Fortress Britain
June 26, 2008
By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Variant, Issue 32, Summer 2008; Spinwatch, June 23, 2008; Scoop (New Zealand), June 25, 2008; UK Watch, June 25, 2008; Media Monitors Network, June 25, 2008; Dissident Voice, June 27, 2008
“The public has to be more alert”, warned one “international terrorism expert” in the Daily Mail late last year, because Scotland “is set to become another Israel within five years”. “[A]nti-terror measures will soon become a common feature of life”, he assured the audience, and called for “routine arming of police officers” and increasing children’s “awareness of the dangers of terrorism” and for them to be “encouraged” to report anything “out of the ordinary”.
The oracle of doom was one Amnon Maor, identified as the head instructor of counter-terrorism for the IDF and Israeli border police.[1] Maor is working with security firm 360 Defence, based near Glasgow, which is “training Scottish police, military and civilians in security techniques”. This wouldn’t be the first time the British police benefits form Israeli anti-terror expertise. The police squad that carried out the extrajudicial execution of the young Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes in the London underground had received similar training.
In the post-September 11 world, Naomi Klein writes, Israel has pitched its “uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror’”. Britain has since been furnished with its own unpopular occupation of Arab land – and the lessons from Israel are not lost on its architects. In disaster lies opportunity – and the only thing more useful than a thing to fear is fear itself. The give away line in Maor’s prescription above is his offer to increase children’s awareness of the dangers of terrorism – absent the real thing, fear should suffice. The Prime Minister may not have many achievements to his name, but he can claim patents to ‘Fortress Britain’, whose battlements sit on a foundation of fear.
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America’s Victory in Lebanon
June 21, 2008
Mark Perry of the excellent Conflicts Forum draws on historical parallels from the US war of independence to put into context US setbacks in Lebanon.
The prime minister of His Majesty’s Government, the rotund Lord North–reputed (falsely) to be the bastard son of George III–once sniffed to his cabinet that if it were not for the interference of France, the American colonists would surely return to the loving arms of their mother country. He said this in the midst of the dark winter of 1776, when George Washington’s ill-clad army was traversing the ice-clogged rivers of New Jersey to do battle with Hessian mercenaries that the parsimonious North had hired. The result was predictable: when Washington attacked the Hessians (groggy from their Christmas libations), the British-paid militia dropped their arms and fled, giving the Americans their first military triumph.
North had great faith both in British power and in the Sceptred Isle’s capacity for good. He sent several messages to America’s leaders: all we want is what is good for you, he said–our interests are secondary. When told that his messages were greeted with derision, that the colonists had formed armed militias (those words, exactly) and that His Majesty should send an army to defeat them, North scoffed. The Royal Navy was the greatest navy in the history of the world; entire nation’s quelled at its appearance. “Four or five frigates will do the business without any military force,” he clucked dismissively. And so it was that while North’s Hessians were fleeing pell-mell through the streets of Trenton, the Royal Navy was blithely riding at anchor offshore–waiting for the rag tags to wet their homespun breeches.
Condoleezza Rice Was Right
June 3, 2008
‘A a new Middle East is being born’, argues regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of CEPRID in today’s guest editorial on the Doha Agreement.
The Doha Agreement for Lebanon has clarified a new re-ordering of the map of the Middle East. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was correct when, during the Israeli war against Lebanon in the summer of 2006, while Israeli planes bombed that Arab country’s civilian areas, especially Shi’ite barrios of Beirut and the country’s southern cities, she justified the massacre saying that it was assisting “the birth pangs of a new Middle East”. What Rice never dreamt was that with Hizbollah’s victory over Israel, that new Middle East was going to be one very different from the imperialist design, one that little by little would move away from the tutelage of the United States and its regional agents, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan.
Just as is happening in Latin America, there is an awakening in the Arab world. To the Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian struggles one can add that of workers in Egypt and, to a lesser extent but still worth highlighting, that of Jordanian workers against their government’s neoliberal, IMF-friendly policies. It is indeed the birth of a new Middle East, that of its peoples.
Horrors We Have No Choice But To Forget
May 31, 2008
Cannes 2008 Film Clip | Trailer
While I’ve not experienced the kind of traumatic horrors that Robert FIsk has, I do experience the amnesia he describes. Everyday I read fervently to remember how people are suffering, to keep motivated, to keep my rage on the boil. Its a daily battle that I face because my mind forgets so easily, emotionally I move on, perhaps we all do, and perhaps thats the problem.
I have a clear memory of a terrible crime that was committed in southern Lebanon in 1978. Israeli soldiers, landing at night on the beach near Sarafand – the city of Sarepta in antiquity – were looking for “terrorists” and opened fire on a car load of female Palestinian refugees.
It took the Israelis a day before they admitted shooting at the car with an anti-tank weapons, by which time I had watched civil defence workers pulling the dead women from the vehicle, their faces slopping off on to the road, an AP correspondent holding his hands to his face in shock, leaning against an ambulance, crying “Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ. I suppose all this is because of what Hitler did to the Jews.” Save for his remark, however, all I remember is silence. As if the whole scene was muted, sound smothered by the dead.
Raytheon 9
May 30, 2008
During the July war activists in Northern Ireland, shocked by the Israeli onslaught, occupied their local Raytheon arms manufacturer. Knowing full well Raytheons complicity in unfolding events the group halted production and destroyed the Raytheon computer system. A brave and moral act of resistance these activists are now on trial for criminal damage and affray, for more information visit their website - Support the Raytheon 9.
Western Delusions
May 27, 2008
Jean Bricmont on ‘The Violent Folly of Humanitarian Interventionism‘.
One can understand why some people might have sincerely thought that the Iraq war would be a “cakewalk”. First, consider WW2 ; the US mercilessly bombed Germany and Japan, including their civilian populations, then occupied those countries militarily, imposing almost total control. Yet, today, Germany and Japan are among the world’s most faithful allies of the US. How deep this alliance really is and how long it will last remains to be seen, but for the moment it is a reality.
Now, consider the Cold War. Remember that, once upon a time, governments from Poland to Bulgaria were hostile to the US. Now, they want nothing more than integration into Nato, advanced US anti-missile shields and participation in the occupation of Iraq. Or consider, even more surprisingly, Vietnam, where US investors are now welcomed with open arms, while, in a not so distant past, the US was ferociously bombing Vietnam, killing millions of people and poisoning the environment.
Even after the bombing of their little country in 1999, the Serbs behaved as desired, by voting out Milosevic and by accepting, at least for a while, pro-Western governments approving implicitely if not explicitely the bombing of their own country.
Four Days that Shook the Middle East
May 21, 2008
Today’s guest editorial on developments in Lebanon from regular Fanonite contributor Alberto Cruz of Centro de Estudios Políticos para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Desarollo (CEPRID).
The taking of Beirut by Hizbollah militants and their allies from May 7th to May 11th foiled a political military operation supported by the US and Saudi Arabia against Lebanese patriotic nationalist forces meant to weaken and defeat Hizbollah decisively .
Since Hizbollah defeated Israel in the war of the summer of 2006, both the US administration and the Saudi monarchy have promoted a dual strategy against that organization : on the one hand to reduce its prestige among significant parts of Arab people’s opinion from Morocco to Iraq, regardless of religious affiliation and on the other to disarm its military structure.
The campaign to undermine Hizbollah began from the very moment the war ended and spread further when that organization and the patriotic nationalist forces supporting it (Maronite Christians, and leftist secular groups) began a campaign of civil disobedience against the Siniora government in November 2006.
Where does the Madness End?
May 18, 2008
Robert Fisk on the victory of Hezbollah in Lebanon and George Bushes recent speech where he displays a dangerous inability to understand the situation.
I am not sure what was the worse part of this week. Living in Lebanon? Or reading the outrageous words of George Bush? Several times, I have asked myself this question: have words lost their meaning?
So let’s start with lunch at the Cocteau restaurant in Beirut. Yes, it’s named after Jean Cocteau, and it is one of the chicest places in town. Magnificent flowers on the table, impeccable service, wonderful food. Yes, there was shooting at Sodeco – 20 yards away – the day before; yes, we were already worried about the virtual collapse of the Lebanese government, the humiliation of Sunni Muslims (and the Saudis) in the face of what we must acknowledge as a Hizbollah victory (don’t expect George Bush to understand this) and the danger of more street shooting. But I brought up the tiny matter of the little massacre in northern Lebanon in which 10 or 12 militiamen were captured and then murdered before being handed over to the Lebanese army. Their bodies were – I fear this is correct – mutilated after death.
Memory for Forgetfulness
May 18, 2008
Mahmoud Darwish was born in 1941 in the village of Birwe, in Upper Galilee. Birwe was destroyed in 1948 after its inhabitants were made to flee the village. The extract which follows is taken from a memoir Darwish wrote during the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon. In it, he remembers his first encounter with Beirut in 1948, before his family stole back into what has since become Israel, where Darwish remained until 1972 . (via al-Ahram)
The sky of Beirut is a huge dome made of dark sheet metal. All-encompassing noon spreads its leisure in the bones. The horizon is like a slate of clear grey, nothing colouring it save the playful jets. A Hiroshima sky. I can, if I want, take chalk in hand and write whatever I wish on the slate. A whim takes hold of me. What would I write if I were to go up to the roof of a tall building? “They shall not pass”? It’s already been said. “May we face death, but long live the homeland”? That’s been said before. “Hiroshima”? That too has been said. The letters have all slipped out of my memory and fingers. I’ve forgotten the alphabet. All I remember are these six letters: B-E-I-R-U- T.
I came to Beirut thirty-four years ago. I was six years old then. They put a cap on my head and left me in Al-Burj Square. It had a streetcar, and I rode the streetcar. It ran on two parallel lines made of iron. The streetcar went up I didn’t know where. It ran on two iron lines. It moved forward. I couldn’t tell what made this big, noisy toy move: the lines of iron laid on the ground or the wheels that rolled. I looked out the window of the streetcar. I saw many buildings and many windows, with many eyes peering out. I saw many trees. The streetcar was moving, the buildings were moving, and the trees were moving. Everything around the streetcar was moving as it moved. The streetcar came back to where they’d put the cap on my head. My grandfather took me up eagerly. He put me in a car, and we went to Damur. Damur was smaller, and more beautiful than Beirut because the sea there was grander. But it didn’t have a streetcar. Take me to the streetcar! So they took me to the streetcar. I don’t remember anything of Damur except the sea and the banana plantations. How big the banana leaves were! How big they were! And the red flowers climbing the walls of the houses. When I came back to Beirut ten years ago, the first thing I did was stop a taxi and say to the driver: “Take me to Damur.” I had come from Cairo and was searching for the small footsteps of a boy who had taken steps larger than himself, not in keeping with his age and greater than his stride. What was I searching for? The footsteps, or the boy? Or for the folks who had crossed a rocky wilderness, only to reach that which they didn’t find, just as Cavafy never found his Ithaca? The sea was in plac, pushing against Damur to make it bigger. And I had grown up. I had become a poet searching for the boy that used to be in him, whom he had left behind some place and forgotten. The poet had grown older and didn’t permit the forgotten boy to grow up. Here I had harvested my first impressions and here I had leaned the first lessons. Here the lady who owned the orchard had kissed me. And here I had stolen the first roses. Here my grandfather had waited for the return to be announced in the newspaper, but it never was.
Saudi v Syrian media
May 16, 2008
Syrian Media – The Challenge and the Need to Act. This article from Syriacomment.com by by Averroes is a revealing analysis of the Arab media wars.
With the latest events in Lebanon, Saudi channel Alarabiya is again doing what it does best, inflaming Arab public opinion against Shiites, Syria, and the Lebanese Opposition, and it is doing so using the most recklessly sectarian language imaginable. The words Shiite, Sunni, Ta’ifi (sectarian,) and Alawite, are being repeated at an alarming rate on this and similar “Moderate Arab” media outlets, in reference to the political situations in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran. In spite of the fact that the two sides of the power struggle in Lebanon have Sunnis, Shiites, Christians, and Druze, Alarabiya and other similar media outlets are adamant on painting everything with the ugly sectarian color.
