Saturday, December 13, 2014

كيف حل «الانعقاد الدائم» بهدوء ولماذا تبددت أصوات التصعيد لدى القيادة الفلسطينية؟

عرب 48
من دون ضوضاء ألغت قيادة السلطة الفلسطينية اجتماع القيادة الذي كان  مخططا مساء أمس، وفجأة تبددت أصوات التهديد وخبت نبرات التصعيد. و«الانعقاد الدائم» الذي أعلنت عنه القيادة الفلسطينية يوم الأربعاء الماضي حل دون تقديم شروحات أو تبريرات.
طرحت مقترحات تصعيدية في الاجتماع الذي عقد يوم الأربعاء، تليق بحدث بحجم مقتل الوزير زياد أبو عين- إثر تعرضه للعنف المفرط من قبل جنود جيش الاحتلال، وعلى رأس تلك المقترحات: وقف التنسيق الأمني وتوقيع معاهدة روما للانضمام لمحكمة الجنايات الدولية.
لم تتخذ القيادة قرارات في اجتماعها، وأرجأت الحسم إلى اجتماع كان يفترض أن يعقد مساء أمس، وأعلنت أنها في حالة انعقاد دائم. لكن مر يوم الجمعة بهدوء، ودون سابق إنذار ألغي الاجتماع،  ولم تقدم قيادة السلطة تفسيرا حول قرار الإلغاء، وتبدد الصخب وحل مكانه السكون، ولم يعقب أحد من القيادات على تأجيل الاجتماع، بل أنهم توقفوا عن الرد على اتصالات الصحافيين.
 وكان أكثر من مسؤول فلسطيني، آخرهم صائب عريقات، أكدوا بأن قرار وقف التنسيق الأمني سيتخذ. فما الذي حصل؟
وألمح مسؤول فلسطيني لـ'عرب 48' أن رئيس السلطة الفلسطينية تعرض لضغوط  شديدة، مشيرا إلى أن مقترح كيري الذي أعلن عنه اليوم  ليس منفصلا عن إلغاء الاجتماع الذي كان يفترض أن تتخذ فيه قرارات من شأنها أن تغير مسار العلاقة بين إسرائيل والسلطة الفلسطينية.

من جانب آخر، أكد مسؤول عسكري إسرائيلي رفيع المستوى يوم أمس بـأن التنسيق الأمني بين إسرائيل والسلطة الفلسطينية متواصل. مضيفا: ' بكل ما يتعلق  بمحاربة حركة حماس ومكافحة الإرهاب يتواصل بشكل معتاد'. وتابع: ' شهدت العلاقة هزّة خفيفة لكن التنسيق متواصل'.
 وأعلن اليوم أن الإدارة الأمريكية تدرس خطواتها حيال مشروعي القرار، الفلسطيني والفرنسي في مجلس الأمن، والمطروخ على طاولة البحث عدة احتمالات: إما تقديم مشروع  قرار أمريكي فضفاض حمال أوجه   يتضمن الدعوة لـ «إقامة دولة فلسطينية»  ويأخذ مطالب إسرائيل بعين الاعتبار، او استخدام حق النقض الفيتو على مشروعي القرار، أو الامتناع عن التصويت.
وقالت مصادر إسرائيلية إن رئيس الحكومة بنيامين نتيناهو يوم الاثنين  المقبل وزير الخارجية الأمريكي جون كيري، للتداول في مشروعي القرار  الفلسطيني والأوروبي حول القضية الفلسطينية.
 وأضافت أن «إسرائيل تأمل أن تستخدم واشنطن حق النقض الفيتو على كل قرار أممي لصالح الفلسطينيين، ولكن في الولايات المتحدة يسيرون باتجاه خيار يشكل مشكلة بالنسبة لنتنياهو، وهو مشروع قرار أمريكي يدعو إلى إقامة دولة فلسطينية، بصيغة قرار 'مخفّفة'  وودية أكثر اتجاه إسرائيل.
وأضافت أن المستوى المهني في وزارة الخارجية الأمريكية يرى بأن فرض الفيتو على اقتراح يدعو إلى إقامة دولة فلسطينية في حدود 1967 (مع تبادل الأراضي) يضر بعلاقات الولايات المتحدة مع الدول العربية، وقد يسبب أزمة لإسرائيل.  ومن هذا المنطلق تدرس حلا وسطا بأن تقوم إدارة الرئيس الأمريكي باراك أوباما بطرح مشروع قرار  يتضمن الإشارة إلى حدود 1967 (مع تبادل الأراضي)، وويلأأخذ متطلبات الأمن الإسرائيلية بعين الاعتبار، وتجنب تحديد موعد نهائي صارم للانسحاب الإسرائيلي من الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة عام 1967.

Jordan: Assault on Free Expression

Prosecutors Use 2014 Reform Loopholes to Silence Critics

Labeling speech ‘terrorism’ doesn’t hide the reality that Jordan is still intent on muzzling its citizens who speak freely. Jordan claimed credit for limiting the jurisdiction of its State Security Court, but in reality it left gaping loopholes for authorities to carry on business as usual.
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director

(Beirut) – Jordanian authorities have broken reform promises by arresting and charging activists for speech-related offenses. At least three activists were arrested in recent months and charged with speech-related offenses under vague terrorism legislation and are being tried in Jordan’s State Security Court.

Those detained and facing trial for expressing their views include Zaki Bani Irsheid, leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s political party in Jordan, Mohammed Sayed Bakr, a senior Brotherhood official, and Yousef Smadi, an independent activist.

“Labeling speech ‘terrorism’ doesn’t hide the reality that Jordan is still intent on muzzling its citizens who speak freely,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Jordan claimed credit for limiting the jurisdiction of its State Security Court, but in reality it left gaping loopholes for authorities to carry on business as usual.”

The State Security Court was established in 1959 with jurisdiction over penal code crimes deemed to harm Jordan’s internal and external security. The court is not independent of the executive, as the prime minister appoints military judges on the recommendation of the army joint chiefs of staff, while Jordan’s judicial council appoints civilian judges. The state security judges sit in panels of three – some military, some civilian, and some mixed. The prosecutors are all military officers.

Jordanian lawmakers approved reforms for the State Security Court law in early 2014 to restrict its jurisdiction to terrorism charges and four other crimes. But lawmakers did not remove overbroad provisions used to restrict peaceful expression from terrorism statutes. Instead they broadened the terrorism law to encompass vague notions such as “disturbing [Jordan’s] relations with a foreign state,” which is interpreted to include criticizing policies of neighboring countries.

Police arrested Bani Irsheid, leader of the Islamic Action Front political party, on November 20 and charged him on December 8 with “disturbing [Jordan’s] relation with a foreign state” under the terrorism law based on his criticism of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in a November 15 Facebook post. He is in Marka Prison in east Amman and will face trial in the State Security Court. The Jordan Times reported that his defense team filed a bail request on November 24, but it was later denied.

The Facebook post, written in response to the UAE’s classification of the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist organization,” does not call for violence. It accuses the UAE of collusion with Israel and calls for the UAE to be expelled from the Gulf Cooperation Council, Arab League, and Organization of Islamic Cooperation. It says:
The influential leadership in the Emirates undertakes the role of American policeman in the region and the dirtiest functional roles of service to the Zionist Masonic project. It stands behind all acts of terrorism and destruction of the project of the [Arab] nation, and it conspires against the causes of the [Arab] nation and against the movements of national liberation, and it supports coups and funds spying and Westernization movements. This leadership is cancerous cells on the body of the Arab nation.
“Disturbing [Jordan’s] relations with a foreign state” has been a crime listed in Jordan’s penal code for many years and has been used by Jordanian prosecutors against speech critical of foreign rulers. The State Security Court reform law, passed earlier in 2014, removed this charge from the jurisdiction of the court, but in April, lawmakers reversed the reform by adding the provision to Jordan’s terrorism law, with a penalty of 3 to 20 years in prison.

Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour defended the prosecution as a matter punishing “defamation” against the UAE, stating that Bani Irsheid “should have read the law before making the post.” Another cabinet member told theJordan Times that Bani Irsheid cannot be considered a “political prisoner” because “[i]t is only when people are arrested for their opinions that they are called ‘political prisoners.’ This has never been the case in Jordan.”

Neighboring Gulf Cooperation Council countries pledged in 2011 to provide Jordan with US$5 billion in development aid, including $1.25 billion from the UAE.

“It’s a shame that Jordanian leaders seem to care more about hurting the feelings of foreign leaders who provide financial support to the government than the rights of Jordanian citizens,” Whitson said. “If Jordanian citizens can’t peacefully criticize policies in the region, what option do they have left to express their political views?”

Another vague charge prosecutors have exploited to curb free expression is penal code article 149, which proscribes “undermining the political regime in the kingdom or inciting opposition to it.” The penal code classifies this charge as a terrorism provision, and as such it falls under the jurisdiction of the State Security Court.

Police arrested Bakr in September 2014 on that charge based on an August 6 speech to a brotherhood rally protesting the Israeli invasion of Gaza. The charge carries a penalty of 3 to 20 years in prison. Bakr is in Marka Prison.

Bakr’s charge sheet states that Bakr maintained ideas “opposing the political regime” and “these ideas rested in place with the defendant until the beginning of August 2014 when the events taking place in the Gaza Strip … allowed him to express these ideas exploiting the feelings of anger that pervaded the Arab street.…”

In the speech Bakr spoke sarcastically of the role played by Jordan and other regional countries in the conflict, stating:
Thank you, you stupid [people], if even the least of us were tasked to develop a plan to diminish Hamas the plan would have been wiser than your plans you fools.… Who of you is embarrassed to be part of an army or the armies of Arabism today? I ask God’s forgiveness because it is a sin to be part of an army that does not come to the aid of flowing blood [in Gaza].
Al-Smadi was arrested on September 21, a family member told Human Rights Watch, and faces trial in the State Security Court on a similar charge for criticizing King Abdullah II on Facebook. He is in Muwaqqar I Prison, 35 kilometers east of Amman.

The charge sheet cites several Facebook posts in which al-Smadi allegedly encouraged residents of Ajloun, a city 45 kilometers north of Amman, to boycott a Friday prayer at an Ajloun mosque in July because the king would be visiting.

A July 25 post allegedly stated: “No welcome to you in Ajloun, Abdullah II; return to where your grandfather came from on his mangy camel. These are environs of Jerusalem, pure land, and there is no place in it for traitors of the nation.…”

Al-Smadi’s family member told Human Rights Watch that al-Smadi claims he did not write these posts and that his Facebook account had been hacked at the time the posts appeared on his page.

The penal code article historically used to punish criticism of the king, 195, proscribes “lengthening the tongue.” This charge was removed from State Security Court jurisdiction in 2014. It appears that prosecutors are instead using “undermining the political regime,” a terrorism provision, to keep prosecutions for criticizing the court under the jurisdiction of the State Security Court, Human Rights Watch said.

Freedom of expression is guaranteed under article 15 of Jordan’s constitution. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which Jordan is a state party, protects the right to freedom of expression, including “freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice” (article 19). According to article 9.3 of the ICCPR, “[i]t shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody.”

Egypt bans former US diplomat as nation continues crackdown on dissent

American scholar Michele Dunne en route to pro government conference appears on no-entry list and cites the irony on Twitter

The Guardian

Egypt protests
 A protester holds a placard reading “R4BIA” (L) and a poster of Egypt’s ousted president Mohamed Morsi. Photograph: Thomas Samson/AFP
Egypt denied entry to a prominent American scholar arriving at Cairo’s international airport Saturday, the latest incident in the country’s sweeping crackdown on dissent.
Michele Dunne, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former US diplomat, had accepted an invitation to speak at a conference organized by the Egyptian Council for Foreign Affairs, made up primarily of former Egyptian diplomats.
In her work, Dunne is frequently critical of the Egyptian government.
From Frankfurt, Germany, she said on Twitter that some Egyptians complain she doesn’t pay enough attention to pro-government views. But “when I accept invite to (conference) of pro (government) group they deny me entry. Go figure.”
Airport authorities say Dunne’s name appeared on a no-entry list prepared by security officials. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.
Last August Human Rights Watch executive director Ken Roth and regional director Sarah Leah Whitson were also denied entry to Egypt ahead of the publication of a report accusing the government of possible crimes against humanity.
Since Islamist President Mohammed Morsi was overthrown last year, the Muslim Brotherhood group has been branded a terrorist organization. Its members have been imprisoned, detained and killed in a crackdown conducted under the banner of “combating terrorism.”
The crackdown has extended to liberal and leftist critics of the government. Over 20,000 people have been arrested since Morsi’s ouster last year.

TORTURERS ARE NOT PATRIOTS

By Eric Margolis

Torture is a crime under both American and international law. The Bush administration repeatedly broke the law from 2002 to 2006 by unleashing a wave of torture, kidnapping, and murder, all under the banner of its faux “war on terror.”
“Terror” is a wonderfully useful propaganda term developed by the Israelis and adopted by the Bush administration to dehumanize and delegitimize America’s violent enemies who were opposing US presence in much of the Muslim world.
The US Central Intelligence Agency, created to gather and assess information, was turned into a ruthless paramilitary hunter of America’s real or imagined enemies. Of course, America had to be protected from another 9/11-type attack. But, just as much, the Bush administration was seeking revenge for the 9/11 attacks that caught the tough-talking president asleep on guard duty. CIA was given the dirty job and then chivvied without relent by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Muslims had to be taught a dire lesson. The Guantanamo gulag, the freezing rooms, beatings, contorted positions, waterboarding – all tortures favored by the old Soviet secret police – were to serve as a stark warning to disobedient miscreants in America’s Mideast Empire, which I call, the “American Raj.” Humiliation and degradation techniques developed by Israel to turn Arab prisoners into informers were applied full force by US military jailers at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.
Amazingly, some idiots at CIA actually paid two quack psychologists $81 million to develop tortures. Any self-respecting Moroccan or Serb policeman would have happily done job for $100 cash.
As a journalist, I’ve been writing about the American Inquisition since 2003. America’s tame media and weak-willed Congress ignored this systemic criminal behavior. Official Washington and the court media simply accepted the absurd euphemism, “Enhanced Interrogation,” with childlike naiveté.
President Barack Obama quite rightly banned any more torture but then emasculated his orders by protecting America’s Inquisitors from justice. Obama’s “we tortured some folks” was not enough to explain away America’s descent into police state behaviour under the Bush administration.
Now, on the 11th hour, Sen. Diane Feinstein has done her duty, at least to a degree, by forcing a heavily edited version of her Intelligence Committee’s report into the open over fierce objections by Republicans and the “transparency” president. Kudos for the senator.
That’s how government checks and balances are supposed to work. The reason Bush and his neoconservative advisors were allowed to plunge to US into its biggest foreign policy disaster in Iraq was precisely because a tame Congress rubber-stamped his war of aggression and the media cheered it on. Almost all criticism was silenced by the lingering horror of 9/11.
Those in the national media, like this writer, who dared challenge the lies that led the US into the Iraq War or false claims that Saddam Hussein was somehow behind 9/11, lost their jobs and were blacklisted and accused of being “unpatriotic.”
Republicans are now insisting the Senate report is wrong and that President Bush didn’t know about the torture or secret prisons. The CIA’s torturers were “patriots,” insists chief John Brennan.
Die-hard Communists in Russia still insist, “Comrade Stalin didn’t know about the gulag or KGB crimes.” But even Vice President Dick Cheney, the Grand High Inquisitor, says Bush knew from Day 1 and signed off on the torture. Cheney is just as culpable. So are the former CIA chiefs Tenet and Hayden. Only the FBI stood up and warned that so-called enhanced interrogation amounted to torture, a crime.
Republicans want George W. Bush cleared because Gov. Jeb Bush is planning a run for the presidency. So the Bush name and the Republican legacy of two lost wars must be whitewashed. Karl Rove has been assigned this task. Fox TV and the Wall Street Journal have been leading the Pravda-style campaign to rewrite history.
Back in the 1960’s, President John Kennedy tried to lay all blame on CIA for bumbling US plots against Cuba and attempts to murder Fidel Castro. Official Washington may again dump this whole ugly mess on senior CIA officials and demand they fall on their swords. I’ve been through all this before when asked to serve on the Church Commission, which investigated CIA’s last era of crime.
Most CIA senior officers are bureaucrats, not 007’s. In my long experience with intelligence, they were following orders from the White House, not running amok. As a former military man, I was taught command responsibility. If a ship hits a rock, its captain is responsible, even if he was asleep. When the horrors of Abu Ghraib prison were revealed, only a few small fry got their wrists slapped. Like defeat, crime is an orphan. The buck does not stop in the White House.
If America does not taken action to bring to justice those senior politicians and officials who egregiously broke the law, it has no longer any right to boast of being a “city on hill” or preach similar claptrap to other nations. Alas, this is unlikely to happen. America’s Justice Department is protecting the guilty, courts won’t take action, and the Republicans are coming. Democrats who rubber-stamped the unnecessary wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are mostly muted. Obama urges we not rehash the past – unless it has to do with Nazi crimes.
It may be up to other nations with a higher regard for human rights and law to pursue the matter. That’s clearly why prime malefactors George Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Tenet and Hayden of CIA, and Condoleeza Rice are so nervous about traveling abroad. They and Britain’s mendacious Tony Blair have much to answer for.
The reason ISIS – which was formed in Abu Ghraib prison – dressed its beheading victims in orange prison suits was to make the obvious link to Guantanamo. Our sins are coming to haunt us.
The whole world expects a higher standard of law, government, and behavior from the United States. That’s why I was always proud to be an American and to wear my nation’s uniform. That was before Bush & Co. brought so low our nation, fouled its honor, and made it into a world-class hypocrite. Time to clean out our Augean Stables.
Torturers are never patriots. They are criminals.
Copyright Eric S. Margolis 2014

نصيحة جزائرية للشعب السوري!

نصيحة جزائرية للشعب السوري!

د. فيصل القاسم
صحيح أن الفارق الزمني بين الثورتين الجزائرية والسورية حوالى ربع قرن من الزمان، إلا أن أوجه الشبه بين الثورتين واضحة للعيان. لهذا بات البعض يخشى، على ضوء المبادرات الدولية والروسية تحديداً، أن تنتهي الثورة السورية على الطريقة الجزائرية البائسة، وأن يعود جنرالات الأمن والجيش إلى تشديد قبضتهم على البلاد والعباد عبر مصالحات زائفة وقوانين الوئام الوطني الكاذبة المفصلة على مقاس القتلة والمجرمين الذي عاثوا في البلاد خراباً وتدميراً وقتلاً. وقد وضع أحد الباحثين الجزائريين أوجه الشبه التي لا تخطئها عين بين الحالتين الجزائرية والسورية. ولو رتبنا الأحداث من البداية إلى النهاية لوجدنا التالي:
خروج مظاهرات مطالبة بإلغاء الانقلاب الذي قام به جنرالات الجزائر على نتائج الانتخابات وضرورة إعطاء الجبهة الإسلامية للإنقاذ الفرصة في الحكم. بالمقابل، خرجت مظاهرات شعبية في سوريا مطالبة بتغيير نظام الحكم. وكما تصدى النظام الجزائري للمظاهرات الشعبية بالحديد والنار، أنزل بشار الأسد الجيش إلى الشوارع فوراً للقضاء على التجمعات الشعبية والسياسية. وقد تشابه النظامان في شن حملة مداهمات واعتقالات في صفوف المعارضة واختفاء عشرات الألوف، مما حدا بالمعارضة إلى حمل السلاح للدفاع عن نفسها في كلتا الدولتين، فأصبح صاحب الحق متمرداً في نظر النظامين.
وكما ظهرت في الجزائر جماعات متطرفة مجهولة المنشأ، شعارها محاربة النظام وتشويه سمعة المعارضة، برزت على الساحة السورية أيضاً جماعات لم يعرف أحد من أين جاءت. والغريب أن كل تلك الجماعات جاءت باسم الدين وشعارها «الله أكبر». ويعتقد الكثيرون أنها صنيعة أمنية في كلتا الحالتين، ولكم القياس. ثم تلى ذلك البدء في حملات التصفية الجماعية لكل من كان له علاقة من قريب أو من بعيد بالمعارضة الأصلية.
لاحظوا أيضاً ظهور المجازر الجماعية بالجملة، والمجرم مجهول، والكل يتبرأ من الجريمة. أضف إلى ذلك الحملة المسعورة لتشويه صورة الإسلام والمعارضة. وكما هرب ملايين الجزائريين للخارج، أصبح العالم الآن يضرب المثل بعدد اللاجئين الذين هربوا من سوريا جراء الصراع الدامي. وقد أصبح كلّ من الشعبين منبوذاً أينما حلّ، وصارت صفة الإرهاب ملازمة لهما.
لاحظوا أن العالم في ذلك الوقت تحرك، لكن ليس لإنصاف الشعب الجزائري المسكين، بل لإنهاء الصراع لصالح الجنرالات والحفاظ على النظام. لاحظوا أيضاً أن العالم يعيد الكرة الآن في سوريا، حيث تناسى ما حل بالسوريين من كوارث، وأصبح همه الحفاظ على الحكم في دمشق من خلال مصالحات مفروضة على الشعب فرضاً بعد أن ذاق الأمرّين على مدى سنوات من التشرد والجوع والمرض والدمار. وكما دخل الشعب الجزائري وقتها في حالة من الضياع والتيه والحسرة، وكان يتمنى الرجوع إلى نقطة البداية والرضى بالواقع، فإن الكثير من السوريين بات يحن إلى أيام الطغيان الخوالي، ويريد سلته بلا عنب.
إلى هنا كل شيء متطابق حرفياً بين التجربتين الجزائرية والسورية. وعلى ضوء ذلك يمكن أن نتوقع الأحداث التالية في سوريا بناء على النموذج الجزائري. أولاً: الدعوة إلى الحوار بين أطراف النزاع برعاية أصحاب المصالح. ثانياً: الدعوة إلى الوئام المدني ووقف إطلاق النار واعتبار الوضع حرباً أهلية، وبالتالي لا أحد سيُحاسب لاحقاً. ثالثاً: الدعوة إلى مصالحة وطنية، وذلك يعني عفا الله عما سلف، وينجو الجميع بفعلته والذين ماتوا، والمجرمون حسابهم عند ربهم ولا عقاب، ولا متابعة، ولا هم يحزنون في الدنيا. رابعاً: بقاء النظام في الحكم، ويتم استبدال الرئيس بشخصية جديدة حسنة السمعة وتـُرضي الجميع، لكنه في الواقع تطور يخدم النظام ويدعم قوته، ويعطيه شرعية جديدة لم يكن يحلم بها قبل الثورة. خامساً:.عندما ترضى المعارضة بالمصالحة فاقرأ السلام عليها، لأن النظام سيعمل على تلميع صورته وتشويه سمعة الطرف الآخر، ويستحيل بعدها القيام بثورة ديمقراطية في البلد. سادساً: العودة إلى نقطة الصفر، والجميع سيسكت خوفاً من تكرار الاحداث من جديد، وكلما ظهرت بوادر انتفاضة قام النظام بتفجير هنا وآخر هناك، فيهدأ الجميع.
ولمن ما زال لديه أمل في الحرية، فإن النظام الذي قتل مليون سوري لا يقيم لك أي وزن ولا أهمية لوجودك، فيما لو تمكن ثانية. لاحظ كيف صمت الشعب الجزائري بعد تلك التجربة المريرة، وانظر إلى أين وصل وضعه الآن. رئيس مشلول، وفساد ليس له مثيل، ومجرمون يمارسون الموبقات على رؤوس الأشهاد، ولا أحد يجرؤ على الكلام، فالجميع خائف. وليعلم السوريون، إذا رجع النظام، فلن يرحم أحداً. وبالتالي، كل من ينخدع بوعود المصالحة المزعومة في سوريا، فلا يلم إلا نفسه. لهذا أمام الشعب أمران اثنان: إما أن ترضوا بالعودة إلى نقطة الصفر وفق الأحداث المتوقعة، وإما أن توحدوا الصفوف، وتحسموا أمركم ضد النظام الحاكم، لأنه في أضعف أحواله، ولو كان قادراً على المواجهة لما بدأ في الدعوة إلى المصالحة أصلاً .
فاختاروا مصيركم الآن: إما أن تكونوا أو لا تكونوا.
اللهم اشهد أني قد بلغت.
أخوكم المحب ابن الجزائر.
٭ كاتب واعلامي سوري

عملية اقتحام قاعدة زكيم إبان حرب غزة


Anything But Progress: US Data Shows Little Results in ISIS War

Over 1,000 Airstrikes, But What Was Even Hit?

by Jason Ditz, December 12, 2014
60-plus nations nominally in the coalition and over 1,000 airstrikes between Iraq and Syria, the US has thrown myriad data at Congress to try to prove “progress” in the war on ISIS. Yet a closer inspection reveals anything but.
Over 1,000 airstrikes sounds like a lot, but it’s not clear how many actually hit intended targets. McClatchy reported that some of the bombing locations were nearly 100 miles off of the target.
Watching what’s actually happening on the ground sure doesn’t help the case of the war, as ISIS controls virtually all of the territory it did at the start of the US war. They lost a few border villages and gained some others.
The US has had a similar problem during the Afghan occupation, claiming “progress” in general terms but offering no data that actually backs it up, and indeed, ignoring evidence that the war isn’t going well at all.

Why Tunisia succeeded where Egypt failed

The situation in Tunisia remains perilous despite the smooth parliamentary and presidential elections.


By Mark LeVine
Email Article
 
Print Article
 
Share article
 
Send Feedback
In Tunisia, the elements of the state remain bastions of the ancien regime, writes LeVine [Getty]
The coincidence couldn't be more striking. As Tunisians prepare for a run-off in their first full presidential elections, an Egyptian court has declared invalid all remaining murder and corruption charges against former President Hosni Mubarak, which stemmed from his three decades of misrule and the hundreds killed in the brutal crackdown he launched to preserve it.
While denizens of Tunis debate whether interim President Moncef Marzouki or Ben Ali era veteran Beji Caid Essebsi can best move the country forward, security forces in Cairo fired on crowds who attempted to enter Tahrir Square, the erstwhile centre of the revolution, to protest the Mubarak decision, killing at least one person while arresting dozens.
The untold thousands of peaceful protesters and activists rotting in Egypt's jails and the cult of personality today surrounding President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi tell the story of how the reluctant decision by Tahrir's revolutionaries to agree to a military-led transition turned out.
In Tunisia, the elements of the state, such as the interior ministry, remain bastions of the ancien regime. But the country has undeniably moved further than any Arab country towards a real and sustainable democracy. This should not surprise anyone familiar with Tunisia's history, as the country boasts the Arab - indeed, Muslim - world's first modern constitution, from 1861, and has long been among the most cosmopolitan and open in the region.
Central issue
But the central issue today is precisely how the country built its post-Ben Ali leadership. Whatever one wants to say about the Islamist Nahda Party, its spiritual and political leader Rachid Ghannoushi re-entered Tunisian politics with a long history of supporting pluralism and democracy. And when it was clear that the party could not govern effectively, it ceded power and agreed to new elections, while members have engaged in public self-criticism about its failings.
Tunisians vote in landmark presidential poll
Equally if not more important, Marzouki is one of the Arab world's most respected human rights figures, whose Congress for the Republic Party has brought togethervarious opposition tendencies since its creation in 2001.
His term in office has been far from a sterling success - it could not have been otherwise, given the Herculean task of building a new governing system on the still functioning body of Ben Ali's mafia state.
But despite political assassinations, flaring religious extremism, and deep-seated economic problems, the country has moved to solidify a new civil and democratic political system. The contrast with the Egyptian post-revolutionary leadership couldn't be clearer.
There are many structural reasons why Tunisia has progressed politically while Egypt has seemingly returned to its pharaonic roots (as many commentators like to describe its penchant for authoritarian leaders). The most prominent are the exponentially greater power of the Egyptian military vis-a-vis its North African counterpart and its far larger, and poorer, population. But I would argue that the centrality, at least politically, of human rights to the national discourse has been one of the unheralded heroes of the post-revolutionary period. Just compare Tunisia and its president with the situation in Egypt. As Abdel Basset Hassan, head of the Arab Institute for Human Rights in Tunis and a long-time resident of Cairo, explained to me when we met in September, human rights are clearly being institutionalised to a strong degree.
The problem is that human rights is a frail political discourse. Whether in the most "advanced" democracies like the United States and UK, or developing countries like Egypt and Tunisia, it's easily swept aside by appeals to core national and/or religious identities and the creation of threats whose defeat inevitably requires watering down the protections afforded to all citizens. More broadly, human rights exists in a contradictory political framework: In most societies they both require revolutionary change to be fully implemented and yet are routinely violated in revolutionary situations where one form of power is, more or less violently, overpowering and superseding another.
A Nida Tounes-Nahda alignment would provide a powerful ideological and political cover for retrenching the policies that brought Tunisia to the brink of revolution.
Market fundamentalist liberalism
As revolutions from Iran to Cuba have shown, its all too easy for revolutions fought in the name of human rights, justice and dignity to themselves produce violent and repressive systems.
What's more, human rights is intimately tied to a notion of individual personhood that can all too easily be hijacked to a kind of market fundamentalist liberalism in which broad political freedom masks incredibly deep and destruction inequalities, exploitation, and repression - whether of colonised peoples "outremer" or of working classes at home.
Yet, for anyone who's experienced the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions in action, the power and importance of human rights is undeniable. It remains one of the most radical concepts of the modern era; first, because it demands recognising others as inherently equal to oneself regardless of their differences - ethnic, racial, gender, religion, class, or nation. Second, they demand strict limitation on state power which is inherently and, unless checked, normatively abusive of citizens.
And this is where the situation in Tunisia remains perilous despite the smooth parliamentary and presidential elections of the last two months. While Marzouki's Congress for the Republic party represents a poorer and more traditional (and southern) component of Tunisian society, Essebsi's Nida Tounes Party is not merely tied to the old regime, but to the international financial interests to which it was beholden.
Indeed, the main threat in Tunisia today, in this regard, is not a religious-secular divide but left-neoliberal, with the two powerful parties working together to suppress all opposition to once again making Tunisia the Arab world's "poster child" for a "broken down" neoliberal reform model which has always produced - and masked - the desperate inequalities that led to the revolution against Ben Ali in the first place.
For decades, neoliberalism has produced the same results most everywhere it has been implemented: aggregate growth that mask growing inequality, increasing corruption, crime, environmental degradation and repression. The only check on such policies would be a strong and united left (the opposite of the present situation, by some accounts) centred broadly on labour rights, a fair distribution of wealth and resources and fighting against the corruption that fatally weakened the previous state.
Neoliberal ideologies
But one of the signature strengths of neoliberal ideologies, from Kansas to Cairo, is precisely how efficiently they motivate people to support leaders and policies that are manifestly against their economic interests. A Nida Tounes-Nahda alignment would provide a powerful ideological and political cover for retrenching the policies that brought Tunisia to the brink of revolution.
On the other hand, there are more positive countervailing forces at work in Tunis that are cause for long-term hope. This process is exemplified by the establishment of Dar Essaida, or Saida House, a human rights centre located in and emerging from the local community in one of Tunis' poorest quarters. As Hassan explained, encouraging the poor and working class to (re)define the political and cultural discourses of human rights in ways that reflect their struggles and desires marks an important moment in the evolution of human rights practice.
"It's about implementing a complete vision, and as important, getting it out to the widest public," Hassan declared. "This is the only way to strengthen advances in areas such as women's rights or constitutional reforms. But the culture is harder to change, and you can't just root out all the networks of the former mafia state in one year, or even ten. It's a long process and it's not fruitful to use the angle of 'better or worse' to judge it now."
Mark LeVine is a professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor at Lund University. His new book is One Land, Two States: Israel and Palestine as Parallel States, co-edited with Ambassador Mathias Mossberg.

Friday, December 12, 2014

The CIA’s Torture Orgy 100 or More Prisoners Tortured to Death in US Detention.

Sending troops to protect dictators threatens all of us

By Seumas Milne
December 11, 2014 "ICH" - "The Guardian" - - We may have known the outline of the global US kidnapping and torture programme for a few years. But even the heavily censored summary of the US senate torture report turns the stomach in its litany of criminal barbarity unleashed by the CIAon real and imagined US enemies.
The earlier accounts of US brutality in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo pale next to the still sanitised record of forced rectal “infusions” and prolapses, multiple “waterboarding” drownings and convulsions, the shackled freezing to death of a man seized in a mistaken identity case, hooded beatings and hanging by the wrists, mock executions, and sleep deprivation for up to 180 hours.
What has been published is in fact only a small part of a much bigger picture, including an estimated 100 or more prisoners tortured to death in US detention. Added to the rampant lying, cover-ups and impunity, it’s a story that the champions of America’s “exceptionalism” will find hard to sell around the world. And it’s hardly out of line with a CIA record of coups, death squads, torture schools and covert war stretching back decades, some revealed by an earlier senate report in the 1970s.
There is of course nothing exceptional about states that preach human rights and democracy, but practise the opposite when it suits them. For all the senate’s helpful redactions, Britain has been up to its neck in the CIA’s savagery, colluding in kidnapping and torture from Bagram to Guantánamowhile dishing out abuses of its own in Iraq and Afghanistan.
So you’d hardly think this reminder of the horrors unleashed in the name of the war on terror was the time for Britain to announce its first permanent military base in the Middle East for four decades. The presence of western troops and support for dictatorial Arab regimes were, after all, the original reasons given by al-Qaida for its jihad against the west.
The subsequent invasions, occupations and bombing campaigns led by the US, Britain and others have been endlessly cited by those who resisted them in the Arab and Muslim world, or launched terror attacks in the west. But last week, foreign secretary Phillip Hammond proudly declared that Britain would reverse its withdrawal from “east of Suez” of the late 1960s and open a navy base “for the long term” in the Gulf autocracy of Bahrain.
The official talk is about protecting Britain’s “enduring interests” and the stability of the region. But to those fighting for the right to run their own country, the message could not be clearer. Britain, the former colonial power, and the US, whose 5th Fleet is already based in Bahrain, stand behind the island’s unelected rulers. No wonder there have already been protests against the base.
Bahrainis campaigning for democracy and civil rights, in a state where the majority are Shia and the rulers Sunni, were part of the Arab uprisings in 2011. With US and British support, Saudi Arabia and the UAE crushed the protests by force. Mass arrests, repression and torture followed.
Three years later, Bahrain’s human rights situation has got worse, and even the US government voices concerns. But British ministers purr about the “progress” of the monarchy’s “reforms”, praising phoney elections to a toothless parliament, boycotted by the main opposition parties. Last week Bahraini activist Zainab al-Khawaja was sentenced to three years in jail for tearing up the king’s photograph. Her father, Abdulhadi, is already serving a life sentence for encouraging peaceful protest.
In reality, the British base’s main job won’t be to prop up the Bahraini regime, but to help protect the entire network of dictatorial Gulf governments that sit on top of its vast reserves of oil and gas – and provide a springboard for future interventions across the wider Middle East. British troops never really left the region and have been part of one intervention after another.
The US itself controls an archipelago of military bases across the Gulf: in Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the UAE, as well as Bahrain. And despite Barack Obama’s much-heralded pivot to Asia, they are also clearly there for the long haul. After the US accepted the overthrow of the Egyptian dictator Mubarak three years ago, the Gulf autocrats are looking for extra security, which Britain and France are glad to provide. For the London elite, the Gulf is now as much about arms sales and finance as about oil and gas – and a web of political, commercial and intelligence links that go to the heart of the British establishment.
So the British military is also looking to beef up its presence in the UAE, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait. The crucial thing is that these colonial creations remain in the grip of their ruling families and democratisation is put on the back burner. That’s the only guarantee that this corrosive relationship will endure – on the back of disenfranchised populations and armies of grotesquely exploited migrant labour.
On a larger scale, the return of western-backed dictatorship in Egypt, the Arab world’s most important country, has helped re-establish the conditions that led to the war on terror in the first place. Obama has traded the CIA’s Bush-era kidnap-and-torture programme for expanded special forces and CIA drone killings, often of people targeted only by their “signatures” – such as being males of military age. And British forces have this week been accused of training and providing intelligence for Kenyan death squads targeting suspected Islamist activists.
The impact of all this – the revelations of the CIA’s torture orgy, the growing western military grip, the vanishing chances of democratic change – on the Arab and Muslim world should by now be obvious, along with the social backlash in countries such as Britain.
But with its new commitment to station troops in Bahrain, we can have no doubt where the British government stands: behind autocracy and “enduring interests”. Just as the refusal to hold previous US governments to account for terror and torture laid the ground for what happened after 9/11, the failure of parliament even to debate the decision to garrison the Gulf is an ominous one. Britain’s new base isn’t in the interests of either the people of Britain, Bahrain or the Middle East as a whole – it’s a danger and affront to us all.
Copyright The Guardian

Loose Cannon: US Standing in the Middle East

By Immanuel Wallerstein 

-------------------- On November 27, The New York Times headlined an article “Conflicting Policies on Syria and Islamic State Erode U.S. Standing in Mideast.” But this is not new. U.S. standing in the Middle East (and elsewhere) has been eroding for almost 50 years. The reality is far larger than the immediate dispute between anti-Assad forces in Syria and their supporters elsewhere on the one hand and the Obama regime in the United States on the other.
The fact is that the United States has become in the expression derived from onetime nautical practice a “loose cannon,” that is, a power whose actions are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and dangerous to itself and to others. As a result, it is trusted by almost no-one, even when many countries and political groups call upon it for assistance in specific ways in the short run.
How is it that the erstwhile unquestioned hegemonic power of the world-system, and still the strongest military power by far, has come to this sorry state? It is reviled or at least sternly reproached not only by the world left but by the world right and even such centrist forces as remain in this increasingly polarized world. The decline of the United States is not due to errors in policy but is structural – that is, not really subject to reversal.
It is perhaps useful to trace the successive moments of this erosion of effective power. The United States was at the height of its power in the period 1945-1970, when it got its way on the world scene 95% of the time on 95% of the issues, which is my definition of true hegemony. This hegemonic position was sustained by the collusion of the Soviet Union, which had a tacit deal with the United States of a division of zones of influence, not to be threatened by any military confrontation between the two. This was called the cold war, with an emphasis on the word “cold” and by their possession of nuclear weapons, guarantee of “mutual assured destruction.”
The point of the cold war was not to subdue the presumed ideological enemy but to keep a check on one’s own satellites. This cozy arrangement was first threatened by the unwillingness of movements in what was then called the “Third World” to suffer the negatives of this status quo. The Chinese Communist Party defied Stalin’s injunction to compromise with the Kuomintang and instead marched on Shanghai and proclaimed the People’s Republic. The Viet Minh defied the Geneva accords and insisted on marching on Saigon to unite the country under their rule. The Algerian Front de Libération Nationale in Algeria defied the French Communist Party’s injunction to give priority to the class struggle in France and launched its struggle for independence. And the Cuban guerillas that overthrew the Batista dictatorship forced the Soviet Union to help them defend again U.S. invasion by taking over the label of Communist Party from the group that had colluded with Batista.
The defeat of the United States in Vietnam was the result both of the war’s enormous drain on the U.S. Treasury and by the growing internal opposition to the war by middle-class youth draftees and their families, which bequeathed a permanent constraint on future U.S. military action in the so-called Vietnam syndrome.
The world-revolution of 1968 saw a worldwide rebellion not only against U.S. hegemony but against Soviet collusion with the United States. It also saw a rejection of the Old Left parties (Communist parties, Social-Democratic parties, national liberation movements) on the grounds that, despite coming to power, they had not changed the world as they had promised and had become part of the problem not part of the solution.
The United States under presidents from Richard Nixon to Bill Clinton (and including Ronald Reagan) sought to slow down U.S. decline by a triple policy. It invited its closest allies to change their status from satellite to that of partner, with the proviso that they not drift too far from U.S. policies. It shifted its focus in the world-economy from developmentalism to a demand for export-oriented production in the global South and the neoliberal injunctions of the Washington Consensus. And it sought to curb the creation of further nuclear powers beyond the five permanent members of the Security Council by imposing on all other countries an ending of their nuclear armament projects, a treaty that was not signed by and ignored by Israel, India, Pakistan, and South Africa.
These U.S. efforts were partially successful. They did slow down but not reverse U.S. decline. When in the late 1980s the Soviet Union began to collapse, the United States was in fact dismayed. The cold war was not meant to be won but to continue indefinitely. The most immediate consequence of the collapse of the Soviet Union was the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The Soviet Union was no longer there to restrain Iraq in the interest of U.S.-Soviet arrangements.
And while the United States won the Gulf war, it demonstrated further weakness by the fact that it could not finance its own role but was dependent for 90% of its costs on four other countries – Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan. The decision by President George H.W. Bush not to march on Baghdad but content himself with the restoration of Kuwaiti sovereignty was no doubt a wise judgment but was seen by many in the United States as a humiliation in that Saddam Hussein remained in power.
The next turning-point was with the coming to power of President George W. Bush and the coterie of neo-con interventionists that surrounded him. This group seized upon the September 11 attack by al-Qaeda to justify an invasion of Iraq in 2003 to overthrow Saddam Hussein. This was seen by the interventionists as a mode of restoring waning U.S. hegemony in the world-system. Instead, it badly backfired in two ways. The United States for the very first time lost a vote in the U.N. Security Council and Iraqi resistance to U.S. presence was vaster and more persistent than anticipated. In sum, the invasion transformed a slow decline into a precipitate decline, which brings us to the efforts of the Obama regime to deal with this decline.
The reason neither President Obama nor any future U.S. president will be able to reverse this is because the United States has been unwilling to accept this new reality and adjust to it. The United States is still striving to restore its hegemonic role. Pursuing this impossible task leads it to pursue the so-called “conflicting policies” in the Middle East and elsewhere. Like a loose cannon, it constantly shifts position seeking to stabilize the world geopolitical ship. U.S. public opinion is torn between the glories of being the “leader” and the costs of trying to be the leader. Public opinion zigzags constantly.
As other countries and movements regard this spectacle, they place no trust in U.S. policies and therefore pursue each their own priorities. The problem for the world is that loose cannons result in destruction, both of the perpetrators and the rest of the world. And this increases the role that fear plays in the actions of everyone else, augmenting the dangers to world survival.
© Toward Freedom