Posts from — October 2013

Here is the embarrassing excerpt where US State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, replies to journalist in a “clueless as hell responses about the illegal arrest and detention of former Bahrain MP Khalil al-Marzooq. Now made a “terrorist” by the Bahrain Regime and who will likely be deported. What follows is the lesson that MS Harf learned from her idiocy and disrespect. – Phlipn Out.

MS. HARF: Yep, a couple of points on that. Obviously, we’re following the case closely. We’ll be raising it with the Bahraini authorities as part of our discussion of recent political developments in Bahrain. I think the bigger context is important here, that we are disappointed that opposition groups have suspended their involvement in the national dialogue that you just mentioned. We believe that the national dialogue is an important step in a longer process that leads to meaningful reforms and that addresses the legitimate aspirations of all Bahrainis. So we’ll continue to encourage everyone to participate in it. …Full Interview

U.S. discussing rights issues with Bahrain
4 October, 2013 – UPI.com

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (UPI) — The U.S. government has expressed its concern about the treatment of opposition leaders in Bahrain to its close partners in Manama, the State Department said.

Bahrain’s government last month confirmed the arrest of Khalil al-Marzooq, a deputy leader from the opposition al-Wefaq organization. He was accused of inciting violence and supporting terrorism through a speech he delivered to supporters in September.

The Bahraini government stripped dozens of political activists of their citizenship, including at least one member of al-Wefaq. Bahrain blames the opposition group for unrest in the Persian Gulf country.

Dozens of people were killed during an uprising in 2011. Bahrain said it is committed to reforms outlined by an independent commission probing the government’s response to the protests.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said Washington was calling on both sides to settle their issues through a national dialogue. She said she was concerned about restrictions placed on political freedoms.

“We’ve continued this discussion with the Bahraini government,” she said during her regular press briefing Thursday. “They’re close partners of ours in the region, and we’ll keep talking about it with them.”

Bahrain hosts the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet.

…source

OP-ED: Bahrain Repression Continues Amid Sham Trials and Imprisonment
By Emile Nakhleh – IPS – 4 October, 2013

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 2013 (IPS) – The lengthy prison sentences handed down to 50 Shia activists last week and the refusal of Bahraini courts to hear their allegations of torture once again confirm the regime’s continued repression of the opposition.

Amnesty International in a statement this week decried the unfair trials and sentencing of these activists and the inability of the defence lawyers to present witnesses or to challenge the authorities’ politically motivated charges. Court decisions seem to be pre-ordained regardless of the facts.
“The King’s hands-off approach shows he is ruling over a fractious country that is heading toward the abyss.”

Many of those convicted were allegedly tortured in prison before trial as “terrorists”, an accusation which the Al Khalifa regime hurls at any Bahraini who criticises regime brutality.

In a recent interview with Al Monitor, the Bahraini foreign minister defended his government’s “serious” commitment to the so-called national reconciliation dialogue and accused the opposition of undermining it. He said the dialogue is “there to stay,” but just this week the government suspended the dialogue until Oct. 30.

From the very beginning, the government-organised dialogue has been a public relations stunt to buy time and perhaps mollify critical Western governments. It failed because it mostly focused on process, not substance.

Unfortunately for Bahrainis, the deafening silence in Washington and London about human rights abuses has signaled to the Bahraini regime that other regional trouble spots, especially Syria, Iran, and Egypt, at least for the moment trump Bahrain.

The regime continues to encourage the radical Sunni Salafi elements within the ruling family to pursue an unwavering apartheid policy against the majority and remains impervious to international criticism.

Apart from the convictions, the government crackdown has included banning non-governmental organisations from contacting foreign funding sources or diplomats without government approval, arresting Khalil Marzuq, a leading member of al-Wifaq party, depriving a number of Bahrainis of citizenship, and pursuing an anti-Shia sectarian agenda. These actions have incurred international condemnation and have prompted the opposition in mid-September to pull out of the dialogue.

Restrictions on NGOs finally prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a statement Sep. 19 expressing “concern” about the Bahraini government’s recent restrictions on civil society groups and their ability to freely communicate “with foreign governments and international organizations.”

European governments, spearheaded by Switzerland, privately and publicly have repeatedly condemned human rights abuses in Bahrain. The recent human rights declaration signed by 47 states is another sign of growing international impatience with the autocratic, intolerant, and exclusive nature of the Bahraini regime.

In recent media interviews, the Bahraini foreign minister criticised U.S. President Barack Obama for lumping Bahrain with Iraq and Syria as regimes that have promoted sectarianism.

“We are different from the other two states, and this is hard to take,” the foreign minister said in an interview with the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat newspaper.

Some media reports have discussed the serious divisions within the ruling family’s two major ideological factions. These include the supposedly pro-reform faction led by the King’s son and Crown Prince Salman; the other is the more conservative and anti-reform faction led by the “Khawalids” within the military senior hierarchy and the Royal Court.

The King views himself as a “constitutional monarch” above the political fray and as an arbiter of family ideological feuds. This hands-off approach, however, shows he is ruling over a fractious country that is heading toward the abyss.

By replacing his ambassador in Washington, the relatively moderate Bahraini Jewish woman Huda Nunu, with a military officer closely associated with the Khawalids, the King’s “in your face” appointment in effect is telling Washington that his hard-line policies against the opposition would continue.

Whatever game the King is playing is destined to fail in the long run. He cannot possibly envision a stable and peaceful Bahrain if he continues to allow an extremist Sunni anti-Shia faction within his family to run the country with total disregard of the majority. This is a recipe for violence and chaos. The game is up; the King cannot pretend all is well in his tiny “constitutional monarchy”.

Much like the white extremist faction within the U.S. Republican Party that is bent on disregarding the law of the land and the democratic procedures to effect political change, the extremist Khawalid faction under the auspices of the prime minister is committed to keeping Al Khalifa in power at all costs, even at the risk of tearing the country apart.

If the King is still committed to genuine reform, he should shed his “constitutional monarch” posture and act decisively and courageously. He could immediately take the following 10 steps:

– Remove the prime minister, appoint the crown prince or another distinguished bahraini as acting prime minister, and call for free national elections.

– Appoint a respected and representative commission to initiate genuine national reconciliation dialogue involving all segments of society.

– Stop illegal arrests and sham trials.

– Void the 22 amendments to the law that the lower house of the Bahraini parliament passed recently, which, among other things, call for stripping Bahrainis of their citizenship if they criticise Al Khalifa, whether on Twitter or in person.

– Remove all vestiges of employment discrimination against the Shia, especially in defense and the security services.

– Implement the key recommendations of the Bassiouni Commission report.

– Make new appointments in the Royal Court and the top echelons of the military.

– Review the court system and revisit the contractual appointments of expatriate judges.

– Void the recent sentences and arrests of peaceful opposition protesters.

– Announce the above steps in a nationally televised address to the nation.

The ruling family has waged a sophisticated public relations campaign through traditional means and on the new social media and has hired publicists to present a gentle picture of the government’s abysmal human rights record. The campaign has failed.

Western governments, human rights groups, the European Union, and Western media have not really bought into Al Khalifa’s PR blitz. The Washington Post’s recent editorial condemning Marzuq’s arrest is a telling example of how Western media has come to view Bahrain’s repressive regime.

A recent twist in the Bahraini regime’s propaganda has been to argue that the “Bahraini file” is linked to the “Syrian file” and to the “Iranian file.” Therefore, the Bahraini domestic conflict could not be resolved until Syria is taken care of or until a U.S.-Iran rapprochement is achieved. The regime has been trying feverishly but unsuccessfully to sell this argument to regional and international players and to the Bahraini opposition.

No such linkage exists; grievances in Bahrain go back decades. A resolution of the Syrian crisis, whether by war or diplomacy, or the possible reintegration of Iran in the international community should not prevent the ruling family from implementing genuine reforms and ending the sate of emergency and Sunni apartheid policies against the Shia majority.

Emile Nakhleh is former Director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at CIA and author of “A Necessary Engagement: Reinventing America’s Relations with the Muslim World and Bahrain: Political Development in a Modernizing Society.” …source

Bahraini Activist: Manama Regime Lacks Legitimacy
5 October, 2013 – Tasnim

TEHRAN (Tasnim) – A Bahraini opposition figure strongly condemned Al Khalifa regime for the atrocities it has committed against the Arab nation, and stressed that the ruling family has lost its legitimacy and relevance.

“The ruling regime in Manama has lost its legitimacy among the Bahraini nation, and the crimes this regime has committed against people of the country have made the nation call for the overthrow of Al Khalifa with one voice,” Saeed Shahabi, secretary general of the Bahrain Freedom Movement, told Tasnim on Saturday.

He also explained that the Bahraini nation regards “the ruling monarch and his accomplices” as the culprits, and want the “criminals and murderers” who killed many people and “brazenly violated human rights” to be brought to justice.

Shahabi further made it clear that the Bahraini nation would not budge “untill the realization of all its goals,” and added: “Presence of all the Bahraini people in the demonstrations reveals that the revolution is on its right path.”

The Persian Gulf state has seen frequent unrest since authorities cracked down on the popular uprising against the ruling monarchy in early 2011.

Human Rights Watch has accused the Bahraini government of violence and torture, with frequent reports of child protesters facing conditions which border on torture while in custody.

Human rights organizations have also accused the West of turning a blind eye to the crackdown, because it considers Bahrain as strategically important, providing a haven for the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet in the Gulf.

Bahrain has seen 80 people killed since the protests erupted, according to the International Federation for Human Rights. Hundreds more have been arrested and languish in prison.

In a recent mass show trial in six separate cases, 95 Bahraini protesters were sentenced to between three and 15 years in prison for allegedly trying to topple the country’s constitutional monarchy, organizing bombings and inciting anti-government rallies.

Many popular human rights activists were among the 95 individuals receiving a total of 808 years behind bars.

Saudi Arabia, whose forces helped the Al Khalifa regime in its bloody repression of the popular uprising, is much resented by the Bahraini people. …source

Bahrain Charges Leading ex-MP with Inciting Terror
by Naharnet – 5 October, 2013- narharnet

Bahrain’s general prosecutor on Saturday said he had referred prominent Shiite opposition ex-MP Khalil Marzooq to court on charges of “inciting terrorist crimes”.

Marzooq, a senior figure in the main Al-Wefaq opposition formation who was arrested on September 17, also faces charges of “promoting acts that amount to terrorist crimes”, Abdulrahman al-Sayyed said in a statement.

The prosecutor also accused Marzooq of using his position in Al-Wefaq, a legal association, to “call for crimes that are considered terror acts under the law,” the statement said.

The prosecutor confronted Marzooq with his public speeches in which he allegedly supported the “principles of terror elements… especially the terrorist group named the February 14 Coalition, which he openly supported,” the statement said.

It said that Marzooq had raised the flag of the clandestine group at a public rally after it was handed to him by a masked man.

Last Sunday a court sentenced 50 Shiites including a top Iraqi cleric, to up to 15 years in jail for forming the February 14 Coalition, which is blamed for most of the confrontations between security forces and members of the Shiite majority.

Marzooq was deputy speaker in the 40-member parliament of the Sunni-ruled monarchy before 18 MPs from the influential Al-Wefaq walked out in February 2011 in protest over violence against demonstrators.

At least 89 people have been killed in Bahrain since Arab Spring-inspired pro-democracy protests erupted in February 2011, according to the International Federation for Human Rights.

Bahrain, a strategic archipelago just across the Gulf from Iran, is the home base of the U.S. Fifth Fleet and Washington is a long-standing ally of the ruling Al-Khalifa dynasty.
…source

Saudi Arabia behind Syria chemical attack: Russian source
5 October, 2013 – Shia POst

A Russian diplomatic source says the August chemical attack near the Syrian capital Damascus was carried out by Saudi Arabian intelligence agents.

“Based on data from a number of sources a picture can be pieced together. The criminal provocation in eastern Ghouta was done by a black op team that the Saudis sent through Jordan and which acted with support of the Liwa al-Islam group,” the Interfax news agency reported, citing a Russian source.

On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said there was evidence that components of chemical weapons were used by foreign-backed militants in Syria and transferred into Iraq for possible “provocations.”

“We read reports and hear from various sources, semi-official and trustworthy, that some official representatives of a number of the countries of the region surrounding Syria allegedly established contacts and meet regularly with leaders of Jabhat al-Nusra and other terrorist groups, and also that those radicals have some components of chemical weapons maybe found in Syria or maybe brought from somewhere, and not just on the Syrian territory, but also that chemical weapons components have been brought to Iraq and that provocations are being prepared there,” Lavrov said at a news conference after a meeting with Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid.

On August 21, hundreds of people were killed and scores of others were injured in a chemical attack in eastern Ghouta on the suburbs of Damascus.

The militants operating inside Syria and the foreign-backed Syrian opposition accused the army of being behind the deadly attack.

Damascus, however, has strongly denied the accusation, saying it was a false-flag operation carried out by Takfiri groups in a bid to draw in foreign military intervention.

Following the chemical attack, US stepped up its war rhetoric against the Syrian government and called for punitive military action against Damascus.

The Syrian government averted possible US aggression by accepting a Russian plan to put its chemical arsenal under international control and then have them destroyed.

Syria has been gripped by deadly unrest since 2011. According to reports, the Western powers and their regional allies — especially Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey — are supporting the militants operating inside Syria.

In a recent statement, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said the number of Syrian refugees, who have fled the country’s 29-month-long conflict, reached two million.

The UN refugee agency also said some 4.2 million people have also been displaced inside Syria since the beginning of the conflict in the Arab country. …source

Slavoj Žižek: The eternal marriage between capitalism and democracy has ended
2 September 2013, by Harry Cross – Humanité

From the Humanité summer series Imaging a New World. Interview with Slavoj Žižek, Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst. According to him the historic era of capitalism is drawing to a close. The word “communism” should not be avoided when describing the horizon of our hopes.

After spending a considerable part of his intellectual formation in France, it is in Ljubljana, the city of his birth in 1949, where Žižek bases himself for his research. It is also from this town, when he is not fulfilling commitments around the world, that the Slovene iconoclast writes most of his books, now translated into dozens of languages. His polymorphic work draws on Lacan, Hegel and Marx, whose systems of thought in combination he believes offer an unrivalled means of understanding the antagonisms that span society. Žižek delivers an intellectual attack on numerous ideas that pose problems in contemporary reality: globalisation, capitalism, liberty and servitude, political correctness, Marxism, postmodernity, democracy, ecology… Described by his detractors from the left and the right as truculent and uncontrollable, Žižek is above all a thinker who does not abide by intellectual convention and practices. His conceptual constructions are rooted in a “living” Marxism (to use the well-chosen words of Sartre), a Lacanian passion and a Hegelian tropism. This construction rests in part in the digressions that he allows himself to come closer to the tensions of the real in its interwoven complexity.

You wrote in your most recent work that “the seizures of state power have failed miserably” and that you consider that “the left should dedicate itself to the direct transformation of social life.” Can these two not be intertwined?

Slavoj Žižek: I am in severe disagreement with several of my friends, notably in Latin America, who believe that taking power should no longer be a priority, and that the Bolshevik or “Jacobin” paradigm (in other words, the direct seizure of state power) should be abandoned in favour of instigating change in local communities. There is even the illusion that the state will disappear by itself. My position is entirely different. We must remain Marxist. The basic social antagonism is not found on the level of power and governance; it is the economic antagonism which expresses most directly the paradox of capitalism. The solution is not to be found in a movement of resistance against the state. That is not our greatest enemy. It is wrong to think that the solution is to keep a distance from the state, capital already exists a distance from the state! The enemy, for me, is this society in its actual mode of functioning and the economic domination it creates.

It is therefore firstly the role attributed to the state that you question, rather than the hypothetical opposition between civil society and the state?

Slavoj Žižek: Depriving oneself of the state can lead to worse scenarios. One left-wing legal theoretician told me that he had looked at all the legal cases in the United States in which local communities opposed the state. The neoconservative civil movement believes that the state should not interfere in civil affairs. Reactionary groups have therefore succeeded in banning homosexuality in schools to take but one example. In the United States, it is the state that defends certain fundamental liberties against pressure from local and civil neoconservatives.

Do you conclude from this that civil society is not necessarily endowed with good, universalist intentions, and that one of the functions of the state could be to contain, if not to supersede dogmatic authoritarianism?

Slavoj Žižek: Yes, we must not forget the fascist movements. Today, the great antimigrant movement born out of patriotism is a manifestation of civil society. The most radical conflict is not between state and subject, it is an economic conflict which can be dominated by the state. Maintaining a distance from the state means that we abandon control of the state to the enemy. It is true that within the structure of the state itself there is a form of domination. This should not stop us from considering how we can achieve many things with it. The tool is ambiguous, it can be dangerous, but it can also be a tool of social transformation.

You seem at times sceptical regarding mass mobilisations. Do you thinks these “groups-in-fusion”, to use the expression of Sartre, are incapable of radically transforming the course of events?

Slavoj Žižek: The mass movements that we have seen most recently, whether in Tahrir Square or Athens, look to me like a pathetic ecstasy. What is important for me is the following day, the morning after. These events make me feel as one does when one awakes with a headache after a night of drunkenness. The major difficulty is in this crucial moment, when things return to their normal state of affairs, when daily life starts again.

Even if the promise of revolution is lost, do these movements not pre-empt history with the possibility of precipitating greater events?

Slavoj Žižek: Yes, but what is left of these great events? The success of these large ecstatic movements should be evaluated on the basis of what is left after they have gone. Otherwise we are in the back to the romanticism of ’68. It is what takes place next that interests me. The problem is knowing what are we are concretely doing today? That is why I admired the results of Hugo Chavez. We talk without end about the continuous auto-mobilisation of the masses. I do not want to live in a society in which I am obliged to be permanently politically mobilised. We have more and more the need for large social projects with concrete and lasting results.

You juxtapose the crisis of capitalism with an ecological crisis. What is this “ecological crisis” that you discuss at length in your In Defence of Lost Causes?

Slavoj Žižek: I do not like the mythology of the ecologist movement with believes in a natural equilibrium which was destroyed by human imperialism or destabilised by the exploitation of nature. I prefer left-wing Darwinism which argues that nature does not exist as a homeostatic order, a Mother Earth whose balance was disturbed by man’s intervention. That is a view that has to be abandoned. I think by contrast that nature is crazy, driven by natural catastrophes, and is one big chaos. This absolutely does not mean that we do not have to work to avoid catastrophe, quite the reverse, the situation is extremely worrying. But we must leave behind this ecological moralisation and the homeostatic perspective. Theology in its traditional form can no longer fulfil its primary function which is to impose fixed boundaries. Invoking God no longer works. By contrast, invoking Nature is beginning to fulfil this role. I do not have any grand answers to the problem but a first useful step would be to refuse the ecological “way of life”. This individualises the ecological crisis as evidenced in the urge to recycle. As if that will suffice to accomplish its purpose! That does nothing but replicate a permanent sense of guilt. I am much more interested in how we can organise to prevent future population movements tied to climate change. The answer to this question interests me more than endless talk about recycling.

You have always been concerned with the democratic question. Drawing as much on Plato as Heidegger you show its often illusory character. Is it time to seek its renewal, or do you believe in the straightforward abandonment of this idea?

Slavoj Žižek: It all depends on what we mean by democracy. Democracy as it currently functions is being more and more called into question. It is one of the important lessons of Occupy Wall Street. Even if it did dissipate it had two correct intuitions. Firstly, it was opposed to being a “one issue movement”: it was a concrete denunciation of the fact that there is something seriously wrong in the actual economic system. Secondly, this movement showed that our existing political system is not strong enough to move effectively against these economic infringements. If we allow the current global system to develop by itself I expect the worst: new apartheids and new forms of social division. I believe that the eternal marriage between capitalism and democracy is over. It has only a few more years to hold out.

What then can replace this “empty shell”?

Slavoj Žižek: What we have on our hands is a democracy void of all significance. But I am not for brutally abandoning this idea. There are precise situations where I can be pro-democratic. In this sense I am not for the systematic rejection of elections. Sometimes they can be very fruitful, as in the Paris Commune, or if one was to imagine a victory of Syriza in Greece. It would be a beautiful democratic moment. But there is a democratic crisis to be overcome. Recall the shock in Europe when Papanderou proposed a referendum. Electoral choice is regularly manipulated in numerous ways, but it can happen that we are able to do things that are truly democratic. I am not therefore in principle against this idea.

You denounce a Europe voided of all “ideological passion”. What is the damage done by this, according to you, in its present form?

Slavoj Žižek: There are three Europes. The technocratic Europe is not bad in principal. But when that is all there is, the unity it offers is a mere façade and it is only capable of delivering the means of its own survival. The populist xenophobic Europe is violently anti-migrant. The biggest danger for me resides in the third Europe, which is the superposition of an economic technocracy (which is multicultural and liberal at the bottom) and an idiotic patriotism. Berlusconi’s Italy is a sinister example. By contrast, I have the impression that we as Europeans have had enough of continuous self-flagellation. We have to be able to defend and boast about what Europe is based on: its values rooted in equality, feminism and radical democracy. The great anticolonial movements were European in inspiration. Our only hope is to inspire another idea of Europe.

You are therefore advocating a new political voluntarism?

Slavoj Žižek: The imminent logic of history is not on our side. If we let it lean toward its natural tendency, history will continue to lead toward a reactionary authoritarianism. In that the analyses of Marx should be our starting point. This line must be pursued whilst considering also other questions, raised for example by the Italian autonomists, such as Maurizio Lazzarato, who argues that, in daily ideology, our servitude is presented to us as our freedom. He demonstrates how we are all treated as capitalists who invest in our lives. Indebtedness implies a functional discipline. It is today a new way of maintaining control over individuals, all whilst promoting the illusion of free choice. Even the fragility of our career path and chronic insecurity is presented to us a chance to reinvent ourselves every two or three years. And it works very well.

A series of intellectuals, of whom you are one, defend the idea that the communist idea is not yet exhausted. Does the idea has a future despite it frequently being the object of vulgar reductionism?

Slavoj Žižek: The axiom we have in common is to continue to use the word “communism” to describe the horizon of our hopes. Contemporary liberal anti-communists do not even have the conceptual ability to formulate a true critique of communism. The theory of the totalitarian temptation which is inherent in communism is a ridiculous non-theorised psychologism. This is what made me say once to Bernard-Henri Lévy that he was not sufficiently anti-communist. We are still waiting for an enlightening critique of the Stalinist catastrophe. Every Day Stalinism is the only work to my knowledge which makes an interesting and informed commentary. It is an historical fact that horrible regimes legitimised themselves from Marx. It is too easy to oppose this reality by saying they were not an authentic Marxism. The question must still be asked: how was that possible? This issue, on the other hand, must not be a pretext for abandoning Marx. It is the necessary precondition for repeating the process differently; renewing this gesture whilst changing the form and not the premises. “Socialism” does not work as a term: Hitler called himself a socialist. “A true idea is divisive”, as says my friend Alain Badiou. But past errors must make use more exigent. …source

How to win a lost war
By Andreas Herberg-Rothe – Asia Time

In the 21st century, the overarching task of policy in a globalized, multipolar world is to manage the rise of the Global South by avoiding great wars and the cancer of mass violence.

Where a technical understanding of the military concept of “battle space” would focus solely on the application of necessary military means – which the US Department of Defense characterizes as “The environment, factors, and conditions which must be understood to successfully apply combat power, protect the force, or complete the mission” – a wider view of the concept is necessary. It must be based on a strategic narrative, which

“explains policy in the context of the proposed set of actions” in war, according to Emile Simpson, former soldier and author of War From the Ground Up.

Dan Moran, a professor at the US-Naval post-graduate school in Monterrey says all his students are discussing how to win the narrative – they understand winning the narrative as winning the war. He cautions, however, against making such an equation. Winning the war narrative is not necessarily the same as winning the war. It is the story surrounding the war, whether it was won or lost.

Germany could not pretend to have won World War II, but for a long time was able to portray ordinary Germans as people with nothing in common with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In this narrative, Germans were overthrown by a dictatorship of a few hundred national socialists. Things are different with World War I. Here too, the Germans could not pretend to have won the war. But from that experience a narrative emerged that was based on the assumption that the German Reichswehr was not defeated on the battlefield but betrayed by the Social Democrats and the communists within Germany.

This understanding of the German defeat in World War I resulted in a most influential narrative to wage a new war in an attempt to make up for defeat and the restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles. The characterization of the causes of the German defeat in World War I might have contributed to the terrible inner oppression in Germany in the Nazi area. If the war was lost through the betrayal of the opponents of the Reichswehr within Germany it was reasonable for the Nazis to eliminate all kind of opposition before and during the war.

The German historical experience in two world wars supports the conclusion that winning the narrative should not automatically be understood as winning the war, even in retrospect. In both cases winning the narrative was not about winning the war, but about integration of the defeat into a cultural, political and social framework – which enabled the German nation to keep its presupposed identity alive and to be recognized as equal part of the international community again.

Narratives therefore are really powerful concepts in shaping the political and social realm in retrospect. But they are not necessarily about winning the war; reasoning about the causes and circumstances of losing a war might have an even more powerful force. For instance, one could say that the Taliban lost the military campaign in 2001 in Afghanistan but won the narrative afterwards.

Let’s look to the future, but again through the prism of German history. Could there be any narrative with which the Germans would have won both world wars? In fact, a narrative could be observed in Germany after World War I that the Reichswehr could have won this war if the generals had read and understood Clausewitz rightly.

As a Clausewitz-scholar I’m a little tempted by this notion as he himself might have been. But Germany just could not win both world wars even by constructing any thinkable narrative. Of course winning the war seems to be at the heart of waging a war. In the 16th century, Prince Frederick of Saxony laid down the following proposition: “If you decide to go to war you have to decide to win.” But the question after Iraq and Afghanistan is, what does it mean to win a war?

In my view, to paraphrase Prince Frederick, the following is true: if you decide to go to war you have to decide to win the political narrative. I’m not totally sure that all wouldto agree with the proposition that winning the war is really about winning the narrative, because winning the narrative is more than about winning the war. Winning the narrative, for example, is also about the legitimacy of the threat of force. Winning the narrative in relation to the armed forces is something more than winning a war.

According to Emile Simpson, the key point is that winning the war in a military manner means winning it in relation to the enemy, but increasingly now, audiences other than the enemy matter, so the narrative is about covering what they think, as well as what the enemy and one’s own side thinks. If the strategic narrative of the battle space in the 21st century is not only about winning the war in a mere military manner, about what then can it be?

I would like to propose three different, although interconnected topics: the legitimacy of using force, the performance of the conduct of war, and the mutual recognition of the fighting communities after the war.

Before explaining this conceptualization in more detail, for purposes of clarity I would like to mention its basic ideas. This proposition stems firstly from my interpretation of Clausewitz’s trinity, which is quite different from so called trinitarian war, which is not directly a concept of Clausewitz, but an argument made by Harry Summers, Martin van Creveld and Mary Kaldor.

In my view, each war is differently composed of three aspects of applying force, the struggle or fight of the armed forces, and the fighting community to which the fighting forces belong. You may easily relate the legitimacy of using force, the performance of the conduct of war and the mutual recognition of the fighting forces after the war to these three aspects of my interpretation of Clausewitz.
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US Zionist attack dog brought to heel
4 October, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

Interesting times are in the offing between the US and Iran as the American government says it is now “ready for talks” with the Islamic Republic – after 34 years of hostility since the Iranian Revolution of 1979.

US Secretary of State John Kerry has said that economic sanctions imposed on Iran could be lifted within six months.

And, interestingly, American officials seem to have resisted Israel’s latest saber rattling when Premier Benjamin Netanyahu hotfooted it to Washington earlier this week with grim warnings that Iran’s diplomatic overtures were merely a ruse.

Netanyahu repeated the tired old disreputable claims before the UN General Assembly that Iran was secretly building a nuclear bomb to destroy the Israeli state. As one mocking headline in Israeli newspaper Haaretz put it: “Netanyahu’s UN speech was enriched with Iran rhetoric, but his stockpile is low”.

In a seeming rebuff to Netanyahu days later, US top diplomat John Kerry told a press conference in Japan that the US was insisting on pursuing the diplomatic route with Iran.

US officials are now scheduled to meet with Iranian counterparts in Geneva later this month, along with other members of the P5+1 group, to explore possible diplomatic options to resolve the nuclear standoff that would allow Iran to avail of its right to peaceful nuclear development and importantly to lift the economic sanctions.

So, are we about to see an historic divergence between US and Israeli foreign policy? A divergence where Washington acts on more enlightened self-interest towards Iran and cuts the bellicose Israeli regime adrift.

This will be a test of what truly makes US foreign policy tick. Many observers aver that Washington has been for too long maligned by an inordinate Israeli influence in its stance towards Iran and the Middle East generally.

In this view, it is contended that a belligerent Israel has in effect hijacked and deformed American government relations with the wider world. The corollary of this analysis is that if somehow Washington could ditch the warping influence of Israeli politicians and the powerful Zionist lobbies then America might be able to establish more friendly foreign relations; and with Iran in particular.

The largely positive reception bestowed on Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani during his visit to the US last week might suggest such a tantalizing new beginning. The cordial meeting between John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly also bodes well. Then came the “historic” phone call from US President Barack Obama to Rouhani as the latter was departing for Iran, during which the American leader even bade farewell in Persian language.

Netanyahu’s barnstorming arrival in Washington and his tirade at the UN pouring invective on President Rouhani also suggests that there may indeed be a significant new opening in American-Iranian relations, one in which the US finally begins to act more reasonably and independently from Israeli warmongering.

To be sure, it is incumbent to give diplomacy a chance. The burden of economic sanctions on the Iranian people makes it imperative to resolve the nuclear dispute.

As President Rouhani has noted, decades of enmity going back to the US-orchestrated coup d’état in 1953 cannot be resolved overnight and certainly not merely on the basis of a few phone calls and cordial meetings.

The ignominious history of American aggression towards Iran will require some earnest practical measures to build confidence in Washington’s purported sincerity. The immediate canceling of illegal US sanctions would be a good place to start, one where the onus is firmly on Washington, not Tehran.

But here is the caveat. Can Washington really separate itself from Israeli hostility towards Iran?

Put it another way: is the Zionist regime an obnoxious appendage of Washington that could be discarded, or is it an integral part of US foreign policy? The benign view is that if the Zionist warmongering influence could be excised then the US might be able to conduct more ethical foreign relations with Iran (and other countries).

The trouble is that this benign view fails to understand the fundamental role of Israel in US foreign relations. Israel is not just an entity that Washington suffers as a result of excessive Zionist lobby groups and bribes to Congress. It is of course partly that.

But, more fundamentally, Israel serves to project American imperialist interests and power in the Middle East. The affront to international law and human rights that the Israeli regime incarnates, the conflict and wars that it fuels, all these violations are an integral part of how US imperialism asserts hegemony across the Middle East region and beyond.

The same goes for the House of Saud and the other Persian Gulf Arab dictatorships. They are all part of the anti-democratic architecture that guarantees Washington’s domination in the oil-rich Middle East. That domination depends not just on the flow of oil and massive weapons sales from conflicts, but more crucially on the flow of
petrodollars to prop up the bankrupt American Federal Reserve.

This explains, for example, why Israel and the Arab dictatorships have merged as allies in the same US camp of fomenting regime change in Syria.

Israel and the Saudi regime may owe their origin to British imperialism, but likewise they owe their ongoing criminal existence to the patronage of American imperialism.

As American Vice President Joe Biden let slip this week at the Washington conference of the Jewish lobby group J Street: “If there was not an Israel, we would have to invent one, to make sure US interests were preserved [in the Middle East].” Biden could easily have said the exact same thing about Saudi Arabia.

The point is that Washington’s hostility towards Iran is not borne out of a policy that is misguided and warped by the rogue state of Israel (or Saudi Arabia). Washington’s hostility towards Iran is borne out of American imperialism, in the service of US-dominated global capitalism. And American imperialism is hostile to any nation that pursues a path of independent economic and political development. Iran is top of that list.

The difference between the US and Israel towards Iran is therefore one of tactics, not strategy. Where Israel is incapable of thinking in any way beyond militarism, the US has enough sophistication to engage in an alternative tactic of diplomacy and politics.

There are telltale signs that the US still retains its fundamental hostility towards Iran despite the latest diplomatic overtures. One such sign was Obama’s White House meeting with Netanyahu this week in which the president reiterated that the US would not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and that “all options, including the military option, were on still on the table”. The bets are Obama did not say that in his “chatty” phone call with President Rouhani.

This is not a case of the Zionist tail wagging the American dog.

Rather it is the imperialist master bringing its Zionist attack dog to heel… for now. …source

West’s damning silence over Bahrain
1 October, 2013 – By Finian Cunningham – PressTV

Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.”

Bahrain’s despotic Al Khalifa rulers have gone into a huff over US President Barack Obama’s comparison of the Persian Gulf island state with Syria.

In his address to the UN General Assembly last week, Obama made vague mention of sectarianism in Syria and Bahrain in the same sentence.

The funny thing is that the Bahraini dictatorship is right in a way, but for all the wrong reasons. Bahrain is nothing like Syria.

That’s because Bahrain represents a genuine case of a peaceful pro-democracy movement being crushed by a despised tyrant. That’s the narrative that the Western governments and their propaganda mainstream media apply erroneously to Syria; but when it comes to Bahrain, where the narrative is truly applicable, the West turns a blind eye and develops a curious speech impediment.

Obama probably felt obliged to make some mention of Bahrain in his UN address only because the human rights situation there is so dire, for him not to throw a few token words of concern would have left him open to derision, especially since the US Navy Fifth Fleet is stationed there and Washington plies the regime with millions of dollars worth of weaponry and commerce.

Nevertheless, the US president’s contemptibly few words on Bahrain, betray a disgraceful complicity of silence by Washington and the West generally towards the Khalifa regime’s crimes against its long-suffering people.

Yet, such is the arrogance of the buffoonish Bahraini autocrats they went into a huff over Obama’s pathetic paucity of criticism.

This week, Bahrain’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa tried to go on the offensive, telling the UN assembly that the so-called kingdom is a society “based on cooperation, not confrontation.” Sheikh Khalid deserved a standing ovation for brazenness.

As his name indicates, the Bahraini diplomat is a royal member of the Khalifa monarchy. This family has ruled over Bahrain ever since the island gained nominal independence from Britain in 1971. The Khalifa appointed itself as a monarchy and assigned grandiose titles, such as “king” and “crown prince,” “prime minister” and “foreign minister.”

And they have held on to these baubles through hereditary cronyism, becoming super rich in the process, without any form of democratic accountability.

Bahrain is an oil-producing minnow when compared with the natural endowments of Saudi Arabia, Iraq or Iran. But the modest oil and gas wealth of Bahrain has been enough to make the Khalifa family and its hangers-on incredibly enriched. For example, the unelected prime minister since 1971, Sheikh Khalifa bin Salman, also known as “Mister Fifty-Fifty” because of his notorious penchant for bribes and backhanders, is reckoned to be one of the wealthiest individuals in the world.

That is something of an achievement for a clan of imposters that the majority of indigenous Bahrainis have time and again repudiated. The Khalifas originally invaded Bahrain 230 years ago as a marauding tribe of sea pirates. They subjugated the Bahraini population and its proud Persian culture under the sword and with the brute help of the British Empire. …more

Russia Warns of More Gas Use by Syria Militants
30 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow has serious suspicions that foreign-backed militants fighting in Syria will continue attempts to use chemical weapons in the Arab country.

“We have serious suspicions that these attempts (to use chemical weapons) will continue,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian Kommersant daily published on Monday.

He added that the US has not produced any evidence on the Syrian government’s role in last month’s chemical attack.

Washington had threatened to take military action against Syria over a claim that the Syrian government had been behind a deadly chemical attack near Damascus on August 21.

Syria strongly rejected the allegation, saying the attack had been carried out by the foreign-backed militants to draw in outside military intervention.

“They did not produce it to us. Meanwhile, we produced the evidence we have (received through our own channels, from Syrians and from independent sources) that prompts the conclusion that it is handiwork of the opposition.”

The top Russian diplomat, whose country is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, noted that the new UN resolution on Syria does not imply the use of force.

The UN Security Council on September 27 unanimously approved a resolution to avert a US-led military strike against Syria. The resolution condemned the use of chemical weapons in the country and called for their elimination.

The resolution came after days of intense negotiations between the United States and Russia and does not fall under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which regulates the use of military force.

“At the meeting with the UN Secretary General and with the five permanent members of the Security Council and at the Security Council session itself we stressed that the countries acting as sponsors of the opposition in the political, financial and military respects bear responsibility for it not trying to lay hands on some stocks of chemical weapons, to receive it from somewhere abroad or stage provocations within Syria to shift the blame on the government, arouse general anger and thus try to provoke an outside strike at Syria,” said Lavrov.

Lavrov said that in compliance with the new UN resolution “any abuses permitted by any side –the Syrian government or the militants — must be reported to the UN Security Council after a thorough investigation.”

“This also applies to the use of chemical weapons by, God forbid, anyone,” he added.

Lavrov further said that Moscow is glad that despite initial resistance from western states, the new resolution includes the approval of Geneva Communiqué, which calls for an end to the Syrian crisis through negotiations.

Foreign-sponsored militancy has gripped Syria for over two years and the turmoil has taken its toll on the lives of many people across the country. …source

Time to turn table on West warmongers
By Finian Cunningham – 29 September, 2013 – PressTV

Notable is the reiterated inclusion of members of the present government. This provision scotches, at least legally speaking, the Western agenda of regime change through covert terrorism. It pours egg on the face of the likes of John Kerry, William Hague and Laurent Fabius who have been harping on about Assad standing down and “having no place on this earth.””

US President Barack Obama described the latest Security Council resolution on Syrian chemical weapons as “a huge victory for the world”. It certainly was a huge victory for diplomacy over war, to the relief of the world’s people.

But for Obama to seek credit in the passing of this resolution is contemptible. It was a defeat for warmongers led by the likes of Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry, who were clamoring for unilateral missile strikes on Syria.

Also among those defeated are the American warmonger puppets of Britain and France, David Cameron and Francois Hollande. Nursing wounded egos are those other cheerleaders of American imperialism, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Recall that only a few weeks ago, these protagonists and proxies were on the cusp of launching an all-out criminal war of aggression on the Syrian Arab Republic.

Some of these warmongers seem to still retain residual fantasies of a military attack. President Obama hasm since the signing of the UN Security Council resolution last Friday, warned that Syria’s government will “face consequences” if it does not comply with the disarmament of its chemical weapons stockpile.

The Israeli minister of military affairs Moshe Yaalon went even further, reportedly telling media “after dismantling Syria’s chemical weapons, the regime in Damascus must be changed”.

The truth is that the UN resolution successfully de-fangs the warmongers. They now sound like sore losers whose diminishing threats are impotent attempts at flexing muscle. In this regard, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has safely steered the American war machine off the road.

In the wording of the resolution, which is binding to all parties, there is no mention of the use of military force. Use of force was precisely what Washington and its puppets and cheerleaders were threatening. Now there is a legal framework in place where such threats have been excluded.

Admittedly, in the final provision of the resolution, number 21, it is stated “in the event of non-compliance with this resolution, including unauthorized transfer of chemical weapons, or any use of chemical weapons by anyone in the Syrian Arab Republic, [permits] to impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter”.

The ominous Chapter VII may, in theory, lead to military force. But that eventuality would require another unanimous resolution, which Russia and China will veto.

This is no guarantee that the warmongers will not persist at some stage in the future with their plans of aggression and regime change in Syria. After all there are countless laws and charters already in existence for many decades that prohibit illegal violence, but which have not deterred American, British, French or Israeli terrorism.

Nevertheless, Resolution 2118 on Syria is an important impediment to the illicit war agenda and raises the political price for parties that might try to embark on a belligerent path. This is in the crucial context of worldwide public opposition to the warpath. No less important is that the American and European public is trenchantly against any such bellicose adventurism by rogue leaders.

In that way, the resolution is not so much a framework that puts Syria’s chemical weapons under international control but rather it puts American lawlessness and recourse to unilateral aggression, or state terrorism, under international control.

There are more positive aspects. For a start, if we accept the assumption that the Syrian government did not use or has no intention of using chemical weapons and that it has signed up in good faith to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, then there will be no such contingency as “non-compliance”.

The Syrian government has therefore found a legal way to safely dispose of a dangerous liability in the form of its chemical munitions stockpile. Maintaining this arsenal imposes unnecessary financial costs on the Syrian government. In an analogous way to Iran’s argument that nuclear weapons are an obsolete instrument at this point in history, so too it can be said about chemical weapons. To get rid of them is thus a relief from a burden.

The beauty is that this seeming concession is actually a gain, while the West’s concession of disposing its war plans is obviously a double gain for Syria. …more

Bahrain FM openly calls for assassinating Hezbollah Chief Nasrallah
29 September, 2013 – Shia Post

Bahraini Foreign Minister Khalid bin Ahmed Al Khalifa, urged on his Twitter account the assassination of Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah, calling it “a national and religious duty.”

According to the Tweet inconsistent with all international norms, Al-Khalifa’s minister said that Sayyed Nasrallah “is terrorist and declares war on his nation,” the official Bahrain News Agency reported.

The minister’s statements followed Sayyed Nasrallah’s latest speech in which he touched on several topics, mainly the situation in Syria and Bahrain.

Observers believe that the Bahraini authorities should settle its internal problems and meet the demands of the protesters, rather than marketing problems and accusations to others, especially Hezbollah, the Lebanese party of Resistance which constitute the spearhead in facing the Zionist occupation. …source

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov speaks to the United Nations Security Council after it unanimously voted in favor of a resolution eradicating Syria’s chemical arsenal during a Security Council meeting at the 68th United Nations General Assembly in New York on September 27, 2013

Russia says to push for Mideast free of mass-destruction weapons
By Steve Gutterman – Reuters – 29 September, 2013

Russia wants to revive plans for a conference on ridding the Middle East of weapons of mass destruction now that Syria has pledged to abandon its chemical arms, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in comments published on Monday.

Such a move could put Moscow at odds with Washington which announced the conference would be delayed last year. Analysts said it feared the event would be used to criticize its ally Israel, believed to be the region’s only nuclear-armed state.

Russia has been pushing to extend its influence in the Middle East. It initiated a U.N. deal to get Syria to abandon its chemical arms after Washington threatened military strikes to punish Damascus for a sarin gas attack on rebel areas.

“We will seek to have this conference take place,” Lavrov said in an interview with the Russian daily Kommersant.

Lavrov said Syria’s agreement to destroy its chemical weapons by next June should trigger a broader effort.

“In the current situation, it is particularly important to make the … non-possession of weapons of mass destruction universal in this explosive region,” he said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said Syria’s government always viewed its long-undeclared chemical arsenal as a counterweight to the nuclear arms Israel is believed to possess. Israel has never acknowledged having atomic weapons.

DIVIDED POWERS

A plan for a meeting to lay the groundwork for the possible creation of a Middle East free of weapons of mass destruction was agreed in 2010, co-sponsored by Russia, the United States and Britain.

But Washington said the meeting would be delayed just before it was due to start at the end of last year. No new date has been announced.

“Our American partners baulked and sidestepped this,” Lavrov said in the interview, published the same day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to meet U.S. President Barack Obama.

The United States also rejected a Russian proposal to include a line in a U.N. Security Council resolution saying that Syria’s plan to scrap chemical weapons was an important step toward a WMD-free Middle East, Lavrov told Kommersant.

Russia has been Syria’s biggest diplomatic ally during the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad that has killed more than 100,000 people.

Speaking to the U.N. General Assembly on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem called for the creation of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction but said it was “unachievable without the accession of Israel”.

Arab states such as Egypt and Bahrain have made similar calls in speeches at the General Assembly.

But U.S. and Israeli officials see Iran’s nuclear activity as the main proliferation threat in the Middle East.

They have said a nuclear-free zone could not be a reality until there was broad Arab-Israeli peace and Tehran curbed its nuclear program, which they fear is aimed at developing nuclear weapons capability.

Washington remained committed to working toward a Middle East zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery systems, the U.S. envoy to the U.N. nuclear agency said earlier this month. …source

Mission Accomplished? Syria, the Anti-War Movement, and the Spirit of Internationalism
30 September, 2013 – Huffington Post

The American peace movement has been celebrating what it sees as its victory on Syria. “The U.S. is not bombing Syria, as we certainly would have been if not for a huge mobilization of anti-war pressure on the president and especially on Congress,” writes Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). This represents “an extraordinary, unforeseen victory for the global anti-war movement,” she goes on, one that “we should be savoring.” Robert Naiman of the organization Just Foreign Policy vaunts “How We Stopped the U.S. Bombing of Syria”.

This turn of events is “something extraordinary – even historic,” writes my good friend Stephen Kinzer, coming from a different but overlapping perspective. “Never in modern history have Americans been so doubtful about the wisdom of bombing, invading or occupying another country,” writes the author of the classic Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. “This is an exciting moment,” he rhapsodizes, “the start of a new, more realistic approach to foreign policy.”

The tireless progressive journalist David Sirota, whom I admire a lot, extols “How the Antiwar Majority Stopped Obama.” The opposition of “angry Americans” to the administration’s push for a military strike, he contends, proved “absolutely critical” and is “why there now seems to be a possibility of avoiding yet another war in the Middle East.”

I completely understand this jubilance. And yet it leaves me feeling uneasy.

Let me be clear: I too was against the Obama administration’s proposed military strike on Syria. I thought it strange that after two and a half years of doing essentially nothing about the deepening crisis in Syria, the White House suddenly decided to act with such a sense of urgency that it was unwilling to wait for the United Nations inspection team to complete its job. As if the world should just trust American claims about weapons of mass destruction. That went really well last time.

I also thought chemical weapons were exactly the wrong issue. To paraphrase Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center, why draw a “red line” at the use of chemical weapons but not at 100,000 dead? Or at two and a half years of crimes against humanity? The vast majority of the civilians killed since the Syrian uprising began in March of 2011 have died by means of conventional, not chemical weapons.

I agreed wholeheartedly with the International Crisis Group that the Obama administration’s case for action was based on “reasons largely divorced from the interests of the Syrian people,” who “have suffered from far deadlier mass atrocities during the course of the conflict without this prompting much collective action in their defence.”

Hinging its case on chemical weapons turned out to be a huge strategic mistake as well. Russia cleverly short-circuited the Obama administration, taking advantage of the thinness of its case. So Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles will be removed from the equation – then what? The Assad killing machine, which was overwhelmingly non-chemical to begin with, can continue unfettered on its rampage. Chemical weapons issue – solved. The killing fields of Syria – no end in sight. …more