign missions are here to serve the interests of their own countries and not ours. But sometimes we have been so naive to think that whatever they think is correct and good for us. And as such we have been very eager to work for them against the interests of our own country.
Some opposition politicians and other civil society elements think the only way to succeed is to be assisted and promoted by these missions. But this is clearly not true because the Patriotic Front won last year's elections without money or the political support of these missions. And our whole liberation struggle in this region succeeded without them. They were actually on the opposite side. They were the sympathisers of Apartheid and white minority regimes in our region. We fought them and triumphed.
And let's not also forget that the problems in Zimbabwe, the decimation of that country's economy are partly due to their interference in the internal affairs of that country. But in Zimbabwe they met their match. For more than a decade, they have failed to impose their will on that country in the way they are doing in other countries. They wanted a regime change, they didn't get it in Zimbabwe.
[Partly? Knowing the sequence of events and the role of the knowing destruction of the Zimbabwe Dollar, I would say all of it is Blair and Bush administrations' doing. They wanted to prevent the success of land reform, which was a raging success in the first two years (2000, 2001) until the implementation of the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001, going into effect on Jan. 1st 2002. Only from 2002 onwards did we see the destruction of the Zimbabwe economy. - MrK]
A regime change will come in Zimbabwe and this is inevitable. But it will not be, and should not be, because of their will and their interference. Change should come in Zimbabwe as a result of the people of that country's desire and will to change their political leadership; as a result of a growth in the confidence in the power of ordinary Zimbabweans to transform their country, and thus transform themselves. This is the type of democracy we are seeking and should be seeking - a growth in the appreciation of people organising, deciding, creating together.
It is not a secret that the Zimbabwean opposition is under their control and funded by them. The opposition leadership in Zimbabwe is, in one way or another, an agent of theirs. We don't want the same to happen in Zambia. We want political parties that truly arise from the people and are pushed into power by the support of the people and not through the machinations of British or American imperialism.
We have been very quiet on these issues for many years and it's time we start resisting; it's time we started denouncing this undesirable behaviour which is not even in accord with acceptable international norms as stipulated under the Geneva Convention.
No one from our part of the world tells the Americans or the British how they should govern themselves. Even when we try on matters of common global interest, they never listen to us; they always do as they please.
Here, the United States ambassador or British high commissioner is made to believe he is at the same level with the president of our Republic. How is this possible? Is it simply because they represent rich and militarily very powerful countries? Look at the arrogance! Look at the lack of respect! What is its source? Is it money? What is it? Is it imperial might?
[Who owns Anglo-American De Beers? - MrK]
They are entitled to be treated with great respect by all of us because they are representatives of nations of people we respect and love. Zambians love the British people a lot. And they have a duty to love them. And no British citizen should be mistreated by anyone in this country. We have a long history we share and we have a future we can share through cooperation and solidarity. But that has to be a product of mutual respect and solidarity. We would like to see more British people come and invest and settle in this country and make it their homeland.
Equally, no Zambian has the right to hate, mistreat or humiliate any American citizen. Many ordinary Americans supported the liberation struggles of our region, sometimes against the wishes and positions of their government. We have no right to be ungrateful to them. We have a duty to respect and love them and indeed defend them when they are unjustifiably attacked by some insane people like it happened on September 11, 2001.
But again that type of solidarity and love is only possible under conditions of mutual respect and reciprocity.
It is time our politicians and other leaders from civil society start to see the world the way it really is. What is needed here is a government of the people by the people for the people, to borrow from Abraham Lincoln's wisdom. What we need are governments that arise from the people, have the support of the people and devote themselves entirely to working and struggling for the people and the people's interests.
And moreover, democracy implies the defence of all the rights of citizens, including the right to independence, freedom, national dignity and honour. There can be no independence, freedom, national dignity and honour in a country whose president and other political leaders are remote controlled by the missions of powerful countries.
We can't have a president of a country who is controlled by remote by the missions of the financially powerful countries. We can't also have opposition leaders whose political agendas are designed by the foreign missions of the United States and Britain in our country. Yes, they have the money and through their agencies they can fund a lot of things. But we should not allow this to be a ticket for their interference in the domestic affairs of our country. We don't want political parties that are run by these missions to decide the destiny of our country.
There is need for patriotism on this score. There is need for vigilance on this issue. We need to be fully aware of what damage this interference can do to the self-confidence, dignity, honour and independence of a people, a nation.
And we close this comment with some guidance from the apostle of our independence struggle on this score:
"No Zambian diplomat is allowed in any way at any time in the country he has gone to serve Zambia to interfere with the affairs of that country. This is not allowed by the government. Any diplomat who does that will be dealt with very severely. In the same way, we expect those who come here as diplomats from other countries never to interfere in our own affairs."
Labels: AMBASSADOR, HILLARY CLINTON, MICHAEL SATA, NEOCOLONIALISM, TREASON
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Clinton praises Joyce Banda for pulling Malawi from economic brink
By Lusubilo Sichali, Nyasa Times
August 5, 2012
Malawi’s Head of State Joyce Banda on Sunday held bilateral talks with the United States of America (USA) Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton at the New State House in Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe. This was the first visit to Malawi by a USA Secretary of State. Clinton hailed Banda for pulling her impoverished country back from the economic brink after a political crisis.
President Banda took the opportunity to share her vision to eradicate poverty among the people through economic growth and wealth creation. She informed Secretary Clinton that her administration is committed to a quick economic recovery programme and that it has so far identified five priority areas that form Malawi’s medium to long term development plan. They are Agriculture; Tourism; Mining; Energy; and Infrastructure Development, she said.
Clinton and Banda
She reiterated her commitment to the rule of law, human rights and democratic institutions and to nurture Malawi’s democracy. In this regard, President Banda requested for increased support towards strengthening of democracy and governance through capacity building for institutions like political parties, Parliament and the civil society, among others. She also requested for assistance for capacity strengthening for Malawi Defence Forces’ peace keeping exercises and the Malawi Police Service training.
Clinton commended President Banda and her new Government on the progress Malawi has made on political and economic governance. Wife of the former US President Bill Clinton, Hillary also applauded President Banda’s administration for regaining donor confidence, restoration of the Millennium Challenge Corporation Compact, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Extended Credit Facility and for the improvements in the economic policy and on human rights.
President Banda applauded the cordial relationship between the Malawi Government and the US Government. She appreciated the fact that the US Government commended Malawi for the constitutional transition in April 2012.
President Banda further acknowledged the confidence the US Government has in Malawi’s new administration; and that this confidence was clearly demonstrated through the warm welcome and enthusiasm that was accorded to President Banda and her delegation during their visit to the US in June this year, according to a State House Press Statement.
According to the statement, the President also thanked the US Government for the bilateral assistance to Malawi, specifically citing the fact that Malawi is a recipient of over $200 million US Government financial support in health, education, economic growth and governance, among other sectors.
She appreciated that Malawi is a recipient of all five US Government Presidential Initiatives—the Feed the Future Initiative, which President Banda officially launched in July; the Global Health Initiative; the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President’s Malaria Initiative; and the Global Climate Change Initiative.
MCC restoration
President Banda thanked Clinton in her capacity as Chairperson of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) for the reinstatement of Malawi’s Compact to improve the country’s power sector.
Clinton commended the Malawi Government for strong leadership on fiscal discipline, encouraging President Banda’s administration to continue keeping expenditures under control; the need for shared sacrifice; transparency; accountability; and Government’s sustained engagement with the civil society and the private sector.
“Secretary Clinton noted President Banda’s drive towards private sector-led growth and that trade should replace aid. In this regard, Secretary Clinton called for the strengthening of Malawi’s trade with the US and urged Malawi to take full advantage of the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), as well as the US Africa Energy Finance Initiative coordinated by the Overseas Private Investment Corporation,” said the State House statement.
Labels: HILLARY CLINTON, JOYCE BANDA
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Hillary Clinton punts US interest in Africa
03 Aug 2012 06:44 - Charles Molele
Hillary Clinton, the United States secretary of state, arrives in South Africa on August 7 on the final leg of her 11-day African safari, widely seen as an attempt by President Barack Obama's administration to counter the ever-increasing Chinese influence on the continent.
Clinton is visiting Senegal, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi and South Africa largely to promote Obama's new Africa strategy, which focuses on the continent's economic potential as well as on the advancement of its peace and security.
At the start of her visit to Senegal this week, Clinton took an indirect swipe at China and its investment in Africa.
She once again warned African leaders to embrace democracy and partnership with responsible foreign powers if they wanted to improve the living standards of their people.
[Or else... - MrK]
Although she did not mention China by name, Clinton said that, unlike other countries, the US would continue to stand up for democracy and human rights.
[Or undermine it, whatever the needs of the transnational corporations are. What are they positively doing about the DRC, where the people are being repressed so that their resources can be stolen? Considering she is so close to say Maurice Tempelsman, he can explain to her in detail how President Lumumba was murdered just for that purpose, two years before President Kennedy. 40 years to the date of the murder of President Laurent Kabila, again for the same reason, with the same economic beneficiaries. Words are nice, but for those in power only actions will suffice. As long as US politicians like herself are run by the Rockefellers, they are not going to do anything serious about the resource theft in Africa or anywhere else. - MrK]
Partnership
This could be interpreted as a thinly veiled reference to China's appalling human rights record.
"The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for themselves, leaving nothing or very little behind, should be over in the 21st century," Clinton told a media briefing in Dakar after meeting Macky Sall, Senegal's new president.
"America will stand up for democracy and universal human rights, even when it might be easier or more profitable to look the other way to keep resources flowing. Not every partner makes that choice, but we do and we will."
[Odd that it is China that leaves behind infrastructure and development, not Anglo-Amrerican De Beers or Rio Tinto. - MrK]
Clinton called the US's support for democracy and human rights the "heart of the American model of partnership".
China buys one-third of its oil from Africa, mainly from Angola, Sudan and Nigeria, to fuel its surging growth. It has also acquired mines in Zambia, textile factories in Lesotho, railways in Uganda, timber in the Central African Republic and retail development in almost every capital in sub-Saharan Africa.
China's influence
At a recent summit with 50 African nations in Beijing, China pledged $20-billion in new loans to Africa over the next three years for infrastructure and manufacturing.
Jakkie Cilliers, executive director at the Institute for Security Studies, said Clinton's trip to Africa was part of an exercise to neutralise, or at least minimise, China's influence on the continent.
"The trip by Clinton generally re-presents increased recognition by the Obama administration that Africa is now a global player," he said.
"We are not only being courted by the Chinese, but [by] the Americans as well. Perceptions of Africa are changing and the continent is becoming a global destination for trade and investment."
The financial crisis in 2008 hurt the US economy and Obama's new strategy is seen by many as another way of reversing its fortunes through greater trade and investment in Africa.
US ambassador to South Africa Donald Gips said Clinton's visit to South Africa was part of a "strategic dialogue" to discuss issues ranging from trade and investment to diplomatic relations in multilateral institutions such as the United Nations, G20 and COP17.
Robert Kelley, a founding member of Democrats Abroad South Africa, said South Africa had become a strategic partner of the US and its potential could not be ignored.
Sound policy
He said nobody would trade with or invest in a partner they did not hold in high regard.
"I would expect the secretary to have a view that encompasses the Africa of tomorrow and not the troubled Africa of yesterday that is so often represented," Kelley said.
"Over the past several years, the quest for sound policy towards Africa has never been fully realised and yet Africa is clearly a more strategic trading partner than one could have ever imagined.
"It can no longer be considered [merely] a place to set up military bases, or simply a location to secure tomorrow's resources on the backs of the poor."
Clinton is scheduled to hold talks with International Relations Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane and address business leaders before paying a visit to former president Nelson Mandela, who recently celebrated his 94th birthday.
Labels: CHINA, HILLARY CLINTON
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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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