Hamas, Collaborators, and the Left
June 30, 2007
I may have most concerns in common with the Left but I do not consider myself a Leftist. Primarily, because I find that the Left has most of the corruptions of the Right, except with none of its power — and is just as constrained by dogma. People like Che, Sartre and Fanon were exceptional figures, and perhaps would find little in common with modern day Leftists. In fact, Fanon never did. With some exceptions such as Tariq Ali, Arundhati Roy, Finkelstein, it is not surprising today to find many on the Left try to denigrate the resistance in Iraq and Palestine. Their French counterparts behaved no different during the Algerian war of independence. So in yesterday’s CounterPunch, we find Vijay Prashad complaining about the New York Times giving columnspace to a Hamas representative: “The opinion page, for once, ran the view of Hamas (although why should Hamas be the viewpoint contrary to Zionism why not critics of Israeli state policy who are not Hamas?).” Perhaps they didn’t share his views on gay marriage, abortion or genesis, hence they are not entitled to an opinion.
Perhaps dogma and distance distort Prashad’s view but if you thought Leftists would be any more perceptive in Palestine, you would be disappointed. In an obvious confrontation between the elected government of the Palestinians and a collaborationist faction of a mainstream party, one would have thought that principle would dictate siding with the representatives with popular mandate. Palestinian Leftists have chosen otherwise.
Various Palestinian left-leaning factions have been holding meetings in the West Bank city of Ramallah recently in order to discuss their position vis-à-vis the Palestinian president’s decision to declare an emergency government following Hamas’ takeover of the Gaza Strip.
In their meetings, the factions agreed almost unanimously to demonstrate their support for President Abbas during this current crisis.
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), however, did not expressly declare its unilateral agreement and the Palestinian National Initiative (PNI) also left its position vague and unclear.
This is curious indeed since even within Fatah’s leadership, there is less unanimity. Hani al-Hassan, a senior advisor to Abbas, for example, said Gaza war was between Hamas and Fatah collaborators who aided Israel and the US. Not surprisingly, Dahlan’s gangs attacked his home in retaliation, and Abbas fired him.
The Gaza events were not a war between Fatah and Hamas; but between Hamas and Fatah collaborators who served the Americans and the Israelis, said a senior Fatah advisor on Wednesday.
Hani al-Hassan, the Palestinian president’s senior political advisor and member of Fatah’s central committee said in a TV interview that what was happening in the Gaza Strip was the defeat of to plans of American Major General Keith Dayton and his Fatah followers.
Al-Hassan’s words severely discredit Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and other Arab leaders’ claims that the Gaza takeover was a coup against Palestinian democracy…
Following the interview, which put a dent in Fatah’s PR efforts, Fatah gunmen fired at al-Hassan’s home. No one was injured, as al-Hassan was abroad for the interview.
For a perceptive and informed analysis of the events in Gaza, here is Alistair Crooke’s superb piece from the London Review of Books.
‘The situation in Gaza is dangerous, and the danger is that Hamas will take over and turn Gaza into “Hamastan” – into a kingdom of thugs, murderers, terrorists, poverty and despair.’ This was the reaction of Ephraim Sneh, Israel’s deputy defence minister, to Hamas’s seizure of a number of key security institutions in Gaza in the days leading up to 14 June, when Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and leader of Fatah, dismissed the unity government. But, despite what much of the media says, this is not a ‘civil war’, and Hamas is not made up of ‘gangs beyond the control of their leaders’. Hamas’s action was conducted with the aim of removing the influence of just one of Fatah’s security forces in Gaza, the militia controlled by Muhammad Dahlan, Abbas’s national security adviser. Hamas has insisted that this has not been a conflict with Fatah in general, and it was notable that neither the Palestinian security forces – effectively the Palestinian ‘army’ – nor the police in Gaza were targets of the recent violence.
The origins of the Hamas action in Gaza lie in the reaction of the international community, and of Fatah, to Hamas’s overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections of January 2006. Fatah, Yasir Arafat’s movement, saw itself as the founder of the Palestinian Authority; it believed it was the natural party of government; and it had fought a long battle with Arab neighbours to establish itself as synonymous with the PLO, and therefore, implicitly, as the ‘sole representative of the Palestinian people’. Some within Fatah were unable to come to terms with their loss of power, or to reconcile themselves to the claim that, on the basis of the election result, an Islamist party best represented the views of the Palestinian people. At this crucial juncture, the International Quartet intervened: they pressed President Abbas not to yield to Hamas, to hang onto power; and they promised to support him if he did so.
Not only was Abbas not to yield security control to the government and its Interior Ministry, as the constitution provided, but the International Quartet also demanded that he claw back powers from the new government and embody them in the presidency: financial responsibilities would be removed from the Ministry of Finance; the salaries of government officials would be paid by the president’s office; all key policy decisions would be enacted by presidential decree. The government was to be rendered powerless. As Azzam Tamimi notes in Hamas: Unwritten Chapters, the Hamas government had no police force at its disposal, and no authority over frontier crossings.
At the same time, the West imposed financial sanctions on the government and isolated it politically, insisting on conducting business and channelling funding exclusively through Abbas. In short, instead of helping Fatah through the transition and facilitating Palestinian unity – and taking advantage of a real chance to include Hamas, Islamism’s moderates, in the political process – the international community pursued an aggressive policy of internal division that established the conditions for the recent violence in Gaza. Europeans may wring their hands at what they see on their TVs, but European policy, acting in concert with the US, bears a large measure of responsibility for what has happened.
The US and some European countries, including Britain, also chose to finance, train and arm the security apparatus led by Muhammad Dahlan, whom many Palestinians suspected – rightly – was being groomed as the ‘strong man’ who would eventually assume the presidency and restore Fatah to power. The ultimate aim was to build a Fatah militia around Dahlan that could confront Hamas militarily – and win. American officials hoped in the meantime to place Fatah in a position to depose Hamas from power – in other words, to promote a soft coup d’état against the government. A strategy document prepared by one of the US-led coalition of ‘moderate’ Arab states which was circulating among Palestinians in March 2007 said that the US objective was to have Abbas dismiss the Hamas government in August. The International Quartet endorsed these plans in principle. The support the US and Europe give to Fatah is considerable and arrives by a variety of routes: through NGOs and development agencies; through Fatah reform initiatives; through youth development programmes; through information and media projects; and – most significantly – through a large programme aimed at recruiting, training, equipping and financing Fatah security cadres, Dahlan’s chief among them. In addition, every NGO contract has a clause inserted into it by USAID requiring the organisation to pledge that it ‘will not engage in activity with groups deemed as terrorists’.
In the scathing final report he wrote before resigning in May as UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Alvaro de Soto said: ‘The US clearly pushed for a confrontation between Fatah and Hamas, so much so that, a week before Mecca’ – where the two factions met in February and under the auspices of King Abdullah agreed a unity government – ‘the US envoy declared twice in an envoys’ meeting in Washington how much “I like this violence,” referring to the near civil war that was erupting in Gaza in which civilians were being regularly killed and injured, because “it means that other Palestinians are resisting Hamas.”’ It was this situation that pushed Hamas into pre-emptive action. With Fatah refusing to delegate constitutional authority over the security services, and with the build-up of the Dahlan militia, the military arm of Hamas moved to seize all the key assets associated with Dahlan and his colleagues in Gaza. Having achieved complete control, the elected government is now finally in a position to provide security in Gaza.
There is a price, of course; but it has nothing to do with damage to the so-called ‘prospects for peace’. There was no peace process. And, in the view of most Palestinians, there is little prospect of one. On the contrary, the leadership of Hamas – like their colleagues in Hizbullah – are preparing for the long hot summer of regional conflict that inevitably lies ahead. The real cost of Hamas’s military putsch against the Dahlan militia is the weakening of that significant faction within Fatah which, for some time, has been uncomfortable with Dahlan’s and Fatah’s co-option by US and Israeli interests, and has – until now – advocated real co-operation between Fatah and Hamas. But now that Fatah has been humiliated the grass-roots are unlikely to be in a mood to support anyone who argues for a working partnership with Hamas. It is one thing to be perceived by fellow Palestinians as a Western proxy: to be regarded as a failed Western proxy is far worse.
It is too early to judge, but it is possible that the Hamas putsch will come to be seen by Muslims beyond Palestine as an event as significant as the outcome of the Israeli-Hizbullah war last July. The next few weeks may see the beginnings of efforts at mediation on the part of other Arab states, in an attempt to form a fresh unity government in Palestine. If this happens, the issue of security has already been decided: Hamas has settled the facts on the ground. The Americans and Europeans, however, can be expected to continue to resist any transformation of the political dispensation. What they want, and remain wedded to, is a reversion to the status quo ante of Oslo, however discredited its processes now are. But in attempting to ensure Fatah’s continued hold on power, they risk schism, renewed violence, and a fracturing of the Palestinian body politic for years to come.
A peace process with Israel, were that ever to become a reality, cannot be built on Palestinian division and internal conflict. The action of previous US envoys – such as General Zinni and George Tenet – served only to increase these divisions. The lesson has not been learned. President Abbas’s dismissal of the government on 14 June and his declaration of an emergency government – both decrees of questionable legality – brought an end to what remained of Palestinian unity. And did so at a moment when Hamas, in common with moderate Islamist movements throughout the region, is trying to deal with the radicalising of its constituency and a widespread questioning of the value of electoral participation.
The West could not have chosen a worse time to try to make Fatah a proxy dependent on Western financial subsidy and Israeli ‘concessions’ to make up for the popular support it patently lacks. The largest Hebrew newspaper, Yediot Aharnot, noted on 14 June that ‘in Nablus, Jenin, Hebron and Ramallah, the people of the Fatah al-Aqsa Brigades are in control, much thanks to the Israeli General Security Services who have jailed anyone vaguely smelling of Hamas.’ European policy-makers – to judge by their public statements – are largely oblivious to the rising tension in the region. Instability is feeding instability; and the American and European imposition of a bank freeze that left the Palestinian government unable to gain access to its funds – including those from Muslim countries – will trigger new and potentially dangerous disturbances in the region.
Western commentators – prompted by Fatah loyalists – are still inclined to see the 2006 election result as no more than a severe rap on the knuckles for the hitherto dominant Fatah on the part of an electorate angered by its corruption and mismanagement. Since 1993, Palestinians have been living under a one-party system: patronage, jobs and government have been in the gift of Fatah, and it is to its members that these benefits have been distributed. The election outcome, however, was not primarily a judgment on Fatah’s corruption, even if this was a significant factor. I recall a leader in a refugee camp in Lebanon saying: ‘You will see . . . what this victory for Hamas represents is the final rupture of the Palestinians’ faith in the international community. We no longer believe that the Americans or the Europeans ultimately can be counted on to do the right thing by us. We know that we must rely only on ourselves now.’ Hamas had recognised for some time that the Palestinian constituency that voted Fatah a monopoly of power and of armed force in 1993, following the Oslo Accords, no longer existed. Hardly any Palestinians now believe that Palestinian ‘good behaviour’ – as promised to Israel by Fatah – will induce the US to ignore its domestic Israel lobby and exert pressure on Israel to withdraw from the lands occupied in 1967. ‘Hamas had predicted all along that Israel would not fulfil its bargain,’ Tamimi writes, ‘and that it was using peacemaking in order to expropriate more land.’
Palestinians have seen their putative state in the West Bank salami-sliced away by settlements, army posts, military zones, fences and Israeli-only roads that cut the territory into enclaves in which 2.5 million Palestinians are confined, their movements heavily curtailed. A map of the West Bank recently published by the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs shows that the Israeli system of settlements and protective infrastructure has rendered 40 per cent of the West Bank off-limits to Palestinians. Palestinians have seen the US and Europe do nothing about this. The US and the EU argued that Palestinian violence was the problem; but the Palestinians noted that in periods of quiet more rather than less of their land fell to the Israeli salami-slicer – yet still the international community remained silent. Any optimism from Oslo had long faded by 2006, when the Palestinians voted in Hamas. There is no longer a significant ‘peace camp’ that believes in gradual progress towards a Palestinian state.
Demise of the Two-State Solution
Against this background of disenchantment, the contributors to Jamil Hilal’s Where Now for Palestine? The Demise of the Two-State Solution point either towards a binational state in Israel/Palestine, or to a further chapter of armed resistance, or both. Ziad Abu Amr argues that the ‘Palestinian Authority is becoming a façade hiding an actual Israeli occupation, and a tool to help Israel regulate its occupation policies.’ Jamil Hilal argues that ‘Israel’s policy has amounted to a systematic negation of the basic conditions necessary for a viable and sovereign Palestinian state,’ and Ilan Pappe, looking for the roots of Israeli policy, concludes that ‘occupation proceeds from the same ideological infrastructure on which the 1948 ethnic cleansing was erected.’ None of these contributors thinks that the psychological and political conditions for a two-state solution any longer prevail. The adoption of demands for a new Israeli constitution by Adalah, a human rights organisation based in Israel, is a further signal of radicalisation. ‘The Democratic Constitution’ – a discussion document that has generated widespread interest among Palestinian citizens of Israel, and outrage in some parts of the Israeli press – calls for a constitution that conforms to democratic principles, is bilingual and multicultural, and which, above all, enshrines the right to complete equality of all residents and citizens, thereby making Israel no longer an exclusively Jewish state, or even a state that affords special privileges to Jewish citizens.
One reason for Fatah’s election defeat was its failure to recognise that the Bush administration was different from the Clinton administration. Fatah persisted in its assumption that, at bottom, the Bush administration shared its vision of a Palestinian state based on Israeli withdrawal from the territories occupied in 1967. The leadership continued to assume that if they pleased the US they would eventually be rewarded by pressure on Israel to concede a viable Palestinian state. It has long been obvious to most Palestinians, including many in Fatah, that the vision Bush shared was not Fatah’s, but that of Tel Aviv, and it sees Israel remaining in the West Bank for ever.
Khalil Shikaki of the Palestinian Centre for Policy and Survey Research, an institute funded by foreign governments to conduct opinion surveys in Palestine, conducted three crucial polls that affected perceptions in Washington in the early parts of June, September and December 2005. They all showed Fatah leading Hamas by a comfortable margin. In June, Shikaki showed Fatah ahead by 44 per cent to Hamas’s 33 per cent; in September Fatah’s share had gone up to 47 per cent as against Hamas’s 30; by December, one month before the election, he gave Fatah 50 per cent and Hamas 32. In the election, however, Hamas won 74 parliamentary seats and Fatah 45 in a 132-seat chamber. Hamas’s own assessment of November 2005 anticipated that they would win between 70 and 80 seats.
It is difficult to know whether it was the European and American refusal, on the basis of these polls, to acknowledge that Palestinian perceptions had changed which influenced the actions of certain Fatah leaders after the election. Or whether Europe’s friends in Fatah, such as Dahlan, with his claim to be able to deal with Hamas, persuaded Europeans to shut their eyes to the revolution in Palestinian sentiment. Dahlan, Al-Ahram Weekly recently reported,
tacitly admits that he has been behind much of the lawlessness and security chaos in Gaza: ‘I just deploy two jeeps, and people would say Gaza is on fire . . . Hamas is now the weakest Palestinian faction. They are whining and complaining. Well, they will have to suffer yet more until they are damned to the seventh ancestor.’
Whatever the cause, Europeans embarked on one of their greatest policy mistakes in the region – second only to their support for the invasion of Iraq – with their dogged determination to isolate Hamas and attempt to return Fatah to power.
Hamas had argued during the election campaign that Fatah’s promise to Israel of an end to violence would bring Fatah only Israeli contempt for what it would perceive as Palestinian ‘weakness’. As Hamas sees it, a just solution will emerge only when Israel comes to ‘respect’ its adversaries; meanwhile Fatah’s pleading to be Israel’s peace partner is indirectly contributing to Israel’s hegemonic ambitions. Hamas therefore argues for continued resistance, and for a reversal of the Arafat doctrine, which held that Palestinian institutions should not be established until a state had been achieved. It believes that good governance now, and the unity it will bring, is the path to a Palestinian state. With its record of effective and corruption-free local government, it has been keen to put this into practice at the national level: it may now have its chance in Gaza.
The problem for Hamas is that its constituency – the rank and file – and the wider Islamist movement have now embarked on a period of introspection. What is apparent – and this can be ascertained on any number of Islamist websites – is that the mainstream Islamist strategy of pursuing an electoral path to reform is now being questioned. This will have an impact well beyond Palestine – most obviously in Egypt and Jordan. Three events have triggered this reassessment: the sanctions imposed on the Hamas government; last summer’s US-backed war to destroy Hizbullah in Lebanon; and the repression of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which raises not a peep of protest from Europeans. Continued Western hostility towards all Islamists, however moderate their policies, has also frustrated the grass-roots.
At a conference held in Beirut in April, the senior Hamas official present, Usamah Hamadan, was strongly criticised by Fathi Yakan, the leader of Jamaat Islamiyah in Lebanon, for having embarked on the electoral route in the first place. Yakan pointed to the failure – experienced by all Islamists without exception – of those who have participated in their national parliaments. No MP or deputy, from Islamabad to Cairo, or anywhere in between, has succeeded in bringing any significant change to their society. At the same time, young Egyptians in the Muslim Brotherhood have been debating whether their eighty-year-old movement has lost its way. Commentators have been arguing that for it to sit in parliament – while its leaders are being interned, its economic base is being attacked, and legislation is being passed aimed at excluding movements with a religious basis from elections – undermines its credibility and invites derision. The movement, it’s suggested, is too big, rigid and ungainly, and needs to be rethought – and perhaps broken up.
At issue in these discussions is whether moderate Islamist groups such as Hamas and Hizbullah will manage to retain their influence over this process of radicalisation; and whether they will survive as a cohesive, disciplined political bloc. Sunni Islamist movements are increasingly concerned at the spread of small Salafist groups that verge on the nihilistic in their disdain for political ideology and in their belief that to set fire to the remnants of colonial power is in itself enough to raise the revolutionary consciousness they hope for. Salafist groups are beginning to make inroads in Gaza, as they have already done in Iraq, Lebanon and North Africa.
What will happen is far from clear. A return to the violent vanguardism of the 1960s and 1970s, detached from popular legitimacy and support, seems unlikely. More plausibly, moderate movements such as Hamas and Hizbullah will encourage popular resistance while also striving to maintain their political presence. Hamas’s armed resistance in Gaza to what they perceive as a Western campaign to depose them is an example of the way an Islamist movement can satisfy a radicalised constituency increasingly angry at American interference in their societies in the interest of what Hassan Nasrallah has termed the ‘Western project’.
One indication of what voters now want can be gauged from Nasrallah’s speeches. ‘In our region,’ he said in Beirut in March, ‘we witness the serious threat . . . presented by the US administration to achieve its scheme for the control of our resources, countries, decisions and destiny . . . Today we no longer hear talk about elections and democracy . . . They discovered that, if free and honest elections were to take place in the Muslim world, patriots who are hostile to US policy and who refuse to succumb to US hegemony will win in every country whether they are Islamists or not due to the general mood in the Islamic world.’ In other words, the test will be whether individuals and states acquiesce to US policy, or ‘refuse to succumb’.
The activities of the US are fundamental to the present crisis. Iraq continues to radiate instability and is exacerbating tensions between the Shia and Sunni everywhere. US and EU policy in Palestine and Lebanon is driving internal tension and polarisation, and the risk of conflict involving Iran and possibly Syria overshadows everything else in the region. In all, the Americans and Europeans are engaged in six internal conflicts in Muslim societies – in Somalia, Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine – in each case providing finance and weapons for one faction to use against another. As I write, Hizbullah is preparing for the possibility of renewed conflict with Israel, and Syria and Iran have also reached the conclusion that conflict is a real and imminent prospect, and are actively preparing for it.
When all parties begin to see conflict as inevitable, then the ‘inevitable’ becomes self-fulfilling. Americans are fond of comparing the situation in the region to the 1930s and the rise of totalitarianism; but perhaps Europe in 1914 is a better metaphor: the situation is such that some small, unexpected autonomous event might trigger a sequence of events that even the great powers of the region could find it beyond their ability to control. In the past, after all, a car accident (in the case of the first intifada) and a cinema fire (triggering the Iranian revolution) have unleashed consequences that no one could have foreseen.
Israel, too, seems oblivious to its position. It believes that the Palestinian conflict can be sustained, and it continues to enjoy a growing economy and a healthy tourist trade. Israelis have arrived at a modus vivendi with their peculiar circumstances: life can go on, they sanguinely presume. In Failing Peace, which charts the psychological and human costs of occupation and prolonged violence, Sara Roy warns that
prior to Oslo there was a belief among Israelis that peace and occupation were incompatible but this has changed. In recent years more and more Israelis are benefiting from the occupation. Their lives, for example, have been facilitated by the vast settlement road network built in the West Bank and by an improved economy . . . hence, Israelis no longer feel uncomfortable with the occupation at a time when the occupation has grown more repressive and perverse. This contradiction is dangerous and unsustainable.
Roy’s warning is timely. Over the middle term it is possible to predict that a greater number of Palestinian citizens of Israel will become radicalised, as well as members of the Palestinian population as a whole. Israel’s ‘moderate’ friends among Arab leaders may disappear. It may also encounter Islamists not only in the Palestinian government, but at the Jordanian and Egyptian frontiers; and conflict with Iran, were it to occur, might finish up by sweeping away many of the region’s landmarks.
This prospect may not disturb the slumbers of the Europeans, who will dismiss it as alarmist, even if their record of reading events in the area has been less than inspired. But these are the scenarios that are being taken seriously by thoughtful Islamists in the region. We should hope – that may be all we can now do – that moderate Islamist movements manage to navigate these turbulent times, in spite of European attempts to prevent Islamism, which is clearly now the dominant regional current, from reshaping Middle Eastern societies. These attempts are opening space, not for the moderate pro-Western secularists whom Europeans seek to empower, but for those who believe that to build a new society you must first burn down the old one.
Terror Threat and the Man on the Moon
June 29, 2007
News of the discovery of cars laden with fuel to be used as bombs is all over the British and US media. Guardian reports:
The incident began when an ambulance was called to a nightclub at around 1am to treat a person who had fallen ill. The ambulance crew noticed a Mercedes parked outside the club, and saw that the vehicle appeared to have smoke inside it.
Witnesses said they had seen the light metallic green saloon car being driven erratically earlier. It then crashed into bins before the driver ran away.
Maybe these terrorists lacked that highly esoteric skill commonly referred to as ‘driving’.
A parking ticket was put on the second car at 2.30am and it was impounded an hour later at a lot. The device was made safe by specialist officers, Mr Clarke said.
Yes, sounds just like the kind of spygame that was intended to be discovered. To believe the official account, one would also have believe in the man on the moon. All that one can do is to wait and see which new attack on civil liberties this incident is used to justify.
John Chuckman offers more reasons why scepticism is prudent:
We should all exercise a healthy skepticism regarding the story of the car-bomb just found in London.
There are powerful reasons for this.
The grant of an appeal to the Libyan convicted of the Lockerbie bombing. There is powerful evidence that key evidence in his trial was tampered with or manufactured by the CIA. The U.S. wanted this matter off its plate, the families of the dead being a constant irritation. And who better to pin it on than the then much-disliked Libyans?
Actually, nothing is easier to fake than an amateur device like this. It takes little sophistication, and there is low risk of discovery.
The CIA has just released papers it terms the ‘family jewels’ which concern many dark matters from decades ago. While these papers are carefully selected to make the CIA look more ineffectual than it is and to give it a public-relations boost in light of its torture and kidnapping activities today, they still document a perfect willingness to engage in the most unethical behavior.
Mr. Brown has just taken office, and expectations are high that he will distance himself from Blair’s foreign policy, a policy many thoughtful people regard as foolish, destructive, and rather servile.
In the United States, paranoid games have been regularly – such as phony terror alerts and ridiculous arrests -played concerning threats to keep fears fired up.
Apartheid Did Not Die: Tutu Speaks Out
June 29, 2007
Ten years back in a hard-hitting documentary John Pilger had revealed that despite the end of political Apartheid, a system of economic segregation still prevailed. The iconic image of Nelson Mandela has long since immunized the ANC from scrutiny — i.e., until Pilger’s subjected the new system to his withering critique. Now another iconic figure from the anti-Apartheid struggle is speaking out. Financial Times reports:
The gap between rich and poor is widening in South Africa, threatening to sweep away the gains brought about by democracy since 1994, Desmond Tutu, the former archbishop ofCape Town, has warned.
“Most [people] are languishing in the wilderness,” the archbishop said of the slow pace of wealth redistribution since the end of white rule 13 years ago. Using a Biblical analogy, he said South Africans had crossed the Red Sea in their struggle against apartheid but that very few had reached the promised land.
The archbishop, one of the most inspirational leaders of the anti-apartheid movement, was, not for the first time in the eight-year-old presidency of Thabo Mbeki, wading into an acutely sensitive political debate. His warning came as the ruling African National Congress held its five-yearly policy conference against the backdrop of savage criticism from the left, which argues the government’s pro-business policies have not helped the poor.
In the past, almost all the affluent were white, now they had been joined by a few black people, Archbishop Tutu said. But most of the people living in shacks before the end of white rule were still living in shacks.
“I’m really very surprised by the remarkable patience of people,” he told the Financial Times at the launchof the Tutu Foundation in London on Wednesday. It was hard “to explain why they don’t say to hell with Tutu, [Nelson] Mandela and the rest and go on therampage.”
Archbishop Tutu, who won the Nobel Peace prize in 1984, has previously criticised the ANC’s black economic empowerment policy as a process that has enriched only the few rather than lifting people out of poverty.
South African companies have been encouraged to bring in black shareholders to widen ownership of the economy and also to promote black staff and board members. But the left has seized on research showing companies with a “significant black influence” control just 5 per cent of the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.
The government has been praised for its prudent fiscal management, with the economy recording annual growth of about 5 per cent over the last three years. But unemployment, which is difficult to measure since there is a large informal sector, is estimated to be as high as 40 per cent.
Mr Mbeki opened the ANC’s four-day conference on Wednesday, warning the party’s traditional allies – the Communist party and the unions – against trying to push it to the left. In a much-needed fillip, public service unions indicated they were ready to agree to the government’s latest offer of a 7.5 per cent pay rise and end a four-week strike that has led to the closure of many schools and the disruption of services at many hospitals.
But behind the scenes there is acute anxiety in the party’s grassroots over indications that, in spite of overseeing one of the most sustained periods of economic growth since the second world war, Mr Mbeki also presides over a stark divide between rich and poor.
Archbishop Tutu has been a forthright critic of several of the Mbeki government’s signature policies. Earlier this year he expressed his outrage and sadness at South Africa’s refusal to back a UN resolution condemning the human rights abuses in Burma.
The president has clearly been irked by the cleric’s attacks. In late 2004 he criticised the archbishop in his weekly online newsletter for suggesting the ANC was stifling internal dissent.
Some Iraqis Liberated
June 28, 2007
Very recently I watched the vice-president of Iraq’s Vichy regime thank the United States for ‘liberating’ Iraq. I thought I should introduce you to one such glorious act of liberation.
Chicken Wings, Rape, and Murder
Here is from the Guardian frontpage story on the rape and murder of 14-year-old Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and her family.
US soldiers, accused of raping and murdering a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, drank alcohol and hit golf balls before the attack. One of them grilled chicken wings afterwards, a criminal investigator told a US military hearing yesterday…
According to Specialist Barker’s statement, Private Green not only raped the girl but also shot her and her family after telling his comrades repeatedly he wanted to kill some Iraqis. Mr Bierce said that on the day of the attack, Specialist Barker, Sergeant Cortez, Private Spielman and Private Green had been playing cards and drinking Iraqi whisky mixed with an energy drink. They practised hitting golf balls, Specialist Barker’s statement said.
Specialist Barker made it clear Private Green was very persistent about killing some Iraqis. At some point they decided to go to the house of the girl they had seen passing by their checkpoint. Specialist Barker also said that when they arrived at the house, the father and the girl were outside. Private Spielman grabbed the girl while Private Green seized her father and took them into the house.
Private Green took the father, mother and the younger sister into the bedroom, while the girl remained in the living room. Specialist Barker wrote that Sergeant Cortez pushed the girl to the floor, and tore off her underwear. Sergeant Cortez appeared to rape her, according to the statement. Specialist Barker then tried to rape the girl, Mr Bierce said. Suddenly, the group heard gunshots. Private Green came out of the bedroom holding an AK-47 rifle and declared: “They’re all dead. I just killed them,” the statement said.
Private Green put the gun down, then raped the girl while Sergeant Cortez held her down. Specialist Barker claims Private Green picked up the AK-47 and shot the girl once, paused, then shot her several more times. Specialist Barker said he got a lamp and poured kerosene on the girl. She was set on fire, but he does not say who did it. He does not say if Private Howard or Private Spielman took part in the rape. The statement says he grilled chicken wings back at their checkpoint.
The case has increased demands for changes to an agreement that exempts US soldiers from prosecution in Iraqi courts. Prime minister Nuri al-Maliki has demanded an independent investigation.
Truth to Power
June 28, 2007
I like Ray McGovern, he reminds me of my grandfather. Since the beginning of the war, he has been sharp and consistent in his analysis of the motivations behind the war and its execution. This is from a year back, but it was one of those rare instances where someone confronted and humiliated one of the key executioners of the Iraq war.
Cynthia McKinney is another courageous voice of dissent. For her outspoken views the Israel Lobby twice used its financial muscle to eject her from office. Here is a sample of why the establishment felt so threatened by her. DynCorp, the mercenary firm she is speaking about, presently holds major contracts in Iraq.
An Interview with Patrick Cockburn
June 28, 2007
Patrick Cockburn is one of the finest journalists reporting from Iraq today. I am reading his new book at the moment, and there are some issues which I’ll address in a review soon. But over all, he has been consistent in presenting an accurate picture of the realities in Iraq, even if, unlike his colleague Robert Fisk, he avoids being overly critical of the motives behind the invasion and occupation.
Spin and Rumour at the G8
June 28, 2007
A report from the G8 summit by fellow Spinwatch member, Kees Stad.
Two years ago, during the protests against the G8 in Gleneagles in Scotland, we had to pay an unexpected visit to the police station in Stirling because one of the Dutch activists had lost his passport. While we were in the waiting area we saw an electronic news display on the wall constantly making announcements about the protests. To our surprise there were horrendous stories about violence against the police, which I was sure were not true or at least grossly exaggerated. Suddenly that classic urban myth popped up: demonstrators had supposedly attacked one of the officers with a knife! At almost every large confrontation between police and protesters this story surfaces, although there has never been any evidence of it actually occurring.
During ‘Heiligendamm’ two police officers supposedly suffered knife attacks (Focus) . As usual some of the press willingly repeated this report without checking if it actually happened. You can count yourself lucky if there is any mention it is based on a police statement (1). It is remarkable that the media almost never ask for proof. These rumours are usually launched amidst a flurry of events, giving the reporters no time whatsoever to check on statements. If they did they would find the police unable to present the alleged ‘victims’, because they don’t actually exist.
When the dust finally settles the knife attack is but one minor incident among many, old news not worth rectifying or investigating. With such a pliant media there is no need to construct such ‘evidence’, which happened for example in Genoa during the G8 protests there in 2001 (2).
Arsenal
The imaginary stabbings are only a small part of an arsenal of lies and rumours about protesters that seep into mainstream media reporting. When the opening march on June 2nd ended in rioting the floodgates opened. Parts of the media, which had originally been suspicious of the state spin, did a u-turn. Suddenly protesters were supposed to be ‘capable of anything’ and it was a good thing the police had taken preventative measures to protect civilians and politicians. Again, to the attentive observer, these events turned out to be mostly staged. The riots had indeed been intense, but no more serious than the average clash involving autonomists. Media reporting was actively fed by the police and other authorities who produced dire reports about thousands injured, many of them seriously, including over 400 (433 to be precise) police officers. The high point was (again) the Berlin paper Der Tagesspiegel which ran a headline about ‘a rain of rocks splintering riot squad helmets’. Of the Berlin police alone 18 officers were supposed to be in hospital with serious injuries.
These reports lead to grotesque scenes with the police managing to elevate themselves to the role of victims. The online chronology of Der Spiegel emphasised police injuries as well as their battle with the autonomists ([15:31] Einzelne Gruppen von Polizisten werden von Autonomen regelrecht gejagt.)
Days later some newspapers managed to deconstruct the story and found it had all been severely exaggerated. Every scratch and every blister had been included and the most serious injury sustained by an officer (a broken leg) had been caused by his own colleagues stumbling over him when they ran down a staircase while hunting for protesters. Two days later, according to the right-wing weekly Focus no-one was in the hospital anymore. This kind of rectification however never makes the front page. Meanwhile the image was already firmly in place and politicians and even spokespeople of NGO’s like Attac were falling over one another demanding tougher (!) measures against the protesters. A police union even demanded the use of rubber bullets. This wave of real or contrived indignation continues. Politicians have announced they will take further measures against what they call the ”black block”, like constructing special databases and a ban on dressing uniformly in addition to the long-time ban on face coverage already in place.
Purpose
Planning for this repressive operation had been taking place for some time. Many police departments as well as the army had already come to the aid of the local police, who were already well-prepared with 16,000 personnel and all kinds of technical equipment made available. Legally also they had little cause for complaint: the freedom to protest had been drastically reduced in many areas. The pre-summit smear campaign was meant to make the population and the media accept the repression, and preferably embrace it. Such reports were probably also meant to incite the officers themselves to take stronger action. They are human too, and sometimes question the justice of their ‘work’. A continuous stream of propaganda about the opposition’s malice can help to keep them motivated. A fourth target group of this barrage of false reports are people considering joining the protests. If they believe this might be life threatening or there might be hooliganism they are likely to decide to stay at home.
Provocation? I predict a riot…
There was much discussion among the protesters about the cause of the riots on Saturday afternoon. Rumours about police provocation were rife. The more radical segment of the activists had already been harassed for weeks, for example by the raids on 40 apartements on May 9th and on May 25th at a march against the EU-ASEM summit in Hamburg. This didn’t just happen in Germany: on May 5th an entire bicycle demonstration was arrested in Utrecht (Netherlands)(3).
As Heiligendamm drew closer the police activity intensified. It was clear that the dam would eventually burst. But the ‘blame’ of course isn’t entirely on one side. The ”black block” attended as usual and was rather large in Rostock (many sources estimate around 2000 people, some even 5000). These were people who no longer wanted to let themselves be pushed around and some probably felt like finally taking a stand against the police. (4)
It was typical that there had been almost no incidents during Saturday’s entire demonstration, including the “black block” (with the exception of one broken window at a Sparkasse bank and one at a supermarket, the origin of which was not clear). It is however interesting to investigate why things got out of hand at the close, in full view of the media cameras.
A few incidents suggest police provocation. Firstly there was a lone police van parked in the middle of the protest marches’ route, while all other vehicles had been put safely in a guarded parking lot. There are striking film images of this. Also compare the reports on Spiegel TV in which at first a picture was painted that “the entire centre of Rostock is being smashed up by the “black block” (supposedly consisting of a mixture of neo-nazis and Iranian women?) and then mainly showed people blaming the police for the escalation.
When the riot didn’t kick off at the police van the famous pseudo-arrest incident occurred. While not much is happening an undercover police officer inside the march looks around and suddenly attacks a person dressed in black, pushing him to the ground (film). Some pushing and shoving ensues and a riot police ‘hundertschaft’ lined up nearby charges at the demonstration. People get angry, start throwing things, and suddenly a riot has begin. After that the riot police units and protesters were at it for hours. Every time things seemed to calm down riot police units attacked anew. There has been a lot of debate about this incident (for example here). There has been speculation that the two supposed ”black blockers’ were actually police officers, given that the prisoner doesn’t make any attempts to escape the arrest. The purpose of this operation would be to incite the crowd.
These events mainly took place in one single side street along the harbour square which was broken up to provide missiles. Some cars were turned upside down and one of them was set on fire. For days that one Ford was the main image on TV and in the newspapers. To continue that thread towards all protesters against the G8 seemed child’s play.
Spin machine
The big spin machine could be set in motion. Suddenly (the source turned out to be the German press agency DPA) a horribly mistranslated quote by one of the speakers on stage at the closing rally appeared in the media. Walden Bello, the well-known director of Focus on the Global South, had words put into his mouth claiming he had called for violent resistance, to “bring the war into the demonstration because with peaceful means we will accomplish nothing”. This suggested that Bello (and with him the entire organization of the march) was calling for violent resistance. In reality Bello had called attention to the war in Iraq and argued for the protest to include this because “without peace there can be no justice”. Hundreds of media repeated the DPA-version. Media activists immediately got to work publicising this scandal and spreading the true content of Bello’s speech, which led to an apology by Der Spiegel, but the damage had already been done.
Up a gear
In the following days the police, who suddenly thought themselves covered by massive support from the public, press and politicians, employed pretty much all means at their disposal to disable further protests. Protesters were continually being pulled from their cars and searched, demonstrations for which permits had previously been issued were made impossible and continually surrounded by large police forces. There are too many examples to list them all, but take this one as an indication.
It was clearly thanks to the protesters that things didn’t escalate further. On the way to a licensed demonstration at Rostock airport Laage one of our two buses was stopped for the upteenth time and everyone was arrested (including a mother with a three year old child who were also put in cages, ID’d and photographed!. Even the always calm and quiet photographer U. was roaring with anger that next time he would be throwing rocks.
Here you can see how an entirely peaceful demonstration (commemorating the Lichtenhage pogrom of 1992) is messed up by the police.
A recurring phenomenon after Saturday’s riots was police units attacking small groups of protesters to arrest people. Pepper spray and batons were used and caused many injuries. Peaceful situations kept getting transformed into chaos and panic. Even the local S-bahn trains (see film) on which activists traveled from one march to the other were
repeatedly stopped and raided by riot squads.New urban myths
All of this only sketches the context in which the rumours were released. A new high point was for example a story in Monday, June 4th’s Berlin Tagesspiegel predicting that Saturday’s riots were only child’s play compared to what was yet to come. Remember, the blockading of the G8 itself hadn’t even started yet. The journalist in question, Frank Jansen, quotes an anonymous ‘hochrangiger Sicherheitsexperten’ (renowned security expert) claiming to know that protesters are using ‘fruit containing razor blades or stanley knives’ as ammunition. This story is soon repeated by many other media. (5) The story mentions other absurd weapons like enormous catapults made of athletics training equipment and supposedly being assembled in the action camps. Again, there is not a shred of evidence and afterwards the police has never shown any of these contraptions to the media. A version of this story, about a potato with nails in it, appeared on local newspapers MV Regio’s website. A picture was published of a similar potato which according to the newspaper had been ‘displayed’ at the Reddelich action camp. In no time other media report this as fact.
In retrospect it is clear to see how the bizarre accusations often are a back and forth passing play between the press and the police. At a press conference or via the website a police spokesperson reports a gruesome bit of news, one of the media takes it up (and perhaps mentions that it is a police assertion): DPA: “Laut Polizei vermummen sich Autonome und bewaffnen sich mit Molotow-Cocktails und Steinen.” Then Spiegel Online and NDR-tv repeat it and present it as fact (source).
Criminalising clowns
One of the most bizarre urban myths concerns the clown army who form a specific problem for the police. They are not just being funny but actually take part in many of the actions: making the police look ridiculous, getting in the way and sometimes breaking through police barriers. The police had been warned in advance by the secret service about the clowns, who according to the service are a lot more dangerous than they pretend to be. An attempt was made to make the clowns look dangerous despite their hilarious outfits. Many clowns carried water pistols (after all, an army carries weapons) which they sprayed at both activists, onlookers and police. Soon the rumour was spread that the clowns’ water pistols didn’t contain water but a dangerous acid. Here is the report by tv-station NDR.
In retrospect this horror story could of course not be maintained. Asked about the background of this accusation the police version was that they had noted ‘stripes on the uniforms’ of the officers who had been sprayed. Upon investigation however these turned out to be caused by soapy water. But by then the rumour had done its job. This story might well have been especially constructed to make the police take stronger action against the clowns.
On our way back to the Netherlands we met a large group of Bavarian riot police in a parking lot on the motorway, they were also on their way home. We couldn’t resist confronting them with the front page of the (Hamburg) paper Morgenpost, which broadly ran the story of the police provocateur who was exposed when he was collecting rocks and trying to incite the protesters to attack the police. The returning officers’ retort was a pathetic story about how terribly frightening their job had been over the last couple of days and the ‘clowns-with-acid-guns’ soon surfaced. We left convinced they actually believed it….
Provocateurs
After Saturday’s riots and the media storm that followed the situation seemed grim and fairly hopeless. Yet later on the atmosphere slowly changed again. One important reason for this was that the activists didn’t allow themselves to lose the plot and by the thousands they just went to work doing what they had come to do: building the camps, holding actions and demonstrations and preparing for the blockades. This shows the importance of having well organised movements, and also that part of the population is quite politicised. During the first three days the situation was nevertheless dramatic, because of the severe repression described earlier. An important switch came on Wednesday when the first blockade-actions were executed. The massive marches by determined and cheerful protesters, outsmarting the police and striking throughout the entire area surrounding Heiligendamm, made a strong impression on the onlookers, press and fellow protesters.
In addition the ban on demonstrating which had been instituted for the entire 5 km zone around Heiligendamm was rendered useless by people voting with their feet. Thousands upon thousands entered the area with the police unable to stop them. It remains bitter that in several places the police still responded with brutal violence. The feeling among the local population was also much better than was previously feared. Despite mentions in the media (like in the Dutch Volkskrant) that the population was hostile towards the activists, there were many expressions of the opposite. Many houses sported protest flags. Local people supplied water and food, and in the evening they handed out wood for the campfires. Even farmers whose fields were flattened by protesters walking through indicated that they mainly blamed the police.Another important event was the discovery of a group of police infiltrators at one of the non-violent sit-down blockades. They were busy bringing in rocks and tried to get the protesters to attack the police. However they did this so clumsily that the protesters became suspicious and started shouting they were police. They were surrounded and one was overpowered and recognised as an plain-clothes officer from Bremen. He was almost assaulted but activist lawyers accompanied him to the police and handed him over. Many media witnessed this incident. At first the police denied the plain-clothes officers were theirs, but after a while even they couldn’t stand up to the massive amount of evidence to the contrary and were forced to admit the men were infiltrators. The police continue to deny these infiltrators’ instructions were about incitement and provocation, claiming they were just gathering information as usual, but by now no-one believes this anymore. Many see this as evidence supporting other observations of police officers dressed in plain clothes actively trying to incite.
What to do?
Of course the activists did not sit still during this media frenzy. A well-equipped indymedia centre in Rostock was working full time publishing their own reports or correcting the commercial media. Various other media activists and bloggers threw themselves into the fray. But the playing field was far from level (also see a previous sketch: The Media gets the Massage)
It remains fascinating that the mainstream media systematically exaggerate militant actions by protesters and pay very little attention to police violence. At the end of the action-week about half the population of the action-camps was sporting bandages and splints as a result of police activity. Even one of the clowns speaking at the press conference sustained a broken finger on the final day. A number of people were seriously injured , some of them by the water cannons. At least two people are in danger of losing an eye. Have you seen any of this covered in your media? Or any of the innumerable smaller incidents like when a group of clowns were surrounded for an entire afternoon at a McDonalds on the way to Bad Doberan and forced to hand over all of their money as bail? The hundreds of arrests with no legal basis, the inhumane conditions in the cages on the industrial estate which were supposed to pass for prisons, the many incidents involving journalists or doctors being arrested by the police? At most the scandalous torpedoing of the Greenpeace boats received some media attention, but other than that it was utter crap.
The stupidest way to respond is by immediately becoming defensive and distancing yourself from ‘the violence’, like quite a few spokespeople for NGO’s and various left wing parties did. Continuous discussion about the chosen means of action is obviously necessary, but it became very clear in Heiligendamm that if we want to change the world we should not allow ourselves to be dictated by the government and the media. The most important victory of this G8 mobilisation is that the actions and blockades were executed so successfully. Now it is time to learn from this experience and to further strengthen the structures and resolve of the anti-globalisation movement.
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Also see the survey by the exellent Grundrechtekomitee.
A good survey of the reports about the G8 by the German mainstream media can be found at the Badespasz website.
The unsurpassed website gipfelsoli has set up an archive of the reports about repression .
Here is an English summary of police repression: http://de.indymedia.org/2007/06/185126.shtml
There are many analyses of the repression and the media lies to be found, for example here and here and here and here .
This analysis adresses how a naive reaction to media-manipulation can lead to a distancing from more militant forms of action.
And finally it needs to be said that not all mainstream media should be tarred with the same brush. there were some positive exceptions. Germany has a few progressive newspapers that reported differently (Junge Welt, Neues Deutschland, Jungle World. The Tageszeitung mainly howled along with the mainstream wolves…). Of the ‘quality press’ the Süddeutsche Zeitung provided a more balanced reporting. While one lokal newspaper Nordkurier committed mainly blatant propaganda for the G8 and the authorities, the other – Die Ostzeezeitung or OZ – appeared to be a relieving exception. Also see this hilarious report by the BBC.
(written by: Kees Stad, globalinfo.nl Translation: Hooligirl)
Notes
(1) Not only right wing papers traditionally slandering protesters like Bild or Focus, but also ‘quality papers’ like Financial Times Dld : “Mindestens ein Polizist wurde verletzt, als ein Demonstrant ihn mit einem Messer angriff.” or Der Spiegel.
Der Spiegel (in its online version) played a peculiar part in the reporting by systematically almost literally passing on the police reports.(2) Immediately afterwards a police spokesperson claimed that during the scandalous raid on the Diaz school one of the officers was attacked with a knife. The knife was supposed to have been deflected by the officer’s bullet-proof vest. This clearly slashed vest was presented to the media together with the knife supposedly belonging to the ‘attacker’. During later court cases however it was proven this knife could never have made the cut in the vest. Two molotov cocktails presented by the police as having been found in the school turned out to have been planted by the police themselves during the raid.
(3) The mass arrests, after which people were kept in inhumane conditions, caused little or no consternation with the press or politicians. Some of the detainees were among the people who were refused entry at the Germany border. This points to a cooperation between the Dutch and German police, using completely illegal blacklists.
(4) The many mysterious stories about the ”black block” form part of the criminalisation and smear campaign against protesters. The ”black block” is of course not a tight knit organisation at all, but a not very secretive demonstration-tactic: by dressing more or less the same and taking other preventative measures you can prevent being forced to follow the police’s whims. It enables the group, or members of it, to execute actions which would otherwise be impossible. The level of militance is usually kept within conscious limits and, unlike those of the police, there have never been any fatalities caused by this group’s activities. For more background information see the book ‘Les Black Blocs’ by Francis Dupuis Deri or ‘Autonome in Bewegung’ (AG Grauwacke).
Also see: interview with a Berlin autonome in the July 4th edition of the Süddeutsche Zeitung .
(5) Via the newspaper’s office I got the e-mail address of the journalist concerned and politely asked him for his contact information so I could ask him a few questions about his story. So far he has not responded.
Israel’s Military-Industrial Complex
June 27, 2007
Here is an excellent article by Naomi Klein that appeared a couple of weeks back, but has been since update with new information. It looks at how Israel profits from global insecurity through its booming security industry. I must say I have always considered Klein’s journalism exceptional, but in this article she has outdone herself.
Gaza in the hands of Hamas, with masked militants sitting in the president’s chair; the West Bank on the edge; Israeli army camps hastily assembled in the Golan Heights; a spy satellite over Iran and Syria; war with Hezbollah a hair trigger away; a scandal-plagued political class facing a total loss of public faith.
At a glance, things aren’t going well for Israel. But here’s a puzzle: Why, in the midst of such chaos and carnage, is the Israeli economy booming like it’s 1999, with a roaring stock market and growth rates nearing China’s?
Thomas Friedman recently offered his theory in the New York Times. Israel “nurtures and rewards individual imagination,” and so its people are constantly spawning ingenious high-tech start-ups–no matter what messes their politicians are making. After perusing class projects by students in engineering and computer science at Ben Gurion University, Friedman made one of his famous fake-sense pronouncements: Israel “had discovered oil.” This oil, apparently, is located in the minds of Israel’s “young innovators and venture capitalists,” who are too busy making megadeals with Google to be held back by politics.
The Good Shepherd
June 26, 2007
Last night I watched Robert deNiro’s The Good Shepherd, a film about the birth of OSS (CIA’s forerunner) and I found the direction as well as the performances quite brilliant. There is little attempt to glamorize CIA, even if the Agency retains its Hollywood mystique; emphasis is placed on the cynical motives and the lack of accountability that sustain the enterprise. As Chalmers Johnson notes in his recent book, one of the reason CIA works behind so many layers of secrecy is the sheer mundane and banal nature of its work. Making it public would be embarassing, and kill the mystique.
The film clearly wouldn’t fit into the steretypical Hollywood spy-movie genre. Mercifully short on Hollywood cliches, the film is a delight to watch and at nearly three hours it allows the story ample time to develop without substituting style for substance.
The lead character, played by Matt Damon, is loosely based on James Jesus Angleton one of whose known specialties was false flag operations. What is less known, and predictably overlooked in fictionalized accounts like these, is that Angleton was an ardent Zionist; Israel even acknowledged his services to the Zionist entity in monuments named after him(more on him later). Without indulging in conspiratorial mystificaton the film shows how elite power networks develop and function through a disobliging look at the peurile ceremonies of fraternaties such as Skull and Bones to the eventual domination of all state institutions by a mutually supportive cast of former frat boys.
The film makes many references to real life events, such as waterboarding of prisoners, use of LSD, the Bay of Pigs invasion, besides some strident statements about the sheer unaccountable power of the agency. The film also uses the clever device of a Soviet spy under the influence of LSD to make a statement about the exaggeration of foreign threats in order to oil the wheels of the military-industrial complex.
I found the film superlative. I am generally a fan of Francis Ford Coppola, but his collaborations with deNiro always bring forth exceptional artistic synergy. In this film, he takes the back seat and merely appears in the role of Executive Producer. But deNiro really shines in the role of a Director. This film is definitely worth a watch.
Nasrallah on UNIFIL
June 26, 2007
Robert Fisk had recently reported that Hizbullah has been ensuring the security of the UNIFIL troops in the South of Lebanon lest an attack on them be used as a pretext for further US-Israeli intervention in Lebanon. In the light of the recent attack on UNIFIL forces, the following words from Hassan Nasrallah’s speech in February sound prophetic. [Thanks Jeff B]
The next issue concerns the UNIFIL. The “neo-forecasters” have been forecasting for the past two month assassinations and explosions. Praised be God… Their forecasting seems always to be in place (jokingly). It’s been more than two months now that they have been forecasting that something would happen in the South targeting the UNIFIL forces. Either they are themselves preparing something that they will execute against the UNIFIL or they are summoning someone from abroad who will execute an operation against the UNIFIL. There seems to be insistence on their part regarding this “prophesy”. It’s been about 2 months now… and they still insist. Of course, we know that if something happens to the UNIFIL in the South, who is going immediately to be blamed? Hezbollah, of course. Hezbollah attacked the UNIFIL. Hezbollah wants to discard resolution 1701. Hezbollah wants this. Hezbollah wants that. Either way, they’’ve been preparing something there.
Of course at the other end of the rope is the Israeli side doing its share of incitement. Yesterday for example, Yediot Ahronot printed that the French forces of the UNIFIL had been flying reconnaissance planes in the South for the past few days intensively. This was simply provocative news and they knew it very well. It is not among the UNIFIL’’s duties to fly reconnaissance missions on the South and to spy on it… and we communicated this matter to many of the countries participating in the UNIFIL. We told them to let the Israelis violate the airspace and take whatever pictures they want…, but not to violate the sovereignty themselves taking pictures and thus becoming spies in Israel’’s eyes. Let the Israelis commit the violations…, but we don’t accept that the UNIFIL should be made into the spies.Indeed, once the news was out and we contacted the different countries of the UNIFIL, they made it very clear that this item of news was incorrect and untrue. Today the official spokesmen of the UNIFIL also denied this item of news. I am however telling you very clearly that there are those who are presently working at creating a climate of tension and confrontation between the Resistance and UNIFIL… in exactly the same manner as they always tried to create tension between the Resistance and the army.
In what concerns the UNIFIL, I want to repeat what I said before as many people seem to be bringing this issue up lately. When the UNIFIL came to Lebanon, they didn’’t come against our will. Some countries contacted us and informed us of their wish to come and we informed them that the circumstances might not be the best as a result of the present atmosphere in the country and the givens of Iraq… and indeed they respected this advice. The countries that came here, they all contacted us. They contacted our brothers in the Amal movement. They of course contacted the state… and we agreed to those countries. And when they contacted us …aside of the UN resolution which they didn’’t consider as their guarantee, they took from us assurances regarding the presence of their forces on our territories and in our country.
We informed them that we would not harm those forces in any way and we stand by our word. We fulfill our pledges and promises. There is no problem between us and the UNIFIL and we are not complaining about or disapproving the presence of the UNIFIL. When we have any observations to make in regards to performance, we do so through the state and we do so directly. We don’’t only do it through the state, we also do it directly with the concerned countries. We tell them our observations and they work on addressing them. Until now we always get positive feedback from the countries participating in the UNIFIL. They are cooperative in addressing those observations because certain concerns can be undertaken by officers or soldiers of the UNIFIL as a result of them having been recruited by an Israeli party. The concerned state does not take responsibility for what that officer or soldier did. When we thus make our observations, matters can be immediately addressed.
In what concerns the UNIFIL we have to be careful. Any inciting or provocative material coming out of media sources should be verified, double-checked and corroborated and handled through diplomatic and political channels. It is not in Lebanon’’s interest or the interest of the South or the Resistance that there should be any problems between the UNIFIL and the Resistance or the UNIFIL and the inhabitants of the region. This should be very clear. However, if there are domestic (internal) elements who wish to create strife or to target the UNIFIL, then of course we know that when an “accident” happens, the accused is ready to be pointed at. God may help us all then… This is our true and responsible position towards the UNIFIL.
