Middle East

Guess How Many Bombs America Dropped In 2015

January 12, 2016 Micah Zenko, www.nationalinterest.org Educate! Drones, Iraq, Middle East, Syria, Wars and Militarism

Micah Zenko for The National Interest. United States - The primary focus—meaning the commitment of personnel, resources, and senior leaders’ attention—of U.S. counterterrorism policies is the capture or killing (though, overwhelmingly killing) of existing terrorists. Far less money and programmatic attention is dedicated to preventing the emergence of new terrorists. As an anecdotal example of this, I often ask U.S. government officials and mid-level staffers, “What are you doing to prevent a neutral person from becoming a terrorist?”

US Planning New Military Bases In Middle East, Asia, And Africa

December 12, 2015 Dan Wright, www.shadowproof.com Educate! Africa, Asia, Middle East, US military

Dan Wright for Shadow Proof - Not satisfied with sowing greater chaos and despair in the Middle East for the last decade, the Obama Administration is reportedly planning for the U.S. to expand its imperial footprint throughout Africa, Asia and other parts of the Middle East with a series of new military bases. The base plan was reportedly submitted this year by now-former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey. The U.S. already has military personnel in 135 countries, with the Department of Defense’s own reports acknowledging the existence of over 660 U.S. military bases abroad.

How US Fueled The Rise Of The Islamic State

November 16, 2015 Seumas Milne, www.theguardian.com Educate! Islamic State, Middle East

By Seumas Milne for The Guardian - The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting. The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.

The Sham Syrian Peace Conference

November 9, 2015 Gareth Porter, www.middleeasteye.net Educate! Diplomacy, Middle East, Peace

By Gareth Porter for Middle East Eye - I have always been enthusiastic in my support for peace negotiations, which have been neglected all too often in internal and international conflicts. But it is clear that the international conference on Syria that held its first meeting in Vienna on October 30 is a sham conference that is not capable of delivering any peace negotiations, and that the Obama administration knew that perfectly well from the start. The administration was touting the fact that Iran was invited to participate in the conference, unlike the previous United Nations-sponsored gathering on Syria in January and February 2014.

The Anti-Empire Report #140

November 5, 2015 William Blum, www.williamblum.org Educate! Middle East

By William Blum for Willliam Blum - Are you confused by the Middle East? Here are some things you should know. (But you’ll probably still be confused.) The US, France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar, and the Gulf monarchies have all in the recent past supported al Qaeda and/or the Islamic State (ISIS) with arms, money, and/or manpower. The first example of this was in 1979 when the United States began covert operations in Afghanistan, six months before the Russians arrived, promoting Islamic fundamentalism across the southern tier of the Soviet Union against “godless communism”. All the al-Qaeda/Taliban shit then followed.

Palestinians In Israel Call For Strike As Protests Grow

October 13, 2015 Creede Newton, www.aljazeera.com Resist! Israel, Middle East

By Creede Newton for Aljazeera - Jerusalem - Palestinian citizens of Israel have announced a general strike and more protests as unrest continues to sweep Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories since the killing of two Israeli settlers in the West Bank on October 1. The High Follow-Up Committee for Arab Citizens of Israel, an extra-parliamentary body that represents the minority community, declared a general strike for Tuesday. Arab-owned businesses, schools and other institutions will be closed. For the past week, thousands of Palestinians in Israel have protested in Haifa, Jaffa, Nazareth and other cities and villages in Palestinian communities across the country.

The Revolutionary Age

October 7, 2015 Chris Hodges and Sabah Alnasseri, www.therealnews.com Educate! Middle East, Religion

By Chris Hodges and Sabah Alnasseri for The Real News, In this episode of teleSUR's Days of Revolt, Chris Hedges and Sabah Alnasseri dissect the genesis of political revolutions in the Middle East, and discuss the role of religion and the reasons for the increased prevalence of fundamentalism. HEDGES: So I think what we want to focus on in this segment is the dynamics of revolutionary change in an age of globalism and neoliberalism, how it will look like revolutions in the past, and how it will look like something else. And I know this is something you have examined. ALNASSERI: Right. Right. I will start with the end of the Cold War and the breakdown of the Soviet Union, because this world historical context is very important in understanding any kind of politics, revolutionary or otherwise.

A Useful Prep-Sheet On Syria For Media Propagandists

October 3, 2015 Gary Leupp, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Israel, Middle East, Syria

By Gary Leupp for Counter Punch - State Department talking points on Syria for cable news anchors: Keep mentioning the barrel bombs. Do not mention how their use was pioneered by the Israeli Air Force in 1948, and how they were used by the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam in Operation Inferno in 1968. Keep repeating, “barrel bombs, barrel bombs” and stating with a straight face that the Syrian regime is using them “against its own people.” Against its own people. Against its own people. Against its own people. Keep mentioning “200,000.” (The UN estimates that 220,000 have been killed in the conflict since 2011.) Declare like you really believe it that this is the number of civilians the Syrian government of Bashar Assad has killed during the war.

Obama’s Geopolitical Strategy For Containing China

September 17, 2015 Alfred W. McCoy, www.tomdispatch.com Educate! China, Middle East, Obama

By Alfred W. McCoy in Tom Dispatch - In ways that have eluded Washington pundits and policymakers, President Barack Obama is deploying a subtle geopolitical strategy that, if successful, might give Washington a fighting chance to extend its global hegemony deep into the twenty-first century. After six years of silent, sometimes secret preparations, the Obama White House has recently unveiled some bold diplomatic initiatives whose sum is nothing less than a tri-continental strategy to check Beijing’s rise. As these moves unfold, Obama is revealing himself as one of those rare grandmasters who appear every generation or two with an ability to go beyond mere foreign policy and play that ruthless global game called geopolitics. Since he took office in 2009, Obama has faced an unremitting chorus of criticism, left and right, domestic and foreign, dismissing him as hapless, even hopeless.

The Rise Of A ‘Democratic’ Fascism

March 9, 2015 John Pilger, www.consortiumnews.com Educate! Fascism, History, Middle East, Torture

The recent 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz was a reminder of the great crime of fascism, whose Nazi iconography is embedded in our consciousness. Fascism is preserved as history, as flickering footage of goose-stepping blackshirts, their criminality terrible and clear. Yet in the same liberal societies, whose war-making elites urge us never to forget, the accelerating danger of a modern kind of fascism is suppressed; for it is their fascism. “To initiate a war of aggression…,” said the Nuremberg Tribunal judges in 1946, “is not only an international crime, it is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.” Had the Nazis not invaded Europe, Auschwitz and the Holocaust would not have happened.

Why I Can’t Celebrate Malala’s Nobel Peace Prize

October 13, 2014 Middle East Revised, www.middleeastrevised.com Educate! Malala, Middle East

We would never even know her name. But, since Malala’s story fits into the western narrative of the oriental oppression (in which the context underlying the creation of the oppression is left out), we all know Malala’s name. Like Assed Baig writes: “This is a story of a native girl being saved by the white man. Flown to the UK, the Western world can feel good about itself as they save the native woman from the savage men of her home nation. It is a historic racist narrative that has been institutionalised. Journalists and politicians were falling over themselves to report and comment on the case. The story of an innocent brown child that was shot by savages for demanding an education and along comes the knight in shining armour to save her. The actions of the West, the bombings, the occupations the wars all seem justified now, ‘see, we told you, this is why we intervene to save the natives.'”

Owl Of Minerva’s View: ISIS And Our Times

September 6, 2014 Noam Chomsky, www.truth-out.org Educate! Civilization, ISIS, Middle East

It is not pleasant to contemplate the thoughts that must be passing through the mind of the Owl of Minerva as the dusk falls and she undertakes the task of interpreting the era of human civilization, which may now be approaching its inglorious end. The era opened almost 10,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent, stretching from the lands of the Tigris and Euphrates, through Phoenicia on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean to the Nile Valley, and from there to Greece and beyond. What is happening in this region provides painful lessons on the depths to which the species can descend. The land of the Tigris and Euphrates has been the scene of unspeakable horrors in recent years. The George W. Bush-Tony Blair aggression in 2003, which many Iraqis compared to the Mongol invasions of the 13th century, was yet another lethal blow. It destroyed much of what survived the Bill Clinton-driven UN sanctions on Iraq, condemned as "genocidal" by the distinguished diplomats Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, who administered them before resigning in protest. Halliday and von Sponeck's devastating reports received the usual treatment accorded to unwanted facts. One dreadful consequence of the US-UK invasion is depicted in a New York Times "visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria": the radical change of Baghdad from mixed neighborhoods in 2003 to today's sectarian enclaves trapped in bitter hatred. The conflicts ignited by the invasion have spread beyond and are now tearing the entire region to shreds.

The Covert Origins Of ISIS

August 31, 2014 Staff, www.scgnews.com Educate! Iraq, ISIS, Libya, Middle East, Syria, Wars and Militarism

The Islamic militant group ISIS, formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and recently rebranded as the so called Islamic State, is the stuff of nightmares. They are ruthless, fanatical, killers, on a mission, and that mission is to wipe out anyone and everyone, from any religion or belief system and to impose Shari'ah law. The mass executions, beheadings and even crucifixions that they are committing as they work towards this goal are flaunted like badges of pride, video taped and uploaded for the whole world to see. This is the new face of evil. Would it interest you to know who helped these psychopaths rise to power? Would it interest you to know who armed them, funded them and trained them? Would it interest you to know why?

NY Times Rewrites Headline On 4 Gaza Boys Killed By Israel

July 18, 2014 Peter Hart, www.fair.org Educate! Gaza, Israel, Journalism, Middle East, New York Times (NYT), Palestine, Wars and Militarism

Yesterday (7/16/14) the New York Times posted its first account of the Israeli strike that killed four young Palestinians on a beach in Gaza. The headline looked like this: "Four Young Boys Killed Playing On Gaza Beach." That headline appropriately conveys the horrors witnessed and documented by the Times reporters. But at some point–around 9:00 pm, according to the website Newsdiffs–the headline was changed to the version that appears on the front page of the New York Times today: "Boys Drawn to Gaza Beach, and Into Center of Mideast Strife." Was there something wrong with noting in the headline that the boys were killed? Do readers learn more being told they were "drawn into strife"? Headlines are one very prominent way that news stories are framed. In this case, it does a disservice to the reporting underneath.

Why It’s Way Too Soon To Give Up On The Arab Spring

June 30, 2014 Juan Cole, www.latimes.com Educate! Arab Spring, Egypt, Elections, Middle East, Revolution, Youth

Three and a half years ago, the world was riveted by massive crowds of youths mobilizing in Cairo's Tahrir Square to demand an end to Egypt's dreary police state. We watched transfixed as a movement first ignited in Tunisia spread from one part of Egypt to another, and then from country to country across the region. Before it was over, four presidents-for-life had been toppled and the region's remaining dictators were unsettled. The young Arabs who made the recent revolutions are ... distinctive: substantially more urban, literate, media-savvy and wired than their parents and grandparents. - Some 42 months later, in most of the Middle East and North Africa, the bright hopes for more personal liberties and an end to political and economic stagnation championed by those young people have been dashed. Instead, some Arab countries have seen counterrevolutions, while others are engulfed in internecine conflicts and civil wars, creating Mad Max-like scenes of postapocalyptic horror. But keep one thing in mind: The rebellions of the last three years were led by Arab millennials, by young people who have decades left to come into their own. Don't count them out yet.

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