Author: Idrees Ahmad

I am a Lecturer in Digital Journalism at the University of Stirling and a former research fellow at the University of Denver’s Center for Middle East Studies. I am the author of The Road to Iraq: The Making of a Neoconservative War (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). I write for The Observer, The Nation, The Daily Beast, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Al Jazeera, Dissent, The National, VICE News, Huffington Post, In These Times, Le Monde Diplomatique, Die Tageszeitung (TAZ), Adbusters, Guernica, London Review of Books (Blog), The New Arab, Bella Caledonia, Asia Times, IPS News, Medium, Political Insight, The Drouth, Canadian Dimension, Tanqeed, Variant, etc. I have appeared as an on-air analyst on Al Jazeera, the BBC, TRT World, RAI TV, Radio Open Source with Christopher Lydon, Alternative Radio with David Barsamian and several Pacifica Radio channels.

Kuperman does Libya

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’ neocon 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.’

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Libyan revolution and more infantile leftism

The asinine commentary issuing from some leftist quarters, the wild-conspiratorial ramblings, the incapacity to handle dilemmas — all of this would be amusing if it weren’t for the slanders and falsehoods which have so quickly ossified into conventional wisdom. Over half a century after Richard Hofstadter wrote his famous essay it appears the paranoid style still thrives in the politics of both the left and right. The western leftists’ answer to liberation struggles elsewhere is to project their own impotence and assume that there must be a grand conspiracy at play. How else could ordinary people take charge of their own lives and refuse to be silenced and repressed? No, they must be Al Qaeda, or CIA agents, or both — as figures such as Alexander Cockburn, Edward Herman and John Pilger have imperiously declared (relying on a report by West Point’s Counter Terrorism Center no less–never mind that it is a dubious outfit run by neoconservative terrorologists). What better way to divest yourself of moral dilemmas? Blame the victims!

There is a good reason why radicals of the left often find it so easy to turn into radicals of the right. Both are possessed of a Manichean worldview governed by absolutes, free of moral dilemmas, disdainful of ambiguity. This kind of simple-mindedness is the prerogative of those who are either completely powerless and thus free of responsibility, since their actions are of no consequence, or of the absolutely powerful, whose actions are beyond accountability. The rest of us, alas, are doomed to a world where the choices are rarely as simple as between ‘good’ and ‘bad.’

Jeffrey Blankfort has some apt comments:

Also, check out Stephen Shalom’s commentary on Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s speech on Libya.

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Juliano Mer-Khamis, RIP

Palestinians mourn Julian Mer-Khamis

The great Juliano Mer-Khamis is no more. He was killed by masked gunmen in front of the theatre he established in Jenin to help Palestinian youth resist the occupation creatively. I was lucky enough to spend time with him when he visited Glasgow to raise funds for The Freedom Theatre. He was a charismatic, big-hearted, and compassionate man. He also had a great sense of humour. It takes a real coward to attack a man like that. I hope the murderers are brought to justice soon. (Mondoweiss has more on this, including statements from the Palestinian Popular Committee and Gideon Levy)

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The Crash

On May 2, 2011, US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner sent his third ultimatum to Congress noting that the US is set to reach its statutory debt limit of $14.3 trillion by May 16, and unless the ceiling was raised by August 2, the country could face default. ‘The economy is still in the early stages of recovery,’ he warned, ‘and financial markets here and around the world are watching the United States closely.  Delaying action risks a loss of confidence and accompanying negative economic effects.’ These will have a ‘catastrophic economic impact’ and ‘broad range of government payments would have to be stopped, limited or delayed, including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare payments, interest on debt, unemployment benefits and tax refunds.’ It will also lead to ‘sharply higher interest rates and borrowing costs, declining home values and reduced retirement savings for Americans.’ Mostly ominously, it will ‘cause a financial crisis potentially more severe than the crisis from which we are only now starting to recover.’

The situation doubtless sounds dire, but there is something mildly ironic about a Treasury Secretary warning the government against losing the trust of an industry which he only recently rescued with an extraordinary cash transfusion of $4.1 trillion in public money. The real costs of the bailout are estimated by Bloomberg at $ 12.8 trillion. But it is easy to overlook the consistency in Geithner’s assessment: the US government was a hostage to the financial industry when it faced collapse, and it is a hostage to it when its own economic future turns increasingly uncertain. The doubling of US national debt between 2004 and 2011 is merely a symptom of the problem—two wars and the bailout have both paid a part—but at its root are the regulatory failures and conflict of interests which are embodied in the person of Timothy Geithner. For over two decades the US Treasury has functioned as a de facto arm of Wall Street, eschewing its regulatory function to act as a passive enabler. Little surprise then that three years after the crisis the institutions that caused the collapse continue to evade responsibility and the price is instead paid by the taxpayer in exorbitant, lost homes and depleting employment opportunities.

How did things go so bad?

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Information Wars

Part I of this episode of Al Jazeera’s Empire is available here.

Information is power and in the age of the information revolution, cyber and satellite communication is transforming our lives, reinventing the relationship between people and power. How will governments deal with the information revolution?

Srebrenica on the Mediterranean

Two days after Gaddafi promised that he’ll show ‘no mercy’, his troops are bombarding, some entering, Benghazi. The UN Security Council had passed a resolution declaring a no-fly zone over Libya. Thus far, the sky belongs to Gaddafi. There was a point where Gaddafi could have been thwarted, had his armoured columns been checked by the presence of hostile air power. No need to bomb them, just bomb the road ahead. Check their advance, send a message. Instead, the troops have been allowed to enter Benghazi. Now they cannot be attacked without inflicting high casualties on civilians. The UN forces will likely excuse themselves by claiming that tanks can’t be attacked because now they are in the city. Western forces are also reluctant because since 2003, Gaddafi has been a reliable economic parter and Libya has been a favoured destination for rendition flights. (Remember where Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi died?)

The UN could still salvage the situation by threatening Gaddafi’s supply lines. But I fear we are about to see another Srebrenica. In that instance, the UN forces delayed intervention till the Serbs had encircled the enclave and then declined to intervene because they said it would put their own peacekeepers lives at risk. Meanwhile the slaughter continues.

Can anyone at the US State department spell ‘Irony’?

From the State Department’s 14 February 2011 daily press briefing.

MR. CROWLEY: Well, that – what has guided us throughout the last three months and guides us in terms of how we focus on Iran is the core principles – the Secretary mentioned them again today – of restraint from violence, respect for universal rights, and political and social reform. There is a – it is hypocrisy that Iran says one thing in the context of Egypt but refuses to put its own words into action in its own country.

QUESTION: How about other countries – Bahrain, Yemen, or Algeria, or Jordan? Why you are not talking about those countries and you are condemning what is happening in Iran?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, actually, in the other countries there is greater respect for the rights of the citizens.

14 February 2011

Iranians Protest In The Streets

The courage of these protesters is admirable even if some of their politics (their positions on the Palestinians and on Lebanon) is less than savoury. (Remember that Iran executed many who protested back in 2009)

New York Times slimes on Julian Assange

Bill Keller of the New York Times accuses Wikileaks of engaging in ‘anti-war propaganda’. Of course that is something that the august ‘paper of record’ would never do. It only engages in pro-war propaganda. Check out the kind of things Keller was writing in the lead up to the Iraq war.

Phenomenons otherwise known as Julian Assange and WikiLeaks have – no doubt – turned world politics and journalism, upside-down. Maybe that’s why the New York Times was among the first US Media outlets to begin working with Assange last year, securing scoops on classified US Government documents obtained by WikiLeaks. Six months later, the relationship has soured and the Times is looking to profit from it by publishing a critical tell-all book about the source that they once relied on.

Lives in the Balance (A song for Egypt)

Jackson Browne is a prophet, but it’s Richie Havens who really captures the intensity of the subject. This one is for Egypt:

On the radio talk shows and the T.V.
You hear one thing again and again
How the U.S.A. stands for freedom
And we come to the aid of a friend
But who are the ones that we call our friends–
These governments killing their own?
Or the people who finally can’t take any more
And they pick up a gun or a brick or a stone
And there are lives in the balance
There are people under fire
There are children at the cannons
And there is blood on the wire