The US, Gulf Kings and Brutal Repression in Bahrain
April 17th, 2011 § 4 Comments
The brutal repression of demonstrators by the US-backed monarchies continues.
Adam Hanieh: US policy in region based on Gulf Cooperation Council ability to suppress opposition
New Who Profits Report: Forbidden Fruit- The Israeli Wine Industry and the Occupation
April 17th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
From the Who Profits Newsletter:
A new report by Who Profits maps the involvement of the Israeli wine industry in the occupation of the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights and traces some of the ways in which it masks this involvement. For this purpose, this report surveys the Israeli wine industry, maps the vineyards and wineries in the occupied territory and traces the connections between the main Israeli wine producers and this settlement industry.
The full report is available here: http://www.whoprofits.org/articlefiles/WhoProfits-IsraeliWines.pdf
« Read the rest of this entry »
Air-Conditioned Vestiges of an Empire
April 16th, 2011 § 1 Comment
One end of the Tunnel
When I told my father recently about my morning jogs up Ancón Hill—located in Panama City’s Quarry Heights, former headquarters of the U.S. Southern Command—he emailed back to say that his own father, director of intelligence for SOUTHCOM from 1971-76, used to receive visits from Manuel Noriega in the Ancón Hill “Tunnel” during the latter’s service as director of military intelligence under Omar Torrijos.
Not known for my attentiveness to scenery, I asked what tunnel. He responded: The thing dug into the side of the hill.
Indeed, ascending the hill the following morning, I noted a cement edifice on my left—one end of the U.S. bunker, abandoned in accordance with the withdrawal of SOUTHCOM from Quarry Heights in the late 1990s.
Located not far from the Tunnel is the former house of U.S. General Marc Cisneros, a key player in the 1989 U.S. war on Panama to dislodge Noriega, who had by this time risen to the position of dictator and whose decades of cooperation with the CIA failed to avert his demise via “Operation Just Cause”. The house is currently inhabited by a Panamanian woman who drew my attention to the whirring machinery 10 meters from her front door as an indication that the bunker continues to be air conditioned, and who asked me why, if nuclear holocaust were visited upon the region, U.S. military commanders would wish to prolong their existence three years inside a tunnel. Aside from air conditioning, the Tunnel is reportedly equipped with other luxuries such as decontamination chambers, a church, and an SUV-sized paper shredder.
Miss Dallal
April 16th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
Emil Nolde's Portrait of a Young Girl
This story was published in today’s Guardian.
He filled up the tank before he left Kuwait City, filled it again at Qurriyat near the Saudi-Jordanian border. He stopped a couple of times for sandwiches and crisps, otherwise kept on driving through the flat desert with stereo playing and air conditioning humming. They waved him through the crossings after he’d waved his genuine Rolex and his heavy silver rings at them. Including border stops, the journey took eighteen hours. These days the world’s a small place, which is one of the Prophet’s Signs of the Hour – distances will disappear before the end comes.
Dusk was falling on Damascus when he arrived. Fumes rose from the minibuses and paraffin heaters and from people’s cigarettes and swirled up to meet the thickening night. Green lights and minarets shook on either side, and there were potholes in the asphalt. He didn’t bother checking into his hotel. He wanted to get straight to business.
He drove towards the mountain, through the centre of town. He followed a highway along the bed of a gorge. Here at last the barren melted against the power of potential fertility. A gurgling stream rushed beside the road, and there were trees and restaurants, sometimes dining rooms fatly bridging the water. He pulled in at a building more contemporary than the rest, a tall building fronted in metal and dark mirrors.
War, a documentary by Gwynne Dyer
April 15th, 2011 § 2 Comments
Gwynne Dyer’s War is a seven part miniseries, released in 1983, that explores the evolution of war from the bronze age to the Napoleonic era, from the World Wars to the nuclear age. The film has a broad scope, funded by The National Film Board of Canada, it was shot in ten countries, features six national armies, and contains interviews with many veterans and military specialists, including the infamous Bomber Harris.
Dyer himself has a strong military background: he served in the Canadian, American and British navies as a reserve officer; taught military affairs at the Canadian Forces College in Toronto; and for four years was a senior lecturer in war studies at Sandhurst, Britain’s Royal Military Academy. One suspects that, at least at one time, Dyer must have been relatively enthusiastic about the military, but through his understanding of the consequences of a war between great powers has become anti-war, recognising that such a confontation would inevitably escalate to nuclear war, threatening all life on the planet.
The premier episode defines the milestones along the road to total war: the birth of nationalism, conscription, the mobilization of large armies; the invention of the machine gun, tank and atomic bomb; and the deliberate killing of civilians. Paintings and visual material from archives around the world complement interviews and Mr. Dyer’s commentary, which sums up modern warfare, from Napoleon to Nagasaki.
The series was broadcast in 45 countries and the episode The Profession of Arms was nominated for an Academy Award.
The Road to Total War
Kuperman does Libya
April 15th, 2011 § 6 Comments
You must have seen this article by Alan Kuperman doing the rounds over the past 24 hours. Nevermind the fact that Kuperman is a ‘bomb-Iran’ neocons hardliner, many are referencing it to dismiss the enormity of the situation in Libya. Kuperman begins with some strong declarative statements which he says are based on Human Rights Watch findings.
EVIDENCE IS now in that President Barack Obama grossly exaggerated the humanitarian threat to justify military action in Libya. The president claimed that intervention was necessary to prevent a “bloodbath’’ in Benghazi, Libya’s second-largest city and last rebel stronghold.
But Human Rights Watch has released data on Misurata, the next-biggest city in Libya and scene of protracted fighting, revealing that Moammar Khadafy is not deliberately massacring civilians but rather narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.
Misurata’s population is roughly 400,000. In nearly two months of war, only 257 people — including combatants — have died there. Of the 949 wounded, only 22 — less than 3 percent — are women. If Khadafy were indiscriminately targeting civilians, women would comprise about half the casualties.
Revealing figures — which seem to leave absolutely no room for doubt. Except Kuperman’s analysis bears little relation to the report he is referencing. First he performs some deductive reasoning based on the estimates of one interviewee and tries to pass it off as the conclusions of HRW. He then inverts the actual conclusions of HRW to claim that ‘Moammar Khadafy [sic] is not deliberately massacring civilians.’ He then proceeds with an impressive kamikaze act declaring in no uncertain terms that Qaddafi is ‘narrowly targeting the armed rebels who fight against his government.’
Of Niqabs, Monsters, and Decolonial Feminisms
April 15th, 2011 § 12 Comments
By Huma Dar
A woman in niqab being arrested in Paris, April 12, 2011, copyright EPA
Of Civilities and Dignities
On 22 June 2009, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French President, asserted that burqas (or the burqa-clad?) are “not welcome” in France, adding that “[i]n our country, we cannot accept that women be prisoners behind a screen, cut off from all social life, deprived of all identity” and that “the veils reduced dignity.” France’s Muslim minority is Western Europe’s largest Muslim minority, estimated at six-million-strong. And this is just an approximation, as the French Republic implicitly claims to be post-race and post-religion via a prohibition on any census that would take into account the race or religion of its citizens. (This anxiety mirrors the brouhaha in Indian media àpropos the much-contested enumeration of OBCs or Other Backward Castes in the Indian census surveys of 2011, or the urgency to declare some spaces post-caste, post-feminist, and post-racist while casteism, patriarchy and racism continue unabated.)
Omar Barghouti, founder of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, speaks at Brandeis University
April 14th, 2011 § 2 Comments
Lisa Hanania
WALTHAM, M
A- Today (Wednesday) Omar Barghouti, one of the leading founders of the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, presented at Brandeis his new book BDS: Boycott Divestment and Sanction: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights. The event was hosted by Brandeis Students for Justice in Palestine (BSJP) and Haymarket Books.
US-Israel Trade: Espionage, Theft and Secrets
April 13th, 2011 § 1 Comment
On April 6, Grant F. Smith presented a comprehensive review of the US-Israel Free Trade Agreement to the Finance and Economics Council at the University of Rochester. Using a slide show of declassified documents and charts, Smith revealed how secret agreements and a joint Israeli embassy/AIPAC covert operation undermined US industries and the trade negotiating process.
New quantitative analysis and disclosures reveal the US-Israel trade agreement is actually a $10 billion/year foreign aid program. Smith also discusses how major omissions in Dan Senor and Saul Singer’s 2009 Council on Foreign Relations book Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle undermine their two major findings: that perpetual conflict gives Israel a comparative advantage and that the US should reinstate conscription in order to match Israel’s entrepreneurial output.
Misurata civilians under siege
April 12th, 2011 § 3 Comments
Al Jazeera’s Hoda Abdel Hamid reports on the ongoing battle for Libya.
